Dependence and physical exercise: Spanish validation of the Exercise Dependence Scale-Revised (EDS-R)

The purpose of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the Exercise Dependence Scale-Revised (EDS-R). To achieve this goal, a sample of 531 sport center users was used and the psychometric properties of the EDS-R were examined through different analyses. The results supported both the first-order seven-factor model and the higher-order model (seven first-order factors and one second-order factor). The structure of both models was invariant across age. Correlations among the subscales indicated a related factor model, supporting construct validity of the scale. Alpha values over .70 (except for Reduction in Other Activities) and suitable levels of temporal stability were obtained. Users practicing more than three days per week had higher scores in all subscales than the group practicing with a frequency of three days or fewer. The findings of this study provided reliability and validity for the EDS-R in a Spanish context.     

Understanding Intentions to Exercise Following a Structured Exercise Program: An Attributional Perspective1

The present study examined the relationships among perceived outcome, causal attributions, affect, expected success, and intentions to exercise following a structured exercise program. Participants were 105 volunteers who had just completed a 12-week exercise program. Results indicated that perceived outcome over objective outcome (% attendance) was significantly more important for understanding the attribution process. Interesting interactions indicated that (a) individuals who made personally controllable attributions reported higher positive affect following perceived success, but lower positive affect following perceived failure than those who made personally uncontrollable attributions, and (b) individuals who made external attributions following perceived failure reported higher expected success than those who made internal attributions. Finally, both positive affect and expected success showed positive relationships with intention to exercise following the program. It was suggested that attribution theory may be beneficial to understanding continued exercise following structured exercise programs.     

Exercise Dependence: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Issues for Patients in Psychotherapy

Health promotion and exercise is recognized as an important ingredient in health maintenance. Within the diagnostic category of obsessive-compulsive disorders has been the increased recognition by clinicians of a phenomena best described as exercise dependence. Reviewed herein is its definition, theoretical framework and a spectrum of factors often associated with exercise. Realizing that exercise dependence as a clinical entity is not yet recognized in either the International Classification of Disorders (ICD-9) or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-R), proposed criteria for its inclusion are offered. Where a pattern of behavior shows the presence of symptoms consistent with exercise dependence, clinical diagnosis should be made to assure that appropriate treatment might be offered to manage the condition and continue to make exercise an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Diagnostic and therapeutic considerations are offered for the contemporary psychotherapist.     

Rationally Functional Dependence

Two different types of functional dependencies are compared: dependencies that are functional due to the laws of nature and dependencies that are functional if all involved agents behave rationally. The first type of dependencies was axiomatized by Armstrong. This article gives a formal definition of the second type of functional dependencies in terms of strategic games and describes a sound and complete axiomatization of their properties. The axiomatization is significantly different from the Armstrong’s axioms.     

Dependence and manhood

American culture is at best ambivalent and at worst hostile to the appropriateness of dependency in males. To reorient this cultural misconception, a healthful model of male dependency is needed-especially for health care and pastoral professionals. This paper offers such a construct by bringing the perspectives of a theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and a psychoanalyst, Heinz Kohut, to an examination of this issue. Out of this discussion, an ethic can be formulated which offers guidelines for the exercise of male dependency and a more complete model of manhood.Thomas L. Truby, D. Min., an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, completed this paper while serving as a Counseling Associate of The Center for Religion and Psychotherapy, Chicago. It was subsequently used by Dr. Randall C. Mason as an illustration of synthesized depth-psychology and theological reflection (Advances in Self Psychology. Ed. Arnold Goldberg. New York, International Universities Press, 1980, p. 421). For their guidance on this project the author is especially grateful to Dr. Mason and Dr. David M. Moss of The Seabury Institute for Pastoral Psychotherapy, Atlanta.     

Dependence and Independence

We introduce an atomic formula ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{z}}$ intuitively saying that the variables ${\vec{y}}$ are independent from the variables ${\vec{z}}$ if the variables ${\vec{x}}$ are kept constant. We contrast this with dependence logic ${\mathcal{D}}$ based on the atomic formula = ${(\vec{x}, \vec{y})}$ , actually equivalent to ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{y}}$ , saying that the variables ${\vec{y}}$ are totally determined by the variables ${\vec{x}}$ . We show that ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{z}}$ gives rise to a natural logic capable of formalizing basic intuitions about independence and dependence. We show that ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{z}}$ can be used to give partially ordered quantifiers and IF-logic an alternative interpretation without some of the shortcomings related to so called signaling that interpretations using = ${(\vec{x}, \vec{y})}$ have.     

Understanding Narratively,Understanding Alterity

Phenomenology's systematic exploration of how a world comes into existence for knowers – knowers who are often conceptualized as individual and ostensibly isolated – requires that it provide some account of the constitution of alterity. In this paper, I address this issue by arguing that we apperceive alterity in terms of the intentionality of behavior. A corollary of this argument is that the apperception of an alter as specifically human is a secondary attribution, following the primary apperception of intention. I further argue that the intentionality of behavior is understood through the projection of a narrative frame, or a “protonarrative,” onto the alter's behavior. I suggest that protonarrativity is the form that experience takes as its ontological condition. Our living is not simply known to us reflectively as protonarrative; rather, experience is lived as protonarrative.This essay is based on a paper presented at the annual conference of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Memphis, Tennessee, October 28–30, 2004.     

