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Antiretroviral medication during pregnancy and breastfeeding substantially decreases the risk of HIV transmission from mothers to infants, but its effects on the child's neurodevelopment are unknown. This study compared neurodevelopmental outcomes of ante-partum and post-partum antiretroviral exposure in HIV-exposed and uninfected children with HIV-unexposed and uninfected children at ages 12, 24, 48, and 60 months.

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Neuropsychological sequelae from pediatric cerebral malaria (CM) have been well-documented. Although malaria-specific retinopathy during acute illness has become a defining criterion for CM, its relationship to neurocognitive sequelae has not been documented. This relationship is important if malaria-specific retinopathy reflects the possible brain neuropathogenesis leading to long-term neurocognitive deficits.

Past studies have demonstrated an inverse relationship between religiosity and addictive behaviors, such as gambling, smoking, alcoholism, and substance use. This association suggests that religiosity may act as a buffer against such behaviors. In recent literature, Internet-based pornography involvement has been identified as an addictive behavior, and popular Christian writing has suggested that it is affecting the Church. In this study, the relationship between religiosity and cyberporn involvement was examined among 125 undergraduate, college males. Findings suggested that involvement in Internet-based pornography among participants was prevalent. Furthermore, religiosity was not inversely related to the use of online sexual materials.

In an overview of God and evolutionary theory in recent thought, Barbour (2000) categorizes various proponents as representing either a conflict, independence, dialogue, or integration approach. Using an evolutionary psychological (EP) model of the social function of human emotions, these approaches are considered in terms of how one could include EP within a theological ontology. The partnership of EP with dramatic scientific advances in cognitive neuroscience, the Human Genome Project, and proteonomics represent a powerful scientific hegemony in ultimately defining the human condition. The author's Hebraic model of integration proposes a robust framework for accommodating this hegemony within a theological ontology and eschatology, but without appealing to an apologetic of “intelligent design” or an “inner-agent” superseding the natural order. It is a holistic approach based on the core assumptions of physicalism and the power of an empirical epistemology in understanding and treating emotional brokenness. It also sees redemptive emotional healing as portent of the eschatological hope of the physical resurrection, deep social renewal, and the human place in ecological restoration in the Kingdom of God.

Students from four distinct student populations were surveyed, including inmate students at a state prison, students at a private Christian liberal arts college, students at a large state university, and criminal justice students at that state university. Their attitudes toward behavior modification were measured by having them respond to a series of statements developed by Turkat, Harris, and Forehand (1979). The student groups differed in the extent to which they viewed behavior modification as appropriate or ethical with such target populations as prisoners, homosexuals, retarded individuals, normal children, and those with marital problems. It was suggested that the extent to which one views behavior modification as appropriate or ethical depends, at least in part, on the extent to which the proposed target group is stigmatized by one's particular culture. Furthermore, it was quantitatively verified that the overall favorability of one's views regarding behavior modification depends, in part, on the accuracy of one's perceptions regarding what constitutes valid procedures.

OBJECTIVE: To determine (1) whether the neuropsychological profiles of healthy individuals at risk (AR) for Huntington's disease who were positive (AR/+) or negative (AR/—) for the Huntington's disease genetic marker differed from those of symptomatic patients with Huntington's disease and normal control individuals and (2) whether the neuropsychological performance of the two AR groups differed from each other on three assessments during a 4-year span. DESIGN: Case-control, double-blind study, with AR status determined by genetic linkage analysis (G8 probe), in addition to examination of trinucleotide repeats for most AR subjects. SETTING: The Neuropsychology Program in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, a tertiary care center. PARTICIPANTS: Eight subjects matched as closely as possible forage, gender, and education in each of the following groups: AR/+, AR/—, normal control, and Huntington's disease. MEASURES: A battery of neuropsychological tasks, including measures of intelligence, memory, problem solving, and motor ability. RESULTS: Although both AR groups demonstrated variability on select intellectual subtests relative to normal subjects, they did not differ from each other on the three assessments during a 4-year span. Patients with Huntington's disease performed more poorly than the other groups across a range of neuropsychological measures. CONCLUSIONS: These results do not support previous evaluations concluding that AR/+ individuals demonstrate cognitive impairments as compared with AR/- individuals. Findings in earlier studies without genetic linkage analysis of lower performance of AR individuals, including children, as compared with normal controls may relate to extraneous environmental and familial issues that interfere with intellectual development.

