Religion and Spirituality among American Indian,South Asian,Black, Hispanic/Latina,and White Women in the Study on Stress,Spirituality, and Health

Social scientists have increasingly recognized the lack of diversity in survey research on American religion, resulting in a dearth of data on religion and spirituality (R/S) in understudied racial and ethnic groups. At the same time, epidemiological studies have increasingly diversified their racial and ethnic representation, but have collected few R/S measures to date. With a particular focus on American Indian and South Asian women (in addition to Blacks, Hispanic/Latinas, and white women), this study introduces a new effort among religion and epidemiology researchers, the Study on Stress, Spirituality, and Health. This multicohort study provides some of the first estimates of R/S beliefs and practices among American Indians and U.S. South Asians, and offers new insight into salient beliefs and practices of diverse racial/ethnic and religious communities.     

Disentangling help-seeking and giving up: differential human-directed gazing by dogs in a modified unsolvable task paradigm

Animal Cognition - Dogs are renowned for ‘looking back’ at humans when confronted with a problem, but it has been questioned whether this implies help-seeking or giving up. We tested 56...     

Non-conscious word processing in a mirror-masking paradigm causing attentional distraction: an ERP-study

In this event-related potential (ERP) study a masking technique that prevents conscious perception of words and non-words through attentional distraction was used to reveal the temporal dynamics of word processing under non-conscious and conscious conditions. In the non-conscious condition, ERP responses differed between masked words and non-words from 112 to 160 ms after stimulus-onset over posterior brain areas. The early onset of the word-non-word differences was compatible with previous studies that reported non-conscious access to orthographic information within this time period. Moreover, source localisations provided evidence for automatic activation of prelexical phonological information, whereas no evidence for non-conscious semantic processing was found. When subjects were informed about the masking technique, lexical differences occurred at later time intervals, suggesting conscious access to additional word related information. These results indicate that early visual word processing does not depend entirely on attentional resources, but that non-conscious processing probably is restricted to rather lower-level linguistic information.     

Challenge me! Communicating in multicultural classrooms

The current study investigated the value of Socratic classroom communication (e.g., critical debate and challenging each other on content matters) among students from various cultures (clustered into Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans and Non-Europeans) and from members of faculty at an international university in Germany. Students from Western cultures where Socratic communication had been valued in the school systems reported a greater ease of engaging in the respective communication style than did Eastern European and Non-European students. Furthermore, we assessed how strongly the faculty valued the respective kinds of behavior. The results show that overall students underestimated the extent to which Socratic communication behavior was esteemed by members of faculty. In addition, faculty members perceived themselves to be more explicit about their pedagogical principles than they were perceived by students. Finally, the easier it was for students to show Socratic classroom communication, the more academically satisfied they were and the better their grades. The results are discussed with regard to practical implications and the internationalization of universities.     

Modal preferences in creative problem solving

Embodied cognitive science appeals to the idea that cognition depends on the body as well as on the brain. This study looks at whether we are more likely to engage just the brain or enlist the body for complex cognitive functioning such as creative problem solving. Participants were presented with a puzzle based on De Bono’s lateral thinking puzzles. The puzzle consisted of rotating and joining two-dimensional shapes to make a three-dimensional one. In one condition, participants were given the choice of either solving the puzzle mentally or through manipulation of the images on a computer screen. In another condition, the subjects had to solve the puzzle first mentally and then report which mode they would have preferred to solve the puzzle. Two more conditions were applied with slight variations. In all conditions, an overwhelming majority of participants chose to solve the puzzle by manipulation, even though there was not a significant increase on performance. It appeared that participants were making a conscious choice for the body to play a feedback-driven role in creative cognitive processing. This strong preference for manual manipulation over just mental representation, regardless of the impact on performance, would seem to suggest that it is our natural tendency to involve the body in complex cognitive functioning. This would support the theory that cognition may be more than just a neural process, and that it is a dynamic interplay between body, brain and world. The experiential feedback of the body moving through space and time may be an inherently important factor in creative cognition.     

Facilitation and analogical transfer in the THOG task

This study was concerned with Wason's THOG task, a hypothetico-deductive reasoning problem for which performance is typically very poor (<20% correct). Recently, however, Needham and Amado (1995) and Koenig and Griggs (2004) have observed both facilitation and spontaneous analogical transfer effects for the Pythagoras version of this task. Based on their findings, Koenig and Griggs concluded that in addition to the separation of the data (the properties of the designated THOG) from the hypotheses that need to be generated (the possible combinations of properties written down), an explicit request to generate these hypotheses is necessary to obtain significant analogical transfer. In the present study we extended the generalisability of this conclusion in three experiments with 214 undergraduate participants using O'Brien et al.'s (1990) Blackboard version of the task. We discuss the relationship of the results to dual process theories of reasoning and propose that analogical transfer may be a better criterion than task facilitation for judging participants' task understanding.     

The neural correlates of processing newborn and adult faces in 3‐year‐old children

The current study examines the processing of upright and inverted faces in 3‐year‐old children (n = 35). Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a passive looking paradigm including adult and newborn face stimuli. We observed three face‐sensitive components, the P1, the N170 and the P400. Inverted faces elicited shorter P1 latency and larger P400 amplitude. P1 and N170 amplitudes were larger for adult faces. To examine the role of experience in the development of face processing, the processing of adult and newborn faces was compared for children with a younger sibling (n = 23) and children without a younger sibling (n = 12). Age of sibling at test correlated negatively with P1 amplitude for adult and newborn faces. This may indicate more efficient processing of different face ages in children with a younger sibling and potentially reflects a more flexible face representation.     

Measuring Intrinsic Religiosity: scales for use in mental health studies in China – a research report

While Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale and the Duke University Religion Index have gained popularity in the field of religion and mental health, it remains unknown whether these scales are optimal measures of religiosity in the Chinese culture. This study is to provide some evidence to support the use of the Chinese versions of Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale and the Duke University Religion Index. The data were from a community-based sample of 1039 Chinese women, 18–34 years old, in rural China. Reliability tests were performed on the two religiosity scales. Internal consistency analysis showed excellent correlation coefficients for most of the items. In addition, factor analysis produced two factors for the Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, a result consistent with previous findings in the Western, predominantly Christian cultures and societies. Moreover, our findings showed statistically significant correlations between the two religiosity scales and mental health outcomes, even though the strength of correlation between the Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale and mental health outcomes appeared to be stronger. In sum, this study suggests that both the Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale and the Duke University Religion Index should be appropriate instruments for detecting and measuring religiosity in the Chinese context.     

The bivalency effect represents an interference-triggered adjustment of cognitive control: An ERP study

When bivalent stimuli (i.e., stimuli with relevant features for two different tasks) occur occasionally among univalent stimuli, performance is slowed on subsequent univalent stimuli even if they have no overlapping stimulus features. This finding has been labeled the bivalency effect. It indexes an adjustment of cognitive control, but the underlying mechanism is not well understood yet. The purpose of the present study was to shed light on this question, using event-related potentials. We used a paradigm requiring predictable alternations between three tasks, with bivalent stimuli occasionally occurring on one task. The results revealed that the bivalency effect elicited a sustained parietal positivity and a frontal negativity, a neural signature that is typical for control processes implemented to resolve interference. We suggest that the bivalency effect reflects interference, which may be caused by episodic context binding.