Music's Effect on Exercise Participants by Exercise Session

We identified exercise participants’ music preferences in three exercise sessions and clarified how preferred or randomly assigned music affects perceived psychological helpfulness of exercise. There were 292 fitness center members in Korea who were selected as participants. Participants’ preferred music was assessed using frequency analysis and participants were grouped by preferences. Similar percentages were observed for sedative (45.2%) and stimulative (54.8%) music during warm-up, whereas participants preferred stimulative (91.4%) and sedative (75.7%) music during workout and cooldown, respectively. During the warm-up session, sedative music was found to be more psychologically helpful for the sedative music preferred group (t = 4.86, p <.001), whereas stimulative music was found to be significantly more psychologically helpful than sedative music for the stimulative music–preferred group (t = –6.47, p <.001). During the workout sessions, the sedative music was found to be more helpful for the sedative music–preferred group, albeit with no statistical difference from stimulative music, whereas the stimulative music had similar effects to the warm-up session (t = ?18.37, p <.001). Finally, during the cool-down sessions, sedative music was found to be more psychologically helpful for the sedative music­–preferred group (t = 7.97, p <.001), whereas stimulative music was found to be more psychologically helpful to the stimulative music–preferred group (t = ?2.10, p <.05). The results of this study provide basic information for music usage in health management centers and other interested organizations to improve physical activity.     

Aerobic Exercise

This pilot study, using a modified single systems design, attempted to answer the question: what effect does an occupational therapy aerobic exercise program have on adolescents with depression? The sample was comprised of four adolescent boys from a private psychiatric hospital. Their ages ranged from 12 to 18 years and all had a primary diagnosis of major depression. The program consisted of brisk walking and running. It met three times a week for one hour over a 65 day period. Each session started with a warm-up of five minutes of slow walking followed by ten minutes of stretching. During each session a subject was randomly assigned to wear a heart rate monitor. The monitor was used to insure the subject exercised within a target zone of 70 to 80 percent of his maximum heart rate. The length of the walk/run phase was increased from 10 to 15 to 20 minutes only when the subjects felt comfortable exercising for longer periods of time. The last phase was a warmdown of five minutes of slow walking followed by ten minutes of stretching. Discussions about the activity and the boys' lives were included in the program. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck 1961) was used to measure depression levels because of its sound psychometric properties and because of its frequent use in other research studies to assess depression. The BDI was administered five times; as a pretest on the initial meeting, as a re-test after 29 days of the program, as a second re-test after 50 days of the program, as a third re-test after 65 days of the program, and 45 days after the program ended. These data were used to measure changes in depression throughout the program. The results from the BDI showed a general decrease in depression scores for all subjects. Due to the small number of subjects and data points, the results were considered to be preliminary.     

Causation and Counterfactual Dependence

Recently Stephen Barker has raised stimulating objections to the thesis that, roughly speaking, if two events stand in a relation of counterfactual dependence, they stand in a causal relation. As Ned Hall says, however, this thesis constitutes the strongest part of the counterfactual analysis of causation. Therefore, if successful, Barker’s objections will undermine the cornerstone of the counterfactual analysis of causation, and hence give us compelling reasons to reject the counterfactual analysis of causation. I will argue, however, that they do not withstand scrutiny.     

Self-Presentation and Exercise

Preliminary research indicates that self-presentation may be an important antecedent and consequence of physical activity because it may affect people's exercise cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors. The specific purposes of this article were to review the literature on self-presentational processes with regard to (a) exercise behavior, (b) motivation to engage in physical activity, (c) the characteristics of the exercise environment, (d) subjective responses to acute exercise, and (e) the effects of exercise interventions on self-presentational concerns. Implications of a self-presentational perspective for examining exercise adherence and developing physical activity interventions are discussed.     

Exercise as psychotherapy

The use of exercise as a psychotherapeutic agent is reviewed. The benefits of exercise are considered to impact both physiological processes and psychological factors such as self-esteem and more efficacious self-talk. The possibility of the use of exercise as an adjunct to both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy is suggested.     

Understanding Exercise and Diet Motivation in Overweight Women Enrolled in a Weight-Loss Program: A Prospective Study Using the Theory of Planned Behavior

The purpose of this study was to prospectively examine the utility of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) constructs for exercise and diet behavior with women enrolled in a 4-week weight-loss program. Sixty-nine females participated in group exercise 3 times a week and they consumed a low-calorie diet for 1 month. They completed baseline measures of exercise behavior, demographic variables, and the TPB constructs for exercise and diet at the start of the program. Adherence to the exercise and diet was recorded, along with pre- and post-measurements of body composition. Significant decreases in body mass index, body fat percentage, and circumference measurements occurred from pre- to post-program. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that diet adherence was predicted by intention. However, the TPB constructs failed to predict exercise adherence, exercise intention, and diet intention. These results are discussed in relationship to previous research, and recommendations for future studies with this special population are highlighted.     

Understanding Beliefs

Beliefs are central to political psychology, but in many ways remain undertheorized. A good starting place for further thought is the typology of Smith, Bruner, and White that separates reality testing from the social and psychological functions of beliefs. The concept of beliefs has several connotations, some of which involve faith and emotions. It is often difficult to grasp others' beliefs, especially when they are foreign to us or morally repugnant. It is even more difficult to determine whether beliefs are powerful in the sense of determining behavior and autonomous in the sense of not being directly derivable from other factors. The Smith, Bruner, and White typology is useful here, helps us understand the operation of biases, and points to the multiple roles that beliefs play in people's lives, including managing trade-offs and generating what looks to others like hypocrisy.