Massignon,Vatican II and Islam as an Abrahamic religion

The qur'anic material about Abraham corresponds in broad outline to the biblical story although it contains some novel features, including the claim that Islam is the religion of Abraham and that together with Ishmael he rebuilt the Kaaba. The article surveys the largely negative responses of Byzantine polemicists, medieval Western authors, and later orientalists, to Islam's avowedly Abrahamic pedigree. It then examines the work of Louis Massignon and his circle, and discusses the extent to which his conviction that Islam was an Abrahamic religion, like Judaism and Christianity, influenced Vatican II. Some precursors of Massignon are mentioned, his attitude to the qur'anic representation of Abraham is criticized in the light of recent research, and his interest’ in Abraham is shown to have been intimately bound up with the peculiar circumstances of his own life.     

An analysis of the role and trait components of sex-biased occupational beliefs

This study investigated the role and trait components of sex-biased occupational beliefs. A repeated-measures analysis of variance design was used to assess the agreement patterns of 198 female and male undergraduates to three types of sentences: (1) traits necessary for a variety of occupations (job requisites); (2) the relative possession of these traits by men and women (traits); and (3) the relative suitability of women or men for these occupations (roles). A significant sex of subject by sentence type interaction was found, indicating that the sex of the subjects as well as the type of sentence (job, role, or trait) contributed to overall occupational beliefs. Moreover, tests of the simple main effects revealed that sentence type was significant for both females and males, and that sex was significant within two of the three levels of sentence type: job requisites and role statements. The results indicated that greater understanding of occupational stereotyping may be attained through research aimed at distinguishing between role and trait components of job stereotypes.This research was completed as part of the first author's doctoral dissertation research while supported by an NIMH Traineeship at Michigan State University. Use of the Michigan State University computer facilities was made possible in part through support from the National Science Foundation.     

Military Stressors,Parent-Adolescent Relationship Quality,and Adolescent Adjustment

Elements of military life can create challenges for all family members, including military-connected adolescents, and can have detrimental consequences for their adjustment. Although research with samples of military-connected adolescents has examined the influences of military stressors for adolescent adjustment (e.g., depressive symptoms, anxiety), less research has identified possible mechanisms responsible for these effects, particularly the role of specific familial factors. Drawing from social ecological theory and attachment theory, we examined the associations between military stressors (e.g., parental rank, combat deployments, permanent change of station moves) and self-reported adolescent adjustment (e.g., depressive symptoms, self-efficacy) along with examining adolescents’ perceptions of parent-adolescent relationship quality with both the active duty and civilian parent as a linking mechanism. Using a path analysis, data from 265 Army families were examined to identify the direct and indirect associations between military stressors and adolescent adjustment through parent-adolescent relationship quality. Most military stressors were not significantly related to relationship quality of either parent or indicators of adolescent adjustment. However, parent-adolescent relationship quality with each parent (active duty and civilian parent) was uniquely related to adolescents’ adjustment. Discussion is provided regarding how military stressors and familial factors are conceptualized within the context of military families and implications for future research, family therapy, and policies are suggested.

     

An empirically derived scoring system for intermale aggression in mice

Scoring systems used to assess intermale aggression have been characterized by arbitrary scales and wide variability in the behaviors selected for measurement. The use of such different systems severely limits the ability of investigators to make meaningful comparisons among studies and indicates that there is a need for a common, statistically derived evaluative system for intermale aggression. We measured the frequency and duration of five major components of agonistic behavior exhibited by intact males toward olfactory bulbectomized stimulus males and then analyzed the data using a number of univariate and multivariate procedures. The results were used to generate two statistically based scoring systems, one a short-form index and the other a composite index for more detailed studies of aggression. It is hoped that these statistically derived systems will be adopted by other investigators to increase methodological congruence in the field.     

