Conceptions of love in Ghana: An exploration among Ghanaian Christians

We explored conceptions of love from the perspective of Ghanaian Christians. Using an ethnographic approach, we interviewed 61 participants (males = 39; females = 22; age range 20 to 70) on their understanding and experiences of love in the context of family. Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed understandings of love expression in meeting material needs (of children, spouse, parents, and close relatives), helping other people in need (including the elderly, friends, and strangers), and affectionate care. Communal and maintenance-oriented love appears to characterise love expression among Ghanaian Christians.     

The Ethics of Smart Pills and Self-Acting Devices: Autonomy,Truth-Telling,and Trust at the Dawn of Digital Medicine

Digital medicine is a medical treatment that combines technology with drug delivery. The promises of this combination are continuous and remote monitoring, better disease management, self-tracking, self-management of diseases, and improved treatment adherence. These devices pose ethical challenges for patients, providers, and the social practice of medicine. For patients, having both informed consent and a user agreement raises questions of understanding for autonomy and informed consent, therapeutic misconception, external influences on decision making, confidentiality and privacy, and device dependability. For providers, digital medicine changes the relationship where trust can be verified, clinicians can be monitored, expectations must be managed, and new liability risks may be assumed. Other ethical questions include direct third-party monitoring of health treatment, affordability, and planning for adverse events in the case of device malfunction. This article seeks to lay out the ethical landscape for the implementation of such devices in patient care.     

A new approach to pastoral counseling

Pastoral Psychology -     

An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment

Self-report measures of adult attachment are typically scored in ways (e.g., averaging or summing items) that can lead to erroneous inferences about important theoretical issues, such as the degree of continuity in attachment security and the differential stability of insecure attachment patterns. To determine whether existing attachment scales suffer from scaling problems, the authors conducted an item response theory (IRT) analysis of 4 commonly used self-report inventories: Experiences in Close Relationships scales (K. A. Brennan, C. L. Clark, & P. R. Shaver, 1998), Adult Attachment Scales (N. L. Collins & S. J. Read, 1990), Relationship Styles Questionnaire (D. W. Griffin & K. Bartholomew, 1994) and J. Simpson's (1990) attachment scales. Data from 1,085 individuals were analyzed using F. Samejima's (1969) graded response model. The authors' findings indicate that commonly used attachment scales can be improved in a number of important ways. Accordingly, the authors show how IRT techniques can be used to develop new attachment scales with desirable psychometric properties.     

Outcome of group cognitive-behavior therapy for bulimia nervosa: the role of core beliefs

It is hypothesized that individuals who benefit less from CBT will be those who have more pathological core beliefs (unconditional beliefs, unrelated to food, shape and weight). Twenty bulimic women were treated using 12 sessions of conventional group CBT. Eating behavior and attitudes were assessed pre- and posttreatment. Core beliefs were assessed at the beginning of the programme, and were used as predictors of change across treatment (once any effect of pretreatment psychopathology was taken into account). Group CBT was effective, with reductions of over 50% in bulimic symptoms. Outcome on most indices was associated with pretreatment levels of pathological core beliefs. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.     

The use of schematic knowledge about sources in source monitoring

Source monitoring refers to mental processes leading to attributions regarding the origin of information. We tested Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay's (1993) assumption that prior source-relevant knowledge is used in some source-monitoring tasks. In two experiments using different domains of schematic knowledge, two sources presented information that was expected for one source and somewhat unexpected for the other. In a later source-monitoring test, participants decided whether items had been presented by Source A, by Source B, or were new. The results of both experiments show that source identification is better for expected items than for somewhat unexpected items. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that when participants do not remember the source of information, they guess that it was presented by the expected source. These results provide evidence for the claim that source monitoring can be based on prior knowledge and support a guessing hypothesis.