Development and Preliminary Validation of the Threat Appraisal Questionnaire for Children (TAQ-C)

Despite the emphasis on threat appraisal in cognitive models of anxiety, self-report measures of related processes in children and adolescents have been lacking. This paper reports on the development and preliminary psychometric evaluation of a new measure of threat appraisal for children and adolescents – the Threat Appraisal Questionnaire for Children (TAQ-C). Based on current conceptualisations of threat appraisal, the TAQ-C was designed to index the construct across three dimensions: probability, cost, and coping difficulties. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to examine this structure in a community sample of n = 312 children (ages 9–15 years, 55% female). Results indicated that the scores on the instrument capture three factors (Probability, Cost and Coping difficulties). Moreover, a model in which the 1st-order factors loaded significantly on a single 2nd order factor of threat in general, was supported. The TAQ-C was found to demonstrate good internal consistency, and acceptable levels of test-retest reliability within a 3–4 week interval, when evaluated with a subsample of n = 51 children. Support for convergent validity was demonstrated, with TAQ-C scores found to correlate strongly with existing measures of child anxiety, and conceptually related cognitive processes. Divergent validity was also evidenced, with low correlations found between TAQ-C scores and the unrelated construct measure of Hyperactivity-Inattention. The TAQ-C, therefore, appears to be a promising measure with a range of potential applications for child and adolescent settings.     

Joint Influence of Visual and Auditory Words in the Stroop Task

We conducted four Stroop color–word experiments to examine how multiple stimuli influence interference. Experiments 1a and 1b showed that interference was strong when the word and color were integrated, and that visual and auditory words made independent contributions to interference when these words had different meanings. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed this pattern when the word information and color information were not integrated, and hence when overall interference was substantially less. Auditory and visual interference effects are comparable except when the visual distracter is integrated with the color, in which case interference is substantially enhanced. Overall, these results are interpreted as being most consistent with a joint influence account of interference as opposed to a capture account.     

Thoughts on Rigoletto

The author discusses the traditional interpretations of the principal dramatis personae in Verdi's Rigoletto, suggesting that the opera expresses the composer's unconscious but highly perceptive and intuitive exploration of: (i) paranoid and perverse father-daughter oedipal dynamics as enacted between Rigoletto and Gilda; (ii) a folie-à-deux sado-masochistic relationship between Rigoletto and the Duke; (iii) the avoidance of conscious guilt and responsibility for Rigoletto's part in the tragedy through the rejection of insight achieved via massive projection, an addiction to mania, and perversion. In this respect Rigoletto is compared with King Lear. Some technical aspects of Verdi's compositional style employed to portray the contrasting characters of the protagonists are analysed. The paper also touches on Verdi's own possible unconscious (as well as conscious) investment in this particular opera, noting similarities between Verdi's portrait of the tragic, hunchback jester and his own self-depiction. The author notes similarities and contrasts between his analysis of the opera and recent papers by Hudson (1992),Tarnopolsky (1995)and Bergstein (2003)on the same subject.     

Give them what they want: The benefits of explicitness in gift exchange

Five studies show that gift recipients are more appreciative of gifts they explicitly request than those they do not. In contrast, gift givers assume that both solicited and unsolicited gifts will be equally appreciated. At the root of this dilemma is a difference of opinion about what purchasing an unsolicited gift signals: gift givers expect unsolicited gifts will be considered more thoughtful and considerate by their intended recipients than is actually the case (,  and ). In our final two studies, we highlight two boundary conditions for this effect: identifying a specific gift and using money as a gift. When gift recipients request one specific gift, rather than providing a list of possible gifts, givers become more willing to purchase the requested gift (Study 4). Further, although givers believe that recipients do not appreciate receiving money as much as receiving a solicited gift, recipients feel the opposite about these two gift options (Study 5).     

