Technology Complementing Military Behavioral Health Efforts at Tripler Army Medical Center

The purpose of this article is to provide a short narrative on the ways that behavioral health professionals and their patients are currently benefitting from the use of technology. Examples stem from applications of technology to patients/research participants at the Tripler Army Medical Center. The paper also discusses how current use of this technology has made it possible to serve individuals in their own cultural environment, providing a cost-effective means of providing mental health services.     

Five down, Absquatulated: Crossword puzzle clues to how the mind works

Doing crossword puzzles is a popular pastime; no one knows how many people do them, but estimates go as high as 50 million or more in the United States alone. Success at crossword puzzles taxes several aspects of memory and cognition. The purpose of this article is to consider hints that crosswords provide and questions that they prompt regarding how the mind works. Implicated topics include word associations, lexical memory search, semantic priming, the sparseness of word space, list generation, the feeling of knowing and of not knowing, mental aging, and the crossword puzzle as a vehicle for studying cognition.     

Religion,Identity and Freedom of Expression

This article examines the issues raised by religious adherents’ wish to express their beliefs in the public domain through, for example, their modes of dress, their performance of public roles, and their response to homosexuality. It considers on what grounds religion might merit special treatment and how special that treatment should be. A common approach to these issues is through the notion of religious identity, but both the idea of religious identity and its use to ground claims against others prove deeply problematic. An alternative and more productive approach is through the notion of harm. People should enjoy the freedom to express their religious convictions subject to the harm principle, but harm should include the undermining of people’s status as free and equal citizens. The article concludes by considering the grounds upon which this alternative approach might recognize religion as special and might justify giving an overriding status to civic equality.     

Relieving career anxiety and indecision: the role of undergraduate students’ perceived control and faculty affiliations

As educators and mentors, we often focus on helping undergraduate students make career decisions. However, there is also value in helping alleviate career anxiety and indecision, both of which impede decision-making and are not automatically resolved once a decision is made. This research examined the role of individual differences (age, gender, and perceived control) and learning environment variables (year in university, participation in an orientation program, and faculty affiliations) as predictors of undergraduates’ (n = 844) career-related anxiety and indecision. Traditional individual difference variables like age and gender had little effect whereas perceived control (primary and secondary) predicted lower levels of career anxiety and indecision. The outcomes were not influenced by environmental factors such as year in university or completion of an orientation program, but students’ self-reported faculty affiliation had significant effects. Students who were not affiliated with any specific faculty reported more indecision than students in arts, science, and professional faculties. Likewise, students in professional faculties had less career anxiety and career indecision than arts students. The implications of these results for potential interventions and future research are discussed.     

Left-handedness and male-male competition: Insights from fighting and hormonal data

Male-male competition can shape some behavioral or morphological traits of males. Here we investigate if this competition could play a role in the persistence of the polymorphism of handedness in human populations. A negative frequency-dependent selection mechanism has been hypothesized, based on the fact that left-handed men may benefit from a "surprise" advantage during fighting interactions because they are rare in human populations. This advantage may thereby enhance the probability of survival of left- handed men and/or their reproductive success through an increase in social status. In this study, we first explored the association between hand preference and lifetime fighting behavior in a population of 1,161 French men. No effect of hand preference on the probability of fighting was detected, suggesting that the innate propensity to fight does not differ between left- and right-handers. However, among men who had been involved in at least one fight during their lifetime, left-handers reported significantly more fights than right-handers. To explore the biological basis of this behavior, we also investigated the testosterone concentration in saliva samples from 64 French university students. Consistent with frequencies of fights, we found a significantly higher average testosterone concentration in left-handers than in right-handers. We suggest that these behavioral and hormonal differences may be acquired throughout life due to previous experiences in a social context and may favor the persistence of left-handers in humans.     

Literary arts and the development of the life story

Throughout adolescence, children begin to develop their life story: a coherent account of their experiences and selfhood. Although the nature of this development is still being uncovered, one promising direction for research is the examination of factors that could encourage life story development. Here the authors explore the idea that exposure to the literary arts (i.e., poetry and fictional literature) might promote the formation of a coherent autobiographical narrative. Taking a critical look at both theoretical proposals along with the current empirical research, they provide a brief survey of this intriguing hypothesis.     

Two components in IOR: evidence for response bias and perceptual processing delays using the SAT methodology

Inhibition of return (IOR) occurs when reaction times (RTs) are slowed to respond to a target that appears at a previously attended location. We used the speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) procedure to obtain conjoint measures of IOR on sensitivity and processing speed by presenting targets at cued and uncued locations. The results showed that IOR is associated with both delays in processing speed and shifts in response criterion. When the target was briefly presented, the results supported a criterion shift account of IOR. However, when the target was presented until response, the evidence indicated that, in addition to a response bias effect, there was an increase in the minimal time required for information about the target to accumulate above chance level. A hybrid account of IOR is suggested that describes effects on both response bias and perceptual processing.