Exploring the Impact of Religious Beliefs,Leadership, and Networks on Response and Recovery of Disaster-affected Populations: A Case Study from Indonesia

Although religion often comprises a central component of the social and cultural make-up of communities in developing countries affected by disasters, there is often limited understanding of how religious faith, religious leaders, and religious institutions contribute to vulnerability and resilience in the post-disaster period. Using a case study related to the earthquake in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2006, our research examined the role of faith and religion from the perspective of affected populations, including individuals, religious leaders, and academics. The research suggests complexity in fatalistic thinking and the role of religious activities, where both vulnerability and resilience co-existed. The nature of religious leadership was found to be highly dependent on the individual, although leaders primarily saw their roles as supporting the psychological recovery of the affected population. Examining religious institutions suggests that physical structures, collective engagement in activities, networks, and theological perspectives provided opportunities for initiatives aiming at disaster risk reduction, although not all of these aspects remain functional in the aftermath of disasters. The article concludes by discussing the importance of incorporating religious faith and institutions in disaster risk reduction programming and unifying messages between faith and non-faith organizations.     

Five-item Francis scale of attitude toward Christianity: construct and nomological validity and internal consistency among Colombian college students

The Spanish version of the five-item Francis scale of attitude toward Christianity is a refinement of the short version of the Francis scale of attitude toward Christianity. The scale is a good measurement for intrinsic religiosity. It has been applied previously among Colombian adolescent students. The internal consistency and construct and nomological validity were tested among a sample of 1349 Colombian college students from Santa Marta, Colombia. Participants were aged between 18- and 30-years-old; 51% were men; and 68% were social science students. Exploratory analysis factor, Cronbach alpha and omega McDonald were computed. The scale showed high internal consistency (both alpha and omega = .96) and excellent construct and nomological validity (one factor which explained for 88% of variance; women scored higher than men; and Protestants scored higher than Catholics and students with other religion filiations). The five-item Francis scale can be used further researches in Hispano-America among college students.     

Including Both Voices: A New Bidirectional Framework for Understanding and Improving Intergroup Relations

Methods: If successful intergroup harmony is to be achieved between two groups, then both groups' voices must be heard. Despite this, 60 years of social psychological “intergroup” prejudice research has tended to adopt a solely majority‐centric perspective, with the majority group portrayed as the active agent of prejudice, and the minority group as passive targets. Objective: This paper critically reviews relevant literature, highlighting this unidirectional imbalance, and proposes a new, two‐stage bidirectional framework, where we encourage researchers and educators to first understand how minority and majority groups' intergroup attitudes and emotions impact intergroup dynamics, before tailoring and implementing contact and recategorisation strategies to improve intergroup relations, nationally and internationally. Conclusion: We argue that the interactive nature of the intergroup dynamic needs to be better understood, and each group's voice heard, before prejudice can be effectively reduced. Lastly, we describe an Australian study, the Dual Identity and Electronic‐contact (DIEC) programme, that has been conducted and has successfully applied this bidirectional framework.     

The Jerusalem TeleRehabilitation System, a new low-cost, haptic rehabilitation approach.

Survivors of brain injury or stroke can improve movement ability with intensive, supervised practice. Since the hours of supervised therapy with a physical or occupational therapist are limited, telerehabilitation will enable patients to greatly expand the hours that they practice therapeutic exercises. The Jerusalem TeleRehabilitation System (JTRS) consists of patient and therapist systems plus a central server and database connected via the internet. The system can work in two modes: (1) a cooperative mode in which the therapist and patient are online at the same time, and (2) a stand-alone mode in which the patient uses the system on his own. In both cases, the system will monitor the status and progress of the patient and various parameters of his movement abilities, and prepare reports for the patient and for the therapist. From the clinic, the therapist will be able to change the screen seen by the patient and change the level and types of tasks, as needed. Compared to existing systems, our system will have the following advantages: (1) inexpensive and easy to use; (2) remote monitoring and control of the patient's computer by the therapist in the clinic; (3) more detailed analysis of patient status and progress; (4) a "smart" system which self-adapts to the patient's capabilities in real time, increasing or decreasing the difficulty of the exercise as needed; and (5) a central, international database which, by gathering data on many patients over time, will provide the basis for "smart" therapy and will also facilitate coordinated multicenter research studies.     

