The Role of Small and Medium-Sized African-American Churches in Promoting Healthy Life Styles

The issues of poor health care, poverty, crime, and HIV infection make it more difficult for minority communities to combat substance abuse and other diseases that are prevalent in the African-American community. Faith communities in general, and African-American churches in particular, are a largely untapped, but potent, resource to reduce the toll of substance abuse and other health issues. Information about ministers' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding leading health indicators, the frequency with which they discuss these issues from the pulpit, and organizational readiness to develop and implement interventions can be the foundation of clergy training and health intervention efforts.     

Identifying the mechanisms underpinning recognition of structured sequences of action

We present three experiments to identify the specific information sources that skilled participants use to make recognition judgements when presented with dynamic, structured stimuli. A group of less skilled participants acted as controls. In all experiments, participants were presented with filmed stimuli containing structured action sequences. In a subsequent recognition phase, participants were presented with new and previously seen stimuli and were required to make judgements as to whether or not each sequence had been presented earlier (or were edited versions of earlier sequences). In Experiment 1, skilled participants demonstrated superior sensitivity in recognition when viewing dynamic clips compared with static images and clips where the frames were presented in a nonsequential, randomized manner, implicating the importance of motion information when identifying familiar or unfamiliar sequences. In Experiment 2, we presented normal and mirror-reversed sequences in order to distort access to absolute motion information. Skilled participants demonstrated superior recognition sensitivity, but no significant differences were observed across viewing conditions, leading to the suggestion that skilled participants are more likely to extract relative rather than absolute motion when making such judgements. In Experiment 3, we manipulated relative motion information by occluding several display features for the duration of each film sequence. A significant decrement in performance was reported when centrally located features were occluded compared to those located in more peripheral positions. Findings indicate that skilled participants are particularly sensitive to relative motion information when attempting to identify familiarity in dynamic, visual displays involving interaction between numerous features.     

Measuring Mental Wellbeing Among Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Instruments

Globally, promoting mental wellbeing among adolescents is of great public health and social significance. However, less is known about advances in measures of mental wellbeing, relevant for use in mental health interventions, which are age-appropriate and acceptable for use among adolescents. Comprehensive assessment includes multiple aspects of mental wellbeing, as well as positive indicators of feeling and functioning. This review used systematic review methods, guided by PRISMA, to identify and assess comprehensive instruments in terms of their content, conceptual relevance for youth, and responsiveness to change. Ryan and Deci’s framework for mental wellbeing, grounded in hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives, was applied to assess the preponderance of feeling and functioning items for each instrument. The review identified 11 instruments that fit specified inclusion criteria. Only four of the scales were developed for adolescents. Though the scales varied in their preponderance of items, all scales encompassed at least one indicator of both feeling and functioning. Findings emphasize the importance of validating adult-developed instruments for youth and ensuring the instrument’s cultural and conceptual relevance within groups of adolescents. As promoting mental wellbeing becomes critical to the field of practice, practitioners need access to relevant and acceptable measures.     

Attributions in a Spiritual Healing Context: An Archival Analysis of a 1920s Healing Movement

Research on religious attributions has been limited by a preoccupation with disentangling “religious” from “naturalistic” attributions and a failure to capture the attributions that people make in response to meaningful events. Thirty years of research has shown that even under optimum conditions religious attributions are rare compared to naturalistic ones. This research draws on unique archival materials comprising letters written to the Panacea Society containing self‐reported effects of a spiritual healing treatment based on water‐taking practices. This analysis examined attributions over time among a sample of letter writers (N = 19) from the 1920s using the Leeds Attributional Coding System to examine patterns of attributions that correspondents made in response to improvement and worsening of health outcomes. In line with previous research, religious attributions were more common for positive outcomes than negative outcomes. Contrary to previous research, religious attributions accounted for the majority of attributions made compared with nonreligious attributions. We discuss the implications for future research in studying attributions in real‐life meaningful settings and in expanding the repertoire of attributions to include religious ritual and community.     

The integrity of Web-delivered experiments: can you trust the data?

Data from Web-delivered experiments conducted in browsers by remote users of PsychExperiments, a public on-line psychology laboratory, reveal experiment effects that mirror lab-based findings, even for experiments that require nearly millisecond accuracy of displays and responses. Textbook results are obtained not just for within-subjects effects, but for between-subjects effects as well. These results suggest that existing technology is adequate to permit Web delivery of many cognitive and social psychological experiments and that the added noise created by having participants in different settings using different computers is easily compensated for by the sample sizes achievable with Web delivery.     

Identification with arts‐based groups improves mental wellbeing in adults with chronic mental health conditions

People experiencing chronic mental health conditions (CMHC) often report feeling socially marginalised. There is emerging evidence that social and mental wellbeing can be enhanced through participation in arts‐based programmes. In this paper, a social identity theoretical approach was applied to explore how participation in the arts may improve mental health in a longitudinal study. A one‐year prospective study of 34 choir members and 25 creative writing group members (M_age = 46, 51% female) with CMHC, involved three assessments of participants’ group identification and mental wellbeing, measured by the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. The programmes were community‐based and facilitated by arts professionals. Multilevel modelling analyses demonstrated that participants’ mental wellbeing significantly improved over time. Greater identification with their arts‐based group (ABG) was significantly related to an increased rate of improvement in mental wellbeing. The trajectory of improvement in mental wellbeing did not differ between participants partaking in the choir or creative writing group. This study demonstrates that participation in ABGs can be effective in improving mental wellbeing in adults with chronic mental health problems, particularly for those who strongly identify with the group. This study supports ABG participation as an accessible component of mental health services.     

Mary Wollstonecraft on Motherhood and Political Participation: An Overlooked Insight into Women's Subordination

Scholars consider Mary Wollstonecraft an early feminist political theorist for two reasons: (1) her explicit commitment to educational equality, and (2) her implicit suggestion that the private‐sphere role of motherhood holds political import. My reading of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman uses Wollstonecraft's works and draws upon recent claims made by Sandrine Bergès in The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft to connect these points: educated women are better at performing motherly duties and, therefore, of greater benefit to society. Although many scholars have read Wollstonecraft's arguments for educational equality as a starting point for greater equality, Bergès does not. In this article, I further Bergès's claims and argue that Wollstonecraft's project is limited and likely to reinforce inequality between the sexes. Specifically, I show that Wollstonecraft's educational reforms incentivize women to become nothing more than highly educated housewives. In the process of fulfilling their social and political duty to instill public spirit and private virtue in future citizens, women are re‐entrenched in domestic affairs instead of being freed for public pursuits. This realization, I contend, should cause us to be wary of panaceas for women's subordination that rest on increasing their education.     

Stimulus control and associative learning.

Interest in operant research on stimulus control has declined at the same time that much interest has burgeoned in nonoperant areas. Several examples of this shift toward traditional learning theory are considered, all of which have sponsored theoretical approaches that attempt to characterize the underlying associative units. These theoretical approaches are defended on the grounds that they have generated a deeper understanding of a variety of often puzzling phenomena. My projection is that future research will be determined even more strongly by theories about the structure of associations. Particular issues for which such discussion will have major impact include (1) whether conditional stimulus control is qualitatively different than simpler forms of stimulus control, (2) whether stimulus control is organized hierarchically, and (3) the origin of categories of stimulus equivalence.