Atheism, Morality and Meaning

Book reviewed:
Michael Martin, Atheism, Morality and Meaning , 2002, Prometheus Books, 330pp, price £21.00 pb.     

Transformational experiences in young people: the meaning of a safe haven

What do adolescents find meaningful in their exposure to spiritual education organised by religious or spiritual institutions? A qualitative study of adolescents participating in summer school events organised by the Religious Society of Friends and Sahaj Marg meditation system was carried out and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Two central themes emerged of ‘safe haven’ and ‘transforming processes’. The meaning of ‘safe haven’ was further examined and related to Gaston Bachelard’s evocation of the primordial sense of home.     

Parental coping socialization is associated with healthy and anxious early‐adolescents’ neural and real‐world response to threat

The ways parents socialize their adolescents to cope with anxiety (i.e., coping socialization) may be instrumental in the development of threat processing and coping responses. Coping socialization may be important for anxious adolescents, as they show altered neural threat processing and over reliance on disengaged coping (e.g., avoidance and distraction), which can maintain anxiety. We investigated whether coping socialization was associated with anxious and healthy adolescents’ neural response to threat, and whether neural activation was associated with disengaged coping. Healthy and clinically anxious early adolescents (N = 120; M = 11.46 years; 71 girls) and a parent engaged in interactions designed to elicit adolescents’ anxiety and parents’ response to adolescents’ anxiety. Parents’ use of reframing and problem solving statements was coded to measure coping socialization. In a subsequent visit, we assessed adolescents’ neural response to threat words during a neuroimaging task. Adolescents’ disengaged coping was measured using ecological momentary assessment. Greater coping socialization was associated with lower anterior insula and perigenual cingulate activation in healthy adolescents and higher activation in anxious adolescents. Coping socialization was indirectly associated with less disengaged coping for anxious adolescents through neural activation. Findings suggest that associations between coping socialization and early adolescents’ neural response to threat differ depending on clinical status and have implications for anxious adolescents’ coping.     

Improving communication between health and infant mental health professionals utilizing ongoing Collaborative Peer Supervision Groups

This article discusses the use of Collaborative Peer Supervision Groups (CPSG) to promote ongoing professional development for those who work with infants, toddlers, and their families. Our model's strength and clinical utility result from its three major components: (a) a relationship‐based perspective that acknowledges the important role that feelings and emotions play across the life span, (b) a peer supervision model that helps to ensure that no individual or discipline is “the expert,” and (c) a collaborative case‐based continuing‐education experience. Salient features of forming and maintaining a CPSG group are discussed including access to a Web site containing many key start‐up and evaluation materials. Existing barriers to effective communication between disciplines are discussed as are specific methods to structure case data. Additional tools to help anchor a CPSG are considered as are methods of evaluation. Two case presentations are considered to illustrate group process. Lessons learned from such groups are highlighted. Our intent is to provide sufficient background material so that others with a similar interest will be comfortable starting and maintaining a CPSG group on their own. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Learning in a Man'S World: Examining the Perceptions of Undergraduate Women in Male-Dominated Academic Areas

This study examined the perceptions of undergraduate women in male-dominated academic areas. First-year and final-year female undergraduates in a male-dominated academic area (i.e., math, science, or engineering) reported higher levels of discrimination and stereotype threat than women in a female-dominated academic area (i.e., arts, education, humanities, or social science), and men in either a male- or female-dominated academic area. Moreover, women in a male-dominated academic area were most likely to report thinking about changing their major. These findings suggest that female college students majoring in math, science, and engineering continue to perceive additional gender-based obstacles in their field.     

Taking from those that have more and giving to those that have less: How inequity frames affect corrections for inequity

Most theories of inequity focus on relative inequity. In contrast, this paper provides evidence that individuals infer what people should have (i.e. an absolute standard) from the way inequity is described. In the reported experiment, participants give more to a subordinate actor when inequity is described in terms of “less than” rather than “more than,” and take more from a dominant actor when inequity is described in terms of “more than” rather than “less than,” even though the magnitude of inequity is constant. Mediational analyses suggest that these differences are driven by changes in individuals’ perceptions of what the actors should have (i.e. the standard). We conclude by discussing the implications for motivated perceptions of inequity and redistributive policy attitudes.     

Men's job and partner roles: Spillover effects and psychological distress

What is the relationship between the quality of men's job and partnership roles on the one hand and men's mental health on the other? This question was addressed in a random sample of 300 men, ages 25–40, in dual-earner couples. Predictions were made from both main-effects and two interaction-effects models of this relationship. More specifically, negative-spillover effects, as predicted by the role-stress model, were estimated both from work to home and home to work. Positive-spillover effects, as predicted by the role-enhancement model, were estimated from home to work and from work to home. The general finding was that the effects are additive not interactive, thus supporting the main-effects model. With respect to spillover effects, there was some support for the role-stress model, but no support for the role-enhancement model. More specifically, the relationship between job stress and psychological distress was exacerbated among men who had troubled relationships with their partners.     

The effect of intergender conflict on sex-role attitudes

This study explored conditions under which initially multidimensional attitudes change and coalesce into unidimensionality. One hundred twenty-one college students participated in a pretest-posttest control group experimental design involving a prejudice reduction simulation. One group was exposed to overt statements and action that supported traditional male dominance. This group exhibited significantly more modern sex-role attitudes than did the other groups; and the former's attitudes shifted to unidimensionality while the others' attitudes did not. The data also suggest independence between techniques that produce racial/liberalism and sexrole attitude modernity.     

Language Acquisition is Language Change

According to the theory of Universal Grammar, the primary linguistic data guides children through an innately specified space of hypotheses. On this view, similarities between child-English and adult-German are as unsurprising as similarities between cousins who have never met. By contrast, experience-based approaches to language acquisition contend that child language matches the input, with nonadult forms being simply less articulated versions of the forms produced by adults. This paper reports several studies that provide support for the theory of Universal grammar, and resist explanation on experience-based accounts. Two studies investigate English-speaking children’s productions, and a third examines the interpretation of sentences by Japanese speaking children. When considered against the input children are exposed to, the findings of these and other studies are consistent with the continuity hypothesis, which supposes that child language can differ from the language spoken by adults only in ways that adult languages can differ from each other.     

Recollective experience in word and nonword recognition

The functional relationship between memory and consciousness was investigated in two experiments in which subjects indicated when recognizing an item whether they could consciously recollect its prior occurrence in the study list or recognized it on some other basis, in the absence of conscious recollection. Low-frequency words, relative to high-frequency words, enhanced recognition accompanied by conscious recollection but did not influence recognition in the absence of conscious recollection. By contrast, nonwords compared with words enhanced recognition in the absence of conscious recollection and reduced recognition accompanied by conscious recollection. A third experiment showed that confidence judgments in recognizing nonword targets corresponded with recognition performance, not with recollective experience. These measures of conscious awareness therefore tap qualitatively different components of memory, not some unitary dimension such as "trace strength." The findings are interpreted as providing further support for the distinction between episodic memory and other memory systems, and also as providing more qualified support for theories that assume that recognition memory entails two components, one of which may also give rise to priming effects in implicit memory.