An Investigation of Religion and Spirituality of Sexual Minorities in the United States: Exploring Perceptions,Intrinsic Religiosity,and Outness to Religious Communities

We investigated how sexual minority participants in the United States (N = 217; M age = 36.36 years) viewed organized religion and their relationships with a higher power. In addition, we examined the associations between levels of outness in religious communities, internalized heterosexism (IH), intrinsic religiosity, and depression. Open-ended responses revealed that views of organized religion fell into three categories—negative (57.9%), positive (9.1%), and ambivalent (33%)—and participants reported a variety of relationships to a higher power—existing relationship (61.5%), no relationship (19%), fractured relationship (4.6%), and some who felt unsure (10.8%). Participants with greater outness to a religious community reported less IH and higher intrinsic religiosity. Also, outness to a religious community moderated the association between IH and depression, such that there was not a significant association between IH and depression for individuals with low levels of outness. However, at average to high levels of outness, there was a significant association between IH and depression.     

A Commentary on Commercial Genetic Testing and the Future of the Genetic Counseling Profession

Commercial genetic testing laboratories are increasingly employing genetic counselors. As a result, the role of these or many genetic counselors is shifting from primarily direct patient counseling in clinics and hospitals to more laboratory-centered activities that involve case coordination, customer liaison, variant classification, marketing, and sales. Given the importance of these commercial entities to the genetic counseling profession, this commentary examines the current financial situation of four publicly traded, genetic testing companies. It also explores how the various roles of genetic counselors are likely to be affected by the financial pressures these companies face.     

Testing the dimensional comparison theory: When do students prefer dimensional comparisons to social and temporal comparisons?

Students compare their achievement in a subject with their classmates’ achievements (social comparison), their own prior achievements (temporal comparison), and their achievements in other subjects (dimensional comparison), which can each be better (upward comparison), equal (lateral comparison), or worse (downward comparison). Prior research has investigated the impact of different comparison motivations on the prevalence of social and temporal comparisons, but no study has examined the same for dimensional comparisons yet. The present study closes this gap: A total of 605 German high school students were presented with four situations, in which a fictitious student receives the same objective feedback for an exam in a certain subject, but is motivated either to evaluate, to enhance, to improve, or to differentiate himself. For each comparison motivation, the participants judged how likely the fictitious student was to draw dimensional, social, and temporal upward, lateral, and downward comparisons. As a central result, dimensional comparisons in all directions had the highest prevalences under the self-differentiation motivation. In contrast, the prevalences of dimensional comparisons were relatively low under the other three motivations. This finding complements the recently developed dimensional comparison theory. For the first time, we could empirically show that dimensional comparisons primarily serve self-differentiation motivations.     

Monitor yourself! Deficient error-related brain activity predicts real-life self-control failures

Despite their immense relevance, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying real-life self-control failures (SCFs) are insufficiently understood. Whereas previous studies have shown that SCFs were associated with decreased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG; a region involved in cognitive control), here we consider the possibility that the reduced implementation of cognitive control in individuals with low self-control may be due to impaired performance monitoring. Following a brain-as-predictor approach, we combined experience sampling of daily SCFs with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a Stroop task. In our sample of 118 participants, proneness to SCF was reliably predicted by low error-related activation of a performance-monitoring network (comprising anterior mid-cingulate cortex, presupplementary motor area, and anterior insula), low posterror rIFG activation, and reduced posterror slowing. Remarkably, these neural and behavioral measures predicted variability in SCFs beyond what was predicted by self-reported trait self-control. These results suggest that real-life SCFs may result from deficient performance monitoring, leading to reduced recruitment of cognitive control after responses that conflict with superordinate goals.     

Trajectories of Suicidal Ideation among Adolescents Following Psychiatric Hospitalization

Suicidal ideation (SI) is a common presenting problem for psychiatric hospitalizations in adolescents and often persists following discharge. This study examines whether distinct trajectories of SI could be delineated following hospitalization and the risk factors most strongly related to these trajectories. Adolescents (N = 104; 76 females; 28 males) were followed for 6 months after discharge from inpatient or partial hospitalization. Semi-parametric group modeling identified SI trajectory group membership. In all, 33.7% of adolescents fell in a Subclinical SI group, 43.3% in a Declining SI group, and 23.1% in a Chronic SI group. Multinomial logistic regression was utilized to examine baseline predictors of group membership. Emotion dysregulation differentiated Chronic SI from Declining SI. In multivariate analyses, adolescents endorsing greater non-acceptance of emotional responses (OR =1.18) and more limited access to emotion regulation strategies (OR =1.12) were more likely to belong to the Chronic SI than Declining SI trajectory. Those in the Chronic SI group also had the greatest number of suicide attempts and hospitalizations in the 6 months post-discharge. These results suggest that clinicians should closely monitor and address emotion dysregulation when assessing suicide risk. Greater dysregulation may require more intensive services in order to have an effect on chronic SI.     

Rapid automatized naming in children referred for evaluation of heterogeneous learning problems: how specific are naming speed deficits to reading disability?

Because the Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) test reliably predicts reading skill, it is typically viewed as a diagnostic indicator of risk for reading disability (RD). Since most of the work on naming speed has been undertaken within the framework of reading research, however, the extent to which poor RAN is specifically associated with RD or with learning impairment (LI) in general is uncertain. We tested the hypothesis that slow naming speed is specific to RD. Participants were 188 children (ages 7 to 11) referred for evaluation of learning problems. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the utility of the RAN task for classifying children in diagnostic groups. RAN was an excellent tool for detecting risk for learning problems in general, but it was much less effective at distinguishing LI children with and without RD from each other.