Taking spiritual experiences seriously in the religious education classroom: a transrational approach

ABSTRACT

Spiritual experiences are common across religious and non-religious faiths, but schoolchildren are often afraid to share these because they fear ridicule from peers who are convinced religion is irrational. The need to speak about spirituality in religious education is increasingly recognised. Signposts suggests that intercultural understanding implies recognising religious students’ perception of reality and helping others understand it. Religious education in Norway now includes exploration of existential questions as a core element, and in England, making sense of religious, spiritual and mystical experiences has been suggested as a big idea. In this paper, we discuss how the dualistic paradigm of modern science makes it difficult to take spirituality seriously as lived experience and empirical phenomenon. Instead we suggest a transrational approach to explore our multidimensional reality in an intercultural dialogue where insiders and outsiders learn from each other. We also explore examples of transrational research on spiritual phenomena.     

Being popular can be healthy or unhealthy: stress, social network diversity, and incidence of upper respiratory infection.

Diverse social contacts are generally associated with better health. However, diverse contacts can increase exposure to infectious agents. This should increase risk for disease, particularly among those whose host resistance is otherwise compromised (e.g., stressed individuals). In this prospective study, healthy college students who completed questionnaires assessing social network diversity and stressful life events were subsequently interviewed weekly for 12 weeks to track incidence of upper respiratory infections (URIs). URI episodes were defined by a symptom criterion and by clinically verified self-reported illness. Stress and diversity of social contacts interacted; diversity was associated with more illnesses among those with more stressful life events and slightly fewer illnesses among those with fewer stressful life events. Associations remained after controlling for neuroticism.     

Flank transparency: the effects of gaps,line spacing,and apparent motion

We analyze the properties of a dynamic color-spreading display created by adding narrow colored flanks to rigidly moving black lines where these lines fall in the interior of a stationary virtual disk. This recently introduced display (Wollschl?ger et al, 2001 Perception 30 1423-1426) induces the perception of a colored transparent disk bounded by strong illusory contours. It provides a link between the classical neon-color-spreading effect and edge-induced color spreading as discussed by Pinna et al (2001 Vision Research 41 2669-2676). We performed three experiments to quantitatively study (i) the enhancing influence of apparent motion; (ii) the degrading effect of small spatial discontinuities (gaps) between lines and flanks; and (iii) the spatial extent of the color spreading. We interpret the results as due to varying degrees of objecthood of the dynamically specified disk: increased objecthood leads to increased surface visibility in both contour and color.     

Ethnic differences in clinical presentation of depression in adult women

This study examined ethnic differences in self-report and interviewer-rated depressive symptoms and estimated the contributions of sociodemographic and psychosocial factors in predicting severity of depression. One hundred twenty-five clinically depressed African American (n = 46), Caucasian (n = 36), and Latina (n = 43) women were recruited. After controlling for differences in socioeconomic status, African American women reported more symptoms of distress and Latinas were rated as significantly more depressed than the other groups. However, these ethnic differences were not moderated by either education or employment. Finally, hierarchical regression analysis indicated that severity of depression was predicted by low education, being single, being Latina, high perceived stress, and feelings of hopelessness. Additional research is needed to validate these results and to investigate their clinical significance.     

Regulating the interpersonal self: strategic self-regulation for coping with rejection sensitivity

People high in rejection sensitivity (RS) anxiously expect rejection and are at risk for interpersonal and personal distress. Two studies examined the role of self-regulation through strategic attention deployment in moderating the link between RS and maladaptive outcomes. Self-regulation was assessed by the delay of gratification (DG) paradigm in childhood. In Study 1, preschoolers from the Stanford University community who participated in the DG paradigm were assessed 20 years later. Study 2 assessed low-income, minority middle school children on comparable measures. DG ability buffered high-RS people from interpersonal difficulties (aggression, peer rejection) and diminished well-being (e.g., low self-worth, higher drug use). The protective effect of DG ability on high-RS children's self-worth is explained by reduced interpersonal problems. Attentional mechanisms underlying the interaction between RS and strategic self-regulation are discussed.     

Procedural learning in schizophrenia: further consideration on the deleterious effect of neuroleptics

Deficits in procedural learning remain a controversial issue in schizophrenia. This may be related to the nature of the neuroleptic treatment of schizophrenic patients as conventional neuroleptics may be more deleterious than new atypical neuroleptics. However, there is no comparative study on the effect of specific neuroleptics on procedural learning. In this study, three groups of patients treated with different neuroleptics were compared to normal controls on two procedural learning tasks. In a visuo-motor task, patients and controls showed similar learning rates, although schizophrenic patients showed generally lower performances than normal controls. However, patients treated with a conventional neuroleptic, but not those treated with the atypical neuroleptics, showed many fluctuations during the initial learning phase. In a problem-solving task, all groups were comparable in performance and learning fluctuations, but learning rates were lower in patients treated with the neuroleptic showing the higher incidence of extrapyramidal symptoms. This suggests that procedural learning abilities may be significantly affected by neuroleptics in schizophrenia, although the effect may differ between tasks and the specific neuroleptics. Fluctuations in the initial learning phase of the visuo-motor task probably results from a frontal dysfunction while reduced learning rates, such as those observed in the problem solving task, may be attributed to a striatal dysfunction. This is concordant with the differential pharmacological actions of the conventional and atypical neuroleptics in these two cerebral areas.     

Family or friends: who plays a greater supportive role for Latino college students?

This study compared the relative contribution of perceived family and friend support to psychological well-being and distress and examined whether family or friend support moderated the effects of stress on psychological adjustment in 338 Latino (228 Mexican American, 110 Central American) college students from a predominantly Latino university. Two multiple regressions, controlling for gender, socioeconomic level, acculturation level, and stresses (generic college, acculturative, and minority status), showed that friend support made a slightly greater contribution to well-being than family support, and friend support and not family support protected against psychological distress. Neither family nor friend support moderated the effects of stress on psychological adjustment. Further examination of these variables that assess common-specific stresses within a culture-specific theoretical framework is recommended.     

Epidemiology of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in Mexico

Prevalence rates of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were estimated from a probability sample of 2,509 adults from 4 cities in Mexico. PTSD was assessed according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI; WHO, 1997). Lifetime prevalence of exposure and PTSD were 76% and 11.2%, respectively. Risk for PTSD was highest in Oaxaca (the poorest city), persons of lower socioeconomic status, and women. Conditional risk for PTSD was highest following sexual violence, but nonsexual violence and traumatic bereavement had greater overall impact because of their frequency. Of lifetime cases, 62% became chronic; only 42% received medical or professional care. The research demonstrates the importance of expanding the epidemiologic research base on trauma to include developing countries around the world.