Prayer in the medical encounter

A large percentage of the population report that they believe in God and pray regularly. Recent reviews suggest that prayer and religious commitment are positively associated with mental and physical health. These data, taken together, strongly imply that the health professional must find a way to recognize and work with patients' religious practices. There is already a reasonable amount of literature detailing the beliefs and desires of both patients and professionals in commencing upon this work. This paper provides a comprehensive review of that literature and concludes with a discussion of implications and future directions.     

Understanding the Complexity of Human Aggression: Affective,Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Individual Differences in Propensity Toward Aggression

Human aggression is a complex phenomenon operating at multiple levels. Converging evidence distinguishes ‘hot’ aggression, impulsive and emotionally-centered, from ‘cool’ aggression, cognitively based and instrumental. The correspondence of these aggressive response patterns with individual differences in Propensity toward Aggression was investigated. Our data (from 477 Italian adults) map ten of these aggression indicators into the personality space defined by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality. The quadrant containing most of these variables is defined by Emotional Instability (the negative pole of Emotional Stability) and Hostility (the negative pole of Friendliness). Factor analysis uncovered two factors that accounted for nearly 60 percent of the variance in Propensity toward Aggression: Emotional Responsivity and Positive Evaluation of Violence. Practical implications for issues of health and disease, violence, and interventions for different forms of adults' and children's aggression are outlined.     

Testing the limits of optimistic bias: event and person moderators in a multilevel framework

N. D. Weinstein (1980) established that optimistic bias, the tendency to see others as more vulnerable to risks than the self, varies across types of event. Subsequently, researchers have documented that this phenomenon, also known as comparative optimism, also varies across types of people. The authors integrate hypotheses originally advanced by Weinstein concerning event-characteristic moderators with later arguments that such optimism may be restricted to certain subgroups. Using multilevel modeling over 7 samples (N = 1,436), the authors found that some degree of comparative optimism was present for virtually all individuals and events. Holding other variables constant, higher perceived frequency and severity were associated with less comparative optimism, higher perceived controllability and stereotype salience with more comparative optimism. Frequency, controllability, and severity were associated more with self-risk than with average-other risk, whereas stereotype salience was associated more with average-other risk than with self-risk. Individual differences also mattered: comparative optimism was related negatively to anxiety and positively to defensiveness and self-esteem. Interaction results imply that both individual differences and event characteristics should jointly be considered in understanding optimistic bias (or comparative optimism) and its application to risk communication.     

The etiology of behavioral problems and competencies in very young twins

Although genetic and environmental influences on behavior problems in middle childhood and adolescence have been well-studied, little is known about the etiology of behavior problems in very early childhood. The present study explores genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in behavior problems and competences in an infant-toddler sample of twins. There were 1,950 twin pairs (mean age=23.8 months) who were rated by parents on the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. All four domains (Externalizing, Internalizing, Dysregulation, Competence) and 20 subscales-indices on the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment displayed significant heritability. There were also substantial shared environmental influences operating on most of the domains and subscales. Compared with behavior problems, behavioral competencies were less heritable and more influenced by shared environments.     

Neuropsychological Effects of Brain Arteriovenous Malformations

Brain arteriovenous malformations (AVM's) are developmental, chronic lesions that provide unique information about the human brain and can be a useful model for neuroscientists to study cerebral reorganization and hemodynamics. We review the neuroanatomy, epidemiology, natural history, imaging and treatment of brain AVMs, and provide a model with which to better understand neuropsychological functioning and brain reorganization. We suggest that future studies must exclude ruptured AVMs if they wish to further explain focal neurological/cognitive deficits associated with this neurovascular anomaly.     

How configurations of binocular disparity determine whether stereoscopic slant or stereoscopic occlusion is seen

A partially occluded contour and a slanted contour may generate identical binocular horizontal disparities. We investigated conditions promoting an occlusion resolution indicated by an illusory contour in depth along the aligned ends of horizontally disparate line sets. For a set of identical oblique lines with a constant width added to one eye's view, strength, depth, and stability of the illusory contour were poor, whereas for oblique lines of alternating orientations the illusory contours were strong, indicating a reliance on vertical size disparities rather than vertical positional disparities in generating perceived occlusion. For horizontal lines, occlusion was seen when the lines were of different lengths and absolute width disparity was invariant across the set. In all line configurations, when the additional length was on the wrong eye to be attributed to differential occlusion, lines appeared slanted consistent with their individual horizontal disparities. This rules out monocular illusory contours as the determining factor.     

Psychological Health and Attitude Toward Christianity Among Protestant and Catholic Sixth-Form Pupils in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland remains both one of the more religiously active and also one of the most religiously divided countries in Europe. In this context 1,093 sixth-form pupils attending Protestant schools and 1,266 sixth-form pupils attending Catholic schools (aged between 16 and 19 years) completed the abbreviated Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised (EPQR-A), as a measure of psychological health, alongside the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christainity (FSAC). The findings demonstrated that a positive attitude toward Christianity was associated with neither higher nor lower neuroticism scores, but was associated in both religious communities with lower psychoticism scores. There is no evidence, therefore, to associate a positive view of Christianity with poorer levels of psychological health among adolescents in Northern Ireland, and some evidence to associate a positive view of Christianity with better levels of psychological health.     

Validation of the multiple language versions of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-37 for refugee adolescents

The objective of this study is to provide preliminary psychometric properties of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-37 (HSCL-37A) for refugee adolescents. The HSCL-37A is a modification of the well-known HSCL-25 and assesses symptoms of internalizing and externalizing problems that have been associated with reactions to trauma. Four independent heterogeneous samples (N=3890) of unaccompanied refugee minors, immigrants, and native Dutch and Belgian adolescents were assessed at school. The confirmative factor analyses, per language version, support the two-factor structure of internalizing and externalizing behavior. The total and subscales show good internal consistency and acceptable test-retest reliability in spite of the heterogeneous sample populations. The construct, content, and criterion validity of the HSCL-37A were also examined and found to be good. The findings of this study suggest that the HSCL-37A is a reliable and valid instrument to be used among culturally diverse refugee adolescents to assess emotional distress and maladaptive behaviors.