Reliability and validity of the Spanish Version of the Crisis in Family Systems-Revised

Increasing the representation of Spanish-speaking study participants requires development and dissemination of reliable and valid translated scales. In the urrent study the construct validity was assessed of the Spanish version of the Crisis n Family Systems-Revised, a measure of contemporary life stressors, with a convenience sample of 377 parents interviewed in a study of childhood asthma, although over half of the respondents did not have children with asthma. Most respondents were foreign-born women between 20 to 60 years old (M=35, SD=7). 52% had not completed high school or its equivalent, and 55% reported a household income of dollar 15,000 or less. For a subsample of 25 respondents test-retest reliability was .86 over 2 wk. Reporting more life stressors was associated with greater depressive symptomatology, poorer physical and mental health function, and lower household income. These relationships support the construct validity of the test in Spanish. This study provided strong evidence that this version is a valid and reliable measure of life stressors for a Spanish-speaking population living in the United States.     

Attentional enhancement opposite a peripheral flash revealed using change blindness

We describe a new method for mapping spatial attentionthat reveals a pooling of attention in the hemifield opposite a peripheralflash. Our method exploits the fact that a brief full-field blank caninterfere with the detection of changes in a scene that occur during theblank. Attending to the location of a change, however, can overcome thischange blindness, so that changes are detected. The likelihood of detecting anew element in a scene therefore provides a measure of the occurrence ofattention at that element's location. Using this measure, we mappedhow attention changes in response to a task-irrelevant peripheral cue. Underconditions of visual fixation, change detection was above chance across theentire visual area tested. In addition, a "hot spot" ofattention (corresponding to near-perfect change detection) elongated alongthe cue-fixation axis, such that performance improved not only at the cuedlocation but also in the opposite hemifield.     

Being forgiven: toward a thicker description of forgiveness

The author describes the less frequently examined process of seeking forgiveness from others. Examples from the seminary classroom are used to describe the process. The examination of the seeking forgiveness process provides insight into the whole construct of forgiveness.     

The 'hard problem' and the quantum physicists. Part 1: the first generation

All four of the most important figures in the early twentieth-century development of quantum physics-Niels Bohr, Erwin Schroedinger, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli-had strong interests in the traditional mind-brain, or 'hard,' problem. This paper reviews their approach to this problem, showing the influence of Bohr's complementarity thesis, the significance of Schroedinger's small book, 'What is life?,' the updated Platonism of Heisenberg and, perhaps most interesting of all, the interaction of Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli in the latter's search for a unification of mind and matter.     

Health, wealth, and happiness: financial resources buffer subjective well-being after the onset of a disability

We examined the hypothesis that the relationship between financial status and subjective well-being, typically found to be very small in cross-sectional studies, is moderated by health status. Specifically, we predicted that wealth would buffer well-being after the onset of a disability. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study of people at and approaching retirement age, we employed within-subjects analyses to test whether wealth measured prior to the onset of a disability protected participants' well-being from some of the negative effects of a new disability. We found support for this hypothesis: Participants who were above the median in total net worth reported a much smaller decline in well-being after a new disability than did participants who were below the median. We also found some evidence that the buffering effect of wealth faded with time, as below-median participants recovered some of their well-being.     

Sex-specific finger-length patterns linked to behavioral variables: consistency across various human populations

In humans, as in nonhuman primates, the digits of the hands are similar in length during early fetal development. Subsequently, differentiation leads to a patter of unequal finger lengths, described by George as the finger-length pattern. Recent work by Manning and colleagues suggested that digit length patterns are due to early influences of sex hormones. Most importantly for psychology, such patterns might also relate to cognitive activities that are influenced by early organizing actions of sex hormones. The exciting possibility of having an easily measurable indicator of early action of sex hormones that relates to behavior led us to examine the universality of digit length patterns. With samples from Brazil, Canada, India, Turkey, and Korea, we showed that patterns of distal extent of finger tips are similar across different human populations. Consistent sex differences were found across the samples, showing that the index finger in males extends less far distally relative to the middle finger than is the case for females and that the difference in distal extent between index and ring fingers, relative to the middle finger, is smaller in females than in males.     

Stereotypes and steroids: using a psychobiosocial model to understand cognitive sex differences

To further our understanding of cognitive sex differences, we studied the relationship between menstrual phase (via serum estradiol and progesterone levels) and cognitive abilities and cognitive performance in a sample of medical students in eastern Turkey. As expected, we found no sex differences on the Cattell "Culture Fair Intelligence Test" (a figural reasoning test), with females scoring significantly higher on a Turkish version of the Finding A's Test (rapid word knowledge) and males scoring significantly higher on a paper-and-pencil mental rotation test. The women showed a slight enhancement on the Finding A's Test and a slight decrement in Cattell scores during the preovulatory phase of their cycle that (probably) coincided with a rise in estrogen. There were also small cycle-related enhancements in performance for these women on the mental rotation test that may reflect cyclical increases in estrogen and progesterone. Additional analyses showed an inverted U-shaped function in level of estradiol and the Cattell Test. Finally, for women who were tested on Day 10 of their menstrual cycle, there was a negative linear relationship between their Cattell scores and level of progesterone. Stereotypes about the cognitive abilities of males and females did not correspond to performance on the mental rotation or Finding A's Test, so the sex-typical results could not be attributed to either stereotype threat or stereotype activation. For practical purposes, hormone-related effects were generally small. Variations over the menstrual cycle do not provide evidence for a "smarter" sex, but they do further our understanding of steroidal action on human cognitive performance.     

Short-term memory and working memory as indices of children's cognitive skills

In the current literature, empirical and conceptual distinctions have been drawn between a more or less passive short-term memory (STM) system and a more dynamic working memory (WM) system. Distinct tasks have been developed to measure their capacity and research has generally shown that, for adults, WM, and not STM, is a reliable predictor of general cognitive ability. However, the locus of the differences between the tasks has received little attention. We present data from children concerning measures of matrices reasoning ability, reading, and numerical skill along with forward and backward order serial recall of WM, STM, and STM with articulatory suppression tasks. As indices of children's cognitive skills, STM and WM are shown to be rather similar in terms of memory per se. Neither the opportunity for rehearsal nor task complexity provides satisfactory explanations for differences between memory tests.