Recognition and recall of invisible objects

Three experiments examined recognition and recall of items that people imagined as being invisible. When one item hid another, the hidden item suffered in recognition, but so did the one that remained visible; the demand to imagine items invisibly made both items less recognizable than in control conditions. Cued recall did not depend on whether the visible item or the invisible item was the cue, but it did depend on whether the initial task required relational processing of the items. When both items were invisible in a dark imaginary scene, there was a general loss in all measures of memory, including memory for the scene. None of the results requires recourse to the “out of sight, out of mind” principle that memory depends on the visual characteristics of images. The results attest, instead, to the importance of the informational characteristics of memorial records.     

An Evaluation of the Job Stress Questionnaire with a Sample of Entrepreneurs

A modified version of Caplan's Job Stress Questionnaire (JSQ) was administered to 169 male and 56 female entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs were found to have higher levels of stress associated with workload than with role ambiguity and underutilization of skills. Compared to scores reported previously for various occupational categories, the entrepreneurs scored significantly higher than did white collar, blue collar, and professional groups on the workload scale and significantly lower on scales measuring role ambiguity and under-utilization of skills. These results may be due to the nature of entrepreneurial activity, which is often characterized by heavy workloads, long hours, and a self-established role in the organization. Additionally, the factorial composition of the JSQ and its internal consistency were examined. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity at the item and subscale level confirmed the a priori dimensions of the JSQ, although the internal consistency of the scales were low to moderate. The need for various improvements in the measurement of occupational stress is briefly discussed.     

Prototypes of Faith: Findings with the Faith Q‐Sort

Defining religion and finding ways to assess it in individual lives has long challenged psychologists of religion. At first, open‐ended questionnaires were used, but with the advent of modern statistical methods, a succession of religiosity scales was developed. But these usually brief scales were typically based on the preconceptions of their authors, who were overwhelmingly Protestant Christian and often conservative, much as were those who completed them. To provide a more adequate way of assessing “faith,” a term here encompassing both religious and nonreligious attitudes, a new assessment device was developed that incorporates the singular advantages of Q methodology. The Faith Q‐Sort consists of 101 statements that respondents sort on a nine‐category continuum, indicating the degree to which each statement describes himself or herself. Factor analysis based on correlations of the sorts rather than individual items yielded, for the initial group of participants, three major prototypes and five minor ones, accounting for 67 percent of the variance. Of the 42 participants, 31 proved to be exemplars of one or another of the eight prototypes. Subsequent explorations illustrate the wealth of possibilities the FQS offers, both as a research instrument and a counseling tool.     

Family Therapy, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

In this article we use our experience with ballroom dancing to revisit three central systemic/relational ideas—summativity, pragmatics/aesthetics, and communication—in order to reaffirm our theoretical grounding in family therapy and to connect that grounding to community-mindedness in therapy. Community-mindedness consists of deliberate attention to the socially constructed grand narratives that dominate clients and therapists in the process of therapy. A detailed example is provided. Thanks to Leo Sayer     

Religious Coping Among the Religious: The Relationships Between Religious Coping and Well-Being in a National Sample of Presbyterian Clergy, Elders, and Members

This study examined whether the relationships between religious coping and well-being are moderated by the salience of religion to the individual's identity and social roles. As part of a national survey of Presbyterians, 1,260 clergy, 823 elders, and 735 members completed measures of demographic variables, global religiousness, life stressors, positive and negative religious coping, and well-being (positive affect, depressive affect, religious satisfaction). Our predictions were largely confirmed. First, clergy reported higher levels of positive religious coping than elders, who, in turn, indicated more positive religious coping than members. Second, positive and negative religious coping were associated with higher and lower levels of well-being respectively. Finally, positive and negative religious coping were more strongly related to well-being for clergy than for members. Furthermore, the drawbacks of negative religious coping for the clergy were not offset completely by the benefits of positive religious coping. Longitudinal studies of the longer term implications of positive and negative religious coping are clearly warranted. The results also suggest the need for supportive and educational services to help clergy draw on their religious coping resources and come to terms with their spiritual struggles.     

The role of experience in spatial test performance: A meta-analysis

The hypothesis that spatial ability is, in part, experientially determined, and that sex differences in spatial ability can be explained by sex differences in spatial experience, can be studied in a correlational manner by examining the relationship between spatial activity participation and spatial ability test performance for males and females. Alternatively, an experimental training situation, comparing male and female susceptibility to training, has been proposed to test the hypothesis that environment has an impact on spatial skills and sex differences in ability. Both lines of research are reviewed here, through the use of meta-analytic techniques. The first meta-analysis reveals a weak but reliable relationship between spatial activity participation and spatial ability. This relationship appears similar for males and females. The second meta-analysis reveals that spatial ability test performance can be improved by training for both sexes. This improvement does not appear different for males and females, however, contrary to a predominant hypothesis in the literature. Training to asymptote may be a better test of the relevance of differential experience to sex differences. Content and duration of training are also discussed as important factors in the effectiveness of training.This research was supported by Grant No. MH39671 from the National Institute of Mental Health. A version of this paper was presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1987. We are grateful to Margaret Signorella and Susan Resnick for providing data. We would also like to thank Judith Dubas, Susan Resnick, Ralph Rosnow, Carolyn Spies, Lance Weinmann, and Marsha Weinraub for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.