Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk (Eds.), 50 Voices of Disbelief. Why We Are Atheists

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Personal, Medical, and Healthcare Utilization Among Homeless Veterans Served by Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Veteran Facilities

This study assessed differences in personal, medical, and health care utilization characteristics of homeless veterans living in metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan environments. Data were obtained from a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) network sample of homeless veterans. Chi-square tests were used to assess differences in demographics, military history, living situation, medical history, employment status, and health care utilization. Moderator analyses determined whether predictors of health care utilization varied by metropolitan status. Of 3,595 respondents, 60% were residing in metropolitan areas. Age, sex, and marital status were similar between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan homeless. Metropolitan homeless were less likely to receive public financial support or to be employed, to have at least one medical problem, one psychiatric problem, or current alcohol dependency, but more likely to be homeless longer. Of the 52% of the sample who used VHA care in the last 6 months, 53% were metropolitan versus 49% nonmetropolitan (p = .01). Metropolitan status predicted at least one VHA visit within the prior 6 months (OR:1.3, CI:1.1, 1.6). Significant differences occur in the personal, medical, and health care utilization characteristics of homeless veterans in metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan areas.     

Contextual control over task-set retrieval

Contextual cues signaling task likelihood or the likelihood of task repetition are known to modulate the size of switch costs. We follow up on the finding by Leboe, Wong, Crump, and Stobbe (2008) that location cues predictive of the proportion of switch or repeat trials modulate switch costs. Their design employed one cue per task, whereas our experiment employed two cues per task, which allowed separate assessment of modulations to the cue-repetition benefit, a measure of lower level cue-encoding processes, and to the task-alternation cost, a measure of higher level processes representing task-set information. We demonstrate that location information predictive of switch proportion modulates performance at the level of task-set representations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that contextual control occurs even when subjects are unaware of the associations between context and switch likelihood. We discuss the notion that contextual information provides rapid, unconscious control over the extent to which prior task-set representations are retrieved in the service of guiding online performance.     

Automatic and controlled response inhibition: associative learning in the go/no-go and stop-signal paradigms

In 5 experiments, the authors examined the development of automatic response inhibition in the go/no-go paradigm and a modified version of the stop-signal paradigm. They hypothesized that automatic response inhibition may develop over practice when stimuli are consistently associated with stopping. All 5 experiments consisted of a training phase and a test phase in which the stimulus mapping was reversed for a subset of the stimuli. Consistent with the automatic-inhibition hypothesis, the authors found that responding in the test phase was slowed when the stimulus had been consistently associated with stopping in the training phase. In addition, they found that response inhibition benefited from consistent stimulus-stop associations. These findings suggest that response inhibition may rely on the retrieval of stimulus-stop associations after practice with consistent stimulus-stop mappings. Stimulus-stop mapping is typically consistent in the go/no-go paradigm, so automatic inhibition is likely to occur. However, stimulus-stop mapping is typically inconsistent in the stop-signal paradigm, so automatic inhibition is unlikely to occur. Thus, the results suggest that the two paradigms are not equivalent because they allow different kinds of response inhibition.     

The UCLA Body Project II: Breast and Body Dissatisfaction among African, Asian, European, and Hispanic American College Women

Breast and global body dissatisfaction were examined in Asian (n = 237), European (n = 196), Hispanic (n = 109), and African (n = 58) American college women. Asian American women reported the lowest body satisfaction on the Appearance Evaluation Scale (Cash, T. F. The multidimensional body-self relations questionnaire users’ manual: 3rd revision, 2000) and greatest breast dissatisfaction on one of two breast dissatisfaction measures. Ethnic differences in breast dissatisfaction, but not in body dissatisfaction, disappeared when body size (BMI) was statistically controlled. Results were consistent with research showing that (1) ethnic differences in body dissatisfaction are small, (2) studies of ethnic differences must include appropriate controls for total or specific body size, and (3) Asian college women report lower global body satisfaction than women of African, European, or Hispanic heritage. For additional papers and information, please contact David Frederick at enderflies1@aol.com, visit his website at or contact Gordon B. Forbes at gforbes@millikin.edu.     

