Ego depletion,attentional control,and decision making in sport

ObjectivesAthletes differ at staying focused on performance and avoiding distraction. Drawing on the strength model of self-control we investigated whether athletes do not only differ inter-individually in their disposition of staying focused and avoiding distraction but also intra-individually in their situational availability of focused attention.Design/methodIn the present experiment we hypothesized that basketball players (N = 40) who have sufficient self-control resources will perform relatively better on a computer based decision making task under distraction conditions compared to a group who's self-control resources have been depleted in a prior task requiring self-control.ResultsThe results are in line with the strength model of self-control by demonstrating that an athlete's capability to focus attention relies on the situational availability of self-control strength.ConclusionsThe current results indicate that having sufficient self-control strength in interference rich sport settings is likely to be beneficial for decision making.     

The CORE‐10: A short measure of psychological distress for routine use in the psychological therapies

Background: There is a need for a generic, short, and easy‐to‐use assessment measure for common presentations of psychological distress in UK primary care mental health settings. This paper sets out the development of the CORE‐10 in response to this need. Method: Items were drawn from the CORE‐OM and 10 items were selected according to a combination of usefulness, coverage of item clusters, and statistical procedures. Three CORE‐OM datasets were employed in the development phase: (1) a primary care sample, (2) a sample from an MRC platform trial of enhanced collaborative care of depression in primary care, and (3) a general population sample derived from the Office of National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity Follow‐up survey. A fourth dataset comprising a sample from an occupational health setting was used to evaluate the CORE‐10 in its standalone format. Results: The internal reliability (alpha) of the CORE‐10 was .90 and the score for the CORE‐10 correlated with the CORE‐OM at .94 in a clinical sample and .92 in a non‐clinical sample. The clinical cut‐off score for general psychological distress was 11.0 with a reliable change index (90% CI) of 6. For depression, the cut‐off score for the CORE‐10 was 13 and yielded sensitivity and specificity values of .92 (CI=.83–1.0) and 0.72 (CI=.60–.83) respectively. Conclusion: The CORE‐10 is an acceptable and feasible instrument that has good psychometric properties and is practical to use with people presenting with common mental health problems in primary care settings.     

Honoring the duallium: disability,environmental ethics,and the implicit religion of gardening

In recent years, the pilgrimage shrine of La Sainte-Baume has attracted an increasing number of non-Catholic pilgrims influenced by the ‘New Age’ and the Neopagan movement. These pilgrims consider Mary Magdalene as a sort of female counterpart of Jesus and the mountain of La Sainte-Baume, where according to a Christian legend she spent the last part of her life, as a ‘power place’ charged with ‘healing energy’. Based on 3 years of field work among Mary Magdalene pilgrims and drawing on Tanya Luhrmann's idea of ‘interpretive drift’ (1989), the essay describes the way in which these pilgrims gradually shift from their previous Christian background towards what they generally identify as ‘spirituality’. The pilgrims reconceptualise La Sainte-Baume and its saint, and make their own a shrine they feel was misappropriated and unjustly monopolised by the ‘Church’.     

Getting culture: a new path for Indonesia’s Islamist Justice and Prosperity party?

Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS, The Justice and Prosperity Party) is the largest Islamist political party in Indonesia. It has roots in the religious and political and religious teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood and promotes what Oliver Roy calls "deculturized religion." The party can be understood as the political component of a larger social movement that seeks to transform Indonesian society and culture in ways that would establish Shari'ah as social, if not political, reality. It is also committed to the electoral process and to working inside the Indonesian political system in a more general sense. Until recently, the PKS has dismissed local modes of Muslim practice and much of Indonesian culture as "un-Islamic." The extent of the party's transformative agenda is unclear for three reasons: it shares the Muslim Brotherhood's gradualist approach, it is less than transparent about its goals, and it is divided into purist or "Justice" and pragmatic or "Prosperity" factions. The leadership of the Prosperity faction is currently ascendant and is attempting to reach beyond its Islamist base by sponsoring musical and dramatic performances it hopes will appeal to Muslims devoted to Javanese and other Indonesian cultural traditions. Ethnographic and web-based research indicate that these efforts are greeted with considerable suspicion.     

