Religiosity and Spirituality: Influence on Quality of Life and Perceived Patient Self-Efficacy among Cardiac Patients and Their Spouses

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of spirituality, religiosity, and religious coping on quality of life and self-efficacy among couples following a first time cardiac event. There was no significant association between measures for spirituality and religiosity and couples’ ratings for quality of life and self-efficacy. Negative forms of religious coping were associated with lower levels of quality of life and decreased confidence in the patient’s ability to perform physical tasks. Spouses’ measures for quality of life, self-efficacy, spirituality, religiosity, and religious coping were associated with patients’ measures for the same study variables. Joan F. Miller, RN, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Nursing, Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania 17815 and Director of the Bloomsburg University Nursing Wellness Center. The author gives special thanks to Timothy R. McConnell, Ph.D., and Troy A. Klinger, M.S., for their research support and helpful feedback.     

Who Knows? Knowledge Activation,Belief in Certainty of Knowledge,Maximization Tendencies and Need for Cognition in Answerability Judgments

In this study, investigating answerability judgments, 123 participants judged whether each of 46 general knowledge questions could currently be answered by themselves, by someone else, or by no one. There were 26 consensus questions (high expected consensus about their answerability) and 20 non-consensus questions. Before each question, half of the participants rated the extent of their knowledge related to the question. Results showed that answering consensus questions compared with non-consensus led to a lower proportion of “No one knows” answers. Moreover, in the knowledge rating condition compared with the control condition, participants choose “No one knows” proportionally less. Participants’ ratings of belief in certainty of knowledge were associated with more “Someone else knows” for the non-consensus questions. Moreover, tendency to maximization led to a higher proportion of “Someone else knows” options for the non-consensus questions. Finally, high need for cognition was associated with fewer choices of “Someone else knows.”     

The influence of natural contour and face size on the spatial frequency tuning for identifying upright and inverted faces

Psychological Research - It has previously been proposed that holistic face processing is based on low spatial frequencies (SFs) whereas featural processing relies on higher SFs, a hypothesis still...     

Reaffirming the poverty of the stimulus argument: a reply to the replies

Lidz, Waxman, and Freedman [Lidz, J., Waxman, S., & Freedman, J. (2003). What infants know about syntax but couldn’t have learned: Evidence for syntactic structure at 18-months. Cognition, 89, B65-B73.] argue that acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties of anaphoric one in English relies on innate knowledge within the learner. Several commentaries have now been published questioning this finding. We defend the original finding by identifying both empirical and logical flaws in the critiques.     

Jealousy and commitment: Perceived threat and the effect of relationship alternatives

Most research on jealousy has focused on the correlation between one psychological factor and jealousy. In contrast, the current work examined how the link between relationship commitment and jealousy depends on the interplay of two situational factors: attractiveness of relationship alternatives and receiving threatening information about the self and the romantic relationship. In two studies, participants completed measures of relationship commitment for their current relationship and then received feedback that manipulated their perceptions of relationship alternatives (Study 1) or their perceptions of relationship compatibility (Study 2). Participants' jealousy was assessed by their responses to a mildly threatening relationship situation (Studies 1 and 2) and on a jealousy scale (Study 2). Study 1 showed that those in more committed relationships experienced greater jealousy when they were induced to consider having unattractive relationship alternatives. Study 2 showed that those with greater relationship commitment reported more jealousy when they received negative information about their relationship compatibility. Implications for how threat plays a causal role in experiencing jealousy are discussed.     

Boundaries to the articulation of possible selves through social networking sites: the case of Facebook profilers' social connectedness

This study aims to contribute to an emerging literature that seeks to understand how identity markers on social networking sites (SNSs) shape interpersonal impressions, and particularly the boundaries that SNSs present for articulating unconstrained "hoped-for possible selves." An experiment employing mock-up Facebook profiles was conducted, showing that appearing with friends on a Facebook profile picture as well as increasingly higher number of Facebook friends strengthened perceptions of a profiler's hoped-for level of social connectedness. Excessive numbers of friends, however, weakened perceptions of a profiler's real-level social connectedness, particularly among participants with smaller social networks on Facebook themselves. The discussion focuses on when people come to find that reasonable boundaries of self-generated information on an SNS have been exceeded.     

Education and interactivism: Levels of interaction influencing learning processes

The aim of this paper is to explore some consequences of interactivism within learning situations. Since the original interactivist point of view focused on the Subject/Object relationship, much research has stressed the importance of the non-individualistic aspects of learning, and we have found it revealing to point out the mediation processes occurring inside and outside the S/O relationship (e.g. mediation involving cultural context or artifacts). We have combined different learning theory frameworks, chosen for their complementary conceptions of learning, with a view toward describing the system of interactions involved in teaching/learning processes.The cultural-historical approach to learning insists on the fundamental role of socially constructed tools in human development and education (Vygotsky). Clot and Engeström consider educational institutions as working communities that constrain Subject/Object interaction by rules and habits. Chevallard describes the implications of various categories of actors in the definition of curricula. Within the classroom, besides the obvious mutual influences of individual participants, problems to be solved, as organized by the teacher, influence the attitude of the learner towards the knowledge to be acquired (Brousseau). Furthermore, these situations contain multiple artifacts aimed at facilitating the acquisition of the skills necessary in order to use artifacts outside of the educational context (Rabardel & Bourmaud). Finally, Vergnaud suggests that it is more fruitful to consider the relationship between scheme and situation rather than that between subject and object.We will consider how these various levels of mediation shape the Subject/Object relationship and the learning process.