State test‐anxiety,selective attention and concentration in university students

The principal aim of this study was to assess the level of selective attention and mental concentration before exams in a sample of university students and to determine a possible relationship between anxiety and reduction of levels of attention in this circumstance. A total of 403 university students, 176 men and 227 women, aged from 18 to 46 years, participated in the study. Of them, 169 were first‐year undergraduates, 118 were second to fourth‐year undergraduates and 116 were postgraduate Master's degree students. All of them completed the Spanish version of the Spielberger State‐Anxiety Inventory and the D2 Attention Test just before taking an exam. Our results showed that participants with lower levels of anxiety had higher levels of selective attention and mental concentration before the exam. These results specifically indicate that when anxiety levels are very high, this could over‐activate the orientating and alerting functions and to reduce the capacity of attentional control. These processes could have a negative impact on specific attentional processes and become a negative influence on performance in exams.     

Longitudinal trajectories of bicultural identity integration in recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents: Links with mental health and family functioning

This study examined, in a sample of recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents in Miami and Los Angeles, the extent to which bicultural identity integration (BII; involving the ability to synthesise one's heritage and receiving cultural streams and to identify as a member of both cultures) is best understood as a developmental construct that changes over time or as an individual‐difference construct that is largely stable over time. We were also interested in the extent to which these trajectories predicted mental health and family functioning. Recent‐immigrant 9th graders (N = 302) were assessed 6 times from 9th to 12th grade. Latent class growth analyses using the first 5 timepoints identified 2 trajectory classes—one with lower BII scores over time and another with higher BII scores over time. Higher heritage and US identity at baseline predicted membership in the higher BII class. At the 6th study timepoint, lower BII adolescents reported significantly poorer self‐esteem, optimism, prosocial behaviour and family relationships compared with their higher BII counterparts. These findings are discussed in terms of further research on the over‐time trajectory of biculturalism, and on the need to develop interventions to promote BII as a way of facilitating well‐being and positive family functioning.     

Self‐esteem mediates the relationship between spirituality and subjective well‐being in Iran

Self‐esteem appears to play a central role in the spiritual life and ethical behaviour of the typical Iranian. For example, for many Iranians, humankind is believed to be the crown of creation, and each person is believed to be individually valued by God. Previous empirical studies also indicate that in Iran spirituality is positively associated with self‐esteem. On this basis, it was hypothesised that self‐esteem would be one of the mechanisms through which spirituality leads to increased mental well‐being. Mediation analysis showed that self‐esteem was a partial mediator of the spirituality–well‐being relationship. Moreover, results of moderated mediation analysis revealed that this mediation was not significantly moderated by gender, and that the indirect path through self‐esteem was significant in both genders. Implications of the results and their relevance to other western and eastern religions (e.g. Christianity and Buddhism) are discussed.     

Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) understand single invisible displacement?

Previous research suggests that chimpanzees understand single invisible displacement. However, this Piagetian task may be solvable through the use of simple search strategies rather than through mentally representing the past trajectory of an object. Four control conditions were thus administered to two chimpanzees in order to separate associative search strategies from performance based on mental representation. Strategies involving experimenter cue-use, search at the last or first box visited by the displacement device, and search at boxes adjacent to the displacement device were systematically controlled for. Chimpanzees showed no indications of utilizing these simple strategies, suggesting that their capacity to mentally represent single invisible displacements is comparable to that of 18-24-month-old children.     

Intrusive imagery in severe health anxiety: Prevalence, nature and links with memories and maintenance cycles

Increased understanding of the nature and role of intrusive imagery has contributed to the development of effective treatment protocols for some anxiety disorders. However, intrusive imagery in severe health anxiety (hypochondriasis) has been comparatively neglected. Hence, the current study investigates the prevalence, nature and content of intrusive imagery in 55 patients who met DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000) criteria for the diagnosis of hypochondriasis. A semi-structured interview was used to assess the prevalence, nature and possible role of intrusive imagery in this disorder. Over 78% of participants reported experiencing recurrent, distressing intrusive images, the majority (72%) of which either were a memory of an earlier event or were strongly associated with a memory. The images tended to be future orientated, and were reliably categorised into four themes: i) being told ‘the bad news’ that you have a serious/life threatening-illness (6.9%), ii) suffering from a serious or life-threatening illness (34.5%), iii) death and dying due to illness (22.4%) and iv) impact of own death or serious illness on loved ones (36.2%). Participants reported responding to experiencing intrusive images by engaging in avoidance, checking, reassurance seeking, distraction and rumination. Potential treatment implications and links to maintenance cycles are considered.     

