Cognitive and Behavioral Changes Arising From Spirituality

Journal of Religion and Health - This article aims to explore the concept of spiritual transformation and address the question, ‘How does spirituality bring about changes in cognition and...     

A Historical Survey of Police Suicide in Queensland,Australia, 1843–1992

Police suicide research has yielded inconsistent results. An opportunity presented to survey Queensland police suicides in a historical context and add to the existing literature; the study describes changes in police suicide over time, the associated characteristics, and opportunities for intervention. Suicides were examined from the origins of police in Queensland in 1843 up to 1992. Suicide rates were higher earlier, around 60 per 100,000, declining to around 20 per 100,000 recently. The recent rate is lower than most other police studies but the same as the general community (employed). Most suicides were associated with psychological and physical ill health, alcohol abuse, and domestic problems, in keeping with general community surveys. However, occupational problems were more evident than is generally the case. The proximity in time of disciplinary events and suicides was striking. Future studies should explore the interactions between these factors.     

Pragmatic effects on reference resolution in a collaborative task: evidence from eye movements

In order to investigate whether addressees can make immediate use of speaker-based constraints during reference resolution, participant addressees’ eye movements were monitored as they helped a confederate cook follow a recipe. Objects were located in the helper’s area, which the cook could not reach, and the cook’s area, which both could reach. Critical referring expressions matched one object (helper’s area) or two objects (helper’s and cook’s areas), and were produced when the cook’s hands were empty or full, which defined the cook’s reaching ability constraints. Helper’s first and total fixations showed that they restricted their domain of interpretation to their own objects when the cook’s hands were empty, and widened it to include the cook’s objects only when the cook’s hands were full. These results demonstrate that addressees can quickly take into account task-relevant constraints to restrict their referential domain to referents that are plausible given the speaker’s goals and constraints.     

Facilitating the Furrowed Brow: An Unobtrusive Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis Applied to Unpleasant Affect

Abstract

We examined the hypothesis that muscle contractions in the face influence subjective emotional experience. Previously, researchers have been critical of experiments designed to test this facial feedback hypothesis, particularly in terms of methodological problems that may lead to demand characteristics. In an effort to surmount these methodological problems Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988) developed an experimental procedure whereby subjects were induced to contract facial muscles involved in the production of an emotional pattern, without being asked to actually simulate an emotion. Specifically, subjects were required to hold a pen in their teeth, which unobtrusively creates a contraction of the zygomaticus major muscles, the muscles involved in the production of a human smile. This manipulation minimises the likelihood that subjects are able to interpret their zygomaticus contractions as representing a particular emotion, thereby preventing subjects from determining the purpose of the experiment. Strack et al. (1988) found support for the facial feedback hypothesis applied to pleasant affect, in that subjects in the pen-in-teeth condition rated humorous cartoons as being funnier than subjects in the control condition (in which zygomaticus contractions were inhibited). The present study represents an extension of this nonobtrusive methodology to an investigation of the facial feedback of unpleasant affect. Consistent with the Strack et al. procedure, we wanted to have subjects furrow their brow without actually instructing them to do so and without asking them to produce any emotional facial pattern at all. This was achieved by attaching two golf tees to the subject's brow region (just above the inside comer of each eye) and then instructing them to touch the tips of the golf tees together as part of a “divided-attention” experiment. Touching the tips of the golf tees together could only be achieved by a contraction of the corrugator supercilii muscles, the muscles involved in the production of a sad emotional facial pattern. Subjects reported significantly more sadness in response to aversive photographs while touching the tips of the golf tees together than under conditions which inhibited corrugator contractions. These results provide evidence, using a new and unobtrusive manipulation, that facial feedback operates for unpleasant affect to a degree similar to that previously found for pleasant affect.