Review of Julie Chajes,Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy,Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, xii + 215 p., Hardcover,ISBN 978-0-19-090913-0, £64

Studies in East European Thought - This is a review of Julie Chajes, Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019. The book,...     

Spirituality in Clinical Practice: The Perspective of Brazilian Medical Students

Journal of Religion and Health - The purpose of this study was to evaluate the beliefs, opinions, and experiences of medical students from a Catholic confessional university concerning spirituality...     

Will you confess to what I did? Close relationships and in-group membership facilitate voluntary blame-taking

To learn more about why people falsely confess without external pressure, we examined voluntary blame-taking in three experiments. Drawing from theories of prosocial behavior and social identity, we investigated whether participants' blame-taking is influenced by (a) their relationship with the guilty person (Experiment 1) and (b) the group membership of the person asking to take the blame (Experiments 2a and 2b). In Experiment 1, participants (N = 130) considered whether they would take the blame for a small traffic violation for their best friend and a stranger in a vignette-scenario. As expected, intended blame-taking rates were higher for their best friend (60.8%) than for a stranger (8.5%). Reported reasons for taking the blame included reciprocity and empathy. In Experiments 2a and 2b (Ns = 60; 89), we tested actual blame-taking behavior in two field experiments, using a new experimental paradigm. An experimenter approached participants and asked them to commit insurance fraud for a broken camera. Participants who shared the same group as the person in need were more willing to take the blame (47%-48%) than participants who were from a different group (21%-23%). The most frequently listed reason for taking the blame was empathy. Implications for the occurrence of voluntary blame-taking behavior to protect someone else are discussed.     

Measuring structural model invariance across internet-recruited and hospital-recruited IBD patients: Experiential avoidance’s effect on psychopathological symptoms

Current Psychology - Research has questioned whether it is feasible to assess psychosocial variables through web-based recruitment methods. Previous literature on IBD focused exclusively on testing...     

A Prospective Study of Maternal Exposure to Smoking during Pregnancy and Behavioral Development in the Child

Prenatal smoke exposure (PSE) is a risk factor for adverse outcomes in the offspring, including those affecting psychological development. However, it is uncertain whether these associations are the direct result of PSE or other confounding factors. The aim of this study was to examine the possible relationship between PSE and behavioral development in children at 7.5 years of age, considering several prenatal, neonatal and postnatal covariates. A cohort of 266 mother-child pairs was followed from the first trimester of pregnancy until the children reached 7.5 years of age. PSE was assessed using a questionnaire from prenatal clinical records and corroborated by plasma cotinine determinations in the first and second trimesters and in the cord. Mother-child pairs were classified into one of four groups: unexposed, exposed to passive smoking, first trimester active smoking only and active smoking throughout pregnancy. Child behavior was assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist for ages 6–18 and the Childhood Autism Spectrum Test. In multiple linear regression models, smoking during pregnancy was associated with higher scores in affective problems (β?=?0.298; p?=?0.004). No significant associations were found between smoking during pregnancy and externalizing problems. Findings indicate that PSE is negatively associated with behavioral development in childhood.

     

A Single-Session Workshop to Enhance Emotional Awareness and Emotion Regulation for Graduate Students: A Pilot Study

Emerging adults are at substantial risk for developing or worsening psychopathology and university students appear to be particularly vulnerable. Interventions targeted at these young adults that can mitigate transdiagnostic causal risk factors or burgeoning mental health problems have the potential to make a large impact. We aimed to develop and pilot test an accessible, single-session, transdiagnostic group intervention with the goals of enhancing emotion regulation skills and reducing risk for mental health problems in graduate students. The intervention included psychoeducation, skills instruction (e.g., mindful emotion awareness, cognitive flexibility, countering emotion-driven behaviors), group discussion, and supervised practice based on content from the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders. The pilot program demonstrated strong feasibility and acceptability. Baseline, 1-month, and 3-month follow-up surveys also suggested benefits for reducing emotional avoidance and suppression, increasing use of cognitive reappraisal, and reducing symptoms of depression and neuroticism. Graduate students have seldom been the beneficiaries of university-based intervention and prevention research. Furthermore, most college and university mental health centers do not have the capacity to provide psychoeducation, preventative, or early intervention services to the many students who need or could benefit from them. Results suggest that future iterations of this intervention could address such barriers to meaningfully supporting emerging adults in graduate school.     

Associations between burnout and personal and professional characteristics: a study of Portuguese teachers

Social Psychology of Education - Recent research has suggested that teachers’ burnout is growing and, consequently, affecting their overall satisfaction with life and professional...     

Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI). In the present study, we investigated emotional face categorization in groups of children with ASD and CVI by comparing each group to typically developing individuals (TD) in two tasks. Stimuli were either non-filtered or filtered by low- and high-spatial frequencies (LSF and HSF). All participants completed the autism spectrum quotient score (AQ) and a complete neurovisual evaluation. The results show that while both clinical groups presented difficulties in the emotional face recognition tasks and atypical processing of filtered stimuli, they did not differ from one another. Additionally, autistic traits were observed in the CVI group and symmetrically, some visual disturbances were present in the ASD group as measured via the AQ score and a neurovisual evaluation, respectively. The present study suggests the relevance of comparing ASD to CVI by showing that emotional face categorization difficulties should not be solely considered as autism-specific but merit investigation for potential dysfunction of the visual processing neural network. These results are of interest in both clinical and research perspectives, indicating that systematic visual examination is warranted for individuals with ASD.