Aversive racism and medical interactions with Black patients: A field study

Medical interactions between Black patients and nonBlack physicians are usually less positive and productive than same-race interactions. We investigated the role that physician explicit and implicit biases play in shaping physician and patient reactions in racially discordant medical interactions. We hypothesized that whereas physicians’ explicit bias would predict their own reactions, physicians’ implicit bias, in combination with physician explicit (self-reported) bias, would predict patients’ reactions. Specifically, we predicted that patients would react most negatively when their physician fit the profile of an aversive racist (i.e., low explicit-high implicit bias). The hypothesis about the effects of explicit bias on physicians’ reactions was partially supported. The aversive racism hypothesis received support. Black patients had less positive reactions to medical interactions with physicians relatively low in explicit but relatively high in implicit bias than to interactions with physicians who were either: (a) low in both explicit and implicit bias, or (b) high in both explicit and implicit bias.     

Expanding the study of U.S. religion: Reflections on the state of a subfield

The study of U.S. religion, which dates from the 19th century, expanded its sources, methods, and scope during the last quarter of the 20th century, as specialists offered more inclusive historical narratives. That methodological expansion never went far enough, however, and the impulse toward narrative inclusiveness has been restrained in recent years. The subfield, I argue, now faces a number of challenges that also confront other specializations in the study of religion—contraction, overspecialization, fragmentation, and parochialism. After a focused overview of the subfield’s history, I discuss those challenges. Proposing a tentative response, I suggest that specialists celebrate methodological diversity and theoretical sophistication, encourage comparative and translocative studies, and increase collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and national borders. Finally, I suggest that we expand the subfield’s temporal span and geographical scope and reframe the study of U.S. religion in terms of the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Western Hemisphere.     

A Community Psychology of Men and Masculinity: Historical and Conceptual Review

This paper introduces the special section by presenting a historical and conceptual review of theory and research on the psychology of men and masculinity and then introducing the section’s papers. Men have power because of their gender, but differ in access to power based on other individual characteristics such as social class, income, education, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or physical strength. Men typically have been studied as generic rather than gendered beings in psychology. In contrast, a gendered analysis of men highlights the ways in which men’s experience, masculinity, and behavior contribute to health and social problems and to resources commonly addressed by community psychologists. Our gendered analysis suggests ways of working with men in group, organizational, and community settings to create positive individual and social change. Crucial to this analysis is the paradox that enacting masculinity both privileges and damages men. A second paradox stems from men having power as a group over women while individual men feel powerless or victimized by women as a group. The papers in this volume illustrate key themes of our historical and conceptual review through studies of adolescent and adult men as fathers, patients, partner abusers, support group participants and community members, and through examination of the impact of their gendered identities and behavior on health, well being, and justice.     

Effects of instruction on learners’ ability to generate an effective pathway in the method of loci

One of the most effective mnemonic techniques is the well-known method of loci. Learning and retention, especially of sequentially ordered information, is facilitated by this technique which involves mentally combining salient loci on a well-known path with the material to be learned. There are several variants of this technique that differ in the kind of path that is suggested to the user and it is implicitly assumed that these variants are comparable in effectiveness. The experiments reported in this study were designed to test this assumption. The data of two experiments show that participants who are instructed to generate and apply loci on a route to their work recall significantly more items in a memory test than participants who are instructed to generate and apply loci on a route in their house. These results have practical implications for the instruction and application of the method of loci.     

The influence of forward and backward associative strength on false memories for encoding context

Two experiments examined the effects of forward associative strength (FAS) and backward associative strength (BAS) on false recollection of unstudied lure items. Themes were constructed such that four associates were strongly related to a lure item in terms of FAS or BAS and four associates were weakly related to a lure item in terms of FAS or BAS. Further, when FAS was manipulated, BAS was controlled across strong and weak associates, while FAS was controlled across strong and weak associates when BAS was manipulated. Strong associates were presented in one font while weak associates were presented in a second font. At test, lure items were disproportionately attributed to the source used to present lures' strong associates compared to lures' weak associates, both when BAS was manipulated and when FAS was manipulated. This outcome demonstrates that both BAS and FAS influence lure item false recollection, which favours global-matching models' explanation of false recollection over the explanation offered by spreading activation theories.