Violent Attitudes and Deferred Academic Aspirations: Deleterious Effects of Exposure to Rap Music

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of exposure to rap music on the attitudes and perceptions of young African-American males. Subjects u were exposed to violent rap music videos, nonviolent rap music videos, or no music videos (controls). They read two vignettes, involving: (a) a violent act perpetrated against a man and a woman, and (b) a young man who chose to engage in academic pursuits to achieve success, whereas his friend, who was unemployed, "mysteriously" obtained extravagant items (i.e., a nice car, nice clothes). Results indicated, first, that when compared to subjects in the nonviolent exposure and control conditions, subjects in the violent exposure conditions expressed greater acceptance of the use of violence. Second, when compared to subjects in the control condition, subjects in the violent condition 'reported a higher probability that they would engage in violence. Third, when compared to the controls, subjects in the violent exposure condition expressed greater acceptance of the use of violence toward the woman. Finally, when compared to the controls, subjects in the rap video exposure conditions were more' likely to say that they wanted to be like the materialistic young man and were less confident that the other young man would achieve his educational goals. Possible basis for and implications of these findings are discussed.     

SEXUAL ATTACHMENTS: A THEORETICAL PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE ON INCEST

A psychoanalytic framework for understanding the incest‐spectrum group of disorders is outlined. Incest disorders are viewed as a group of perverse activities representing a dynamic solution to developmental conflict or, alternately, as compensatory enactments that serve the function of re‐regulating a defective or fragmenting self‐structure. While incest is typically thought of as behavioural in nature, it also involves particular psychodynamics that underpin the sexualized behavioural enactment. Incestuous activity employs sexualized, bodily engagements to restore self‐regulation or to regulate intense adverse affective states. This perspective emphasizes the need to understand the developmental and psychostructural features of the incest patient. Case material is provided to illuminate aspects of this understanding.     

THE ENCHANTED BEDSIDE

This paper is based on the authors' work offering psychological therapies to patients and their families in a specialist palliative care unit, pre‐ and post‐death. In addressing issues of family interaction around the bedside of the dying patient, the authors have noted a pattern of events that arise from strongly ambivalent relationships.

In particular, family adjustment to the declining health of the patient is acted out in a physical and emotional move around the bedside, with a ‘hierarchy of bereavement’ indicating the status of the relationship to the patient. Previously conflicted feelings towards the dying patient are replaced by an impermeable idealization, lasting throughout bereavement.

In trying to understand this process of idealization the authors have used an analytical frame, referring to Freud and Klein and their work on mourning. This leads on to an exploration of the implications for clinical practice within palliative care. An unshifting idealization can be problematic for many reasons. The reader is left with a discussion about how to work best with families whose initial protective defence can easily crystallize into a long‐term grief reaction.     

Speed of Eating as a Determinant of the Bulimic Desire to Vomit

ABSTRACT

A single-case controlled study found that a bulimic's desire to vomit was virtually eliminated by slowed eating, but not by rapid eating. The present study attempted to determine whether this same relation was exhibited by a larger number (N = 6) of bulimics who were instructed to eat at a fast or a slow rate in a between-subjects reversal design. For all 6 participants, the urge to vomit was found to be greater during fast versus slow eating after comparable amounts of food intake. Clinically, these results suggest that eating slowly might be incorporated into treatment for bulimic vomiting.     

An assessment of Church life in Vietnam

Biblia: Válogatás a Vizsolyi Bibliábol (Bible: Selections from the Vizsoly Bible) compiled by István Vas. Budapest: Európa könyvkiadó, 1986. 933 pp. 125 Ft.

Vallási kisközösségek Magyarországon (Small Religious Communities in Hungary ) by József Fodor. Budapest: Magyar Média, n.d. Paperback, 168 pp.

The Struggles for Poland by Neal Ascherson. London: Michael Joseph, 1987. 242 pp, £14·95.

Human Rights in Yugoslavia edited by Oskar Gruenwald and Karen Rosenblum‐Cale. Los Angeles: Institute for Interdisciplinary Research; New York: Irvington Publishers, 1986. 673 pp.

?rtve Drugog Svetskog Rata u Jugoslaviji (Victims of the Second World War in Yugoslavia) by Bogoljub Ko?ovi?. London: Biblioteka Na?e Delo, 1985. 205 pp. Include English and French summaries

The Churches of China by Britt E. Towery, Jr. Revised and enlarged second edition. Waco, Texas: Long Dragon Books, 1987. 300 pp.

Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan by Olivier Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Paperback, 254 pp.

Ioann XXIII ‐ Pobornik edinstva khristian (John XXIII: Bringer of Christian Unity) by Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad and Novgorod Vienna: Pro Oriente, 1984. 656 pp.

A Radiance in the Gulag by Nijole Sadunaite. Translated by Rev. Casimir Pugevi?ius and Marian Skabeikis. Manassas, Virginia: Trinity Communications, 1987. Paperback, 148 pp. English printing planned for January 1988.

Book note

Der Geistliche und seine Gemeinde in Osteuropa (The Priest and his Parish in Eastern Europe) edited by Wolfgang Kasack. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1986. Paperback, 160 pp.