Introduction

Spiritual and religious beliefs and practices are commonplace in the general population of North America today. In recognition of this fact, research on the interplay of spirituality, religion, and psychological variables increased substantially over the past 3 decades; a recent PsycInfo search identified over 28,000 scientific contributions to this area. However, the relevance of spirituality and religion to clinical practice remains poorly understood. As a result, many practitioners of empirically supported treatments may be reticent to address spirituality and religion in the course of their work. The intent of this special series is to help demystify this topic with the hope of increasing dissemination of spiritually sensitive, empirically supported treatments. The authors in this series cast some light on this understudied topic by highlighting several salient spiritual and religious issues in behavior change. Moreover, based on case material, the authors illustrate how to assess for and address both adaptive and maladaptive utilizations of spirituality and religion in the practice of cognitive behavior therapy. This introductory paper presents a rationale for why it is important to address this topic, and provides an overview of recent research developments in the creation of spiritually integrated psychosocial treatments.     

Family burden of compulsive hoarding: results of an internet survey

Compulsive hoarding, the acquisition of and failure to discard large numbers of possessions, is associated with substantial health risk, impairment in functioning, and economic burden. Despite clear indications that hoarding has a detrimental effect on people living with or near someone with a hoarding problem, no empirical research has examined these harmful effects. The aim of the present study was to examine the burden of hoarding on family members. Six hundred sixty-five family informants who reported having a family member or friend with hoarding behaviors completed an internet-based survey. Living with an individual who hoards during childhood was associated with elevated reports of childhood distress and family strain. Family members reported high levels of patient rejection attitudes, suggesting high levels of family frustration and hostility. Rejecting attitudes were predicted by severity of hoarding symptoms, the individual's perceived lack of insight into the behavior, and having lived in a cluttered environment during childhood. These results suggest that compulsive hoarding adversely impacts not only the hoarding individual, but also those living with them.     

Development and Validation of the Clutter Image Rating

Few instruments are available to assess compulsive hoarding and severity of clutter. Accuracy of assessment is important to understanding the clinical significance of the problem. To overcome problems associated with over- and under-reporting of hoarding symptoms, the clutter image rating (CIR) was developed. This pictorial scale contains nine equidistant photographs of severity of clutter representing each of three main rooms of most people’s homes: living room, kitchen, and bedroom. The psychometric properties of this measure were examined in two studies. Internal consistency, test–retest, and interobserver reliabilities were good and convergent validity with other questionnaire and interview measures was also good. The CIR correlated more strongly with measures of clutter than with other hoarding and psychopathology scales. The CIR’s very brief pictorial assessment method makes it useful in clinical and treatment contexts for measuring the clutter dimension of compulsive hoarding. The Clutter Image Rating (CIR) is available in conjunction with the following publication: Steketee, G., & Frost, R.O. (2007). Treatment of compulsive hoarding. New York: Oxford University Press at .     

Implicit and explicit personality: a test of a channeling hypothesis for aggressive behavior

D. G. Winter, O. P. John, A. J. Stewart, E. C. Klohnen, and L. E. Duncan (1998) proposed that self-beliefs about personality influence the channels through which people express their implicit motives. On the basis of this hypothesis, the authors predicted that self-beliefs about aggressiveness would influence the channel(s) through which people express their aggressive motive and the justification mechanisms they use to defend expression of this motive. For example, the authors predicted that people who were implicitly prepared to rationalize a desire to harm others would engage in (a) overt aggression if they viewed themselves as aggressive or (b) passive aggression if they viewed themselves as nonaggressive. The implicit aspects of aggressiveness were measured via conditional reasoning (L. R. James et al., 2005). Results based on intramural basketball players supported the channeling hypothesis.     

What Determines Visual Statistical Learning Performance? Insights From Information Theory

In order to extract the regularities underlying a continuous sensory input, the individual elements constituting the stream have to be encoded and their transitional probabilities (TPs) should be learned. This suggests that variance in statistical learning (SL) performance reflects efficiency in encoding representations as well as efficiency in detecting their statistical properties. These processes have been taken to be independent and temporally modular, where first, elements in the stream are encoded into internal representations, and then the co‐occurrences between them are computed and registered. Here, we entertain a novel hypothesis that one unifying construct—the rate of information in the sensory input—explains learning performance. This theoretical approach merges processes related to encoding of events and those related to learning their regularities into a single computational principle. We present data from two large‐scale experiments with over 800 participants tested in support for this hypothesis, showing that rate of information in a visual stream clearly predicts SL performance, and that similar rate of information values leads to similar SL performance. We discuss the implications for SL theory and its relation to regularity learning.     

Prelexical phonologic computation in a deep orthography: Evidence from backward masking in Hebrew

Prelexical phonological computation of print was examined in Hebrew orthography using backward masking. Target words were masked by homophonic, phonologically similar, or phonologically dissimilar nonwords. Phonological similarity between masks and targets affected detection in a nonlinear fashion: No differences were found between homophonic and phonologically similar masks, whereas phonologically dissimilar masks hindered identification dramatically. This suggests that representations computed in brief exposures are coarse grained and not detailed enough to capture fine phonetic differences.     

GENDER COMPARISONS OF MATHEMATICS ATTITUDES AND AFFECT

This article reports the complex results of meta-analyses of gender differences in attitudes and affect specific to mathematics. Overall, effect sizes were small and were similar in size to gender differences in mathematics performance. When differences exist, the pattern is for females to hold more negative attitudes. Gender differences in self-confidence and general mathematics attitudes are larger among high school and college students than among younger students. Effect sizes for mathematics anxiety differ depending upon the sample (highly selected or general). One exception to the general pattern is in stereotyping mathematics as a male domain, where males hold much more stereotyped attitudes ( d = -.90). While affect and attitudes toward mathematics are not the only influences on the development of gender differences in mathematics performance, they are important, and both male and female affect and attitudes should be considered in conjunction with other social and political influences as explanations.