The Spiritual Needs and Resources of Hospitalized Primary Care Patients

Previous studies have recognized the importance of hospitalized primary care patients’ spiritual issues and needs. The sources patients consult to address these spiritual issues, including the role of their attending physician, have been largely unstudied. We sought to study patients’ internal and external resources for addressing spiritual questions, while also exploring the physician’s role in providing spiritual care. Our multicenter observational study evaluated 326 inpatients admitted to primary care physicians in four midwestern hospitals. We assessed how frequently these patients identified spiritual concerns during their hospitalization, the manner in which spiritual questions were addressed, patients’ desires for spiritual interaction, and patient outcome measures associated with spiritual care. Nearly 30% of respondents (referred to as “R/S respondents”) reported religious struggle or spiritual issues associated specifically with their hospitalization. Eight-three percent utilized internal religious coping for dealing with spiritual issues. Chaplains, clergy, or church members visited 54% of R/S respondents; 94% found those visits helpful. Family provided spiritual support to 45% of R/S respondents. Eight percent of R/S respondents desired, but only one patient actually received, spiritual interaction with their physician, even though 64% of these patients’ physicians agreed that doctors should address spiritual issues with their patients. We conclude that inpatients quite commonly utilize internal resources and quite rarely utilize physicians for addressing their spiritual issues. Spiritual caregiving is well received and is primarily accomplished by professionals, dedicated laypersons, or family members. A significantly higher percentage of R/S patients desire spiritual interaction with their physician than those who actually receive it.     

Mistakes Around the Clock: Errors in Memory for the Orientation of Numerals

Recent research has demonstrated that when participants are required to draw from memory a standard clock with numbers represented by Roman numerals, they typically misrepresent the four as “IV” rather than as the correct “III.” Participants do not make this mistake when they simply copy the clock while it remains in full view. A reanalysis of the data presented by Richards, French, and Harris (1996) is reported in which we investigated the representation of the orientation of the Roman numerals on the clockface and found that participants in the memory conditions (surprise and forewarned) were more likely than participants in the copy (control) condition to draw the numerals vertically rather than in their correct centripetal orientation. In addition, we found this error was even more likely to occur for participants when they had no warning that a memory task would take place.     

Do core self‐evaluations and trait emotional intelligence predict subjective well‐being in dental students?

We examined unique associations between surface personality traits of emotional intelligence, core self‐evaluations, and subjective well‐being in dental students. A cross‐sectional study of 218 undergraduates showed that trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) and core self‐evaluations (CSE) predicted subjective well‐being controlling the Big Five personality traits. Structural equation modeling showed that trait EI and the neuroticism component of CSE better predicted affective components of subjective well‐being, and cognitive CSE traits (self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and locus of control) better predicted life satisfaction, the cognitive component of subjective well‐being. These findings demonstrate the utility of a parallel‐process approach that specifies differential prediction of cognitive and affective subjective well‐being components.     

The Practical Challenges to Renewal: An Answer to Stein and Singer

Years ago, as a young man in Jungian analysis, I suffered an identity crisis. Its catalyst was my discovery that–unlike my own analyst, the majority of my colleagues, and Jung himself I am not an introverted intuitive-thinking type. Rather, I was an introverted feeling-sensation type. Suddenly feeling excluded from the professional world that defined me, I experienced a strong pull to connect, through the natural world, to a deeper aspect of myself.     

Factors Associated with First Session Nonattendance at a University-Based Family Therapy Clinic

Two hundred four consecutive psychotherapy initiators who called for an initial appointment at a university-based family therapy clinic during a one-year period were examined to see what factors influenced nonattendance. Researchers considered factors such as demographics, substance use, medical and psychiatric involvement, clinic practice, and constellation expected to attend. The 118 (58%) initiators who kept their appointment differed significantly from the 86 (42%) who did not in distance to the clinic, partner's age, number of children, marital status, employment, time of appointment, and therapeutic constellation. Divorce, unemployment, having a partner between the ages of 18–24, and having children were significant indicators of nonattendance. An appointment scheduled between 1:00 and 4:59 P.M., seeking conjoint psychotherapy, and living between 6 and 25 miles from the clinic were significant indicators of attendance. Implications for improving initial appointment attendance are presented.     

