Anxiety and bodily symptoms under the threat of missile attacks: The israeli scene

Abstract

The present research, conducted in Israel during the recent “Desert Storm” operation in the Gulf, sets out to assess the degree of anxiety and bodily symptoms of Israeli citizens, threatened by Scud missile attacks and undergoing a period of acute stress. Data were gathered via questionnaires distributed during the crisis period to over 500 respondents, most of them residing in Haifa, one of the high-risk areas for the missile attacks at the time. State anxiety was reported to be highly elevated during the crisis period, in comparison with norm group data collected during normal times. The most frequently reported bodily symptoms were changes in eating habits (loss of appetite or overeating), fatigue, and insomnia. Women reported more anxiety and bodily symptoms, on average, than men, as well as higher tension, fear and depression. The younger adults in the sample reported more anxiety and bodily symptoms, as well as tension, fear and depression, than their older counterparts. Lower levels of fear and depression were reported at the later stages of the crisis than at the earlier ones; most stress indicators evidenced lower levels with the passage of time. Finally, a strong positive relationship between anxiety and bodily symptoms was found, over and above the contribution of background variables and response tendencies. The possible explanations for the effects of background variables, as well as the strong relationship between anxiety and symptoms reported, are discussed.     

Knowledge and Action,Reason and Habit,in Jewish and Muslim Philosophies of Education

Jewish and Muslim philosophers, alike, regarded the formation of proper habits to be the key to effective education. They also considered rational acceptance of religious obligation to be mandatory for successful observance. This essay examines the relationship between these two dimensions of religious education: knowledge and reason on the one hand, and habit and action on the other hand, in the philosophical and pedagogical works of Abu Hāmid al-Ghazāli (1058–1111,) Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), and the anonymous Sefer Ha-Hinnukh (13th century).     

Big fish in big ponds: A multilevel analysis of test anxiety and achievement in special gifted classes

Abstract

This study analyzes the effects of individual achievement and achievement level of student reference group on test anxiety in a national sample of 769 gifted Israeli students (grade levels 4–9), which was previously investigated by Zeidner and Schleyer (1999a). We hypothesized that when controlling for individual achievement, students’ experiences of test anxiety should increase with the increasing ability level of their peer reference group. It was assumed that this effect was largely mediated by reference group effects on academic self-concept (big-fish-little-pond effect). Zeidner and Schleyer found that gifted students within a gifted peer reference group showed higher levels of test anxiety than gifted students within a non-gifted peer reference group. Of note, the present study focused exclusively on gifted students attending special gifted classes. The main research question was whether or not the assumed effects of individual and class achievement can be found for gifted students in special gifted classes when taking the variance of achievement level (grades) of the special gifted classes into account. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) methodology, the assumed effects were vindicated for this special group of high ability students. Thus, in line with previous results, the Worry component of test anxiety was more highly reactive to the effects of individual achievement than the Emotionality component. Also, in line with our theoretical assumptions, achievement/anxiety relations were largely mediated by the effects of academic self-concept.     

Personal factors related to compassion fatigue in health professionals

This study examines the role of some personal and professional factors in compassion fatigue among health-care professionals. Research participants included 182 (89 mental and 93 medical) health-care professionals who completed an assessment battery measuring compassion fatigue, emotion management, trait emotional intelligence, situation-specific coping strategies, and negative affect. Major findings indicate that both self-report “trait” emotional intelligence and ability-based emotion management are inversely associated with compassion fatigue; adaptive coping is inversely related to compassion fatigue; and differences exist between mental and medical professions in emotional intelligence, coping strategies, and negative affect. Furthermore, problem-focused coping appears to mediate the association between trait emotional intelligence and compassion fatigue. These findings shed light on the role of emotional factors in compassion fatigue among health-care professionals. Beyond enhancing our knowledge of practitioners' professional quality of life, the current study serves as a basis for the early identification of groups of practitioners at risk for compassion fatigue.     