Binocular coordination of the eyes during reading: word frequency and case alternation affect fixation duration but not fixation disparity

This experiment investigated whether properties of the text being read affect binocular coordination of the eyes during reading. Readers' binocular eye movements were recorded while they read sentences that contained high- and low-frequency words. In addition, half of the sentences were presented in normal case, and half were presented in alternating case (i.e., AlTeRnAtInG cAsE). Past research has suggested that the visual system tolerates less binocular fixation disparity with alternating than with normal case (Heller & Radach, 1999). While both word frequency and alternating case produced large effects on fixation durations on the target word, neither manipulation affected the magnitude of fixation disparity. It is concluded that linguistic and visual properties of the text being read do not influence binocular coordination of the eyes during reading. Additional analyses also showed no difference in fixation disparity between reading and a nonlinguistic task. Implications of these results for split-fovea models of reading are discussed.     

An islet of social ability in Asperger Syndrome: judging social attributes from faces

We asked adults with Asperger Syndrome to judge pictorial stimuli in terms of certain social stereotypes to evaluate to what extent they have access to this type of social knowledge. Sixteen adults with Asperger Syndrome and 24 controls, matched for age and intelligence, were presented with sets of faces, bodies and objects, which had to be rated on a 7-point scale in terms of trustworthiness, attractiveness, social status, and age, or, in the case of objects, price. Despite impaired performance on two important aspects of social cognition (second-order mentalizing and face recognition) the social judgements of the individuals with Asperger Syndrome were just as competent and consistent as those of their matched controls, with only one exception: there was a trend for them to be less able to judge the attractiveness of faces if they were the same sex. We explain this difference in terms of a weakness in mentalizing, specifically the ability to take a different point of view: While all other stereotypic attributions could be made from an egocentric point of view, judging the attractiveness of faces of one's own sex requires taking the perspective of someone of the opposite sex, a challenge for people with mentalizing problems. We conclude that individuals with Asperger Syndrome show preserved aspects of social knowledge, as revealed in the attribution of stereotypes to pictures of people. These findings suggest that there are dissociable subcomponents to social cognition and that not all of these are compromised in Asperger Syndrome.     

Taxometric Investigation of PTSD: data from two nationally representative samples

Current psychiatric nosology depicts posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a discrete diagnostic category. However, only one study has examined the latent structure of PTSD, and this study suggested that PTSD may be more accurately conceptualized as an extreme reaction to traumatic life events rather than a discrete clinical syndrome. To build on the existing literature base, the present research examined the latent structure of posttraumatic stress reactions by applying three taxometric procedures (MAXEIG, MAMBAC, and L-Mode) to data collected from large nationally representative samples of women (ns = 2684 and 3033) and adolescents (n = 3775). Results consistently provided evidence for a dimensional PTSD solution across samples and statistical procedures. These findings have important implications for the theory, assessment, and investigation of posttraumatic stress reactions.     

Which cues are available to 24-month-olds? Evidence from point-of-gaze measures during search

In previous research 2-year-olds have failed to show knowledge of solidity in a search task in which a ball rolled behind a screen and was stopped by a barrier. The screen had four doors and the barrier was visible above the door hiding the ball. To establish what cues 2-year-olds might be using, precise point-of-gaze measures were taken during the hiding event. A transparent screen with opaque doors provided two cues: (1) the ball could be tracked until it failed to emerge, and (2) the barrier's position could indicate the correct door. Point-of-gaze measures revealed that children failed to use the more indirect cue of the barrier, which requires reasoning and spatial integration. Their search success was predicted only by the more immediate cue of actively tracking the ball. These findings support the claim that children use best those cues directly related to the object's disappearance, while failing to use cues that entail higher cognitive demands.