Attachment,religiousness, and distress among the religious and spiritual: links between religious syncretism and compensation

Using the Adult Attachment Interview, we explored differences in attachment, distress, and religiousness among groups of traditionally religious, New Age spiritual, and religiously syncretistic (high on both) participants (Ps) (N?=?75). Religiously syncretistic Ps showed a preponderance of insecure attachment and were raised by non-religious parents, who were estimated as relatively insensitive. Moreover, religiously syncretistic Ps perceived a personal relationship with God and had experienced increased religiousness/spirituality during difficult life periods, but did not suffer elevated distress. New Agers often mirrored the religiously syncretistic, but had a more even secure–insecure attachment distribution, typically did not perceive a personal relationship with God, and did suffer elevated distress. Traditionally religious Ps were low on distress and raised by religious parents, estimated as relatively sensitive. We conclude that religious syncretism may often express religion/spirituality as compensation. Finally, we speculate that a perceived relationship with God may attenuate distress among those at risk.     

The Role of Long-Term Memory in Digit–Symbol Test Performance in Young and Older Adults

ABSTRACT

The psychological functions assessed by substitution tests, and the age-related performance decline, are not well understood. Here several aspects of long-term memory were manipulated across younger and older adults. A 45-page Digit–Symbol test was employed. Each page contained a 9-item digit symbol code-table and 9 response items. There were 9 study conditions with each condition deployed across 5 pages, or trials, of the test. The conditions were formed by crossing two within-subjects factors, each with 3 levels. The first factor, Digit Order, pertained to having the code table digits in numerical order vs. a pseudo-random order fixed across trials vs. a pseudo-random order that varied across trials. The second factor, Symbol Pairing, pertained to having a fixed digit–symbol pairing across trials vs. having a varying digit–symbol pairing across trials vs. having a novel set of 9 symbols introduced on each of the 5 trials. Including the additional factor, Age, resulted in a 2 × 3 × 3 mixed randomised block design. The older group was slowed, F(1, 22) = 17.267, p < .001, and overall-performance was poorer when the digits were arranged non-numerically, F(1,44) = 55.403, p < .001. An Age by Symbol–Order interaction indicated that use of novel symbols disadvantaged only the older participants, F(1, 44) = 6.577, p = .014. While there was no evidence that incidental paired-associate learning or spatial memory affect digit–symbol performance, symbol familiarity may be important to digit symbol test completion in older adults. The benefit of ordinally arranged digits in the coding table highlights a fundamental process difference between Digit–Symbol and Symbol–Digit test formats.     

Aging and Working Memory Inside and Outside the Focus of Attention: Dissociations of Availability and Accessibility

ABSTRACT

Two experiments used the N-Back task to test for age differences in working memory inside and outside the focus of attention. Manipulations of the difficulty of item-context binding (Experiment 1) and of stimulus feature binding (Experiment 2) were used to create conditions that varied in their demand on working memory, with the expectation that greater demand might increase age differences in focus-switching costs and the search rate outside the focus of attention. Results showed, however, that although age differences were evident in measures of overall speed and accuracy, and the manipulations significantly affected response times and accuracy in the expected direction, the experimental manipulations had no impact on age differences. Findings instead pointed to age-related reductions in accuracy but not speed of focus-switching and search outside the focus of attention. Thus, age-related deficits appear to involve the availability of representations in working memory, but not their accessibility.     

Intelligence and religiosity: Within families and over time

We study the effect of intelligence (General Mental Ability) on religiosity using research designs that allow for stronger causal inferences compared to previous research in this area. First, we examine how between-siblings differences in intelligence are related to differences in their religiosity. Second, we examine how intelligence is related to changes in religiosity over time. The results of both designs suggest that intelligence has a strong negative effect on religiosity. In addition, our results also suggest that intelligence interacts with age in determining religiosity: the more intelligent the person, the stronger the negative effect of age on religiosity.     

