Feasibility of a pilot intervention targeting self-care behaviors in adults with diabetes mellitus

Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions and is widely encountered by clinicians in medical settings. National Standards for diabetes education recommend utilization of an interdisciplinary team, setting individual lifestyle goals and managing barriers. However, typical diabetes education programs lack integration of strategies for translating recommendations into behavioral actions. The present intervention was developed to assess the feasibility and efficacy of a short-term cognitive-behavioral intervention aimed at optimizing self-care behaviors in adults with diabetes in a “real world” medical setting. Participants were 20 adults who had completed medical model outpatient diabetes education. The intervention consisted of 6 weekly sessions that addressed the role of behavior in diabetes including self-care barriers, cognitions and self-regulation. Pre-post intervention data indicated greater specificity in goal-setting. Participants who kept activity records had the greatest lifestyle activity behavior change. Findings suggest that a brief intervention addressing realistic goal-setting is feasible and can promote meaningful health behavior changes. Clinical psychology can provide a bridge between current diabetes care recommendations and available medical resources by providing training in and delivery of empirically supported behavior change strategies and evaluation of diabetes care treatment approaches.     

Accuracy and Bias in Stereotypes about the Social and Political Attitudes of Women and Men

In three experiments examining the accuracy of gender stereotypes about attitudes, male and female participants estimated the attitudes of men or women on items that had been administered in the General Social Survey to assess attitudes on social and political issues. Demonstrating moderate stereotypic accuracy were correlations between (a) participants' estimates of these attitudes and (b) the criterion attitudes of male and female survey respondents and sex differences in the criterion attitudes. Nevertheless, analyses of discrepancies between the estimated and criterion attitudes revealed a systematic bias by which participants consistently underestimated men's support for female-stereotypic positions on issues. Further analyses of these data suggested that this error rose from perceptions that men would oppose policies that favored women's interests. In contrast, perceived female group interest functioned as a cue to accuracy in estimating women's attitudes.     

Parent and self-report ratings of executive function in adolescents with myelomeningocele and hydrocephalus.

Parent and self-report ratings were obtained for 28 adolescents with myelomeningocele and congenital hydrocephalus using the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1998a, 1998b) and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF; Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000; Guy, Gioia, & Isquith, 1998). Parents rated their children as having significantly more problems, compared to published norms, on the BRIEF but not the BASC. Adolescents rated themselves as having significantly more problems, compared to parent ratings, on scales comprising the BRIEF Behavioral Regulation Index; but not on common scales of the BASC. Parents also reported more problems on the BRIEF Global Executive Composite than on all three primary BASC indices, and more problems on the BRIEF Metacognition Index than on the BRIEF Behavioral Regulation Index. We conclude that the BRIEF captures salient executive dysfunction among individuals with myelomeningocele and hydrocephalus, and may be useful in identifying needs for intervention that might not be identified by broad-band behavior rating scales alone.     

Occasional reinforced trials during extinction can slow the rate of rapid reacquisition

Two appetitive conditioning experiments with rats examined reacquisition after conditioned responding was eliminated by either extinction or by a partial reinforcement procedure in which reinforced trials were occasionally presented among many nonreinforced trials. In Experiment 1, reacquisition to a conditional stimulus (CS) that had been conditioned and extinguished was more rapid than acquisition in a group that had received no prior conditioning. However, the addition of occasional reinforced trials to extinction slowed this rapid reacquisition effect. Experiment 2 replicated the result and showed that a procedure in which the CS and the unconditional stimulus (US) were unpaired in extinction interfered even further with reacquisition. The results suggest that rapid reacquisition is ordinarily produced when reinforced trials provide a contextual cue that can renew responding by signaling other acquisition trials (Ricker & Bouton, 1996). The effects of partial reinforcement in extinction are surprising from several theoretical perspectives and have useful clinical implications.     

Promoting positive community relations: what can RE learn from social psychology and the shared space project?

In this article we considered the relevance of specific claims that ‘multi-faith’ approaches to Religious Education (RE) play a role in promoting good community relations. In doing so, we adopted a social-psychological perspective where engaging in positive and meaningful interactions with diverse others reduces prejudice. Survey responses from 92 RE teachers across the UK were examined to determine the extent to which strategies for promoting positive community relations were embedded within classroom practice. We next examined whether teachers intuitively used social psychological theory – namely the contact hypothesis – to promote positive communities in their classrooms. Results demonstrated that the majority of surveyed RE practitioners perceived community relations to be a core aim of RE and that contact theory was applicable to their practice. Teachers reported examples of how they embed both contact theory and RE in their classrooms but not all of these aligned with social psychological theory. Findings suggest that successful practice in RE may be further developed by integrating theoretical principles of the contact hypothesis. Implications and future directions will be discussed.     

Sleep disruption explains age-related prospective memory deficits: implications for cognitive aging and intervention

The high prevalence of sleep disruption among older adults may have implications for cognitive aging, particularly for higher-order aspects of cognition. One domain where sleep disruption may contribute to age-related deficits is prospective memory—the ability to remember to perform deferred actions at the appropriate time in the future. Community-dwelling older adults (55–93 years, N = 133) undertook assessment of sleep using actigraphy and participated in a laboratory-based prospective memory task. After controlling for education, sleep disruption (longer awakenings) was associated with poorer prospective memory. Additionally, longer awakenings mediated the relationship between older age and poorer prospective memory. Other metrics of sleep disruption, including sleep efficiency and wake after sleep onset, were not related to prospective memory, suggesting that examining the features of individual wake episodes rather than total wake time may help clarify relationships between sleep and cognition. The mediating role of awakening length was partially a function of greater depression and poorer executive function (shifting) but not retrospective memory. This study is among the first to examine the association between objectively measured sleep and prospective memory in older adults. Furthermore, this study is novel in suggesting sleep disruption might contribute to age-related prospective memory deficits; perhaps, with implications for cognitive aging more broadly. Our results suggest that there may be opportunities to prevent prospective memory decline by treating sleep problems.     

Teachers’ reflections of instructional effectiveness: self-assessment through a standards-based appraisal process

This paper explores teachers’ reflections on: (1) self-assessment of their own videotaped lesson using a standards-based appraisal system; (2) comparison to an external reviewer’s evaluation of the same lesson; and (3) effect of the appraisal system on their pedagogical views, professional development, and actual practice improvement. Findings indicate that teachers view the appraisal system as evaluative with little impact on their teaching practice and professional growth. Participating teachers indicated that the self-evaluative reflection process utilized in the study had a greater influence on their professional development than the appraisal system as it is currently structured.     

Searching for Common Ground between Supporters and Opponents of Affirmative Action

Supporters and opponents of affirmative action are often characterized as debating about a single, consensually understood type of affirmative action. However, supporters and opponents instead may have different types of policies in mind when thinking about affirmative action and may actually agree on specific manifestations of affirmative action policies more than is commonly believed. A survey conducted using a student sample and a sample from the broader Chicago-area community showed that affirmative action policies can be characterized into merit-violating versus merit-upholding manifestations. Supporters of affirmative action in general were more likely to think of affirmative action in its merit-upholding manifestations, whereas opponents were more likely to think of the merit-violating manifestations. However, both supporters and opponents showed more support for merit-upholding rather than merit-violating manifestations of affirmative action. The same pattern of results was upheld even when splitting the samples into those who endorsed negative racial attitudes versus those who did not, suggesting that even those who may be considered racist will endorse affirmative action policies that uphold merit values. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of clarifying the political discourse about what affirmative action is and what it is designed to do.