Religion as a cultural phenomenon, and national mortality rates from heart disease.

An hypothesis is developed which proposes that mortality rates from heart disease are a function of a nation's dominant religious tradition, with predominantly Catholic countries having lower rates than the more Protestant countries. The hypothesis was tested on data from 24 economically developed Western countries. A significant inverse relationship of -0.588 was found between the proportion of Catholics in the 24 nations and mortality rates from heart disease, which supports the hypothesis.     

Depression and decision-making among intravenous drug users

Two short scales, the TCU Depression Scale and the TCU Decision-making Scale, were psychometrically evaluated in a sample of 145 intravenous drug users. Coefficient alpha reliabilities were .78 for the 6-item TCU Depression Scale and .77 for the 9-item TCU Decision-making Scale. Concurrent validity of the former scale was assessed by correlating scores with those on the Beck Depression Inventory, r = .75. Based on the Beck Depression Inventory Clinical cutoff scores, 83% of the sample showed some depression, with 23% severely depressed, 39% moderately depressed, and 21% mildly depressed. Individuals scoring higher on depression on both tests tended to score lower on decision-making. Significant demographic associations of age, gender, education, and race-ethnicity were found for the depression and decision-making scales. More depression was noted for women, those younger, white, and having less education. Older and more educated intravenous drug users tended to score higher on decision-making. Validity for the depression and decision-making scales was assessed by examining correlations with behaviors. Significant positive correlations were found between depression scores and intravenous use of cocaine only, heroin and cocaine combined, and heroin only. Also, intravenous use of cocaine only and of cocaine and heroin combined were negatively related to decision-making. AIDS sex-risky behavior was positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated with decision-making.     

Aggression,sex role measures,and Kohut's psychology of the self

Recent controversies concerning the relationship between aggression and sex role development were evaluated in light of Heinz Kohut's psychoanalytic psychology of the self. Masculinity roughly corresponded to grandiose elements of Kohut's bipolar self while femininity was linked to its idealizing sector. As predicted, self-reported aggressiveness reflected an immature grandiosity; and associations of assertiveness with both masculine and grandiose personality styles supported Kohut's claim that adjustment can evolve out of more aggressive forms of self-functioning. Socially desirable forms of femininity had the advantage of being incompatible with aggressiveness, but they also failed to promote assertiveness. Androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated sex roles displayed largely predictable parallels with synthetic, internal, external, and archaic narcissistic styles. As in previous research, therefore, Kohut's theory proved useful in examining the mental health implications of traditional sex roles.Data reported in this project were included in the master's thesis of the first author.     

Object-based visual selective attention and perceptual organization

We report the results of four experiments that were conducted to examine both the representations that provide candidate entities available for object-based attentional selection and the influence of bottom-up factors (i.e., geometric and surface characteristics of objects) and top-down factors (i.e., context and expectancies) on the selection process. Subjects performed the same task in each of the experiments. They were asked to determine whether two target properties, a bent end and an open end of a wrench, appeared in a brief display of two wrenches. In each experiment, the target properties could occur on a single wrench or one property could occur on each of two wrenches. The question of central interest was whether a same-object effect (faster and/or more accurate performance when the target properties appeared on one vs. two wrenches) would be observed in different experimental conditions. Several interesting results were obtained. First, depending on the geometric (i.e., concave discontinuities on object contours) and surface characteristics (i.e., homogeneous regions of color and texture) of the stimuli, attention was preferentially directed to one of three representational levels, as indicated by the presence or absence of the same-object effect. Second, although geometric and surface characteristics defined the candidate objects available for attentional selection, top-down factors were quite influential in determining which representational level would be selected. Third, the results suggest that uniform connectedness plays an important role in defining the entities available for attention selection. These results are discussed in terms of the manner in which attention selects objects in the visual environment.     

A Survey of Behavior Analysis and Behavioral Consultation Courses in School Psychology: Implications for Training School Psychologists

All 216 doctoral and specialist level school psychology training programs were mailed a seven question survey to determine how much behavioral consultation and behavior analysis course work school psychology students are offered. One hundred and twenty-eight surveys were returned, yielding a return rate of 58.26%. The results indicated that almost all programs offer didactic courses in consultation (98.79%) and behavior analysis/behavior modification (91.52%). The percentage of practicum devoted to behavioral consultation and behavior analysis/modification was considerably less (about 25% for each) than other subject areas. The results are discussed within the context of training needed to meet the needs of practitioners in the areas of behavioral consultation and behavior analysis/behavior modification.     

Contingency and its two indices within conditional probability analysis

FOUR THEORETICAL BASES FOR DETECTING A CONTINGENCY BETWEEN BEHAVIOR AND CONSEQUENT STIMULI ARE CONSIDERED: contiguity, correlation, conditional probability, and logical implication. It is argued that conditional probability analysis is statistically the most powerful of these options, in part due to its provision of two indices of contingency: a forward time probability that reinforcement follows behavior and a backward time probability that behavior precedes reinforcement. Evidence is cited that both indices appear to bear on the learning of a variety of animals, although they are unequally salient to human adults and to artificial neural networks designed to solve time-series functions. It is hypothesized that humans may acquire the capacity to detect contingency in the progressive sequence: contiguity, correlation, forward time conditional probability, backward time conditional probability, and ultimately logical implication.     

Predicting Psychiatric Symptomatology with the Defense Style Questionnaire-40

The relationship between specific defense styles and symptom-related responses was investigated in a large sample of university students. In general, immature defenses were the major predictors of the symptom patterns measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory. In particular, combinations of projection, displacement, autistic fantasy, somatization, and acting out were the strongest predictors of psychopathology. Projection was a major predictor of psychopathology in males, whereas displacement was the major predictor for females. Several similarities and differences in the relationship between defense styles and different disorders were revealed.;or timing of both psychological and hormonal responses to 2 given volumes of training.     

Self‐reported emotional intelligence: Construct similarity and functional dissimilarity of higher‐order processing in Iran and the United States

This study employed the Trait Meta‐Mood Scale (TMMS) to assess self‐reported emotional intelligence cross‐culturally as an input (attention to emotions), process (clarity of emotions), and output (repair of emotions) information‐processing system. Iranian (N = 231) and American (N = 220) university students responded to the TMMS along with measures of alexithymia, public and private self‐consciousness, depression, anxiety, self‐esteem, and perceived stress. Negative correlations with alexithymia and expected linkages with all other variables documented the validity of the TMMS in both cultures. Most of the other measures correlated similarly in the two samples. However, private and public self‐consciousness displayed a stronger positive association in Iran. These two scales were also more predictive of adjustment in Iran and of maladjustment in the United States. This difference perhaps reflected a poorer integration of the two dimensions of self‐consciousness within a presumably more individualistic American society. Confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance procedures revealed cross‐cultural similarities in the fit of an a priori higher‐order factor structure to the obtained data, but subsequent structural equation modelling techniques uncovered cross‐cultural dissimilarities in the actual processing of emotional information. Specifically, the higher‐order factors of emotional intelligence were similar, but the interrelationships among those higher‐order factors were not. As expected, Iranians displayed positive relationships among the input, processing, and output activities of the information‐processing model. For the Americans, however, greater input was associated with diminished processing and output. This unanticipated relative contrast seemed congruent with speculation that the historical American emphasis on the self and individualism promotes positive, optimistic thinking. Overall, these data most importantly suggested that subtle cultural differences might exist in the processing of emotional information.