A study of the dynamics of sex differences in adulthood

Studies of gender differences using primarily young individuals show that males, on average, perform better than females in physical activities but worse than females on tests of verbal abilities. There is however a controversy about the existence of these sex differences in adulthood. Our study used 1271 participants from four cultural backgrounds (Chinese, multi‐generation Canadians, Indu‐Canadians, and European‐Canadians) divided in five age groups. We measured sex differences in the time required for participants to complete a lexical task experiment, and also assessed their verbal tempo and physical endurance using a validated temperament test (Structure of Temperament Questionnaire). We found a significant female advantage in time on the lexical task and on the temperament scale of social–verbal tempo, and a male advantage on the temperament scale of physical endurance. These sex differences, however, were more pronounced in young age groups (17–24), fading in older groups. This “middle age–middle sex” phenomenon suggests that sex differences in these two types of abilities observed in younger groups might be “a matter of age,” and should not be attributed to gender in general. A one‐dimensional approach to sex differences (common in meta‐analytic studies) therefore overlooks a possible interaction of sex differences with age.     

Counter-Cultural Egalitarianism: a comparative analysis of New Age and other 'alternative' communities

This paper makes a plea for examining New Religious Movements (NRMs), including the New Age Movement, in terms of contrasting modes of social organisation. NRMs share such contrasting modes with other societies well outside the Western industrial-capitalist world, notably hunting and gathering societies. This means that theoretical discussion relating to the social forms of hunter-gatherers can enlighten the social forms of NRMs. The paper demonstrates the ethnographic similarities between NRMS and hunter-gatherers in relation to the social dimensions of egalitarianism and hierarchy. Egalitarianism as a counter-cultural strategy of opposition is then explicated according to Boehm's idea of reverse dominance. Hierarchy, among NRMs organised quite differently from ‘mainstream’ hierarchy, is meanwhile explicated in terms of distinctive space-time circumstances of social aggregation where people are constricted on limited areas of territory. In counter-cultural strategies, it is concluded, egalitarianism amounts to a ‘witnessing’ opposition, while hierarchy amounts to a ‘symbolic’ opposition.     

Age of acquisition ratings score better on criterion validity than frequency trajectory or ratings “corrected” for frequency

From the very first studies on the effect of age of acquisition (AoA) on word processing, researchers have validated their AoA ratings by correlating them with other, more objective indices of the age at which children know words. Still, the ratings have been questioned, and alternative measures have been proposed. Two of these are differences in word frequency between language directed at young children and language directed at older children (frequency trajectory) and AoA ratings corrected for word frequency. Surprisingly, the criterion validity of these alternative measures has never been established, partly because one of the validation criteria (the age at which children are able to name pictures) has been questioned. In the present study, four databases are used that aimed to establish the order of English word acquisition, going from the very first words learned to words taught in secondary education. The criteria for word knowledge included word production, multiple-choice questions about the meaning of the words, and teacher judgments about when words should be taught in the school curriculum. For all databases, the frequency trajectory correlated substantially less with the criterion than AoA ratings. For all but one, the same was true for AoA ratings “corrected” for other variables. On the basis of these findings, researchers should be cautious interpreting null effects with the “improved” variables as evidence against a genuine AoA effect.     

Une base de l’émotionalité (valence,arousal, catégories) de 1286 mots français selon l’âge (EMA)

Introduction/aim

Several studies have shown that the effects of word emotionality on its processing depend on both its valence and its arousal. Such effects also varied with age. However, in French, there is no norm providing both valence and arousal estimates for words not directly referring to an emotion. That was the aim of this study. Moreover, the base of word emotionality according to age (EMA) we propose here provides categorization for each word in basic emotional subcategories.

Age and schooling effects on early literacy and phoneme awareness

Previous research on age and schooling effects is largely restricted to studies of children who begin formal schooling at 6 years of age, and the measures of phoneme awareness used have typically lacked sensitivity for beginning readers. Our study addresses these issues by testing 4 to 6 year-olds (first 2 years of formal schooling in the United Kingdom) on a sensitive dynamic measure of phoneme awareness and tests of early literacy. There were significant effects of both age and schooling on the dynamic measure of phoneme awareness, word reading, spelling, and letter name knowledge, but there were no significant Age × Time interactions. This indicates that older children within this age group generally outperform their younger classmates (although they do not make faster progress) and that this advantage is developed prior to the start of school.