Measuring attitude towards Buddhism and Sikhism: internal consistency reliability for two new instruments

This paper describes and discusses the development and empirical properties of two new 24-item scales – one measuring attitude towards Buddhism and the other measuring attitude towards Sikhism. The scale is designed to facilitate inter-faith comparisons within the psychology of religion alongside the well-established Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity. Data were obtained from a multi-religious sample of 369 school pupils aged between 13 and 15 in London. Application of the two scales demonstrated that adolescents had a more positive attitude to Buddhism than Sikhism. The findings confirm the reliability of the scales and commend them for further use.     

Projects in progress

This department publishes articles on large-scale projects in which logic plays a significant role, especially editions of collected or selected works. In addition to factual and historical details, articles describe points of historiography and scholarship which are of more general interest. Articles should be submitted to the Editor.     

Childhood Sexual Assault,Quality of Life,and Psychiatric Comorbidity in Veterans With Military and Civilian Sexual Trauma

Veterans with military sexual trauma (MST) are at risk for a variety of psychiatric conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Survivors of MST are also likely to experience diminished quality of life (QoL). Individuals with higher lifetime incidence of sexual trauma may also be at increased risk for poorer outcomes in QoL and psychiatric symptomatology. The differences in psychological sequelae among those who have experienced sexual trauma as children, and those whose sexual trauma exposure is limited to adulthood are relatively understudied. The majority of sexual trauma literature has focused primarily on civilian trauma, and comparatively few studies have specifically examined psychosocial sequelae (e.g., QoL) in veterans with MST. This study examined how childhood sexual abuse (CSA) affects overall QoL as well as severity of PTSD and depressive symptoms. Veterans who reported CSA had significantly greater depression symptom severity than veterans who did not. No significant differences in PTSD symptom severity or QoL were found between veterans who did and did not report CSA. Results highlight the need for further examination of the relationship between CSA and depression in veterans with MST-related PTSD who also report CSA.     

Considering the role of personality in the work-family experience: Relationships of the big five to work-family conflict and facilitation

Using a national, random sample (N=2130), we investigated the relationship between each of the Big Five personality traits and conflict and facilitation between work and family roles. Extraversion was related to greater facilitation between roles but was not related to conflict, whereas neuroticism was related to greater conflict but only weakly related to facilitation. Conscientiousness was related to less conflict, presumably reflecting efficient time use and organizational skills. In general, conflict was negatively related to work-family outcomes (e.g., lower job and family effort and satisfaction) whereas facilitation was positively related to the same outcomes. Conflict and facilitation were shown, however, to be orthogonal rather than opposite constructs. Implications for work-family theory, for the understanding of personality traits, and for enhanced responsibilities of organizations are discussed.     

Free Choice Permission is Strong Permission

Free choice permission, a crucial test case concerning the semantics/ pragmatics boundary, usually receives a pragmatic treatment. But its pragmatic features follow from its semantics. We observe that free choice inferences are defeasible, and defend a semantics of free choice permission as strong permission expressed in terms of a modal conditional in a nonmonotonic logic.     

Co-localisation of abnormal brain structure and function in specific language impairment

We assessed the relationship between brain structure and function in 10 individuals with specific language impairment (SLI), compared to six unaffected siblings, and 16 unrelated control participants with typical language. Voxel-based morphometry indicated that grey matter in the SLI group, relative to controls, was increased in the left inferior frontal cortex and decreased in the right caudate nucleus and superior temporal cortex bilaterally. The unaffected siblings also showed reduced grey matter in the caudate nucleus relative to controls. In an auditory covert naming task, the SLI group showed reduced activation in the left inferior frontal cortex, right putamen, and in the superior temporal cortex bilaterally. Despite spatially coincident structural and functional abnormalities in frontal and temporal areas, the relationships between structure and function in these regions were different. These findings suggest multiple structural and functional abnormalities in SLI that are differently associated with receptive and expressive language processing.     

Quasi-Realism, Negation and the Frege-Geach Problem

Every expressivist theory of moral language requires a solution to the Frege-Geach problem, i.e., the problem of explaining how moral sentences retain their meaning in unasserted (e.g., conditional and disjunctive) contexts. An essential part of Blackburn's ' quasi -realist project', i.e., the project of showing how we can earn the right to treat moral sentences as if they have ordinary truth-conditions, is to provide a sophisticated solution. I show, however, that simple negated contexts provide a fundamental difficulty, since accepting the negation of a sentence is easily confused with merely refusing to accept that sentence. I argue that Blackburn's model-set semantics for his 'Hooray!' and 'Boo!' operators requires logical apparatus to which he is not entitled. I consider various modifications, but show that they do not succeed.
email : n.unwin@bolton.ac.uk     

An evaluation of in situ training to teach sexual abuse prevention skills to women with mental retardation

The current study evaluated a behavioral skills training (BST) program in combination with in situ training to teach sexual abuse prevention skills to five women with mild to moderate mental retardation. In situ assessments were conducted following BST and in situ training sessions were conducted for those who were unable to demonstrate the skills in the natural setting. The results showed that generalization of the safety skills to the natural setting occurred for three of the five participants following one to two in situ training sessions. One participant required 12 in situ training sessions and three booster training sessions to reach criterion level. Three of four participants assessed 1 month following training maintained the skills. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.