Separating sensitivity from response bias: implications of comparisons of yes-no and forced-choice tests for models and measures of recognition memory

A fundamental challenge to psychological research is the measurement of cognitive processes uncontaminated by response strategies resulting from different testing procedures. Test-free estimates of ability are vital when comparing the performance of different groups or different conditions. The current study applied several sets of measurement models to both forced-choice and yes-no recognition memory tests and concluded that the traditional signal-detection model resulted in distorted estimates of accuracy. Two-factor models were necessary to separate memory sensitivity from response bias. These models indicated that (a) memory accuracy did not differ across the tests and (b) the tests relied on the same underlying memory processes. The results illustrate the pitfalls of using a single-component model to measure accuracy in tasks that reflect 2 or more underlying processes.     

Recognition memory for source and occurrence: The importance of recollection

Previous recognition memory studies indicate that when both recollection and familiarity are expected to contribute to recognition performance (e.g., discriminating studied items from nonstudied items) the dual-process and the unequal-variance signal detection models provide comparable accounts of performance. When familiarity is not expected to be useful (e.g., when items from two equally familiar sources are discriminated between), the dual-process model provides a significantly better account of performance. In the present study, source recognition was tested under conditions in which familiarity could have been used to perform a list-discrimination task; participants were required to discriminate between strong studied items, weak studied items, and new items. The dual-process model provided a better account of performance than did the unequal-variance model. Moreover, the results indicated that the unequal-variance assumption in a single-process signal detection model was not a valid substitution for recollection and that recollection was used to make recognition judgments even when assessments of familiarity were useful.     

A conceptual model of cultural predictors of anxiety among Japanese American and part-Japanese American adolescents

A model integrating Japanese ethnicity, cultural identity, and anxiety was developed and assessed in Japanese American and part-Japanese American high school seniors (N = 141). Using measures from the Hawaiian High Schools Health Survey, the model incorporated the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Major Life Events Scale, and the Japanese Culture Scale (JCS). Japanese American adolescents scored higher on the JCS and reported fewer anxiety symptoms than part-Japanese American adolescents. Predictors for anxiety were being Japanese American versus part-Japanese American, income, and culturally intensified events. A significant interaction of behavior by self-identification was obtained. The model had good overall fit, suggesting that cultural identity formation may contribute to anxiety experienced particularly by adolescents of mixed heritage.     

Linear versus Hierarchical Agreement Feature Processing in Comprehension

Two experiments examined whether syntactic number features are tracked during comprehension with a linear slot-based memory system or with a hierarchical feature-passing system. In a construction such as The pond near the trail(s) for the horse(s) was ¨, a linear account of subject-number tracking predicts greater interference from horses (N3), whereas a hierarchical account predicts greater interference from trails (N2). Experiment 1 used singular-head subject noun phrases (e.g., pond) and showed equal interference from N2 and N3, failing to differentiate between linear and hierarchical accounts. Experiment 2 used plural-head subjects and revealed more interference from N2 than N3. The pattern across the experiments accords with the ideas that (1) feature-tracking is hierarchical (e.g., Vigliocco & Nicol, 1997), (2) plurals are marked (e.g., Eberhard, 1997), and (3) subject-number information decays across intervening number-marked elements.     

Predicting individual false alarm rates and signal detection theory: A role for remembering

The relationships between hit, remember, and false alarm rates were examined across individual subjects in three remember-know experiments in order to determine whether signal detection theory would be consistent with the observed data. The experimental data differed from signal detection predictions in two critical ways. First, remember reports were unrelated, or slightly negatively related, to the commission of false alarms. Second, both response types (remembers and false alarms) were uniquely related to hit rates, which demonstrated that the hit rate cannot be viewed as the result of a single underlying strength process. These results are consistent with the dual-process signal detection model of Yonelinas (1994), in which performance is determined by two independent processes--retrieval of categorical context information (remembering) and discriminations based on continuous item strength. Remember and false alarm rates selectively tap these processes, whereas the hit rate is jointly determined. Monte Carlo simulations in which the dual-process model was used successfully reproduced the pattern in the experimental data, whereas simulations in which a signal detection model, with separate "old" and "remember" criteria, was used, did not. The results demonstrate the utility of examining individual differences in response types when one is evaluating memory models.