The psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina: contextual differences in psychological symptoms, social support, and discrimination

This study tested a contextual model of disaster reaction by examining regional differences in the psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina. A total of 386 individuals participated in this study. All were recruited in the primary areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and included residents of metropolitan New Orleans (Orleans Parish, Louisiana), Greater New Orleans (i.e., Metairie, Kenner, Gretna), and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (i.e., cities along the coast from Waveland to Ocean Springs, Mississippi). Participants were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, other psychological symptoms, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of social support, evacuation distance, and the extent to which they experienced hurricane-related stressful events. Results were consistent with previous research on the impact of disasters on mental health symptoms. Findings extended research on individual differences in the response to trauma and indicated that regional context predicted unique variance in the experience of discrimination, social support, and emotional symptoms consistent with the theoretical model presented.     

Religiousness, Health, and Health Behavior in Public-Use Data of the National Center for Health Statistics

Studies of religiousness and health-related variables in large, population-based cross-sectional or, preferably, longitudinal studies, which are often prohibitively expensive, are important to complement findings from the more commonly performed studies. Inadequately known among social science researchers, the national health surveys of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) offer large, high-quality data sets to the public at no or nominal cost and hence offer important opportunities for research in the area of religion and health, religion and reproductive behavior, sociology of religion and psychology of religion. This report provides an overview of the data sets and a bibliography of prior research using these data, which is intended to suggest how the data of NCHS may be further exploited by researchers of religiousness and health.

Sacred cinema: exploring Christian sensibilities within popular Hollywood films

Numerous Christian sensibilities have permeated the popular cinema, but they are frequently undetected, unappreciated or unwanted by those fearful of the cinema’s potentially corrupting effect. Yet, a postmodern religious education requires the embracement of this communication media, not its rejection, employing discernment not denial. A first step in this corrective process is to raise the profession’s consciousness about the possibilities of sacred cinema, which is the primary purpose of this paper. Consequently, using textually based, humanist film criticism as the analytical lens, the critical film and religion literature was reviewed, the popular Hollywood cinema scanned and the following areas explicated herein, namely: (a) holy plotlines, (b) divine symbolism, and (c) sacred subtexts—the Christ‐figure. All three categories were supplied with copious inter‐genre exemplars to demonstrate their diversity and richness. It was concluded that the sacred cinema is a legitimate pop culture phenomenon and a living genre that has immense pedagogic utility for religious education aimed squarely at the proverbial children‐of‐the‐media. As such, it should be proactively employed as a postmodern act of applied cinema that simultaneously values the audiovisual, education and enjoyment. Further research into this emerging and exciting interdisciplinary field was recommended.     

Confidence to Foster Across Cultures: Caregiver Perspectives

It is important to understand how cultural values, beliefs and traditions of foster parents are related to placement success because a substantial proportion of children in care come from culturally diverse backgrounds. In the present study participants were asked about resources they saw as necessary to improve their confidence fostering children from culturally diverse backgrounds. Sixty-one foster parents from a central Canadian province participated in a telephone interview that included the question: “what would help you feel more confident about fostering children with different values, beliefs and traditions?” A total of 35 unique responses were obtained and grouped together by 13 foster parents. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to analyze the grouping data. Foster parents described six themes: understanding different cultures, training, self awareness, agency support, open discussion and community services. There were several similarities and differences between the perspectives of foster parents interviewed and the literature. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Attitude learning through exploration: advice and strategy appraisals

Processes of attitude learning were investigated through a game requiring discrimination between good and bad objects, where feedback about object valence (involving gain or loss) is contingent on approach. Previous research demonstrates a preponderance of false‐negative errors, with some good objects (‘learning asymmetry’) and most novel objects (‘generalization asymmetry’) being judged as bad, but provides no direct evidence concerning how participants appraise alternative strategies and their own performance. To compare alternative strategies, participants received advice, supposedly from a previous participant, that most objects were bad and should be avoided, or good and should be approached. Learning and generalization asymmetries were replicated, especially among participants who followed the former (risk‐averse) advice. Additionally, participants' evaluations of their own game strategy were inversely related to amount of negative feedback (the number of bad objects approached), but unrelated to positive feedback (from good objects approached), pointing to the salience of negative information for self‐appraisals. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of differential vowel prolongations on perceptions of speech naturalness

Prolongation of speech sounds is currently used to modify stuttering and enhance fluency. Prolonged speech (PS) (e.g., prolonged vowels, prolongation throughout utterances) is, however, often perceived as unnatural by listeners. This study examined at which durations and in which contexts 52 college students (primary language was American English) perceived PS to be unnatural. Stimuli were limited to controlled variation in prolongation of the vowel in the middle single-syllable word of a carrier phrase (i.e., say word again). The prolongation was effected by digital waveform manipulation within the Kay Elemetrics Computerized Speech Laboratory (CSL). The listeners judged if they strongly agreed, agreed, or disagreed that the phrases sounded natural. Results indicated that the extent of vowel duration (and possibly context) does influence listener's perception of speech naturalness, findings which can be applied to facilitate fluency therapy.

Educational objectives: (1) The reader will learn about and be able to summarize the digital waveform manipulation procedure in the study. (2) The reader will learn about and be able to describe the effects of differential vowel prolongation on listener's perception of speech naturalness. (3) The reader will learn about and evaluate how differential vowel prolongation can be used to enhance fluency.