The role of encoding strategies in the verbal memory performance in patients with schizophrenia

Background. Verbal learning and memory is often compromised in patients with schizophrenia who prefer encoding words in order of their presentation (serial clustering) rather than using semantic categories (semantic clustering). Method. One hundred and four in‐patients with schizophrenia were assessed twice with the California Verbal Learning Test. Results. Patients showed significantly less semantic than serial clustering at both assessment times. Usage of encoding strategies were not stable over time. An increase in semantic clustering improved recall and recognition performance. Conclusions. Patients with schizophrenia should be taught to use the more effective encoding strategy of semantic clustering in order to improve their memory performance.     

震后一年半灾区小学生的创伤症状调查研究——以“八一帐篷学校”为例

本研究对总装备部·绵阳八一帐篷学校的小学生进行创伤症状调查研究,了解震后一年半小学生的心理健康状况。方法:使用儿童创伤症状量表简版(TSCC-A)对八一帐篷学校3～6年级小学生进行评估。结果:(1)八一帐篷学校的小学生震后一年半最为突出的创伤症状是焦虑,其次为抑郁和分离症状;(2)在创伤症状得分上不存在性别差异性,但是存在年级差异性,三年级学生创伤症状得分均低于其他年级学生;(3)震后一年半学生创伤症状比震后半年学生创伤症状有所减轻。结论:灾区小学生心理健康状况仍存在一些问题,焦虑、抑郁等症状仍比较明显,还应进行持续的心理危机干预。     

Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.     

Target velocity effects on manual interception kinematics

Participants generated manual interception movements toward a target cursor that moved across a computer screen. The target reached its peak velocity either during the first third, at the midpoint, or during the last third of the movement. In Experiment 1 the view of the target was available for either the first 316, 633, 950, or 1267 ms, after which it disappeared. Results showed that for all viewing conditions, the timing of the interception velocity was related to the temporal properties of the target's trajectory. In Experiment 2, when the portion of the target trajectory that was viewed was reversed (such that participants did not see the first 316, 633, 950, or 1267 ms of the trajectory, but instead saw only the later portions of the trajectory), there was no clear relationship between the target trajectory and the timing of the aiming trajectory. These results suggest that participants use visual information early in the target's trajectory to form a representation of the target motion that is used to facilitate manual interception.     

Parental, peer, and teacher influences on the social behavior of Hong Kong Chinese adolescents

Intensive interviews and self-report questionnaires were used to investigate parental, peer, and teacher influences on the prosocial and antisocial behaviors of Hong Kong Chinese adolescents. Students came from 5 academically different high schools. Results indicated that perceived parental influence was positively associated with frequency of prosocial behavior and negatively associated with frequency of delinquent behavior. Students with good relationships with their parents and peers showed lower frequencies of antisocial behaviors than did students with bad relationships. Adolescents in different identity statuses (achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, diffusion; E. H. Erikson, 1968) showed different patterns of prosocial and antisocial behaviors. For example, adolescents in the identity achievement group exhibited high frequencies of prosocial behaviors and low frequencies of antisocial behaviors, but those in the identity moratorium group exhibited quite high frequencies of both prosocial and antisocial behaviors.     

Instrumental values of organizational citizenship behavior for promotion: a field quasi-experiment

The present study examined the relationship between promotion, perceived instrumentality of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) for promotion, and employees' OCB before and after promotion. A field quasi-experiment involving 293 tellers of a multinational bank was conducted. Both supervisors and employees provided OCB ratings 3 months before and 3 months after the promotion decision was announced. The authors found employees who perceived OCB as instrumental to their promotion and who were promoted were more likely to decline in their OCB after the promotion.     

A field experiment testing frontline opinion leaders as change agents

On the basis of previous studies of source credibility and opinion leadership, the authors hypothesized that opinion leaders would serve as effective agents to promote positive attitudes toward a service-quality initiative and increase service-quality effectiveness. The service effectiveness of tellers before and after a service-quality leadership training program was rated by customers, supervisors, and the tellers themselves across 3 matched bank branches. Service effectiveness was rated significantly higher in a branch using opinion leaders as service-quality leaders compared with a branch using randomly selected frontline leaders. Tellers in the latter branch showed greater improvements in service effectiveness than did counterparts in a branch using no frontline service quality leaders. This difference between types of leaders appeared to be mediated by tellers' behavioral beliefs about the service-quality program.     