Does Test Anxiety Bias Scholastic Aptitude Test Performance by Gender and Sociocultural Group?

This study examines the commonly held contention that test anxiety may serve as a source of bias in the scholastic aptitude test performance of gender and ethnic minority groups. In addition, this study examines sex and sociocultural group differences in the level and pattern of test anxiety among Israeli college students. The sample was composed of 163 male and 198 female students sitting for scholastic aptitude tests routinely administered to all student applicants as part of their college admissions procedures. About 67% were of Western cultural extraction whereas the remainder were of Eastern extraction. Significant differences in text anxiety scores for males and females were observed, with greater sex group differentiation on the Emotionality than on the Worry scale. Test anxiety scores were not discernible by ethnicity or social class. Furthermore, test anxiety was not differentially related to aptitude test scores by sex or sociocultural group membership. Thus, this study lends little evidence to the common contention that test anxiety differentially debilitates the aptitude test scores of females and ethnic minority student candidates.     

Characterization of Memory Impairment Following Closed-Head Injury in Children Using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT)

Memory impairment following closed-head injury (CHI) in children is well documented. Characterization of the memory deficits of children with CHI could contribute to the prediction of academic performance and rehabilitation of these children. Twenty-five children who sustained closed-head injury and 25 matched controls were administered the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). The advantage of this memory test is that a number of memory components are measured simultaneously, thus enabling us to study the relations between different aspects of memory within the same patient sample. The findings indicate that the Rey AVLT is a good test for characterization of impaired verbal memory in children following CHI. Transformation of scores derived from the Rey AVLT to Z-scores enables us to determine the relative effect of CHI in children on different memory scores. Raw scores were more vulnerable than relational ones, derived as the difference between two raw scores (e.g., learning, Trial 5?1), to closed-head injury in children, and scores reflecting word span were the least vulnerable. The results are discussed in terms of the possible contribution of the frontal lobes, which are frequently affected in closed-head injuries, to memory performance.     

Age-Related Differences in Cued Recall: Effects of Support at Encoding and Retrieval

The literature is unclear about the relative contributions of environmental supporting conditions to younger and older adults’ episodic memory performance. The work reported addresses the conditions under which different support patterns are obtained. In three experiments, younger and older adults learned picture-word pairs and were then tested with a cued-recall task. Supportive conditions included semantic relations between the pair members (all experiments), and first-letter cues for the target words at retrieval (Experiments 2 and 3). Results of the three experiments indicated different patterns of support for younger and older adults, depending on the number and location of the supporting conditions used. These different patterns are in line with the suggestion that whereas younger adults benefit substantially from support at encoding only, older adults require support at both encoding and retrieval. Alternative accounts of the results are also discussed.     

Older adults’ associative deficit in episodic memory: Assessing the role of decline in attentional resources

In this study, we evaluated an associative deficit hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that the deficit seen in the episodic memory performance of older adults is due, in considerable part, to older adults’ difficulty in binding together unrelated components of an episode into a cohesive entity (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). The study extended the conditions under which older adults show a differential deficit in tests requiring associations among the episode components to situations in which the item and the associative recognition tests are equated on the response mode used and on the amount of information displayed. In addition, we tested the potential role of a decrease in attentional resources in the associative deficit of older adults by comparing their performance to that of younger adults under conditions of reduced attentional resources. The results of the study, which indicate that younger adults under divided attention do not show an associative deficit, are interpreted as indicating that the associative deficit of older adults is due to factors other than depleted attentional resources.     

Revisiting the definition of homo sapiens

Research in genomics, human cloning, and transgenic technology has challenged bioethicists and scientists to rethink the definition of human beings as a species. For example, should the definition incorporate a genetic criterion and how does the capacity to genetically engineer human beings affect the definition of our species? In considering these contemporary bioethical dilemmas, we revisit an ancient source, the Talmud, and highlight how it provides specific biological, cultural, and genetic criteria to define the human species.