Eighty-five undergraduate students were tested in two studies using a computer-based tachistoscopic-type letter- and dot-matching task under various conditions. This task was used to determine the extent to which they displayed unilateral and bilateral brain-hemisphere advantages in the speed and accuracy of their responses. For the letter-matching task in both studies, the intellectual religiosity group displayed a stronger unilateral advantage favoring the right-visual field (RVF) (left brain) than the affective group. Generally, the participants with a more affective style of religiosity had faster reaction times on the matching tasks, especially for correct non-matching responses and on the dot-matching (right-brain) stimulus presentations. The affective groups also tended to have a stronger bilateral advantage for both dots and letter matching compared to the intellectual group. In the second study, the Myers-Briggs personality typology inventory (MBTI) was included in the assessment and was significantly related to the religiosity intellectual/affective dimension. With percent errors as the dependent variable, MBTI feeling-dominant participants displayed a stronger bilateral advantage for dots presentations but not letters, while thinking-dominant respondents on this dimension had a stronger unilateral advantage for letters but not dots. The major implication of these preliminary findings is that enduring religious traits may be anchored in basic brain behavior tendencies that can be measured using neuropsychological laboratory-based tasks.

An ethnic awareness survey was used to evaluate ethnocentrism in a national sample of denominational lay leaders, clergy, and college students of the Free Methodist Church of North America Those found to demonstrate the greatest degree of ethnocentricity were individuals with little or no college education and/or nonprofessionals from smaller churches. Those demonstrating the least degree of ethnocentricity were college graduates, pastors, conference superintendents, those from inner-city churches, and those involved in professional occupations. Among college students in the sample, senior level students were significantly less ethnocentric with respect to the questionnaire scales than their freshman counterparts. Level of education and the demographic nature of the respondent's church and home environment seemed to override the purely theological dimensions of religious and church involvement. The result is a discrepancy between the theological ideals of a church or faith and the way in which social values and attitudes are expressed in day-to-day settings.

The relationship between Christianity and racial prejudice was evaluated by means of a questionnaire which included the Shepherd Scale, the Christian Conservatism Scale, and the Multifactor Racial Attitude Inventory. The instrument was administered to two groups of college psychology students, one predominantly Christian and the other predominatly non-Christian (low scorers on the Christian scales). Although the Christian group scored significantly higher on the Shepherd and Christian Conservatism Scales, no significant differences were found between the two groups with respect to racial prejudice. Furthermore, the dimension of Christianity and the dimension of racial prejudice were independent of one another with respect to correlational measures and a principal components factor analysis.

Because of a duolistic cultural tradition assumed to be biblical, many Christian helping professionals tend to conceptualize an individual's psychological difficulty as originating within either the spiritual, soulish, cognitive, or biological domain, depending on the context in which it occurs. Consequently, various methods of inquiry and treatment are prescribed based on constructs consistent with the perceived origination of the disorder. A Hebraic model of the person, however, conceptualizes the various dimensions of personhood as existing along a mutually interactive continuum in which the divinely inspired aspects of the human condition are directly apparent in the biopsychological aspects, without intermediate metaphysical states or constructs. Furthermore, this holistic interpretation is consistent with the New Testament term soma, often translated as “person.” As such, the Hebraic model vouches for the adequacy of the philosophical assumptions of a psychological science, and it can allow such a perspective to penetrate more thoroughly the analytical and treatment strategies of Christian helping professionals.

Differences were assessed between two types of student populations in terms of Collins' four-dimensional locus of control. 44 students at a 4-yr. college were compared to 58 college-enrolled inmates at a state penitentiary. Subjects were administered a test based on Collins' analysis of the Rotter I-E scale. Data showed the prisoners to be more externally oriented on the dimension of political responsiveness vs unresponsiveness; no significant differences were found regarding difficult vs easy world, just vs unjust world, or predictable vs unpredictable world comparisons. Suggestions were made for further research.

BackgroundLongitudinal studies of the effects of CNS infectious disease in at-risk children must track consistent brain/behaviour outcomes across the developmental span from infancy to adolescence. This study evaluates the correspondence between preschool developmental measures and school-age neurocognitive and behavioural measures in Malawian children.