Religious and Spiritual Practices Used by Children and Adolescents to Cope with Cancer

Journal of Religion and Health - This study consists of an integrative review of the scientific literature that aimed to know the religious and spiritual practices used by children and adolescents...     

Justice Beliefs,Personal Well-Being and Harsh Social Attitudes: Initial Demonstration of a Polynomial Regression and Response Surface Methodology

Tendencies to believe in justice are multidimensional and include beliefs that the world is fair to one’s self (personal justice beliefs) as well as to others (general justice beliefs). Previous research suggests that personal and general justice beliefs are divergently linked to well-being and harsh social attitudes, respectively. However, whether and how these justice tendencies conjointly affect well-being and harsh social attitudes is less well known. Guided by equity theory, the current study used polynomial regression and surface response methodology to demonstrate how specific discrepancies between justice beliefs for self and others predict personal well-being and harsh social attitudes. Participants (N?=?1079) completed measures of tendencies to believe in personal and general justice, as well as measures of physical symptoms associated with illness and attitudes towards the poor. Results suggested that discrepancy between personal and general justice beliefs had detrimental effects on these outcomes (i.e., higher number of illness symptoms and harsher attitudes towards the poor). Moreover, discrepancy resulting from a strong belief in general justice and a weak belief in personal justice (i.e., other-favorable discrepancy) was more strongly negatively associated with well-being and positively associated with harsh attitudes towards the poor than discrepancy resulting from a strong personal justice belief and a weak general justice belief (i.e., self-favorable discrepancy). The current research highlights the potential for personal and general justice beliefs to conjointly predict well-being and social attitudes, while simultaneously demonstrating the capacity to better understand these interactive relationships through the use of surface response methodology.     

Observe: A multimedia course on the observational analysis of behavior

OBSERVE is a preliminary release of a multimedia course for teaching undergraduate and graduate students how and why to study behavior by direct observation. The instructional text and commentary and the self-test and examination materials are built around a series of exercises in which the student observes and categorizes film clips of the behavior of several different species in several different ways. Incorporation of elements from The Observer software for computer recording and video analysis implements fully computerized continuous recording. At present, the text, together with check sheets that the program generates, enables a comparison between one-zero, instantaneous, and continuous sampling of the same behavioral excerpts. Matrices are printed out for an exercise in calculating interobserver reliability. Another section supports carrying out and writing up a small observational project on human behavior in the field. Plans for the future development of OBSERVE are briefly described.     

How stable is happiness? Using the STARTS model to estimate the stability of life satisfaction

A common interpretation of existing subjective well-being research is that long-term levels of well-being are almost completely stable. However, few studies have estimated stability and change using appropriate statistical models that can precisely address this question. The STARTS model (Kenny & Zautra, 2001) was used to analyze life satisfaction data from two nationally representative panel studies. Results show that 34-38% of the variance in observed scores is trait variance that does not change. An additional 29-34% can be accounted for by an autoregressive trait that is only moderately stable over time. Thus, although life satisfaction is moderately stable over long periods of time, there is also an appreciable degree of instability that might depend on contextual circumstances.     

Effects of task requirements on rapid natural scene processing: from common sensory encoding to distinct decisional mechanisms

Using manual responses, human participants are remarkably fast and accurate at deciding if a natural scene contains an animal, but recent data show that they are even faster to indicate with saccadic eye movements which of 2 scenes contains an animal. How could it be that 2 images can apparently be processed faster than a single image? To better understand the origin of this speed advantage in forced-choice categorization, the present study used a masking procedure to compare 4 tasks in which sensory, decisional, and motor aspects were systematically varied. With stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) above 40 ms, there were substantial differences in sensitivity between tasks, as determined by d' measurements, with an advantage for tasks using a single image. However, with SOAs below 30-40 ms, sensitivity was similar for all experiments, despite very large differences in reaction time. This suggests that the initial part of the sensory encoding relies on common and parallel processing across a large range of tasks, whether participants have to categorize the image or locate a target in 1 of 2 scenes.     

Relational insecurity heightens sensitivity to limbal rings in partnered women

Limbal rings augment perceived facial health and attractiveness. We thus expected sensitivity to their presence would depend on motives to seek alternative relationship partners among those feeling insecure about a current pairbond. Despite partnered women's relative insensitivity to good gene cues, partnered women feeling relationally dissatisfied might heighten acuity toward limbal rings. We primed single and partnered women with secure or insecure attachment before evaluating the health of male and female faces with and without limbal rings. Insecurity‐primed partnered women demonstrated greater perceptual acuity toward limbal rings than security‐primed partnered women; this sensitivity was reduced in single women. Findings contribute to literature implicating limbal rings as a health cue, demonstrating how dissatisfaction of mating goals modulates preferences for facial features.     

The Logical Style of Confucius’ Analects

Considered from a logical point of view, Confucius’ Analects contain many implicit forms of reasoning and argumentation. This is shown first by analyzing the phenomenon of parallelism: direct parallelism is often a way of hinting at a general assertion, whereas anti-parallelism hides dilemmas, generalizations and modal notions of “moral preference.” The Analects also have various types of conditionals, ranging from material implications, to modalized implications, and counterfactual conditionals, which are the germs of implicit reasoning, concluding with a moral recommendation. Analogies are particularly abundant and a presentation of three examples suggests that, beyond their explicative role, they also involve moral recommendations. The implicit logic of The Analects requires an active, albeit unconscious participation of the reader, which could be an important element in explaining the enduring influence of the text.     

Associations between prenatal maternal mental health indices and mother–infant relationship quality 6 to 18 months’ postpartum: A systematic review

Maternal mental disorders can significantly impact on children's psychosocial and psychological development, incurring substantial ongoing economic and personal costs. A key mediating mechanism is mother–infant relationship quality (MIRQ). Research studies and perinatal mental health screening initiatives have predominantly focused on depressive symptoms and perinatal depression as predictors of MIRQ. While maternal depression is associated with suboptimal MIRQ, the findings have not been consistent. Personality characteristics are associated with parenting and proneness to depression, presenting a potential addition to prenatal mental health assessment. We conducted a systematic review of studies that have examined the link between prenatal depressive symptoms and/or personality characteristics with postnatal MIRQ. Our findings suggest that both maternal personality traits and depressive symptoms measured in early pregnancy are associated with postnatal MIRQ. A measure of personality characteristics may enhance prenatal mental health assessment, affording opportunities for targeted intervention commencing in pregnancy to improve MIRQ, parenting, maternal mental health outcomes, and infant psychosocial and psychological development, and thereby contributing to the reduction of human and economic cost burdens.     

Sleep arrangements and night waking at 6 and 12 months in relation to infants' stress‐induced cortisol responses

The objective of this short‐term longitudinal study was to examine the concurrent and prospective associations of infants' sleep arrangements and night waking with cortisol responses to an inoculation at 6 and 12 months, controlling for several key covariates. To our knowledge, this was the first study to concurrently and prospectively link proximity in sleep arrangements and night waking to physiological stress reactivity. A sample of 92 mother–infant dyads participated in the study when the infants were 6 and 12 months of age, although sample sizes were reduced for some analyses. Both proximal cosleeping arrangements and more frequent night wakings' were associated concurrently with an increased cortisol response to inoculations at both ages. Night waking at 6 months also was associated with a slightly increased cortisol response to inoculation at 12 months. Results aimed at exploring the direction of influence suggested that cosleeping and night waking may influence infant stress physiology rather than the reverse. Adaptive and maladaptive implications of infants' nocturnal experiences and greater stress‐induced cortisol responses are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.