General feelings of gratitude,gratitude to god,and hemoglobin A1c: Exploring variations by gender*

Research indicates that feeling grateful is associated with better physical health. However, most studies rely on self-reports of health. The purpose of this study is to see if feelings of gratitude in general as well as feeling grateful to God specifically are associated with a key biomarker of health – hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). HbA1c is an indicator of blood sugar control. In the process of assessing the relationship between gratitude and HbA1c, an effort is made to see if the relationship between these measures and HbA1c vary by gender. Findings from a recent nationwide survey indicate that women are more likely than men to feel grateful in general and to feel grateful to God. The results further reveal stronger feelings of general gratitude are associated with lower levels of HbA1c. However, this relationship did not differ for men and women. In contrast, feeling grateful to God was associated with lower HbA1c, but this relationship emerged among women only.     

Integration of parafoveal orthographic information during foveal word reading: beyond the sub-lexical level?

Prior research has shown that processing of a given target word is facilitated by the simultaneous presentation of orthographically related stimuli in the parafovea. Here we investigate the nature of such spatial integration processes by presenting orthographic neighbours of target words in the parafovea, considering that neighbours have been shown to inhibit, rather than facilitate, recognition of target words in foveal masked priming research. In Experiment 1, we used the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm to manipulate the parafoveal information subjects received while they fixated a target word within a sentence. In Experiment 2, we used the Flanking Letters Lexical Decision paradigm to manipulate parafoveal information while subjects read isolated words. Parafoveal words were either a higher-frequency orthographic neighbour of targets words (e.g., blue-blur) or a high-frequency unrelated word (e.g., hand-blur). We found that parafoveal orthographic neighbours facilitated, rather than inhibited, processing of the target. Thus, the present findings provide further evidence that orthographic information is integrated across multiple words and suggest that either the integration process does not enable simultaneous access to those words’ lexical representations, or that lexical representations activated by spatially distinct stimuli do not compete for recognition.     

African philosophy and global epistemic injustice

In this paper, I consider how the discourse on global epistemic justice might be approached differently if some contributions from the African philosophical place are taken seriously. To be specific, I argue that the debate on global justice broadly has not been global. I cite as an example, the exclusion or marginalisation of African philosophy, what it has contributed and what it may yet contribute to the global epistemic edifice. I point out that this exclusion is a case of epistemic injustice. I observe that the absence of a philosophical technique that prevails on philosophers to engage with others from other traditions might be responsible for this epistemic lopsidedness and marginalisation. I go beyond the re-statement of this problem of marginalisation of African philosophy to point out relevant doctrines from the African place. I show how they are united under the methodological and ideological disposition of conversationalism. I argue that this ideology might be a better model for realising the goal of global epistemic justice which is the overcoming of all forms of exclusions and lopsidedness in global epistemic discourses through fair allocation of intellectual spaces.     

Therapists’ perspectives about working with meaning in life in psychotherapy: A survey

Of 212 practicing therapists who completed a survey about working with meaning in life (MIL) in psychotherapy, 129 (61%) had recently worked with MIL with at least one client and reported on their work with a client in this survey. Those therapists who had worked with a client on MIL as compared with those who had not were older, more experienced, more humanistic/existential/experiential in orientation; reported more MIL training; and felt more competent working with MIL. Clients reported on primarily had internalizing, interpersonal, and career issues. Only 12% of clients explicitly labeled MIL as an issue coming into therapy. The three most frequently used interventions involved offering support; helping clients examine thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to discover hopes and goals; and facilitating exploration of MIL cognitions and experiences. Therapists reported many positive consequences from working with MIL. Therapists reported minimal training in MIL and moderate competence in working with MIL. Implications for practice, training, and research are presented.     

Dunning–Kruger effects in reasoning: Theoretical implications of the failure to recognize incompetence

The Dunning–Kruger effect refers to the observation that the incompetent are often ill-suited to recognize their incompetence. Here we investigated potential Dunning–Kruger effects in high-level reasoning and, in particular, focused on the relative effectiveness of metacognitive monitoring among particularly biased reasoners. Participants who made the greatest numbers of errors on the cognitive reflection test (CRT) overestimated their performance on this test by a factor of more than 3. Overestimation decreased as CRT performance increased, and those who scored particularly high underestimated their performance. Evidence for this type of systematic miscalibration was also found on a self-report measure of analytic-thinking disposition. Namely, genuinely nonanalytic participants (on the basis of CRT performance) overreported their “need for cognition” (NC), indicating that they were dispositionally analytic when their objective performance indicated otherwise. Furthermore, estimated CRT performance was just as strong a predictor of NC as was actual CRT performance. Our results provide evidence for Dunning–Kruger effects both in estimated performance on the CRT and in self-reported analytic-thinking disposition. These findings indicate that part of the reason why people are biased is that they are either unaware of or indifferent to their own bias.     

Walking through a virtual environment improves perceived size within and beyond the walked space

Distances tend to be underperceived in virtual environments (VEs) by up to 50%, whereas distances tend to be perceived accurately in the real world. Previous work has shown that allowing participants to interact with the VE while receiving continual visual feedback can reduce this underperception. Judgments of virtual object size have been used to measure whether this improvement is due to the rescaling of perceived space, but there is disagreement within the literature as to whether judgments of object size benefit from interaction with feedback. This study contributes to that discussion by employing a more natural measure of object size. We also examined whether any improvement in virtual distance perception was limited to the space used for interaction (1–5 m) or extended beyond (7–11 m). The results indicated that object size judgments do benefit from interaction with the VE, and that this benefit extends to distances beyond the explored space.     

Tag, you're it: Tagging as an alternative to yes/no recognition in item method directed forgetting

The current study contrasted a standard yes/no recognition task with a tagging recognition task in the context of an item-method directed forgetting paradigm. During the study phase, a series of words was presented one at a time, each followed by an instruction to remember (R) or forget (F). The retention of R and F study words was tested using either a typical yes/no recognition task or a tagging recognition task in which participants labeled each word as “R”, “F” or “New”. The directed forgetting effect observed in each task was equivalent in magnitude. However, the tagging recognition task afforded an additional analysis of the errors of misattribution that was not possible with the more typical yes/no recognition task. Interestingly, when falsely recognizing a Foil word, participants were more likely to assign an “F” tag than an “R” tag. These errors of misattribution are consistent with existing accounts of directed forgetting that suggest R words are better encoded than F words. We argue for the utility of the tagging procedure, given it does not alter the directed forgetting effect normally seen with yes/no recognition but provides additional information about errors of misattribution.     

A positive aging framework for guiding geropsychology interventions

This article characterizes the human aging process from the perspectives of normal, pathological, usual, successful, and positive aging. Positive aging is described based on four characteristics: the mobilizing of latent resources, psychological flexibility, an affirmative decision-making style, and the propensity to generate an optimistic response to stressors inherent in age-related decline. A positive aging strategy framework is proposed, inclusive of recent developments in intervention research employing gratitude, forgiveness, and altruism to preserve subjective well-being. The role of positive aging strategies in conjunction with behavioral intervention approaches to promote well-being in one's later years is recommended for addressing the complex needs of our graying population.