Assessing Belief in the 10 Commandments: The Multidimensional 10 Commandments Questionnaire

Instruments designed to assess various aspects of religion are widespread, but few have been constructed to assess specific religious values and beliefs. The purpose of the present research was to address this limitation by providing preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the Multidimensional 10 Commandments Questionnaire (M10CQ), a self-report instrument that measures belief in the 10 Commandments. Data from three separate samples provided evidence supporting the reliability (i.e., internal consistency) of the M10CQ subscales. Other results indicated that women endorsed many of the 10 Commandments more strongly than men, and that various Commandments predicted people’s mental health (less hostility), their parenting style (more authoritarian and authoritative parenting), and their interpersonal attachments (a more trusting bond with others). The findings reported in this research help to identify the ways in which religious values and beliefs are integrated with multiple aspects of people’s lives. The discussion highlights the usefulness of the Multidimensional 10 Commandments Questionnaire (M10CQ) for studying religious beliefs and values.

Sex Role Ideology, Relationship Context, and Response to Sexual Coercion in College Females

This study examined the impacts of traditional sex role orientation and relationship context upon women’s responses to sexual coercion in a sample of 114 female undergraduates in the northwestern USA. We examined differences in the amount of time participants allowed a simulated sexually coercive situation to continue, comparing groups based upon the extent to which participants endorsed traditional feminine sex roles on the Sex Role Ideology Scale, as well as the context of the relationship in which such behaviors occurred, which was manipulated as an independent variable. Results indicated that individuals in the long-term relationship condition took significantly longer to terminate the vignette than did their peers. However, no significant effect of traditionality upon response latency was observed.     

Child Psychosocial Adjustment and Parenting in Families Affected by Maternal HIV/AIDS

Child adjustment and parenting were examined in twenty-three 9–16-year-old youth from families affected by maternal HIV infection and 20 same-age peers whose mothers were not infected. Children whose mothers were seropositive reported significantly more externalizing problems. Infected mothers reported less age-appropriate supervision/monitoring relative to non-infected mothers. Better mother-child relationship quality and less impairment in parental supervision/monitoring of age-appropriate youth behaviors were associated with fewer externalizing difficulties among the HIV-positive group only. Similarly, only among HIV-infected mothers was refraining from engaging in inconsistent disciplinary tactics associated with lower reports of internalizing and externalizing problems. These data highlight the promise of programs targeting parenting skills to prevent or ameliorate child difficulties.     

Meanings,propositions, and verbs

The event template for a verb is a lexical representation of the type of event that the verb can denote. Manner of motion verbs have a simple template: An entity is engaged in a manner of motion activity (e.g., walk). Change of location verbs have a different template: An entity changes from one location to another (e.g., arrive). We propose, and support empirically, that these templates determine the propositional structures of sentences in which the verbs are used.     

Endangered Girls and Incendiary Objects: Unpacking the Discourse on Sexualization

In this article, we deconstruct the epistemological framework underlying recent discussions on the sexualization of girls. Conducting a close textual analysis of scholarly and activist writings and their media coverage in Australia, Britain and the United States we examine the foundational assumptions of the argument against sexualization and explore its potential social and political implications. It is our contention that the conceptualization of sexualization as both a process and outcome relies on an ambivalent and overly deterministic model which makes the danger of sexualizing materials uniform, but their outcome gender specific. The unintended consequence of this discourse is that girls are framed as passive recipients and their sexuality becomes the result of and reduced to sexualization.

Social representations of refugees: Place of origin as a delineating resource

This study investigated social understandings of refugees from Africa in a regional town in NSW, Australia. Drawing from Social Representations Theory (Moscovici, 1984 ), the study investigated whether place of origin (Africa) mediated understandings held about refugees. Two studies were conducted. In the first study, a between‐subjects manipulation using word association tasks revealed that the super‐ordinate term Refugees, and Refugees from Africa shared a common core of elements (poor, war). Although sharing a core, these representations were differentiated by peripheral elements which concurred with social understanding of Africa (e.g. disease), and media portrayal of refugees/asylum seekers (e.g. boat). The salience of these meanings in the community was further explored using a self‐report questionnaire. Results suggested that place of origin, manifested as peripheral representational elements, may play an important role in differentiating, orientating and linking specific refugee groups to particular socio‐political contexts. Further, we contend that place of origin may be understood as a discursive resource, deployed for rhetorical ends. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neuropsychological impairment associated with compulsive hoarding

A group of patients with compulsive hoarding (n=30) was compared to a mixed clinical group (n=30) and a nonclinical community group (n=30) on laboratory tests of information-processing features hypothesized to be central to hoarding (memory, attention, and decision-making). Hoarding patients demonstrated slower and more variable reaction time, increased impulsivity, greater difficulty distinguishing targets and nontargets, and worse spatial attention relative to comparison groups. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that slower reaction time and increased impulsivity were significantly related to hoarding symptoms over and above the effect of depression, schizotypy, and other obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. There were no group differences on a test of emotion-based decision-making. Results are discussed in terms of previous findings and theoretical models of compulsive hoarding.