Couples of Mixed HIV Status

Abstract

As individuals with HIV are living longer due to earlier diagnosis and advances in treatment, they are turning their attention to living with HIV/AIDS. Based on a study (n = 82) that explored how HIV may affect the intimacy of long-term couples of mixed HIV status, psychosocial issues are identified. Key findings include the identification of six themes. They are: (1) fear of HIV transmission, (2) HIV and health status, (3) shifts in emotional intimacy, (4) assumption of care-giver and patient roles, (5) reproductive issues, and (6) a perceived sense of power inequity present between the genders and between HIV positive and HIV negative partners. Implications for the practitioner are discussed.     

Scene layout from ground contact,occlusion, and motion parallax

An important factor in determining perceived scene layout is optical contact between objects and the ground surface (“ground contact”). The relation between ground contact and occlusion was investigated in four experiments with stationary and motion parallax scenes containing a pole that occluded or was occluded by one or more cylinders. Some judgements were inconsistent with occlusion in stationary scenes, but judgements were consistent with occlusion in motion parallax scenes. When the range of object positions consistent with occlusion did not include the positions specified by ground contract or by motion parallax, the ground contact and motion parallax information still had a quantitative effect on the perceived position of the object within the range consistent with occlusion. These results demonstrate a cooperative interaction between ground contact, occlusion, and motion parallax in determining perceived layout in 3-D scenes.     

How people think “if only …” about reasons for actions

When people think about how a situation might have turned out differently, they tend to imagine counterfactual alternatives to their actions. We report the results of three experiments which show that people imagine alternatives to actions differently when they know about a reason for the action. The first experiment (n = 36) compared reason – action sequences to cause – effect sequences. It showed that people do not imagine alternatives to reasons in the way they imagine alternatives to causes: they imagine an alternative to an action more than an effect, and to a cause more than a reason. The second experiment (n = 214) and the third experiment (n = 190) both show that different sorts of reasons have different sorts of effects on how people imagine alternatives to actions. People imagine an alternative to an action (the protagonist went to a ball) less often when they know the reason for the action was an obligation (he had to participate in fundraising) compared to when they know about a weaker reason (he wanted to meet a famous violinist) or no reason. The second experiment shows the effect for a social obligation and the third experiment replicates and extends it to a health obligation. We interpret the results in terms of the possibilities that people keep in mind about actions and their reasons.     

Religious coping,stigma, and psychological functioning among HIV-positive African American women

The present study examined the role of religious coping in psychological distress and adjustment both cross-sectionally and longitudinally among 141 HIV-positive African American women. Cross-sectional analyses showed that negative religious coping was associated with poorer mental health and functioning, and greater perceptions of stigma and discrimination. Longitudinal analyses revealed that greater negative religious coping at baseline significantly predicted greater changes in mental health in a negative direction 12 months later. Positive religious coping was not associated with any measures of psychological well-being, nor did it predict any mental health outcomes at 12 months. However, participants who experienced high levels of HIV-related stigma and reported high levels of positive religious coping were less depressed than those who reported lower levels of positive religious coping. These results suggest that for this population, negative religious coping was a more salient determinant of psychological distress than positive religious coping was of psychological health.     

Community Psychology: The Case of Cameroon

Community psychology in Cameroon is a budding discipline even its practice, given the scarcity of professionals with specialised training. However, this paper highlights public and private community-oriented projects that resonate with the principles of community psychology. The demands are high with the impact of globalisation, corruption, poverty and HIV/AIDS. Yet it is evident that professional responses to these demands will be slow because even the teaching, research and use of the main discipline of psychology face major problems, blocking its expansion and use. There is the need for strong academic and professional leadership that is usually blocked by tribalism, weakness in the pedagogy of programmes and underdevelopment and unawareness of social problems including the absence of structures for strengthening institutional capacity. These explain why only rudimentary psychological services exist for Cameroonians. There is therefore an urgent need for the rapid formalisation of community psychology in teaching, research and service for alleviating people's distress in Cameroon.     

Neural temporal dynamics of contingency judgement

The present study captures the dynamics of neural processing across positively contingent, negatively contingent, and noncontingent relations. In the setting of a hypothetical chat room conversation, participants rated the contingency of emotional response between two individuals. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were time-locked to the onset of each emotional event. Although each event alone was ambiguous regarding contingency, its neural response was characteristic of the overall contingent relation and the subsequent contingency rating. Very early displays of contingency modified the ERP anterior N1 (AN1) component amplitude. In contrast, the ERP selection negativity (SN) component amplitude seemed to be more sensitive to display properties than contingency. Our results point to the recruitment of early attentional processes for contingency judgement and highlight the efficiency of statistical information processing.     

"The Plague Of Blood": HIV/AIDS and Ethics of the Global Health–Care Challenge

In this essay I explore the heuristic value of the concept of ethics of complexity, chaos, and contingency by applying its framework to the analysis of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Everyday human moral choices are outcomes of a moral impulse, and such an impulse is grounded in moral competence shaped by moral literacy. This literacy is constructed on the basis of a body of knowledge of culture, social context, environment, and the universe. It also includes the knowledge of religions and religious and secular ethical codes. I also distinguish between the social and cultural aspects of ethical systems. Both societies and cultures provide resources and constraints for the development of literacy and competence. An intentionally developed multifaith and multidisciplinary coalition may help us move away from various forms of social speciation and toward sociological mindfulness. This could help us remake the world into one that has more courage to care.     

How Ethical is Islamic Banking in the Light of the Objectives of Islamic Law?

Islamic banking is based on moral foundations that make it distinct from conventional banking. Some argue that because of its foundation in Islam, Islamic banking may represent a more morally appealing alternative. Yet, evidence shows that this is not the case. Indeed, the current practice of Islamic banking has not been able to achieve its goals which are based on Islam's moral values: to enhance justice, equitability, and social well‐being. This essay examines the extent to which Islamic banking is ethical and concludes that the practice of the industry does not seem to be de facto ethical from the Islamic perspective of ethical values. It only consists in trading the same instruments of conventional banks without genuinely enforcing Islam's ethical vision. The practice of Islamic banking misrepresents Islam and does not contribute to solving social problems. The interaction between maqasid al‐shari?a (objectives of Islamic law) and qiyās (deductive analogy) provides a supplementary tool for interpreting the failure of the prior in terms of the practical misuse of the latter by Islamic banks. This essay provides an interpretive approach to the current debate about why Islamic banking has failed and suggests ways to move cautiously in the future.     

MARTIN RÁZUS: Literary and Philosophical Reflections on Morality1

Martin Rázus (1888–1937) was one of the most important personalities of Slovak Lutheran social, political, cultural, literary, and intellectual life during the first half of the twentieth century. First, I examine the picture of Slovak rural morality portrayed in the works of Rázus, particularly his 1929 novel Svety[Worlds], in which Rázus presents the morality of the people in the Slovak countryside from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the 1920s. Second, as the ethical and moral issues of life are crucial topics of Rázus's philosophical and ethical reasoning, I examine Rázus's ethical treatise Argumenty[Arguments] (1932), in which he develops, explains, and philosophically justifies many of his ideas concerning the ethics and morality expressed in his literary works and political and religious essays.