Four studies extending the utility of the Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS-10)

The Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS-10; Blais et al., 1999) is a brief, cost free, and easy to administer assessment device designed to measure a broad domain of psychological health. The 4 studies using the SOS-10 reported here extend the initial reliability and validity studies beyond psychiatric patients in a hospital setting to examine (a) test-retest reliability in a college student population, (b) concurrent validity with college students using an indirect technique assessing maladjustment, (c) concurrent validity with college counseling center clients using a self-report measure of client distress, and (d) sensitivity to treatment changes with outpatient clients. These studies lend further support for using the SOS-10 as a measure of psychological well-being and as an outcome measure in varied settings.     

Revisiting the Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness

Hal Childs has written a solid, subtle, and courageous evaluation of the state of Jesus scholarship, focusing on a critique of the work of John Dominic Crossan. The impact of the fact that the scholars in this field are functioning within the limitations of Cartesian epistemology and ontology is addressed throughout this work, but in a subtle and respectful manner. More directly addressed is the fact that the historical Jesus cannot be discovered solely from that perspective; it requires what Childs terms a fundamentally hermeneutic, archetypal and psychological approach (2000, p. 2). The term historical is in quotes because Childs carefully distinguishes the object of the study from what we like to think of as scientific knowledge.     

Exploring the role of repetition and sensory elaboration in the imagination inflation effect

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether a misattribution of specific characteristics or a misattribution of global familiarity underlies false memories as assessed through imagination inflation. Using the paradigm developed by Goff and Roediger (1998), we found that the proportion of false memories increased with repeated imagination, replicating the imagination inflation effect. False memories developed through imagination were greatest in conditions that forced participants to include sensory detail in their imaginings. Finally, conscious recollection more often accompanied false memories in perceptually detailed imagination conditions, whereas feelings of familiarity more often accompanied false memories in conditions that lacked sensory cues. These results suggest that imagination that contains more perceptual information leads to more elaborate memory representations containing specific characteristics that can be confused with actually performed actions. Confusion based on these representations, as opposed to confusion based on processing fluency, is more likely to lead to false memories.     

Transferring voice effects in recognition memory from remembering to knowing

In five experiments, we investigated the effects of voice congruency (same vs. different voices at study and at test) on remembering and knowing in recognition memory. With low- and medium-frequency three- or four-syllable words, a voice congruency effect occurred only in remembering. With nonwords, voice congruency effects occurred both in remembering and in knowing. With nonwords and divided attention at study, the voice congruency effect transferred almost completely from remembering to knowing. By showing a transfer of effects from remembering to knowing as encoding became more impoverished, these findings support a distinctiveness/fluency account of remembering and knowing as well as the theory that remembering and knowing indicate retrieval of events from episodic and semantic memory systems, respectively.     

Children's working-memory processes: a response-timing analysis

Recall response durations were used to clarify processing in working-memory tasks. Experiment 1 examined children's performance in reading span, a task in which sentences were processed and the final word of each sentence was retained for subsequent recall. Experiment 2 examined the development of listening-, counting-, and digit-span task performance. Responses were much longer in the reading-and listening-span tasks than in the other span tasks, suggesting that participants in sentence-based span tasks take time to retrieve the semantic or linguistic structure as cues to recall of the sentence-final words. Response durations in working-memory tasks helped to predict academic skill and achievement, largely separate from the contributions of the memory spans themselves. Response durations thus are important in the interpretation of span task performance.     

Belief in good luck and psychological well-being: the mediating role of optimism and irrational beliefs

The authors examined the relationship of belief in good luck with depression and anxiety within the context of a number of cognitive and personality variables used to explain depression and anxiety. Undergraduate students (46 men, 98 women) were administered measures of belief in good luck, depression, anxiety, optimism, neuroticism, attribution style, self-esteem, and irrational beliefs. The results showed that belief in good luck was significantly related to optimism and irrational beliefs. A number of models were tested to determine whether irrational beliefs or optimism mediated the relationship between belief in good luck and depression and anxiety. The findings suggested that negative relationships between belief in good luck and both depression and anxiety are best addressed by the theory that belief in good luck engenders optimistic traits and a reduced level of irrational beliefs.     

Cultural meanings of nature: an analysis of contemporary motion pictures

To evaluate current cultural meanings of nature, the authors asked 65 undergraduate students to "list 3 movies in which nature was an important aspect of the film." They also were asked to specify the natural element that stood out to them and describe "how it related to the overall theme of the movie." Two independent groups of raters skilled in interpretive analysis developed thematic meanings from these responses. Following this, in a 2nd study, a different group of participants rated the 18 most frequently mentioned natural elements on thematic scales derived from the initial interpretive analysis. Participants in the 1st study mentioned 33 different movies at least twice and 5 themes that captured the meaning of nature in these films. Correlational results derived from the 2nd study indicated that rating scales reflecting these 5 themes formed 2 distinct groups; the first group described settings in which nature is experienced as adversarial and plays a significant role in dramatic action, and the second group defined settings in which nature is viewed either as a place of refuge or simply as a locale in which ongoing narrative action occurs. The general conclusion reached in both studies concerns the often noted but not always appreciated fact that movies--similar to everyday events and actions--always take place in specific settings and that neither life events nor dramatic narratives can be understood apart from specific settings.     

Inferring the mental processes of other minds

In 4 experiments, the authors examined how several variables influence the quality and quantity of information that people use to make judgments about other people. The results showed that when possible, participants consistently responded appropriately to variables that influenced information that they used to make inferences about other minds. The results also suggested that under circumstances with no opportunity to contrast behavior in different situations, people might not be sensitive to the quality and quantity of information present. The authors interpreted results to mean that under most circumstances, people make inferences in a way that efficiently uses information about the causes of behavior.