Not Always Enslaved,Yet Not Quite Free: Philosophical Challenges from the Underside of the New World

This article is the keynote address of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, philosophy symposium in celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the British outlawing the Atlantic Slave Trade. The paper explores questions of enslavement and freedom through challenges of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of social change, and metacritical reflections posed by African Diasporic or Africana philosophy. Such challenges include the relevance and legitimacy of philosophical reflection to the lives of racialized slaves and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for an understanding of the “face” of political life and the importance of the concept of “home” for a cogent theory of freedom.

After-effects of goal shifting and response inhibition: a comparison of the stop-change and dual-task paradigms

In the present study, we tested three hypotheses that account for after-effects of response inhibition and goal shifting: the goal-shifting hypothesis, the reaction time (RT) adjustment hypothesis, and the stimulus-goal association hypothesis. To distinguish between the hypotheses, we examined performance in the stop-change paradigm and the dual-task paradigm. In the stop-change paradigm, we found that responding on no-signal trials slowed down when a stop-change signal was presented on the previous trial. Similarly, in the dual-task paradigm, we found that responding on no-signal trials slowed down when a dual-task signal was presented on the previous trial. However, aftereffects of unsuccessful inhibition or dual-task performance were observed only when the stimulus of the previous trial was repeated. These results are consistent with stimulus--goal association hypothesis, which assumes that the stimulus is associated with the different task goals on signal trials; when the stimulus is repeated, the tasks goal are retrieved, and interference occurs.     

How do Hostile and Emotionally Overinvolved Relatives View Relationships?: What Relatives' Pronoun Use Tells Us

Expressed emotion (EE) has been linked to negative outcomes for a variety of psychiatric illnesses. Despite development of effective interventions to reduce EE, relatively little is known about EE's antecedents or maintaining factors. The present study uses a novel methodology (measurement of pronouns used by relatives during the Camberwell Family Interview [CFI] or a problem-solving interaction with the patient) to explore possible cognitive correlates of EE. Participants were 98 outpatients with obsessive-compulsive disorder or panic disorder with agoraphobia and their primary relative. Results showed that relatives' pronoun use was stable across situations. Relatives' hostility and criticism, as measured by objective coding of relatives' behavior during the CFI and interactions, respectively, were related to relatives' decreased we-focus and increased me-focus in the 2 situations. In contrast to expectations, relatives' emotional overinvolvement was related to their decreased we-focus during CFIs and interactions. Results support the value of using pronouns as a means to explore important aspects of relationship functioning.     

Integrating Social Information Processing and Attachment Style Research with Cognitive-behavioral Couple Therapy

The majority of the empirically validated interventions for relational distress focus primarily upon improving behavioral functioning, particularly couples’ communication patterns in conflict situations. However, although communication is highly predictive of relationship distress and later divorce, research on the effectiveness of premarital and marital interventions based on communication training has shown limited results. Therefore, although the skills-based approaches can be effective in treating relational discord and instability, they also often neglect another potentially powerful mechanism in the development of relational distress: the social cognitions and/or schemata regarding relationships that individuals carry into their marriages that stem from negative attachment experiences. Thus, this article describes how blending information gleaned from attachment style research with the body of literature addressing social information processing can enhance current methods for the treatment of relational discord. The existing research on adult romantic attachment styles is placed within a social-cognitive information processing framework and a case study demonstrating the utility of this approach with difficult couples is described.     

Bilateral associations of low-level unilateral performance: an unremarked aspect of limb control

The experimenters examine upper limb movement discrimination performance in an arm-raising task for bilateral associations of low-level unilateral performance. On a cue from the experimenter, young adults (n = 23) with no history of shoulder injury raised either their left arm, right arm, or both together in a forward flexion movement until their hand or hands contacted an unseen, adjustable, overhead stop. The participant then judged which of the 5 possible stop positions, in the 12-20 degrees range forward of true vertical, the participant had contacted on the particular trial. Results showed that for the 16 participants whose best performance was in 1 of the unimanual conditions discrimination scores in the bilateral condition were equivalent to those of their worse-performing limb. For the 7 participants whose best discrimination performance was obtained on bimanual arm-raising, scores for the 2 unimanual conditions were equivalently low. Therefore, when a single limb that can perform well operates in conjunction with a limb performing at a lower level, the consequence is lowering the bimanual movement discrimination performance.