A Guide for Assessing Clients’ Attachment to the Sacred: The Spiritual Attachment History

Current research supports that many people relate to God or a higher power in ways consistent with attachment theory, yet nothing exists assisting therapists in gathering attachment-focused background information regarding their clients’ spiritual lives. This paper fills that gap with the Spiritual Attachment History (SAH), a semi-structured interview guide adapted from an ICEEFT Training in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy attachment history handout, to help the authors meet their clients’ spiritual and relational clinical concerns. We describe how we developed the SAH and provide a case study of its incorporation into two treatment plans. We also discuss implications for training, for use by marriage and family therapists, for cross-cultural research, and the ethics of addressing spirituality as a cultural issue.     

Posttraumatic growth following pregnancy termination for fetal abnormality: the predictive role of coping strategies and perinatal grief

Background: Research about termination for fetal abnormality (TFA) suggests that it is a traumatic event with potential negative psychological consequences. However, evidence also indicates that following traumatic events individuals may experience growth. Although TFA’s negative psychological outcomes are well documented, little is known of the potential for growth following this event. Therefore, the study’s objectives were to measure posttraumatic growth (PTG) post-TFA, examine the relationship between PTG, perinatal grief and coping, and determine the predictors of PTG.

Design: An online, retrospective survey was conducted with 161 women.

Methods: Eligible participants were women over 18 who had undergone TFA. Participants were recruited from a support organisation. They completed the Brief COPE, Short Perinatal Grief Scale and Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Data were analysed using regression analyses.

Results: Moderate levels of PTG were observed for “relating to others,” “personal strengths” and “appreciation of life.” “Positive reframing” was a significant predictor of PTG. Despite using mainly “adaptive” coping strategies, women’s grief levels were high.

Conclusions: “Adaptive” coping strategies such as, “positive reframing” are relevant to TFA. They may act as protective factors against distress and as foundations for growth, implicating that interventions such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which aim to reframe women’s experience, may be beneficial.     

The impact of childhood intelligence on later life: following up the Scottish mental surveys of 1932 and 1947

The Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947 collected valid IQ-type test scores for almost everyone born in 1921 and 1936 and attending school on June 1, 1932 (N=89,498) and June 4, 1947 (N=70,805). These surveys are described. This research, using the surveys' data, examined (a) the stability of intelligence differences across the life span, (b) the determinants of cognitive change from childhood to old age, and (c) the impact of childhood intelligence on survival and health in old age. Surviving participants of the Scottish Mental Surveys were tested, and the surveys' data were linked with public and health records. Novel findings on the stability of IQ scores from age 11 to age 80; sex differences in cognitive aging; the dedifferentiation hypothesis of cognitive aging; and the effect of childhood IQ on all-cause and specific mortality, morbidity, and frailty in old age are presented.     

Response inhibition can affect reaction time to abrupt-onset visual displays

Reaction time (RT) to abrupt-onset stimuli has been widely used for more than a century to measure the duration of perceptuo-cognitive and motor processes [Donders, 1868/1969 Attention and Performance II (1969 Acta Psychologica 30 412-431)]. A complicating factor with the RT method is that of response withholding, or response inhibition (RI). The occurrence of RI (under this or other names) has been widely discussed in relation to studies of motor processes but has been largely ignored in relation to studies of perceptuo-cognitive processes. We demonstrate that RI can be a confounding factor when RT to abrupt-onset displays is used to study perceptual and cognitive processes. In experiment 1, new-object targets were more accurately detected than old-object targets in an unspeeded task, but were responded to more slowly in an RT task. Consistent with an interpretation in terms of RI, this pattern of results was dependent on the difficulty of target detection. The data of three further experiments also support predictions from the RI interpretation. It is suggested that RI may be an under-acknowledged factor in RT studies of perceptual and cognitive processes with abrupt-onset displays.     

Doing better but feeling worse. Looking for the "best" job undermines satisfaction

Expanding upon Simon's (1955) seminal theory, this investigation compared the choice-making strategies of maximizers and satisficers, finding that maximizing tendencies, although positively correlated with objectively better decision outcomes, are also associated with more negative subjective evaluations of these decision outcomes. Specifically, in the fall of their final year in school, students were administered a scale that measured maximizing tendencies and were then followed over the course of the year as they searched for jobs. Students with high maximizing tendencies secured jobs with 20% higher starting salaries than did students with low maximizing tendencies. However, maximizers were less satisfied than satisficers with the jobs they obtained, and experienced more negative affect throughout the job-search process. These effects were mediated by maximizers' greater reliance on external sources of information and their fixation on realized and unrealized options during the search and selection process.     

Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias

The status of mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals was evaluated following incidental encoding of target words. Individuals with high and low levels of trait anxiety completed a modified Stroop task, which revealed an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli in anxious individuals. This group was significantly slower in naming the colour in which threat-related words were displayed compared to neutral words. In a subsequent free recall test for the words used in the modified Stroop task, anxious individuals recalled more threat-related words compared to low-anxious people. This difference was significant even when controlling for the false recall of items that had not been presented during study. These results support the view put forward by Russo, Fox, Bellinger, and Nguyen-Van-Tam (2001) that mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals can be observed if the target material is encoded at a relatively shallow level. Moreover, contrary to Dowens and Calvo (2003), the current results show that the memory advantage for threat-related information in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias.     

Selective target processing: perceptual load or distractor salience?

Perceptual load theory (Lavie, 1995) states that participants cannot engage in focused attention when shown displays containing a low perceptual load, because attentional resources are not exhausted, whereas in high-load displays attention is always focused, because attentional resources are exhausted. An alternative "salience" hypothesis holds that the salience of distractors and not perceptual load per se determines selective attention. Three experiments were conducted to investigate the influence that target and distractor onsets and offsets have on selective processing in a standard interference task. Perceptual load theory predicts that, regardless of target or distractor presentation (onset or offset), interference from ignored distractors should occur in low-load displays only. In contrast, the salience hypothesis predicts that interference should occur when the distractor appears as an onset and would occur for distractor offsets only when the target was also an offset. Interference may even occur in highload displays if the distractor is more salient. The results supported the salience hypothesis.     

Tainted love: content analysis of documents written by accused spousal abusers to their victims

This study analyzed themes in documents written by 22 male accused spousal abusers to their female victims. Using Pence's Power and Equity model (1998), 86% of the themes denied equity and expressed power and control in the relation. Of these, 28% minimized or denied the abuse, 24% used the children to manipulate the victim, 16% showed disrespect for the victim, and 14% invoked male privilege (including God's ordination of the abusive relation). These hallmarks of tainted love are rooted in the desire of the accused abuser to maintain power and control over the victim.