Selective attention, visual laterality, awareness, and perceiving the meaning of parafoveally presented words

Four experiments are reported investigating the effect of selective attention on the semantic encoding of parafoveally presented words. In Experiments 1 and 2 a right visual field (RVF) performance bias was found when subjects attended to words that could appear either left or right of centre (attend-side condition). When subjects attended centrally and ignored lateral distractor words (attendcentre condition) there was an inhibitory effect of word meaning from left visual field (LVF) distractors. Both inhibitory and facilitatory effects of semantic category were observed from unattended words in Experiments 3 and 4. The pattern of effects depended upon the direction of spatial bias in an attend-side condition. Both kinds of effect occurred even for subjects who were unable to make consciously directed semantic category decisions to words at the same eccentricity (4°) and exposure time (15 msec) as ignored distractors in the attend-centre condition. Implications of these findings for theories of selective attention, for the issue of semantic encoding independent of conscious awareness, and for theories of the relationship between lateral performance biases and functional hemispheric asymmetry are discussed.     

Distance Learning: Empathy and Culture in Junot Diaz’s “Wildwood”

This essay discusses critical approaches to culture, difference, and empathy in health care education through a reading of Junot Diaz’s “Wildwood” chapter from the 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I begin with an analysis of the way that Diaz’s narrative invites readers to imagine and explore the experiences of others with subtlety and complexity. My reading of “Wildwood” illuminates its double-edged injunction to try to imagine another’s perspective while recognizing the limits to—or even the impossibility of—that exercise. I draw on post-colonial theory and feminist science studies to illuminate a text that is created and interpreted in a post-colonial context—the Dominican diaspora in the United States. The essay offers a model of historical and critical analysis that health care educators can use to frame the concept of empathy in the classroom and the clinic.     

A Multidimensional Scaling Analysis of Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty Among Fifth-Grade Students

A study was conducted to investigate the perceptions of academic dishonesty in fifth-grade students. Two methods were used to gather data: a sorting task, which was used to indirectly assess the students' perceptions, and a rating scale task, which was used to externally validate the results of the sorting task. Results of the multidimensional scaling analysis yielded two dimensions, the first being tests/homework and papers, and the second, more ambiguous appearing to differentiate based on seriousness.     

Spiritual Struggles and Mental Health: Exploring the Moderating Effects of Religious Identity

Although many studies have explored the salutary associations between multiple dimensions of religiousness and psychological well-being, a smaller body of work has focused on the links between spiritual struggles and negative mental health outcomes. Two types of spiritual struggles have received considerable attention in this literature: divine struggles, or troubled relationships with God, and struggles with belief, or religious doubts. Using data from a nationwide online survey of U.S. adults conducted in 2006, our study investigated links between these types of spiritual struggles and four aspects of psychopathology: depressed affect, anxiety, phobic anxiety, and somatization. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that these links vary according to religious identity, such that individuals who identify themselves as highly religious—and therefore are likely to be most invested in their roles as religious persons—experience the strongest negative effects of spiritual struggles, in comparison with persons who identify themselves as moderately religious, or not religious at all. Findings supported this overall hypothesis. The article concludes by noting several study limitations and identifying promising directions for further research.     

Postnatal mental health and mothers’ processing of infant emotion: an eye-tracking study

ABSTRACT

Background

Postnatal mental illnesses are associated with less maternal sensitivity. Differences in how mothers with and without mental illness process infant emotions could explain this. People with mental illness in non-perinatal populations show certain processing patterns when viewing emotional faces, but it is not clear whether these patterns are present in mothers.     

Cognitive Anxiety and the Decision to Seek Services for Hearing Problems

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between a transient state anxiety measure (cognitive anxiety) and the decision to consult for hearing services in older adults. Cognitive anxiety was measured using a content analytic scheme grounded in personal construct psychology. A total of 93 adults with hearing impairment between the ages of 65 and 80 years participated in this study and comprised three groups that occupied different points in the consultation process: a nonconsulting group living in the community, a consulting group seeking evaluation and treatment for hearing impairment, and a group who had received communication consultation and hearing aids. No between-group differences were observed on demographic or objective audiologic measures of hearing impairment. However, as predicted, those who were actively seeking consultation for hearing impairment displayed the highest level of cognitive anxiety, and those who had received consultation and assistance the least, suggesting that difficulties anticipating and interpreting communication situations may play an instigating role in the decision to seek services for hearing impairment.     

Advocates Speak Out on Adult Sexual Assault: A Unique Crime Demands a Unique Response

Research documents the challenges presented to victims of sexual assault whose cases move through the criminal justice system. One key vantage point from which to understand how survivors experience the criminal justice system is from the perspective of the crisis center advocates who work with them. Graduate student research teams conducted semistructured interviews with rape crisis advocates across one Northeastern state. The voices of crisis center advocates raise key points that might help in the development of new procedures and processes for how adult sexual assault cases are handled in the justice system.     

Trajectories of relationship satisfaction: Independent contributions of capitalization and support perceptions

Associations among perceptions of partner responses to disclosures about capitalization and support experiences and relationship satisfaction were examined over 1 year in 268 individuals in romantic relationships. Multilevel modeling indicated that capitalization and support perceptions covaried over 1 year, but they independently predicted contemporaneous relationship satisfaction and appeared to be compensatory processes. However, with increasing relationship duration, support perceptions became more strongly associated with relationship satisfaction, whereas capitalization perceptions became less strongly associated with relationship satisfaction, suggesting that capitalization perceptions may play less of a buffering role with time. Results suggested that perceiving partners as interested and enthusiastic in the face of triumph, and as caring and supportive in the face of difficulties, serve important and independent relationship maintenance functions.     

Local and global processing biases fail to influence face,object, and word recognition

Three studies investigated whether encouraging people to use either global or local processing using the Navon task (Navon, 1977 Navon, D. 1977. Forest before the trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9: 353–383. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) influenced recognition memory for upright and inverted pictures of faces, objects, and words. Contrary to the striking results of Macrae and Lewis (2002 Macrae, C. N. and Lewis, H. L. 2002. Do I know you? Processing orientation and face recognition. Psychological Science, 13: 194–196. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), no effect of such cross-task processing biases were found. In particular, encouraging global processing did not improve the recognition of upright faces, whilst encouraging local processing failed to improve the recognition of words. These results suggest that using the Navon task to manipulate people's processing strategy typically does not have a large, consistent effect on recognition memory. Instead, prior performance of an unrelated task may only influence subsequent recognition memory under restricted circumstances. Therefore, the cross-task processing bias effect does not provide researchers with a powerful, reliable tool with which to investigate the relative importance of local versus global, configural processing of visual stimuli.