The Association Between Church Attendance and Psychological Health in Northern Ireland: A National Representative Survey Among Adults Allowing for Sex Differences and Denominational Difference

This study extends previous research concerning the association between religion and psychological health in six ways: (1) by focusing clearly on religious attendance (church attendance); (2) by employing a robust measure of psychological distress (GHQ-12); (3) by studying a highly religious culture (Northern Ireland); (4) by taking sex differences into account (male or female); (5) by taking denominational differences into account (Catholic or Protestant); (6) and by obtaining a national representative sample (N = 4,281 adults aged 16 and above). Results from a 2 (sex) by 2 (denomination) ANCOVA demonstrated that Catholics recorded significantly lower levels of psychological health compared to Protestants, and that females showed significantly lower levels of psychological health compared to males. In addition, females reported higher frequency of religious service attendance than males, and Catholics reported higher attendance rates than Protestants. A significant positive association was found between frequency of religious attendance and GHQ-12 scores, and this association was moderated by sex and denomination. In conclusion, the results suggest that there may be sex and denominational differences in further understanding the relationship between frequency of religious attendance and psychological health.     

The Personality Characteristics of Anglican Clergymen and Clergywomen: The Search for Sex Differences

The aim of this study is to compare the personality profile of Anglican clergymen and clergywomen with the general population profile. Data were provided by 235 clergymen and 54 clergywomen serving in the Church in Wales who completed the short-form Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. These data demonstrated that the usual sex differences found in the population as a whole were not reproduced among the clergy, since there were no significant differences between clergymen and clergywomen in terms of extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism and the lie scale. Compared with the population norms, the two key differences were that clergymen recorded significantly lower psychoticism scores (closer to the female norms) and clergywomen recorded significantly lower neuroticism scores (closer to the male norms). The implications of these findings are discussed for the development of the ministry of men and women in the church.     

Religion and Happiness: A Study Among University Students in Turkey

This study tests the hypothesis that higher levels of positive religious affect are associated with higher levels of personal happiness among a sample of 348 students studying at a state university in Turkey who completed the Ok Religious Attitude Scale (Islam), the Oxford Happiness Inventory, and the short-form Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. The data reported a small but statistically significant association between religiosity and happiness after taking sex and individual differences in personality into account.     

Conceptual and non-conceptual repetition priming in category exemplar generation: Evidence from bilinguals

One measure of conceptual implicit memory is repetition priming in the generation of exemplars from a semantic category, but does such priming transfer across languages? That is, do the overlapping conceptual representations for translation equivalents provide a sufficient basis for such priming? In Experiment 1 (N=96) participants carried out a deep encoding task, and priming between languages was statistically reliable, but attenuated, relative to within-language priming. Experiment 2 (N=96) replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and assessed the contributions of conceptual and non-conceptual processes using a levels-of-processing manipulation. Words that underwent shallow encoding exhibited within-language, but not between-language, priming. Priming in shallow conditions cannot therefore be explained by incidental activation of the concept. Instead, part of the within-language priming effect, even under deep-encoding conditions, is due to increased availability of language-specific lemmas or phonological word forms.     

The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (second edition). By Romanus Cessario

The call of the Second Vatican Council for the renewal of moral theology has received very divergent responses. This article identifies and compares three such proposals. The underlying presupposition for this analysis is that each proposal begins with a divergent understanding of where the tradition went awry. Hence, the proposed cures ended up irreconcilable. This article seeks to describe ‘as precisely as possible the nature of the confusion and its sources, showing where attention must be directed if a solution is to be discovered.’ ¹ 1 The anonymous referee of the Heythrop Journal.
     

Cross-informant symptoms from CBCL, TRF, and YSR: trait and method variance in a normative sample of Russian youths

A large community-based sample of Russian youths (n = 841, age M = 13.17 years, SD = 2.51) was assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist (mothers and fathers separately), Teacher's Report Form, and Youth Self-Report. The multiple indicator-version of the correlated trait-correlated method minus one, or CT-C(M - 1), model was applied to analyze (a) the convergent and divergent validity of these instruments in Russia, (b) the degree of trait-specificity of rater biases, and (c) potential predictors of rater-specific effects. As expected, based on the published results from different countries and in different languages, the convergent validity of the instruments was rather high between mother and father reports, but rather low for parent, teacher, and self-reports. For self- and teacher reports, rater-specific effects were related to age and gender of the children for some traits. These results, once again, attest to the importance of incorporating information from multiple observers when psychopathological traits are evaluated in children and adolescents.