Personality and Everyday Functioning in Older Adults With and Without HIV

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - In a cross-sectional multi-method study of older adults living with and without HIV (n?=?202; 69.8% HIV seropositive), we tested...     

Cognitive control over working memory biases of selection

Across many studies, researchers have found that representations in working memory (WM) can guide visual attention toward items that match the features of the WM contents. While some researchers have contended that this occurs involuntarily, others have suggested that the impact of WM contents on attention can be strategically controlled. Here, we varied the probability that WM items would coincide with either targets or distractors in a visual search task to examine (1) whether participants could intentionally enhance or inhibit the influence of WM items on attention and (2) whether cognitive control over WM biases would also affect access to the memory contents in a surprise recognition test. We found visual search to be faster when the WM item coincided with the search target, and this effect was enhanced when the memory item reliably predicted the location of the target. Conversely, visual search was slowed when the memory item coincided with a search distractor, and this effect was diminished, but not abolished, when the memory item was reliably associated with distractors. This strategic dampening of the influence of WM items on attention came at a price to memory, however, as participants were slowest to perform WM recognition tests on blocks in which the WM contents were consistently invalid. These results document that attentional capture by WM contents is partly, but not fully, malleable by top-down control, which appears to adjust the state of the WM contents to optimize search behavior. These data illustrate the role of cognitive control in modulating the strength of WM biases of selection, and they support a tight coupling between WM and attention.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 1: conceptual and definitional issues in psychiatric diagnosis

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances.     

Exploring the motivations of Facebook use in Taiwan

The current study explored the motivations of online social network use among a sample of the general population in Taiwan (N=4,346). It investigated how seven different motivations to use Facebook predicted the intensity of Facebook use and content-generation behaviors on Facebook. Results showed that the motivation to use Facebook for posting and viewing status updates was the strongest predictor of Facebook intensity, while the motivation to view and share photographs was the strongest predictor of content-generation behavior on the site. Results are discussed in terms of expanding motivations to use Facebook to the study of social networking sites and other new and social media.     

The role of centrality to self-concept in moderating the associations between injury perceptions and outcomes

Abstract

Objectives: To test the centrality of injury to self-concept as a moderator of the associations between injury perceptions and outcomes.

Methods: Two concurrent studies on samples of injured individuals.

Measures: The centrality of injury to one’s self concept was measured by the degree of self-injury separation (PRISM); injury perceptions were measured by the injury perception questionnaire; and outcomes by standard scales of self-assessed health, physical, emotional and social functioning, vitality, depression, anxiety and somatisation. Regression analyses examined the significance of adding the interactions between injury centrality and injury perceptions to explained outcome variance, beyond their separate contributions.

Results: Both injury centrality and injury perceptions significantly explained variance in patients’ functioning and well-being. Injury centrality moderated the associations between various injury perceptions and outcomes, especially pronounced for emotional representations of the injury. As hypothesised, the effects of injury perceptions on outcomes were stronger among patients for whom the injury was central to their self-concept compared to patients who perceived the injury as peripheral to their self-concept.

Conclusions: ‘Centrality to the self’ is a moderator of the impact of perceptions on outcomes of injuries. The findings suggest ways to tailor interventions to sub-groups of injured patients based on injury centrality to their self-concept.     

Stigma of mental illness,religious change,and explanatory models of mental illness among Jewish patients at a mental-health clinic in North Jerusalem

During 3 months in 2004, 38 recent referrals to a Community Mental Health Clinic in North Jerusalem, a substantially Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, were evaluated by the Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue. This questionnaire, which includes a 13-item scale measuring stigma towards mental illness, was adapted and translated into Hebrew. Patients with a more religious upbringing expressed a greater sense of stigma towards mental illness; however, patients who now had a more religious affiliation did not. The 14 patients who had experienced a religious change toward a more religious affiliation reported a lower level of stigma than the 24 non-returnees. Even when controlling for religious upbringing, the partial correlation between stigma score and religious change was significant. Stigma was lower among younger but not older returnees. Findings from this study support the hypothesis that a stigma of mental illness may be a deterrent to the use of a public mental-health clinic for religious Jews in Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish patients (especially non-Hasidic) used a nonreligious explanatory model (perception and understanding) of mental illness more often than a religious explanatory model. This last finding could reflect a shift in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities from a religious to a more medical and psychological explanatory model.     

Countertransference and reality

The psychoanalytic situation provides many opportunities for people to observe their analysts closely. These observations are inevitably woven into the fabric of patients’ transference experience. Because the observations can be uncomfortable for the analyst, there is a constant temptation to ignore or deny the plausibility of patients’ perceptions. They can be, and often are, quickly reinterpreted as derivatives of sexual or aggressive urges. Psychoanalytic drive theory, with its emphasis on impulse rather than observation as the force behind transference experience, can encourage counter‐transferential disclaimers and lead to blind spots. Some technical suggestions are offered to avoid this tendency and are based on a relational understanding of the nature of transference.     

General Mental Ability and pay: Nonlinear effects

While many studies have examined the linear relationship between intelligence and economic success, only few, if any, examined their nonlinear relationships. The current study examines such relationships in a large, nationally representative sample, using pay as an indicator of economic success. The results show that the effect of General Mental Ability (GMA) on pay depends on occupational complexity; the greater the complexity, the stronger the effect. They also show that, by and large, there is a marginally decreasing (concave) effect of GMA on pay. Methodological and practical questions concerning the relationship between cognitive ability and pay are discussed.