Age and Cultural Gender Equality as Moderators of the Gender Difference in the Importance of Religion and Spirituality: Comparing the United Kingdom,France, and Germany

A range of research studies has found that women report greater importance of religion and spirituality in their lives than men do. This study extends the literature on this phenomenon, and the theories that aim to explain it, by looking at whether gender differences in the three European countries (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) differ by adult age group (young adults 18–39, midlifers 40–59, and older adults 60+), and by the cultural gender equality of the countries in question. Participants provided data on the importance of religiosity and spirituality to their life. Significant gender differences were found within all three countries, for each of the three age groups. In line with predictions based on Global Gender Gap Report 2016, Germany showed the smallest difference, followed by France and the United Kingdom. Gender differences were smaller in the young adult samples than for midlife adults or older adults.     

Religiosity and Premarital Sexual Behaviors Among Adolescents: An Analysis of Functional Form

While numerous studies show a persistent inverse association between religion variables and adolescents’ sexual behaviors, the nature of this relationship is not well understood. Specifically, many previous studies presuppose that the associations between adolescent religiosity and sexual behaviors are linear. However, a number of studies have also identified important nonlinearities of religious influence during adolescence, with highly religious individuals being distinct from their peers. Incorporating this knowledge into a theoretically motivated modeling approach, this article provides a comparative analysis of functional forms describing the relationships between religiosity and adolescent sexual behaviors. Using data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a linear functional form is compared with nonlinear alternatives that link multiple religion measures to outcomes of sexual activity. Results show that the majority of these relationships are best defined by nonlinear functional forms, suggesting that the influence of religiosity increases as individuals become more religious.     

An own-race advantage for components as well as configurations in face recognition

The own-race advantage in face recognition has been hypothesized as being due to a superiority in the processing of configural information for own-race faces. Here we examined the contributions of both configural and component processing to the own-race advantage. We recruited 48 Caucasian participants in Australia and 48 Chinese participants in Hong Kong, and had them study Caucasian and Chinese faces. After study, they were shown old faces (along with distractors) that were either blurred (isolating configural processing), in which high spatial frequencies were removed from the intact faces, or scrambled (isolating component processing), in which the locations of all face components were rearranged. Participants performed better on the memory test for own-race faces in both the blurred (configural) and scrambled (component) conditions, showing an own-race advantage for both configural and component processing. These results suggest that the own-race advantage in face recognition is due to a general facilitation in different forms of face processing.     

A stereo disadvantage for recognizing rotated familiar objects

We tested recognition of familiar objects in two different conditions: mono, where stimuli were displayed as flat, 2-D images, and stereo, where objects were displayed with stereoscopic depth information. In three experiments, participants performed a sequential matching task, where an object was rotated by up to 180° between presentations. When the 180° rotation resulted in large changes in depth for object components, recognition performance in the mono condition showed better performance at 180° rotations than at smaller rotations, but stereo presentations showed a monotonic increase in response time with rotation. However, 180° rotations that did not result in much depth variation showed similar patterns of results for mono and stereo conditions. These results suggest that in some circumstances, the lack of explicit 3-D information in 2-D images may influence the recognition of familiar objects when they are depicted on flat computer monitors.     

Precise instructions determine participants’ memory search strategy in judgments of relative order in short lists

Memory often requires knowledge of the order of events. Previous findings about immediate judgments of relative order in short, subspan lists are variable regarding whether participants’ strategy is to search memory in the forward direction, starting from the first list item and progressing toward the end item, or in the backward direction, starting from the end item and progressing toward the start. We asked whether wording of the instructions influences participants’ search direction. Participants studied sequences of three to six consonants, and for an immediate, two-item probe of each list, judged which probe was presented earlier (“earlier” instruction) or later (“later” instruction) on the list. Forward and backward searches were supported for “earlier” and “later” instructions, respectively. Our findings suggest that participants have more than one effective strategy for order judgments in short lists, and that subtle instructional differences can bias memory search in either the forward or backward direction.     

Conflicts of interest: The implications of roadside advertising for driver attention

There is growing concern that roadside advertising presents a real risk to driving safety, with conservative estimates putting external distractors responsible for up to 10% of all road traffic accidents. In this report, we present a simulator study quantifying the effects of billboards on driver attention, mental workload and performance in Urban, Motorway and Rural environments. The results demonstrate that roadside advertising has clear adverse effects on lateral control and driver attention, in terms of mental workload. Whilst the methodological limitations of the study are acknowledged, the overriding conclusion is that prudence should be exercised when authorising or placing roadside advertising. The findings are discussed with respect to governmental policy and guidelines.     

Correlations between intelligence and components of serial timing variability

Psychometric intelligence correlates with reaction time in elementary cognitive tasks, as well as with performance in time discrimination and judgment tasks. It has remained unclear, however, to what extent these correlations are due to top–down mechanisms, such as attention, and bottom–up mechanisms, i.e. basic neural properties that influence both temporal accuracy and cognitive processes. Here, we assessed correlations between intelligence (Raven SPM Plus) and performance in isochronous serial interval production, a simple, automatic timing task where participants first make movements in synchrony with an isochronous sequence of sounds and then continue with self-paced production to produce a sequence of intervals with the same inter-onset interval (IOI). The target IOI varied across trials. A number of different measures of timing variability were considered, all negatively correlated with intelligence. Across all stimulus IOIs, local interval-to-interval variability correlated more strongly with intelligence than drift, i.e. gradual changes in response IOI. The strongest correlations with intelligence were found for IOIs between 400 and 900 ms, rather than above 1 s, which is typically considered a lower limit for cognitive timing. Furthermore, poor trials, i.e. trials arguably most affected by lapses in attention, did not predict intelligence better than the most accurate trials. We discuss these results in relation to the human timing literature, and argue that they support a bottom–up model of the relation between temporal variability of neural activity and intelligence.     

The lived experience of alopecia areata: A qualitative study

This study explored experiences of individuals living with alopecia areata (AA) and alopecia universalis (AU) and investigated their accounts of adjusting to, and coping with, such conditions. Whilst previous research has primarily focused on the adverse psychosocial impact of alopecia, this investigation used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to provide a more holistic perspective. Biographical interviews were undertaken with 12 participants (7 women; 5 men) diagnosed with alopecia for periods ranging between 2 and 49 years. Results revealed that strategies used by participants evolved over time and that there were clear gender differences. In the early stages, participants did not want to contemplate that their hair loss would be lasting and managed the condition via concealment. Later coping strategies reflected an embodied acceptance with participants managing the effects of AA/AU and becoming more optimistic about living with the condition. Limitations of the study are discussed as well as implications for patient care.