A review of: “Internal landscapes and foreign bodies: Eating disorders and other pathologies”

Gianna Williams (1997) Internal Landscapes and Foreign Bodies: Eating Disorders and Other Pathologies, London: Duckworth (Tavistock Clinic Series), $12.95     

Sketching the Contours of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion

This article argues that there is an identifiable scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion that, though varied in its entry points and forms, exhibits standards of excellence recognizable in other forms of scholarship. Engaging in this scholarship enhances a professor's possession of practice and often reveals insights into student learning and the contours of a field that can advance both educational and disciplinary projects. Through conversation with a form of the scholarship of teaching and learning that emerged most clearly in work associated with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, we describe starting points and generative assumptions that have been employed in the discourse of the scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion as they have emerged in submissions to Teaching Theology and Religion over the past decade and a half and point to its benefits. See responses to this essay by Charles R. Foster , Stephen Brookfield , and Pat Hutchings published in this issue of the journal. Responses by Reid B. Locklin, Joanne Maguire Robinson, and Nadine S. Pence appear in next issue issue, 16:3 (2013).     

Threat advantage: Perception of angry and happy dynamic faces across cultures

The current study tested whether the perception of angry faces is cross-culturally privileged over that of happy faces, by comparing perception of the offset of emotion in a dynamic flow of expressions. Thirty Chinese and 30 European-American participants saw movies that morphed an anger expression into a happy expression of the same stimulus person, or vice versa. Participants were asked to stop the movie at the point where they ceased seeing the initial emotion. As expected, participants cross-culturally continued to perceive anger longer than happiness. Moreover, anger was perceived longer in in-group than in out-group faces. The effects were driven by female rather than male targets. Results are discussed with reference to the important role of context in emotion perception.     

Contrasting effects of self-schema priming on lexical decisions and interpersonal stroop task performance: evidence for a cognitive/interactionist model of interpersonal dependency

Four experiments tested a key tenet of Bornstein's (1992, 1993) cognitive/interactionist (C/I) model of interpersonal dependency: that priming the helpless self-schema (HSS) alters processing of dependency-related information in dependent--but not nondependent--individuals. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of subliminal lexical priming and an emotional priming manipulation on lexical decision (LD) judgments for dependency-related words and control words. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the effects of these same priming procedures on Interpersonal Stroop Task (IST) performance. As predicted, priming the HSS produced contrasting effects on different outcome measures, decreasing LD latencies, but increasing IST response times. Results are discussed in the context of the C/I model, and suggestions for future studies are offered.     

The invalidity of disclaimers about the effects of social feedback on self-esteem

Despite the fact that several theories suggest that people's self-esteem is affected by social approval and disapproval, many individuals steadfastly maintain that how other people regard them has no effect on how they feel about themselves. To examine the validity of these beliefs, two experiments compared the effects of social approval and disapproval on participants who had indicated either that their self-esteem is affected by how other people evaluate them or that their self-esteem is unaffected by interpersonal evaluation. Results of both studies converged to show that approval and disapproval clearly affected the self-esteem of even those individuals who denied that social evaluations affected their feelings about themselves.     

Effects of opiate antagonists on spatial memory in young and aged rats

The effects of post-training opiate antagonist administration on spatial memory were assessed in young and aged male Long Evans rats. In Experiment I rats were trained to visit each arm of an eight-arm radial maze once in a session to obtain a food reward placed at the end of each arm. During training aged rats required significantly more trials to achieve criterion performance when compared to young mature rats. However, administration of the opiate antagonist naloxone (2.0 mg/kg) immediately after each training trial did not significantly alter the rate of achieving accurate performance in either age group. In Experiment II young and aged rats that were previously trained to a comparable criterion on the radial maze were tested on the same maze apparatus in novel spatial environments. When animals were exposed to novel spatial information, the effects of post-trial opiate antagonists were examined using a within-subjects counter-balanced design. In Experiment IIa naloxone (2 mg/kg) enhanced the performance of both young and aged rats. In Experiment IIB naltrexone (1.0 mg/kg) was found to have a comparable effect of enhancing the performance of both age groups. In addition, in Experiment IIb a significant age-related deficit was found in rats tested in novel spatial environments. These results indicate that opiate antagonists are capable of improving memory for new spatial information in both young and aged rats on a task that is sensitive to behavioral deficits during normal aging.     

Suicide in rural communities

The public image of rural areas being characterized by social stability, integration, and supportive interpersonal networks has been challenged with recent evidence showing a large increase in the suicide rate in these areas. Increases have been reported for a number of European countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, and Ireland. This paper reviews the evidence relating to those groups at risk of suicide. The group at most risk of committing suicide in rural areas is males between the ages of 25 and 60, who are unemployed and live alone, and who have a history of psychological disturbance. These findings are discussed in relation to the psychological implications of socio-economic changes brought about by changes in the Common Agriculture Policy of the European Community.