A comparison of personality function among patients with seasonal depression, nonseasonal depression, and nonclinical participants

Although a large body of research has accumulated concerning the relationship between nonseasonal depression and personality, comparatively few studies have examined the relationship between seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and personality. This study compared dimensional aspects of personality in patients diagnosed with SAD (N = 60), nonseasonal depression (N = 273), and nonclinical controls (N = 297) using the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology (DAPP-BQ; Livesley & Jackson, in press). Analysis by ANCOVA indicated that significant between-group differences occurred in several of the 18 DAPP-BQ dimensions, with patients with SAD exhibiting personality psychopathology that was intermediate between the nonclinical sample and patients with nonseasonal depression. The results demonstrated that the traits associated with seasonal and nonseasonal depression differ in degree, not kind.     

Suicide ideation and its relationship to depressed mood in a community sample of adolescents in Hong Kong.

A sample of 996 Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong provided information about their suicide ideation. Their depressive symptoms were measured by the Chinese Beck Depression Inventory (C-BDI), and a broad range of stressors were also assessed as potential predictors to level of suicide ideation. The stressors and C-BDI scores predicted 33% of the variance in suicide ideation. In boys, most of the prediction was attributable to C-BDI scores, suggesting that depression mediated the effects of stressors. In girls, C-BDI scores, perceptions of low parental caring, and high conflict with parents had additive effects in predicting level of suicide ideation. This study contributes needed information about a non-Western population and highlights gender differences.     

Book reviews

The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Rodney Stark, 1996 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press xiv + 247 pp., US$24.95, £16.95 ISBN 0–691–02749–8

Church Watch: Christianity in the Countryside. Leslie J. Francis, 1996 London: SPCK 248 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04951–3

Strategic Church Leadership. Robin Gill & Derek Burke, 1996 London: SPCK vii + 96 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04901–7

’Nice When They Are Young’: Contemporary Christianity in Families and Schools. Mairi Levitt, 1996 Aldershot: Avebury viii +171 pp., £32.50 ISBN 1–85972–388–8

Die Sekten‐Kinder. Kurt‐Helmuth Eimuth, 1996 Freiburg: Herder Verlag 239 pp., DM 19.80 (pb) ISBN 3–451–04397–1

The Good Heart: His Holiness the Dalai Lama Explores the Heart of Christianity—and of Humanity. H.H. The Dalai Lama, 1997. London: Rider xiv + 207pp., £9.99 (pb) ISBN 0–7126–7275–3

Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke & John Polkinghome. John Polkinghorne, 1996 London: SPCK 95 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04945–9

Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies. Dinesh Bhugra, ed., 1996 London, New York: Routledge 236 pp., £50.00, US$65.00 ISBN 0–415–08955–7 (hb)

Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions. Peggy Morgan & Clive Lawton, eds, 1996 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 278 pp., £14.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7486–0709–9

Religious Institutions and Women's Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Catherine Wessinger, ed., 1996 Columbia: University of South Carolina Press x +434 pp., US$24.95 ISBN 1–57003–073–1

Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism. June Campbell, 1996 London: Athlone Press 225 pp., £17.95 ISBN 0–485–11494–1

Forbidden Revolutions: Pentecostalism in Latin America, Catholicism in Eastern Europe. David Martin, 1996 London: SPCK 96 pp., £7.99 ISBN 0–281–04999–8

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State (1939–1950) Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, 1996 Edmonton, Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 310 pp., Ca$39.95(hb) ISBN 1–895571–12‐X

Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression. Farid Esack, 1997 Oxford: Oneworld Publications xii + 288 pp., 3 Appendices + Glossary + Bibliography; £14.99, US$22.95 ISBN 1–85168–121–3

A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers: The Silent Revolution Studies in Religion and Society Volume 34 Pink Dandelion, 1996 Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press xxxiv +417 pp., £59.95 ISBN 0–7734–8807–3

Counting the Days to Armageddon: The Jehovah's Witnesses and The Second Presence of Christ Robert Crompton, 1996 Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. 160 pp., £22.50 ISBN 0–2276–7939

Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. James R. Lewis, ed., 1996 Albany, NY: State of New York University Press vi + 423 pp., US$19.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7914–2890–7

The Divine Versus The Asurian: An Interpretation of Indo‐European Cult and Myth. Michael York, 1995 Bethesda, MD: International Scholars Publications 635 pp., US$94.95 ISBN 1–57309–029–8