Listening for Safe Places: Networks of Playing and Chalcedon in Disaster Pastoral Care

Disaster pastoral care operates in diverse contexts, which may challenge clergy responders in ecclesiological meaning‐making of their practices of care. This article argues that pastoral care may be imagined as part of a larger “network” of caring acts understood as a collective, multiple care practice. Such practice reflects deep‐rooted movements described in psychoanalytical theory as playing, and the christological idea of communication of properties. Therein, spiritual “safe places” can be seen to emerge, even in the midst of traumatic events.     

Testing the Role of Aspirations,Future Expectations,and Strain on the Development of Problem Behaviors across Young and Middle Adulthood

Using prospective data collected across 14 years by the National Youth Survey Family Study (N = 1,436), we assessed change in aspirations, future expectations, and strain, as well as contemporaneous and longitudinal effects of these predictors on drug use, offending, and the perpetration of intimate partner violence. Growth curve models showed that, although time significantly predicted change in these variables, trajectories remained relatively stable. Contemporaneous random-intercept regression models revealed that all three measures were associated with all three problem behaviors. The effects were predictive longitudinally but some associations and gender differences were attenuated when controlling for prior involvement in outcomes.     

Countries with Greater Gender Equality Have More Positive Attitudes and Laws Concerning Lesbians and Gay Men

Social scientists have long discussed and empirically demonstrated how attitudes toward lesbians and gay men are determined in part by sexism and endorsement of gender roles, but only at the psychological level of analysis. We present data that considers these relationships at the cross-national level of analysis, using country-level measures of gender equality (the Gender Global Gap Index), aggregate measures of attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in a country, and a newly constructed measure of the progressiveness of sexual orientation laws. We show for the first time to our knowledge that countries that have the greatest gender equality also have (a) the most positive aggregate attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and (b) the strongest legislative protections for lesbians and gay men. These results hold even when controlling for plausible third variables such as a country’s level of religiosity and its economic and political development, each with their own separate effects. We discuss the results within the context of the various forces that contribute to, and work against, ensuring more accepting attitudes of, and equal rights for, lesbians and gay men. In conclusion, to fully understand support for lesbians and gay men and the laws that protect them, one should also consider how women are treated in a country.     

Effects of alcohol sensitivity on P3 event-related potential reactivity to alcohol cues.

Although alcoholics and individuals at risk for alcoholism often show smaller amplitude of the P3 event-related brain potential (ERP), recent data (K. Namkoong, E. Lee, C. H. Lee, B. O. Lee, & S. K. An, 2004) indicate that alcohol-related cues elicit larger P3 amplitude in alcoholics than in controls. Little is known concerning the ERP profiles or alcohol cue reactivity of social drinkers at risk for alcoholism due to low sensitivity to alcohol's effects. Participants differing in alcohol sensitivity viewed images of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages while ERPs were recorded and provided information about their alcohol use patterns at baseline and 4 months later. Compared to high-sensitivity participants, those low in sensitivity showed larger P3s to alcohol cues, even when recent alcohol use was statistically controlled for. Moreover, the P3 elicited by alcohol cues predicted alcohol use at follow-up, a finding supporting the idea that P3 amplitude reflects the motivational significance of substance-related cues. These findings point to risk status, not consumption history, as an important predictor of cue reactivity effects.     

Expectation of a final cumulative test enhances long-term retention

In the present study, subjects studied lists of words across four experimental conditions: whether (or not) subjects received initial testing for these lists and whether (or not) they were made aware of an upcoming final free-recall test. Initial testing enhanced final-test performance; however, subjects benefited more from initial testing when they also knew they would need to remember the information for a later test. The data suggest that holding an expectation of the final test encouraged the continued processing of study materials following an initial test, affecting the accessibility of these materials at the time of final recall. The results clearly illustrate how an expectation of a cumulative test might influence long-term retention, which may have important implications for educational practice.     

Why stereotypes don't even make good defaults

Many concepts have stereotypes. This leaves open the question of whether concepts are stereotypes. It has been argued elsewhere that theories that identify concepts with their stereotypes or with stereotypical properties of their instances (e.g., Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Ed.), Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Smith, E. E., Medin, D. L. (1981). Categories and Concepts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) fail to provide an adequate account of the compositionality of concepts (Fodor, J., Lepore, E. (1996). The red herring and the pet fish: Why concepts still cannot be prototypes. Cognition, 58, 253-270.; Fodor, J. (1998). Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.). This paper extends this argument and reports an experiment suggesting that participants do not assume, even as a default strategy, that complex concepts inherit the stereotypes of their constituents. Thus propositions such as "Baby ducks have webbed feet" were judged to be less likely to be true than propositions like "Ducks have webbed feet." Moreover, manipulation of the type and number of noun phrase modifiers revealed a systematic departure from the unmodified noun's stereotype both with the addition of stereotypical modifiers ("Quacking ducks have webbed feet" versus "Ducks have webbed feet") and with the addition of a second modifier ("Baby Peruvian ducks have webbed feet" versus "Baby ducks have webbed feet"). Thus, in the general case the stereotypical properties of a head noun are systematically discounted when that head noun combines with modifiers. This effect represents a general principle of conceptual combination that argues against the inheritance of stereotypical features of concepts as a default strategy. Instead, we advocate a model of conceptual combination where concepts remain inert under combination, supported by a separate machinery that introduces pragmatic and knowledge-dependent inferences.     

Treatment of self-restraint associated with the application of protective equipment

The current investigation assessed the effectiveness of protective equipment, specifically arm splints, in reducing the occurrence of severe self-injurious behavior (SIB). Although the protective equipment reduced rates of SIB to near-zero levels, self-restraint subsequently emerged. In an attempt to reduce self-restraint while maintaining reductions in SIB, we provided noncontingent access to preferred stimuli. The presentation of preferred stimuli along with the use of protective equipment reduced both the rate of SIB and the duration of self-restraint.     

Effects of the menstrual cycle on looking preferences for faces in female rhesus monkeys

Fluctuations of ovarian hormones across the menstrual cycle influence a variety of social and cognitive behaviors in primates. For example, female rhesus monkeys exhibit heightened interest for males and increased agonistic interactions with other females during periods of high estrogen levels. In the present study, we hypothesized that females’ preference for males during periods of high estrogen levels is also expressed at the level of face perception. We tested four intact females on two face-tasks involving neutral portraits of male and female rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees and humans. In the visual preference task (VP), monkeys had to touch a button to view a face image. The image remained on the screen as long as the button was touched, and the duration of pressing was taken as an index of the monkey's looking time for the face stimulus. In the Face-Delayed Recognition Span Test (Face-DRST), monkeys were rewarded for touching the new face in an increasing number of serially presented faces. Monkeys were tested 5 days a week across one menstrual cycle. Blood was collected every other day for analysis of estradiol and progesterone. Two of the four females were cycling at the time of testing. We did not find an influence of the cycle on Face-DRST, likely due to a floor effect. In the VP however, the two cycling individuals looked longer at conspecific male faces than female faces during the peri-ovulatory period of the cycle. Such effects were absent for human and chimpanzee faces and for the two noncycling subjects. These data suggest that ovarian hormones may influence females’ preferences for specific faces, with heightened preference for male faces during the peri-ovulatory period of the cycle. Heightened interest for stimuli of significant reproductive relevance during periods of high conception risk may help guide social and sexual behavior in the rhesus monkey.