Religion,Type A behavior,and health

In a study of air traffic controllers, religious differences are found in the way Type A behavior is associated with several health status indicators. Associations between the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) and physical illness incidence, health-promotive behavior, diastolic and systolic blood pressure, subjective distress and impulse control problems, and alcohol consumption are examined by religious attendance, religious affiliation, and change in affiliation. Findings confirm that Type A does not vary significantly by religion. However, there are several significant findings between Type A and various health indicators. Type A is associated with illness incidence, overall and more strongly in several religion, subgroups. Type A and alcohol consumption are related positively in Protestants and converts, and negatively in churchgoing Catholics. Type A is related to impulse control problems in churchgoing Protestants and to subjective distress in churchgoing Catholics. Finally, in individuals with weak or no religious ties, Type A is associated with lower blood pressure. This last finding suggests that in some people (for example, the irreligious or unchurched), the coronary-prone behavior pattern may have cardiovascular effects which are salutary in at least one respect.The authors wish to thank Dr. Kyriakos S. Markides and Laura A. Ray for their assistance with this study. Address requests for reprints to Dr. Levin at the Institute of Gerontology, 300 North Ingalls, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.     

Family therapy without the family: a framework for systemic practice

This paper contrasts the basic tenets of systemic thinking with some guiding principles of the psychodynamic approach, and outlines specific techniques which family therapists can use when seeing individuals. It is argued that a useful systemic framework can be maintained if the therapist aims to keep the therapy system 'open' for relevant others to join at any time.     

Measuring the activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults in ordinary housing

Earlier work on the quality of care in settings for severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults raised the question whether any useful purpose is served by promoting the extensive use of simple recreational materials to occupy people. Data were collected by direct observation on the activity of 6 adults living in a staffed house organized to promote engagement in household activities. Observations were taken over 5 weekdays from 07.00 to 10.00 and 15.00 to 23.00hr. The results showed that Ss spent between 22 and 67% of available time in purposeful activity. Between 27 and 65% of purposeful activity was engagement in domestic or housework tasks. Even the most handicapped people spent more time engaged in housework than in leisure and recreational tasks. The implications of these data are commented on and measurement issues which arise in ordinary housing as opposed to institutional settings are discussed.     

Memory lapses during a pandemic: Differential associations between COVID-stress and daily memory lapses?

The policies related to COVID-19 pandemic such as stay at home orders and social distancing increased daily stress and associated impairments in mental health. This study examines the association between COVID-related stress and cognitive functioning by examining two different types of daily memory lapses, those related to prospective memory (i.e., memory for future plans) and retrospective memory (i.e., memory for past information) as well as the perceived emotional and functional consequences of daily memory problems. As part of a larger study, 58 adults (18 men; 22 ± 3 years) completed a web-based version of the daily inventory of stressful events including stress related to COVID-19 and positive/negative affect for eight consecutive days between 8 September 2020 and 11 November 2020. Findings showed that prospective lapses were positively correlated with COVID-19 stressors (r = 0.41, p = 0.002). At the within-person level, daily COVID-19 stressors were significantly associated with the number of prospective lapses (b = 0.088, SE = 0.040). COVID-19-related stressors were not significantly related to retrospective lapses (all ps > 0.05). Our findings suggested that more daily COVID-19 stressors were related to greater numbers of prospective lapses in daily life even among healthy younger adults. Thus, future research should address long term relations of COVID-19 stress and cognitive functioning in addition to the specific cognitive impairments related to COVID-19 infection.     

Generalization gradients of inhibition following auditory discrimination learning

A more direct method than the usual ones for obtaining inhibitory gradients requires that the dimension of the nonreinforced stimulus selected for testing be orthogonal to the dimensions of the reinforced stimulus. In that case, the test points along the inhibitory gradient are equally distant from the reinforced stimulus. An attempt was made to realize this condition by obtaining inhibitory gradients along the frequency dimension of a pure tone after discrimination training in which the nonreinforced stimulus was a pure tone (or tones), and the reinforced stimulus was either white noise or the absence of a tone. The results showed that some degree of specific inhibitory control was exerted by the frequency of the tone, although the gradients were broad and shallow in slope.

A further experiment was conducted to see whether the modification of an excitatory gradient resulting from training to discriminate neighboring tones could arise from a simple interaction of inhibitory and excitatory gradients. The results indicated that it could not, since discrimination training produced a concentration of responding in the vicinity of the reinforced stimulus which cannot be derived from any plausible gradient of inhibition.

     

Poverty,state, and the family: A challenge for family therapy

Much family therapy writing has focused on work with discrete presenting problems in circumscribed clinical practice settings. This paper takes a broader focus of poor families which do not fit easily into the one-hour therapy schedule, in the context of the powerful forces of politics and economics. If the prevailing political attitudes and economic realities are ignored, direct practice with families may fail to meet them at their point of experience. Examples of political views, and therapeutic and research thinking which do not pay attention to these aspects, are used to highlight the author's point of view.