“Broken Together”: Spirituality and Religion as Coping Strategies for Couples Dealing with the Death of a Child: A Literature Review with Clinical Implications

The death of a child is an event that can fall into the category of uncontrollable life events, testing the limits of the ability to control of bereaved parents. The literature reviewed showed that religious/spiritual coping is a unique way of coping and may be particularly important for couples who have lost a child. When assessing the couples’ coping strategies, marital therapists would be wise to look for religious/spiritual mechanisms that can be employed in the therapeutic process. Furthermore, the reviewers propose Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (Johnson, 2004, The practice of emotionally focused couple therapy: Creating connection, Routledge, New York) as well suited for helping couples grieving the death of their child.     

康德遗著——遗世手稿、康德的工作方式和遗稿新编

康德的《遗著》包含着康德的从自然的理性形而上学向经验科学过渡的未完成的哲学计划,《康德全集》中原有的非批判的版本存在着诸多欠缺,因此新的版面采用发生学的结构分析,通过对康德的工作方式的考察,重现了康德的凌乱而又被密集书写的手稿上的文字产生的时间顺序和逻辑关系,从而最大限度地还原了康德对这一问题的整个思考过程。     

Measuring consciousness: Is one measure better than the other?

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS), through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings (CR), through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering (PDW), in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine (1) which scale best correlates with performance, and (2) whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus (1) PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and (2) we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies.     

Partial awareness distinguishes between measuring conscious perception and conscious content: Reply to Dienes and Seth

In their comment on Sandberg, Timmermans, Overgaard, and Cleeremans (2010), Dienes and Seth argue that increased sensitivity of the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) is a consequence of the scale being less exclusive rather than more exhaustive. According to Dienes and Seth, this is because PAS may measure some conscious content, though not necessarily relevant conscious content, “If one saw a square but was only aware of seeing a flash of something, then one has not consciously seen a square.” In this reply, we claim that there is a difference between conscious visual experience, which may be partial, and the resulting conscious content, which is conceptual. Whereas PAS measures the first, confidence judgments and post-decision wagering measure the second.     

Visual orienting in dynamic broadband (1/f) noise sequences

Visual orienting has typically been characterized using simple displays—for example, displays with a static target placed on a homogeneous background. In the present study, visual orienting was investigated using a dynamic broadband (1/f) noise display that should mimic a more naturalistic setting and that should allow saccadic orienting experiments to be performed with fewer constraints. In Experiment 1, it was shown that the noise movie contains gaze-attracting features that are almost as distinct as the ones measured for (static) real-word scenes. The movie can therefore serve as a strong distractor. In Experiment 2, observers carried out a luminance target search that showed that saccadic amplitude errors were substantially higher (18%) than the ones measured in simple displays. That error is certainly one of the primary factors making gaze-fixation prediction in complex scenes difficult. Supplemental figures for this study may be downloaded from http://app.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Quantifying variability in phase portraits: application to gait ontogeny

We describe new Fourier- and shape-based methods for quantifying variation in phase-portraits, and re-analyze previously-published ontogenetic and adult data [Clark, J. E., & Phillips, S. J. (1993). A longitudinal study of intralimb coordination in the first year of independent walking: A dynamical systems approach. Child Development, 64, 1143–1157]. Results show considerable variation between individuals and through development, but after 6 months of walking some gait patterns stabilize.     

Better than average and better with time: relative evaluations of self and others in the past,present, and future

Evaluations of self and others in the past, present, and future were examined by asking 385 students to rate themselves or an acquaintance relative to their peers on a number of personality traits. We predicted, and found, evidence for self‐enhancement, as most participants regarded themselves superior to ‘most others’ at all points in time. We also found a better than average improvement effect, as participants considered themselves more superior now, than they were in the past, and expected to become even more superior in the future. Expected improvement in the future was larger than improvement over an equal span of time in the past. It is suggested that favorable self‐constructions are possible to the extent that the past and the future are perceived as ambiguous. Singular acquaintances were also rated better than most others, and were believed to improve over time, but their rate of improvement in the future was smaller than the expected improvement for oneself. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Severe Life Events and Chronic Adversities as Antecedents to Anxiety in Children: A Matched Control Study

The present study compared the number of severe life events and chronic adversities as reported retrospectively by mothers of children with an anxiety disorder (n = 39) prior to the onset of their most recent episode, with controls (n = 39) matched for age and sex. The parent version of the Psychosocial Assessment of Childhood Experiences (PACE) was used to assess chronic adversities (long-term experiences with negative impact on child) and severe life events (discrete life events with high long-term threat). A significantly greater number of severe life events and chronic adversities were assessed prior to onset for anxious children compared to controls. The finding for severe life events held regardless of whether impact ratings were assigned by mothers or a panel of independent raters, suggesting the findings reflect actual as opposed to perceived differences. Results suggest that both discrete and chronic stressors may constitute risk for future episodes of anxiety in children.

The darker side of accommodating others: Examining the interpersonal structure of maladaptive constructs

To better understand the greater prevalence of depression among women, compared to men, we explored the darker side of accommodating others by examining where maladaptive relational constructs fit within a general structural framework provided by the interpersonal circumplex and 5-factor model of personality. Participants were four samples of undergraduate students (Ns = 302–2070) who completed questionnaires. Results indicated two clusters of maladaptive items: Submission with Connection and Submission without Connection. In general, the most maladaptive relational constructs were concentrated in the first cluster and were located in the low agency, low communion region of the interpersonal circumplex.