The development and maturation of humanitarian psychology

Humanitarian psychological support as an organized field is relatively young. Pioneers in the field were involved primarily in providing psychological support to refugees and internally displaced persons in conflict and nonconflict situations. This article describes basic principles for the design of psychological support programs and interventions. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) began a psychological support program in 1991. The IFRC chose psychological first aid as its model for implementation in developing countries. Psychological first aid fits all the principles for psychological support program design and is adapted to individual communities. The first generation of psychological support programs differed dramatically depending on the countries in which they were developed. A second generation of psychological support programs evolved in response to the earthquake/tsunami of December 26, 2004. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee international guidelines consolidated the advances of second-generation programs and provided a clear indication of the wide acceptance of the importance of psychological support. A glimpse is provided of the third generation of psychological support programs, and an admonition is made for a more empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions.     

Sublexical frequency measures for orthographic and phonological units in German

Many recent studies have demonstrated the influence of sublexical frequency measures on language processing, or called for controlling sublexical measures when selecting stimulus material for psycholinguistic studies (Aichert & Ziegler, 2005). The present study discusses which measures should be controlled for in what kind of study, and presents orthographic and phonological syllable, dual unit (bigram and biphoneme) and single unit (letter and phoneme) type and token frequency measures derived from the lemma and word form corpora of the CELEX lexical database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Gulikers, 1995). Additionally, we present the SUBLEX software as an adaptive tool for calculating sublexical frequency measures and discuss possible future applications. The measures and the software can be downloaded at www.psychonomic.org.     

Does harboring hostility hurt? Associations between hostility and pulmonary function in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in (Young) Adults (CARDIA) study.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the cross-sectional association between hostility and pulmonary function (PF) and its consistency across race/ethnicity-gender groups. DESIGN: Data were from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in (Young) Adults (CARDIA) cohort study (N=4,629). Participants were recruited from 4 metropolitan areas in the United States, ages 18-30 years at baseline in 1985-1986, approximately balanced across race/ethnicity (Black, White) and gender. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Main outcome measures were percent predicted values for forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC). RESULTS: In full-sample multiple linear regression analyses, each 1 standard deviation (SD) increase in hostility was associated with a 0.66% decrease in FEV-sub-1 (p=.0002) and a 0.60% decrease in FVC (p=.0006). This inverse association of hostility with PF remained after controlling for age, height, current socioeconomic status (SES), participant smoking status, and asthma and is more consistent than that of smoking and PF. In stratified analyses, each 1 SD increase in hostility predicted statistically significant reductions in PF for Black women, White women, and Black men. For White men, hostility showed no statistically significant relation with PF, although the pattern relating hostility to PF was similar to the pattern in the other three groups. Further, both of the post hoc three-way interaction terms for hostility, race/ethnicity, and gender predicting FEV-sub-1 and FVC were nonsignificant. CONCLUSION: PF was inversely associated with hostility across race/ethnicity and gender, independent of age, height, current SES, smoking, and asthma. On the basis of these cross-sectional findings, the authors hypothesize that higher hostility will predict a more rapid decline in PF.     

Community mental health ideology of preprofessional students

Adherence to the ideology of mental health was measured in a cluster sample of preprofessional students in four majors: psychology, social work, rehabilitation and health education. Mean inventory scores for the four groups did not differ significantly.     

A powers theory of modality: or,how I learned to stop worrying and reject possible worlds

Possible worlds, concrete or abstract as you like, are irrelevant to the truthmakers for modality—or so I shall argue in this paper. First, I present the neo-Humean picture of modality, and explain why those who accept it deny a common sense view of modality. Second, I present what I take to be the most pressing objection to the neo-Humean account, one that, I argue, applies equally well to any theory that grounds modality in possible worlds. Third, I present an alternative, properties-based theory of modality and explore several specific ways to flesh the general proposal out, including my favored version, the powers theory. And, fourth, I offer a powers semantics for counterfactuals that each version of the properties-based theory of modality can accept, mutatis mutandis. Together with a definition of possibility and necessity in terms of counterfactuals, the powers semantics of counterfactuals generates a semantics for modality that appeals to causal powers and not possible worlds.     

The incremental priming technique: A method for determining within-condition priming effects

A novel priming technique is applied in two experiments using an alphabetic decision and a lexical decision task to study effects of repetition, and form-related priming on letter and word recognition. The incremental priming technique consists of a gradual increase of the prime’s informational value (operationalized as prime intensity). The minimum prime-intensity level serves as a within-condition baseline for each priming condition. Thus, we can define any priming effect with respect to two baseline conditions: one is the minimum-intensity condition of the particular priming condition (within-condition baseline), and the other is a different priming condition (across-condition baseline). This double-baseline approach makes measuring of priming effects more reliable and imposes stronger constraints on our interpretations of these effects.     

Is Physical Alteration a Sufficient Reason to Prohibit Ritual Infant Circumcision?

Journal of Religion and Health - European culture and thought have long disfavored ritual child circumcision, which is obligatory to Jews and Muslims. Much opposition to this practice hinges on the...