When One Plus One Equals Three: The Role of Relationships and Context in Community Research

This paper explores the role of relationships within and between the community of the researchers and the community of the research participants, as they relate to qualitative, community psychology research. Although relationships are salient to all research, their role is particularly prominent in qualitative research, in which a closer rapport is established between researcher and research participant than in quantitative research, and the impact of both sides of this interaction on the research process is acknowledged. Instead of merely looking at the community and relationships of the participants, the usual focus of research, this paper also explores the often-overlooked community and relationships of the researchers and then goes on to look at the impact on the research process of the interaction of these two separate communities. This inside story, while seldom explicitly explored or articulated, has implications for community research in general and particularly for applied research.     

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.     

Differentiating explanations of attitude-consistent behavior: the role of perspectives and mode of perspective taking

We examined whether participants could differentiate between explanations of attitude-consistent behavior related to EU membership given from two perspectives (EU supporter and EU opponent) by means of three perspective taking modes (the explainer's own perspective, imagined in-group members' perspective, and imagined out-group members' perspective). Participants were presented with explanations provided from different perspectives and perspective taking modes, and they were asked to judge the extent to which they agreed with each explanation, to guess the attitude of the provider of each explanation, and to rate the quality of each explanation in various respects. Participants could not differentiate between explanations given by in-group members and out-group members who imagined the same perspective. They responded more favorably to explanations given from own perspective than from the imagined perspectives. The results suggest that there exists a shared understanding about how both sides should explain attitude-consistent behavior, but this understanding is measurably different from the actual explanations.     

Leisure interest patterns and subjective stress in college students

A first study of the Leisure Interests Checklist (LIC) is reported based on a large (N = 670) normative sample of college students. Acceptable reliability was found on the total interest scores, and on both rationally- and factorially-derived LIC subscales. The BAROMAS stress scales were also studied concurrently with the same college students, and normative data are provided from that sample. Interest in very active diversions and Sports on the LIC did correlate with confidence in doing sports on the BAROMAS. Otherwise, the two instruments showed little overlap. Comparisons between ethnic and gender groupings mainly agreed with advance expectations by disclosing culturally conventional differences in response patterns. The LIC appears promising for future use in both applied and research contexts.     

The reductionist ideal in cognitive psychology

I offer support for the view that physicalist theories of cognition don't reduce to neurophysiological theories. On my view, the mind-brain relationship is to be explained in terms of evolutionary forces, some of which tug in the direction of a reductionistic mind-brain relationship, and some of which which tug in the opposite direction. This theory of forces makes possible an anti-reductionist account of the cognitive mind-brain relationship which avoids psychophysical anomalism. This theory thus also responds to the complaint which arguably lies behind the Churchlands' strongest criticisms of anti-reductionism — namely the complaint that anti-reductionists fail to supply principled explanations for the character of the mind-brain relationship. While lending support to anti-reductionism, the view defended here also insures a permanent place for mind-brain reduction as an explanatory ideal analogous to Newtonian inertial motion or Aristotelian natural motion.I wish to thank the Synthese referees for their comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank Steve Bowen, Elise Brenner, and Arthur Fine for helpful discussions and Joseph Owens for his comments on a version of this paper read at the Central Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association held in Cincinnati in April 1988.     

Do dyslexics have difficulty accessing articulatory information?

Summary Dyslexic and normal readers of the same reading age of around eight years, but of different chronological age (ten and eight years) were given an articulation accessing and a phoneme segmentation task. For the former task they had to indicate which of several schematic drawings corresponded to the position of their tongue, teeth, and lips for a given phoneme. The dyslexic children experienced great difficulty with this task while they were equal to the normal children on a simple phoneme segmentation task. These results were replicated with two further samples of dyslexic and normal children. It is hypothesized that awareness of articulation processes is an important factor in explanations of dyslexia.     

Sentence repetition in preschoolers: Effects of length,complexity, and word familiarity

Seventy-two sentences presented to ten preschool children for repetition were designed so that three sentence construction factors varied independently. The factors were (1) length in number of words, (2) complexity of personal pronouns and main verbs as scaled by Lee (1974), and (3) word familiarity, defined as common vocabulary or the substitution of a nonsense word in place of a typical noun or verb in the model sentence. Three methods were employed for scoring the children's responses: (1) number of retained words, (2) Developmental Sentence Scoring (Lee, 1974), and (3) Stephens's Categories (Stephens, 1974). Eighteen sentences were re-presented for the assessment of reliability. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that length was the important contributing factor in the children's responses to the model sentences and that Stephens's Category Scale of response scoring was the most sensitive method for detecting the influence of the three sentence factors on the children's responses.     

Modification of an impulsive cognitive tempo in emotionally disturbed boys

In order to determine the relative effectiveness of verbal self-instructions and training to delay before responding in modifying an impulsive cognitive style, 15 impulsive emotionally disturbed boys were assigned to one of three groups. The cognitive-training group was given practice in verbal self-instructions, the delay-training group received practice in delaying before responding, and the control group received no training. Posttreatment scores on the Matching Familiar Figures Test showed a significant increase in latencies for both the cognitive and delay-training groups. However, only the cognitive-training group, which had recieved practice in verbal self-instructions, made fewer errors following training. Implications for future research and potential treatment strategies for verbal self-instructions are discussed.