All in faith: Religion as the idiom and means of coping with distress

A survey design was used to examine if there are any differences between a Christian, a Muslim, and a non-religious group in five personality factors (dominance, liveliness, warmth, apprehension, and sensitivity), general well-being, and death anxiety. No significant differences were found with any of the personality factors between the three groups. Religious participants (Christians and Muslims combined) scored significantly higher for general well-being than non-religious participants. Christians scored significantly lower for death anxiety than both non-religious and Muslim groups, and Muslims scored significantly higher than the non-religious group. These findings are discussed with reference to Terror Management Theory. Suggestions for future research include deeper investigation into beliefs of the afterlife and inclusion of more religions into psychological studies.     

Attentional capture by emotional faces in adolescence

Poor decision making during adolescence occurs most frequently when situations are emotionally charged. However, relatively few studies have measured the development of cognitive control in response to emotional stimuli in this population. This study used both affective (emotional faces) and non-affective (letter) stimuli in two different flanker tasks to assess the ability to ignore task-irrelevant but distracting information, in 25 adults and 25 adolescents. On the non-emotional (letter) flanker task, the presence of incongruent flanking letters increased the number of errors, and also slowed participants’ ability to identify a central letter. Adolescents committed more errors than adults, but there were no age-related differences for the reaction time interference effect in the letter condition. Post-hoc testing revealed that age-related differences on the task were driven by the younger adolescents (11-14 years); adults and older adolescents (15-17 years) were equally accurate in the letter condition. In contrast, on the emotional face flanker task, not only were adolescents less accurate than adults but they were also more distracted by task-irrelevant fearful faces as evidenced by greater reaction time interference effects. Our findings suggest that the ability to self-regulate in adolescents, as evidenced by the ability to suppress irrelevant information on a flanker task, is more difficult when stimuli are affective in nature. The ability to ignore irrelevant flankers appears to mature earlier for non-affective stimuli than for affective stimuli.     

The effects of three stimulus‐equivalence testing conditions on emergent US geography relations of children diagnosed with autism

Two children with autism were trained in US geography using a match to sample procedure. Different testing procedures commonly used in stimulus equivalence research were compared, including some conditions with reinforcement for responding to enhance motivation. Both children were able to master the trained geography relations and emergent stimulus relations were also noted. All three testing procedures produced similar effects, suggesting that incorporation of procedures to enhance motivation to respond does not invalidate testing in a stimulus equivalence preparation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Liberatory Pedagogies in the Religious Studies Classroom

The author describes the risks and rewards of her use of liberatory pedagogies in a “Feminist and Womanist Ethics and Spirituality” course. In addition to defining liberation pedagogies and providing a brief bibliography, she includes classroom rules and the projects undertaken that contributed to the character and success of the course.     

Development of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations from childhood to elderly age

Spatial reference frames are fundamental to represent the position of objects or places. Although research has reported changes in spatial memory abilities during childhood and elderly age, no study has assessed reference frames processing during the entire lifespan using the same task. Here, we aimed at providing some preliminary data on the capacity to process reference frames in 283 healthy participants from 6 to 89 years of age. A spatial memory task requiring egocentric/allocentric verbal judgments about objects in peri-/extrapersonal space was used. The main goals were: (1) tracing a baseline of the normal process of development of these spatial components; (2) clarifying if reference frames are differently vulnerable to age-related effects. Results showed a symmetry between children of 6–7 years and older people of 80–89 years who were slower and less accurate than all other age groups. As regards processing time, age had a strong effect on the allocentric component, especially in extrapersonal space, with a longer time in 6- to 7-year-old children and 80- to 89-year-old adults. The egocentric component looked less affected by aging. Regarding the level of spatial ability (accuracy), the allocentric ability appeared less sensitive to age-related variations, whereas the egocentric ability progressively improved from 8 years and declined from 60 years. The symmetry in processing time and level of spatial ability is discussed in relation to the development of executive functions and to the structural and functional changes due to incomplete maturation (in youngest children) and deterioration (in oldest adults) of underlying cerebral areas.     

The propositional basis of cue-controlled reward seeking

Two experiments examined the role of propositional and automatic (ideomotor) processes in cue-elicited responding for rewarding outcomes (beer and chocolate). In a training phase, participants earned either chocolate or beer points by making one of two button-press responses. Rewards were indicated by the presentation of chocolate and beer pictures. On test, each trial began with a picture of beer or chocolate, or a blank screen, and choice of the beer versus chocolate response was assessed in the presence of these three pictures. Participants tended to choose the beer and chocolate response in the presence of the beer and chocolate pictures, respectively. In Experiment 1, instructions signalling that the pictures did not indicate which response would be rewarded significantly reduced the priming effect. In Experiment 2, instructions indicating that the pictures signified which response would not be rewarded resulted in a reversed priming effect. Finally, in both experiments, the priming effect correlated with self-reported beliefs that the cues signalled which response was more likely to be reinforced. These results suggest that cue-elicited response selection is mediated by a propositional belief regarding the efficacy of the response–outcome relationship, rather than an automatic ideomotor mechanism.     

When speech enhances Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes: Joint spatial associations of pitch and timbre in nonmusicians

Previous studies have shown that the effect of the Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes (SMARC) depends on various features, such as task conditions (whether pitch height is implicit or explicit), response dimension (horizontal vs. vertical), presence or absence of a reference tone, and former musical training of the participants. In the present study, we investigated the effects of pitch range and timbre: in particular, how timbre (piano vs. vocal) contributes to the horizontal and vertical SMARC effect in nonmusicians under varied pitch range conditions. Nonmusicians performed a timbre judgement task in which the pitch range was either small (6 or 8 semitone steps) or large (9 or 12 semitone steps) in a horizontal and a vertical response setting. For piano sounds, SMARC effects were observed in all conditions. For the vocal sounds, in contrast, SMARC effects depended on pitch range. We concluded that the occurrence of the SMARC effect, especially in horizontal response settings, depends on the interaction of the timbre (vocal and piano) and pitch range if vocal and instrumental sounds are combined in one experiment: the human voice enhances the attention, both to the vocal and the instrumental sounds.     

State of the States: A survey of statutory law,regulations and court rules pertaining to guilty pleas across the United States

A psycholegal research agenda on guilty pleas is in its nascent stage. Multijurisdictional surveys of related law and policy may advance this research agenda by focusing investigators on the specifics of existing policies and motivating cross‐jurisdictional comparisons of diverse policies. We thus conducted a systematic, national survey of statutes, regulations and court rules across the United States pertaining to nine aspects of the guilty plea process, including sentencing differentials, collateral consequences and waiver of rights, which have been identified in existing legal and psycholegal research and commentary. Following a discussion of these issues, including legal concerns and existing research findings, we present the results of our systematic survey. We supplement this review with a non‐systematic sampling of appellate case law. Broadly, there was notable diversity in whether and how jurisdictions approached these issues. We discuss general and specific implications of our findings for future research, emphasizing the importance of data on actual policies and procedures to the design of studies that may contribute to evidence‐based criminal justice policy.