Partner Violence, Social Support, and Distress Among Inner-City African American Women

This study examined the role of social support in the partner violence–psychological distress relation in a sample of African American women seeking medical care at a large, urban hospital (n = 138). Results from bivariate correlational analyses revealed that partner violence was related to lower perceived social support and greater psychological distress, and lower social support was related to more distress. Furthermore, findings based on path analysis indicated that low levels of social support helped account for battered women's increased distress. Findings point to the need for service providers to screen for partner violence in nontraditional sites, such as hospital emergency rooms, and to address the role of social support resources in preventive interventions with African American battered women.     

Socioeconomic status, resources, psychological experiences, and emotional responses: a test of the reserve capacity model

The current study used ecological momentary assessment to test several tenets of the reserve capacity model (L.C. Gallo & K. A. Matthews, 2003). Women (N = 108) with varying socioeconomic status (SES) monitored positive and negative psychosocial experiences and emotions across 2 days. Measures of intrapsychic and social resources were aggregated to represent the reserve capacity available to manage stress. Lower SES was associated with less perceived control and positive affect and more social strain. Control and strain contributed to the association between SES and positive affect. Lower SES elicited greater positive but not negative emotional reactivity to psychosocial experiences. Women with low SES had fewer resources relative to those with higher SES, and resources contributed to the association between SES and daily experiences.     

Elegiac Poetry: A Pastoral Resource with Complicated Grief

This essay argues that elegiac poetry, the poetry of mourning, may be a resource for pastoral care with complicated grief. It builds on Freuds distinction between mourning (normal grief) and melancholia (complicated grief), particularly as appropriated by French literary critic and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. It makes the case for elegy as a locus for externalizing a lost object which, in complicated grief, has been internalized as part of the bereaved persons self and which is not only grieved but also treated ambivalently if it is not hated. Drawing on the suffering God motif in Christian theologies of the cross, theological reflections supplement psychological arguments.     

Working memory and executive function: The influence of content and load on the control of attention

In a series of three experiments, increasing working memory (WM) load was demonstrated to reduce the executive control of attention, measured via task-switching and inhibitory control paradigms. Uniquely, our paradigms allowed comparison of the ability to exert executive control when the stimulus was either part of the currently rehearsed memory set or an unrelated distractor item. The results demonstrated a content-specific effect-insofar as switching attention away from, or exerting inhibitory control over, items currently held in WM was especially difficult-compounded by increasing WM load. This finding supports the attentional control theory that active maintenance of competing task goals is critical to executive function and WM capacity; however, it also suggests that the increased salience provided to the contents of WM through active rehearsal exerts a content-specific influence on attentional control. These findings are discussed in relation to cue-induced ruminations, where active rehearsal of evocative information (e.g., negative thoughts in depression or drug-related thoughts in addiction) in WM typically results from environmental cuing. The present study has demonstrated that when information currently maintained in WM is reencountered, it is harder to exert executive control over it. The difficulty with suppressing the processing of these stimuli presumably reinforces the maintenance of these items in WM, due to the greater level of attention they are afforded, and may help to explain how the cue-induced craving/rumination cycle is perpetuated.     

Influence of virtual reality training on the roadside crossing judgments of child pedestrians

The roadside crossing judgments of children aged 7, 9, and 11 years were assessed relative to controls before and after training with a computer-simulated traffic environment. Trained children crossed more quickly, and their estimated crossing times became better aligned with actual crossing times. They crossed more promptly, missed fewer safe opportunities to cross, accepted smaller traffic gaps without increasing the number of risky crossings, and showed better conceptual understanding of the factors to be considered when making crossing judgments. All age groups improved to the same extent, and there was no deterioration when children were retested 8 months later. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical arguments concerning the extent to which children's pedestrian judgments are amenable to training.     

Does the right hemisphere take over after damage to Broca's area? the Barlow case of 1877 and its history

In 1877 Thomas Barlow, a London physician, published a remarkable case of functional recovery of speech following brain damage. It involved a 10-year-old boy who had lost his speech, regained it, and lost it again before he died from a disorder that affected his heart and produced embolisms that subsequently affected other organs, including his brain. Examination of the boy's brain revealed two focal regions of softening; one that affected Broca's area and the left facial-motor area, and another, which occurred weeks later, in the homologous regions of the right hemisphere. Although Barlow was most concerned with motor deficits, others at the turn of the century began to cite this case as strong evidence that the corresponding region of the right hemisphere can take over speech functions for Broca's area on the left. Whether this case really provides good support for functional takeover or vicariation theory is critically evaluated in the light of contemporary research, including PET scan studies involving damage to Broca's speech region.     

Aesthetic Truth and Pastoral Theology: A Proposal for a New Method of Reflection and Practice

Pastoral theology needs to clarify its identity as an autonomous theological discipline by developing its own knowledge base, body of research, and practice methods. It needs to broaden its scope to include not only a concern for personal issues, but also larger sociocultural and anthropological ones as well. Additionally, there is a pressing need for moving beyond the confines of traditional methods of correlation. This essay offers a new method for pastoral theological reflection and practice that is grounded in Hans-Georg Gadamer's understanding of aesthetic truth and hermeneutics. It offers a new way of conceptualizing the relationship of pastoral theology to such conversation partners as the Bible and theological tradition, the social sciences, and practical wisdom, demonstrating how these can contribute to the pastoral theological task.     

Pathways of Economic Influence on Adolescent Adjustment

An important part of a science aimed at the prevention of human dysfunction involves the development of empirically based models that identify processes of risk for or protection from emotional distress or behavioral problems over time. The present study developed and evaluated such a model that proposed two pathways through which family economic pressure was expected to influence change in adolescent internalizing symptoms (depression and anxiety) during the period from the eighth to the tenth grades. A total of 377 rural families in a midwestern state provided data for the analyses. The results were generally consistent with the conceptual model in that family economic pressure increased adolescent perceptions of family economic hardship, which, in turn, reduced the adolescent's sense of control or mastery over time. Lowered mastery was associated with increases in emotional distress. Also consistent with the model, prior levels of mastery appeared to reduce the magnitude of economic stress experienced by the adolescent, whereas prior emotional distress intensified the economic stress process. Although gender differences were found in these processes, the overall pattern of results suggests that girls and boys are both at risk for internalizing problems when families experience economic pressure. Implicatios of the findings for the dvelopment of effective preventive interventions with financially stressed families in rural areas are discussed.