Identity and spirituality: a psychosocial exploration of the sense of spiritual self

The authors examined the structure and content of adults' sense of spiritual identity by analyzing semistructured interviews with 13 spiritually devout men and 15 devout women, ages 22 to 72. Individuals' responses to the Role-Related Identity Interview (G. T. Sorell, M. J. Montgomery, & N. A. Busch-Rossnagel, 1997b) were content analyzed and rated on the role-related spiritual identity dimensions of role salience and flexibility. Individuals were categorized as spiritually foreclosed, achieved, or in moratorium, on the basis of their motivational, affective, self-evaluative, and behavioral investments in spiritually defined roles and their reflectiveness about and behavioral changes in role-related spiritual identity. Similarities and differences within and between spiritual identity status groups were observed, suggesting a variety of ways that spiritual identity provides a sense of continuity as well as a domain for adult developmental change.     

Theory of mind and executive function: working-memory capacity and inhibitory control as predictors of false-belief task performance

This study of the relationship between theory of mind and executive function examined whether on the false-belief task age differences between 3 and 5 ears of age are related to development of working-memory capacity and inhibitory processes. 72 children completed tasks measuring false belief, working memory, and inhibition. Significant age effects were observed for false-belief and working-memory performance, as well as for the false-alarm and perseveration measures of inhibition. A simultaneous multiple linear regression specified the contribution of age, inhibition, and working memory to the prediction of false-belief performance. This model was significant, explaining a total of 36% of the variance. To examine the independent contributions of the working-memory and inhibition variables, after controlling for age, two hierarchical multiple linear regressions were conducted. These multiple regression analyses indicate that working memory and inhibition make small, overlapping contributions to false-belief performance after accounting for age, but that working memory, as measured in this study, is a somewhat better predictor of false-belief understanding than is inhibition.     

The Interactive Influences of Friend Deviance and Reward Dominance on the Development of Externalizing Behavior During Middle Adolescence

This study investigated the interactive effects of friend deviance and reward dominance on the development of externalizing behavior of adolescents in the Child Development Project. Reward dominance was assessed at age 16 by performance on a computer-presented card-playing game in which participants had the choice of either continuing or discontinuing the game as the likelihood of reward decreased and the likelihood of punishment increased. At ages 14 and 16, friend deviance and externalizing behavior were assessed through self-report. As expected, based on motivational balance and response modulation theories, path analysis revealed that age 14 friend deviance predicted age 16 externalizing behavior controlling for age 14 externalizing behavior. Reward dominance was a significant moderator of the relationship between friend deviance and externalizing behavior. The contributions of deviant friends to the development of externalizing behavior were enhanced by adolescents' reward dominance.     

A 12-Year Prospective Study of Patterns of Social Information Processing Problems and Externalizing Behaviors

This study investigated how discrete social information processing (SIP) steps may combine with one another to create distinct groups of youth who are characterized by particular patterns of SIP. SIP assessments were conducted on a community sample of 576 children in kindergarten, with follow-up assessments in grades 3, 8, and 11. At each age, four profiles were created, representing youth with no SIP problems, with early step SIP problems (encoding or making hostile attributions), with later step SIP problems (selecting instrumental goals, generating aggressive responses, or evaluating aggression positively), and with pervasive SIP problems. Although patterns of SIP problems were related to concurrent externalizing during elementary school, the consistency between cognition and future externalizing behavior was not as strong in elementary school as it was between grades 8 and 11. In some cases, youth characterized by the co-occurrence of problems in early and later SIP steps had higher externalizing scores than did youth characterized by problems in just one or the other.     

Genetic factors and neurocognitive traits

Genetic contributions to phenotypic variation in general intelligence have been studied extensively. Less research has been conducted on genetic contributions to specific cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, working memory, language, and motor functions. However, the existing data indicate a significant role of genetic factors in these abilities. Stages of information processing, such as sensory gating, early sensory registration, and cognitive analysis, also show evidence of genetic contributions. Recent molecular studies have begun to identify candidate genes for specific cognitive functions. Future research, identifying endophenotypes based on cognitive profiles of neuropsychiatric disorders, may also assist in the detection of genes that increase susceptibility to major psychiatric disorders.     

A community meeting protocol for assault prevention

Assaultive behavior by patients is a serious problem throughout healthcare facilities. Currently, wide variability exists in the approaches used to deal with assaultive behavior. The immediate objective of this study was to perform a consensus validation of the community meeting as a prevention and intervention measure for assault. The community meeting is a regular meeting of all staff and patients for communication, ward management, or psychiatric treatment. A delphi survey, with three iterations, was used to operationalize the collection of judgments and achieve convergence of opinion from expert respondents. A protocol for a Violence Prevention Community Meeting (VPCM) was established.     

On the interaction between linguistic and pictorial systems in the absence of semantic mediation: Evidence from a priming paradigm

Use of the letter search task in the context of the priming paradigm has proved to be an invaluable tool for the investigation of the strategic control of processes involved in word recognition. In particular, previous findings that letter search on a prime word interferes with the priming of semantically/associatively related targets, but not with the priming of either identical or morphologically related targets, suggests that letter search may selectively interfere with semantic processing, leaving other levels of processing intact. In the present experiments, this investigation was extended by exploring the priming of pictures following letter search of either a same-concept word (repetition priming) or a semantically/associatively related word (semantic priming). There was significant repetition priming of picture categorization following both silent reading and letter search of the prime word (Experiments 1 and 2). In contrast, semantic priming of pictures was found only following silent reading of the prime; there was no semantic priming following letter search of the prime (Experiment 2). This pattern of results suggests that focusing attention at the letter level during prime processing selectively attenuates activation of the semantic system by the prime. It does not prevent the spread of activation between the lexical and pictogen levels of representation of a given concept.     

Narrative ability in school-age stuttering boys: A preliminary investigation

In a preliminary investigation, narrative ability was compared in stuttering and nonstuttering school-age boys using tasks known to be sensitive to narrative deficits. The groups were also compared on the broader domains of receptive and expressive language development using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Revised (CELF-R). The results did not support the popular view that stutterers, as a group, are more vulnerable to language disorders than their nonstuttering peers. A recent hypothesis that stuttering behavior might be a causal factor in delayed expressive language development was also not supported. The importance of examining individual differences in stuttering children is emphasized for both clinical and research purposes.     

Effect of Grammatical Gender and Semantic Context on Lexical Access in Italian

The interacting effects of sentence context and grammatical gender on lexical access were investigated in Italian using a timed picture-naming paradigm. Results snowed large interacting effects of both sentence context and the gender of the article, with facilitation relative to two different control conditions. Repeat testing yielded an overall decrease in RT, but did not change the pattern of results. Results are interpreted in support of interactive activation models in which different sources of information are combined on-line to predict, anticipate or preactivate lexical targets.