Imagining Beyond “God's Warriors”

Abstract : This article provides a review of the CNN TV series, “God's Warriors,” by Christiane Amanpour.     

Neuropsychological Performance in Gulf War Era Veterans: Traumatic Stress Symptomatology and Exposure to Chemical–Biological Warfare Agents

Because complaints of diminished concentration and memory are among the most common health symptoms reported by Gulf War (GW) veterans with unexplained illnesses, this study investigated neuropsychological functions among GW veterans and controls. Relationships between neuropsychological performance, severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology, and exposure to chemical–biological warfare agents (CBW) were assessed. Participants were 225 veterans recruited from three cohorts: GW-deployed veterans from Ft. Devens, MA ( n = 141) and New Orleans, LA (n = 37), and Germany-deployed veterans from a Maine National Guard unit (n = 47). A comprehensive evaluation was completed. Severity of subclinical PTSD symptomatology was significantly related to scores on specific neuropsychological tests. PTSD symptom severity in GW-deployed veterans was found to be greater and associated with a broader range of neuropsychological deficits than in Germany-deployed veterans. PTSD severity was associated with lower performance on a range of neuropsychological tasks, whereas CBW exposure contributed to performance deficits on specific cognitive tasks.     

Four studies extending the utility of the Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS-10)

The Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS-10; Blais et al., 1999) is a brief, cost free, and easy to administer assessment device designed to measure a broad domain of psychological health. The 4 studies using the SOS-10 reported here extend the initial reliability and validity studies beyond psychiatric patients in a hospital setting to examine (a) test-retest reliability in a college student population, (b) concurrent validity with college students using an indirect technique assessing maladjustment, (c) concurrent validity with college counseling center clients using a self-report measure of client distress, and (d) sensitivity to treatment changes with outpatient clients. These studies lend further support for using the SOS-10 as a measure of psychological well-being and as an outcome measure in varied settings.     

You’re Better Respected When You Carry Yourself as a Man: Black Men’s Personal Accounts of the Down Low “lifestyle”

Although the notion of a down low life style, called various things at various times, has a long history in the black community, the past few years have been marked by an exponential increase in attention of this phenomenon in both the mainstream press and scholarly work. However, much of this work has focused on exploring whether men on the down low present a unique threat for HIV infection to black women. Currently, there exist very few scholarly works exploring the lives of black men who have sex with men and women that specifically address their own experiences living on the down low or how these men personally define what it means to be on the down low. In this article, we explore why black men who have sex with men and black men who have sex with men and women, including those who self-identify as gay, bisexual or as being on the down low, come to use the down low label and what it means to them to be on the down low.     

Does temporal integration of face parts reflect holistic processing?

We examined whether temporal integration of face parts reflects holistic processing or response interference. Participants learned to name two faces “Fred” and two “Bob.” At test, the top and bottom halves of different faces formed composites and were presented briefly separated in time. Replicating prior findings (Singer & Sheinberg, Vision Research, 46, 1838–1847, 2006), naming of the target half for aligned composites was slowed when the irrelevant half was from a face with a different name rather than from the original face. However, no interference was observed when the irrelevant half had a name identical to the name of the target half but came from a different learned face, arguing against a true holistic effect. Instead, response interference was obtained when the target half briefly preceded the irrelevant half. Experiment 2 confirmed a double dissociation of holistic processing versus response interference for intact faces versus temporally separated face halves, suggesting that simultaneous presentation of facial information is critical for holistic processing.     

Memory for multiple visual ensembles in infancy

The number of individual items that can be maintained in working memory is limited. One solution to this problem is to store representations of ensembles that contain summary information about large numbers of items (e.g., the approximate number or cumulative area of a group of many items). Here we explored the developmental origins of ensemble representations by asking whether infants represent ensembles and, if so, how many at one time. We habituated 9-month-old infants to arrays containing 2, 3, or 4 spatially intermixed colored subsets of dots, then asked whether they detected a numerical change to one of the subsets or to the superset of all dots. Experiment Series 1 showed that infants detected a numerical change to 1 of the subsets when the array contained 2 subsets but not 3 or 4 subsets. Experiment Series 2 showed that infants detected a change to the superset of all dots no matter how many subsets were presented. Experiment 3 showed that infants represented both the approximate number and the cumulative surface area of these ensembles. Our results suggest that infants, like adults (Halberda, Sires, & Feigenson, 2006), can store quantitative information about 2 subsets plus the superset: a total of 3 ensembles. This converges with the known limit on the number of individual objects infants and adults can store and suggests that, throughout development, an ensemble functions much like an individual object for working memory.