Personality and religion: Applying cattell’s model among secondary school pupils

A sample of 1,070 secondary school pupils between the ages of eleven and eighteen years completed the High School Personality Questionnaire alongside the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity. The data demonstrate that religiosity is significantly correlated with five of the fourteen personality factors and with two of the four second-order factors. A positive attitude toward Christianity is associated with high scores on factor G (conformity), factor I (tendermindedness) and factor Q3 (self discipline), and low scores on factor E (submissiveness), factor F (sobriety), second-order factor of extraversion (indicating a relationship with introversion), and second-order factor of tough poise (indicating a relationship with emotionality).     

Working Memory and Spoken Language Comprehension in Young Children

This study has two theoretical dimensions: (a) to explore which components of Baddeley's (1986) working memory model are associated with children's spoken language comprehension, and (b) to compare the extent to which measures of the components of this fractionated model and an index of a unitary model (listening span) are able to predict individual differences in spoken language comprehension. Correlational analyses revealed that within a group of 66 4– and 5-year-old children both listening span and phonological memory, but not visuospatial memory, were associated with vocabulary knowledge and spoken language comprehension. However, of the proposed measures of central executive function—dual task coordination, sustained attention, verbal fluency—only the latter was related to children's ability to understand spoken language. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that variance in vocabulary knowledge was best explained by phonological memory skills, whereas individual differences in spoken language comprehension exhibited unique and independent associations with verbal fluency.     

Quakerism: A Faith for Introverts?

Three samples of 166 practicing Quakers, 241 practicing Anglicans, and 172 practicing Catholics completed the extraversion scale of the abbreviated Revised Personality Questionnaire. The data demonstrate that Quakers tend to be more introverted than the other two denominational groups.     

Additive effects of inhibiting attention to objects and locations in three-dimensional displays

One of the processes thought to underlie visual selection works by biasing attention away from either recently examined locations or objects. The extent of this “inhibition” is greatest when the inhibited object and the inhibited location coincide. In Experiment 1, rectangles are presented stereoscopically at different depths but at similar positions horizontally and vertically. Here, any inhibition should be based solely on a spatial code, as the objects, the rectangles are clearly separate objects. In Experiment 2, the corners of the rectangles are joined to produce a single cuboid that extends in depth space. Now inhibition based on both spatial and object codes should be seen because even when on different depth planes the cue and target are associated with the same object. Consistent with our understanding of the additive effects of inhibition of space and object codes, the extent of inhibition in the second study is almost double that of the first. The results further suggest that space-based inhibition operates within a two-dimensional representation while object-based inhibition utilizes a three-dimensional representation.     

Influence of hand position on the near effect in 3-D attention

Voluntary reorienting of attention in real depth situations is characterized by an attentional bias to locations nearer the viewer once attention is deployed to a spatially cued object in depth. Previously, this effect (initially referred to as the near effect) was attributed to access of a 3-D viewer-centered spatial representation for guiding attention in 3-D space. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the near effect could have been associated with the position of the response hand, which was always near the viewer in previous studies that investigated endogenous attentional shifts in real depth. In Experiment 1, the response hand was placed at either the near or far target depth in a depth-cuing task. Placing the response hand at the far target depth abolished the near effect, but failed to bias spatial attention to the far location. Experiment 2 showed that the response hand effect was not modulated by the presence of an additional (passive) hand, whereas Experiment 3 confirmed that attentional prioritization of the passive hand was not masked by the influence of the responding hand on spatial attention in Experiment 2. The pattern of results is most consistent with the idea that response preparation can modulate spatial attention within a 3-D viewer-centered spatial representation.     

Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials?

Antidepressants, in particular newer agents, are among the most widely prescribed medications worldwide with annual sales of billions of dollars. The introduction of these agents in the market has passed through seemingly strict regulatory control. Over a thousand randomized trials have been conducted with antidepressants. Statistically significant benefits have been repeatedly demonstrated and the medical literature is flooded with several hundreds of "positive" trials (both pre-approval and post-approval). However, two recent meta-analyses question this picture. The first meta-analysis used data that were submitted to FDA for the approval of 12 antidepressant drugs. While only half of these trials had formally significant effectiveness, published reports almost ubiquitously claimed significant results. "Negative" trials were either left unpublished or were distorted to present "positive" results. The average benefit of these drugs based on the FDA data was of small magnitude, while the published literature suggested larger benefits. A second meta-analysis using also FDA-submitted data examined the relationship between treatment effect and baseline severity of depression. Drug-placebo differences increased with increasing baseline severity and the difference became large enough to be clinically important only in the very small minority of patient populations with severe major depression. In severe major depression, antidepressants did not become more effective, simply placebo lost effectiveness. These data suggest that antidepressants may be less effective than their wide marketing suggests. Short-term benefits are small and long-term balance of benefits and harms is understudied. I discuss how the use of many small randomized trials with clinically non-relevant outcomes, improper interpretation of statistical significance, manipulated study design, biased selection of study populations, short follow-up, and selective and distorted reporting of results has built and nourished a seemingly evidence-based myth on antidepressant effectiveness and how higher evidence standards, with very large long-term trials and careful prospective meta-analyses of individual-level data may reach closer to the truth and clinically useful evidence.     

“I’m Just Who I Am”: Self-Continuity and the Dialogical Self in a Study of Migrants

Drawing on dialogical self theory, this study aimed to develop understanding of the processes of self-continuity in migrants with complex trajectories. Twelve participants of various nationalities and ages took part in qualitative interviews in the United Kingdom and the United States. An iterative, three-step analysis for multivoicedness suggested participants initially adopted stabilizing I-positions that acted as foundations for subsequent development and evolution of new selves. A clear and dynamic progression of positioning, repositioning, and innovation in the dialogical self emerged. Findings suggest that change and rupture may act as catalysts for positive development and innovation, resulting in a robust, enhanced sense of self-continuity.     

Facebook use and sleep quality: Light interacts with socially induced alertness

It has been demonstrated that the use of social networking sites late at night can lead to sleep‐related problems that extend into the next day. A common explanation is that the light emitted from screens is disrupting the users’ circadian rhythms. An alternative explanation is that the social cognition inherent in the use of social networking sites is responsible. Here, the two factors were looked at together. Participants used Facebook on iPad tablets before sleep. This was done on different nights with two lighting conditions and with two levels of content. In the ‘light’ condition, blue wavelength light was manipulated so that it was either full wavelength or blue light filtered. In the ‘alertness’ condition, the personal significance of the content was changed from personally relevant to irrelevant. A modified version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was used to measure sleep‐related problems. No evidence was found that simply filtering blue light or simply removing relevant content improved sleep quality. However, the two factors interacted. The results suggest that the light emitted from screens can affect sleep quality under some conditions but this is behaviourally irrelevant in the context of normal Facebook usage.     

Measuring Attentional Demand in Continuous Dual-task Performance

Despite its intuitive appeal, the commonly held assumption that there is some general limitation on dual-task performance has been shown to be seriously flawed (Allport 1980; Navon 1984). Central to this has been the inability to measure the attentional demands of tasks, without which there is no way to determine whether their joint demands exceed the hypothetical general limit. In the absence of such a measure, dual-task interference can always be explained by the alternative possibility that specific interference has occurred. A method is described in which the attentional demands of tasks can be measured and crossvalidated by the use of two scales. Two experiments are described in which a general attentional limit is found; the measurement of attentional demand is consistent across scales and can be made at a level of precision approximating that of an interval scale.