Shame in Physician–Patient Interactions: Patient Perspectives

This study estimated the extent to which shame is elicited in physician–patient interactions and examined the emotional and behavioral reactions of patients to such interactions. A large adult sample (N = 915) reported on their shame-provoking experiences in interactions with physicians through an anonymous survey. Half of all respondents (n = 456) recalled one or more interactions with a physician that left them feeling ashamed, with significantly more women (59%) than men (39%) reporting this. Forty-five percent of those reporting such experiences stated they terminated treatment with, avoided, or lied to their physician to avoid experiencing further shame. However, 33% believed the shame-provoking interaction provoked useful behavioral changes, and 46% were, on balance, grateful to the physician. Women, relative to men, reported that the interaction led to more negative emotional and behavioral consequences. The type of health issue involved in the interaction also was associated with differential outcomes. Thus, it appears that inducing shame in medical contexts is widespread and may well have both positive and negative effects.     

Predicting mothers' reports of children's mental health three years after Hurricane Katrina

This study explored pathways through which hurricane-related stressors affected the psychological functioning of elementary school aged children who survived Hurricane Katrina. Participants included 184 mothers from the New Orleans area who completed assessments one year pre-disaster (Time 1), and one and three years post-disaster (Time 2 and Time 3, respectively). Mothers rated their children's behavior problems at Time 3 only (n = 251 children; 53.0% male; mean age: 10.19 years, SD = 1.68 years). A path analytic model indicated that hurricane-related stressors were associated with increased maternal psychological distress and school mobility in the first post-disaster year, which were associated with higher child internalizing and externalizing symptoms three years post-disaster. Mediation analysis indicated that hurricane-related stressors were associated with child symptoms indirectly, through their impact on maternal psychological distress. Findings underscore the importance of interventions that boost maternal and child mental health and support children through post-disaster school transitions.     

Hand preference in gestures and signs in the deaf and hearing: some notes on early evidence and theory

Research has shown that when persons with normal hearing accompany their speech with gestures, right-handers use more right-hand gestures, and left-handers use more left-hand gestures, although to a lesser extent (D. Kimura, 1973a, 1973b, Neuropsychologia, 11, 45-50, 51-55.). Comparable differences have been found in deaf persons when signing, with the direction of hand dominance for signing in both right- and left-handers corresponding to that for nonlinguistic actions (J. Vaid, D. Schemenauer, U. Bellugi, & H. Poizner, 1984, Hand dominance in a visual-gesture language. Paper presented at BABBLE, March, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada). In this paper, I recount early theories and observational data about hand dominance for gesture and signing, both in the hearing and the deaf. Several of these early theories and observations anticipate current work and also suggest new avenues for investigation.     

Social Trait Information in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Trained for Face Identification

Faces provide information about a person's identity, as well as their sex, age, and ethnicity. People also infer social and personality traits from the face — judgments that can have important societal and personal consequences. In recent years, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have proven adept at representing the identity of a face from images that vary widely in viewpoint, illumination, expression, and appearance. These algorithms are modeled on the primate visual cortex and consist of multiple processing layers of simulated neurons. Here, we examined whether a DCNN trained for face identification also retains a representation of the information in faces that supports social‐trait inferences. Participants rated male and female faces on a diverse set of 18 personality traits. Linear classifiers were trained with cross validation to predict human‐assigned trait ratings from the 512 dimensional representations of faces that emerged at the top‐layer of a DCNN trained for face identification. The network was trained with 494,414 images of 10,575 identities and consisted of seven layers and 19.8 million parameters. The top‐level DCNN features produced by the network predicted the human‐assigned social trait profiles with good accuracy. Human‐assigned ratings for the individual traits were also predicted accurately. We conclude that the face representations that emerge from DCNNs retain facial information that goes beyond the strict limits of their training.