Mental Health, Depression, and Dimensions of Spirituality and Religion

The author explores the relationship between spirituality and religion and human growth and development, specifically examining emotional well-being during adulthood. Dimensions of spirituality to be explored are meaning in life, a transcendent purpose, intrinsic values, and spiritual community. The argument is made that spirituality is related to emotional well-being during adulthood. Implications for further research and relevant information for counselors, psychologists, and educators are included.     

Gender Roles and Empathic Accuracy: The Role of Communion in Reading Minds

Although empathic accuracy is considered a stable skill, few individual difference measures consistently predict performance on Ickes’ (e.g., 2001) empathic accuracy measure. Because past work has shown that women are more empathically accurate than men when female gender roles are made salient before an empathic accuracy task, we hypothesized that self-reported communion and related variables might predict empathic accuracy. Participants (194 undergraduates) from a northwestern U.S. university completed an empathic accuracy task and self-report measures of communion and empathy. Communion and empathic concern predicted greater empathic accuracy, but only after controlling for socially desirable responding. The role of communion in empathic inference is discussed, along with the need to include measures of social desirability when examining correlates of empathic accuracy.     

Semantic memory disorders

Semantic memory encompasses knowledge of objects, facts and words. A number of brain regions are probably involved, but the left infero-lateral temporal lobe appears to play a key role. The separability of semantic memory from episodic (or autobiographical) memory is a focus of current debate. Impaired semantic memory is a common feature of Alzheimer's disease but is invariably overshadowed by a profound deficit in episodic memory. In semantic dementia, a rarer disorder associated with focal temporal-lobe atrophy, there is selective loss of semantic memory, characterized by preservation of superordinate knowledge of words, and objects, but loss of finer-grained information. This pattern can be interpreted as a degradation of features from a distributed network of semantic representations. Following Herpes simplex encephalitis, patients sometimes show disproportionate loss of knowledge for natural kinds (e.g. animals) with relative preservation of knowledge about artefacts, this may reflect differential damage to neural systems critical for perceptual as opposed to functional features, perceptual properties being more salient in knowledge about natural kinds.     

Cognitive behavior therapy for fear of flying: sustainability of treatment gains after September 11

This study examines the long-term efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for fear of flying (FOF) after a catastrophic fear-relevant event, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Participants (N = 115) were randomly assigned to and completed treatment for FOF using 8 sessions of either virtual reality exposure therapy (VRE) or standard exposure therapy (SE) prior to September 11, 2001. Individuals were reassessed in June, 2002, an average of 2.3 years after treatment, with a response rate of 48% (n = 55). Analyses were run on the original data and, using multiple imputation procedures, on imputed data for the full sample. Individuals maintained or improved upon gains made in treatment as measured by standardized FOF questionnaires and by number of flights taken. There were no differences between VRE and SE. Thus, results suggest that individuals previously treated for FOF with cognitive-behavioral therapy can maintain treatment gains in the face of a catastrophic fear-relevant event, even years after treatment is completed.     

Virtual reality exposure therapy and standard (in vivo) exposure therapy in the treatment of fear of flying

This controlled clinical trial tested virtual reality exposure (VRE) therapy for the fear of flying (FOF), a relatively new and innovative way to do exposure therapy, and compared it to standard (in vivo) exposure therapy (SE) and a wait list (WL) control with a 6- and 12-month follow-up. Eighty-three participants with FOF were randomly assigned to VRE, SE, or WL. Seventy-five participants, 25 per group, completed the study. Twenty-three WL participants completed randomly assigned treatment following the waiting period. Treatment consisted of 4 sessions of anxiety management training followed either by exposure to a virtual airplane (VRE) or an actual airplane at the airport (SE) conducted over 6 weeks. Results indicate that VRE was superior to WL on all measures, including willingness to fly on the posttreatment flight (76% for VRE and SE; 20% for WL). VRE and SE were essentially equivalent on standardized questionnaires, willingness to fly, anxiety ratings during the flight, self-ratings of improvement, and patient satisfaction with treatment. Follow-up assessments at 6 and 12 months indicated that treatment gains were maintained, with more than 70% of respondents from both groups reporting continued flying at follow-up. Based on these findings, the use of VRE in the treatment of FOF was supported in this controlled study, suggesting that experiences in the virtual world can change experiences in the real world.     

Neurotoxic dorsal CA1 lesions versus 4 VO ischaemic lesions: behavioural comparisons

Anterograde amnesia, a common consequence of transient cerebral ischaemia, has been attributed to cell loss in the hippocampal CA1 subfield. However, variable, widespread damage outside hippocampal CA1 can also occur following ischaemia. We compared the functional consequences of ischaemia and ibotenate acid CA1 lesions on 2 spatial memory tasks (water maze 'place' and 'matching-to-position') to address the possibility that extra-CA1 loss contributes to ischaemia-induced memory deficits in the rat. During place task acquisition, ischaemic rats showed deficits on more measures than ibotenic rats, and during a 1 min probe trial, only ischaemic rats were impaired. On the matching-to-position task, ibotenic rats showed greater impairment than ischaemic rats in terms of one-trial learning, whereas ischaemic rats were more impaired after Trial 2. Ischaemia and ibotenic acid lesions resulted in equivalent CA1 loss, but silver impregnation revealed additional extra-CA1 cell loss in ischaemic rats. Together with the greater behavioural deficits of ischaemic rats, these data indicate a role for extra-CA1 cell loss in ischaemia-induced memory impairments in both animals and humans.     

A test of motor skill-specific action embodiment in ice-hockey players

To further our understanding of the role of the motor system in comprehending action-related sentences, we compared action experts (athletes) to visual experts (fans) and novices when responding with an action-specific effector (either hand or foot). These conditions allowed inferences about the degree and specificity of embodiment in language comprehension. Ice hockey players, fans and novices made speeded judgments regarding the congruence between an auditorily presented sentence and a subsequently presented picture. Picture stimuli consisted of either hockey or everyday items. Half of these pictures ‘matched’ the action implied in the preceding sentence. Further, the action in these images involved either primarily the hand or the foot. For everyday items, action-matched items were responded to faster than action-mismatched items. However, only the players and fans showed the action-match effect for hockey items. There were no consistent effector-stimuli compatibility effects, nor skill-based interactions with compatibility, suggesting that the action-match effect was not based on motor ability per se, but rather a construction of the action based on knowledge or visual experience with the hockey related sentences.