Caring for Carers in the Aftermath of Trauma

The potential impact on psychological well-being of working in the caring professions in the aftermath of trauma and disaster has been recognized for many years, with terms such as burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization coined to describe stress-related conditions. Although prevalent, these conditions do not affect all workers in the field. Various studies have investigated potential risk and protective factors. It is argued that the outcomes of this research should be used to guide practical interventions in the workplace designed to minimize stress-related problems. A framework that incorporates interventions at the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention levels is outlined, and research investigating the efficacy of interventions at each of these levels is recommended.     

Crossmodal binding in localizing objects outside the field of view

Using virtual reality techniques we created a virtual room within which participants could orient themselves by means of a head-mounted display. Participants were required to search for a nonimmediately visually available object attached to different parts of the virtual room's walls. The search could be guided by a light and/or a sound emitted by the object. When the object was found participants engaged it with a sighting circle. The time taken by participants to initiate the search and to engage the target object was measured. Results from three experiments suggest that (1) advantages in starting the search, finding, and engaging the object were found when the object emitted both light and sound; (2) these advantages disappeared when the visual and auditory information emitted by the object was separated in time by more than 150 ms; (3) misleading visual information determined a greater level of interference than misleading auditory information (e.g., sound from one part of the room, light from the object).     

Structural equation modelling of human judgement

Structural equation modelling (SEM) is outlined and compared with two non-linear alternatives, artificial neural networks and “fast and frugal” models. One particular non-linear decision-making situation is discussed, that exemplified by a lexicographic semi-order. We illustrate the use of SEM on a dataset derived from 539 volunteers' responses to questions about food-related risks. Our conclusion is that SEM is a useful member of the armoury of techniques available to the student of human judgement: it subsumes several multivariate statistical techniques and permits their flexible combination, and it provides robust goodness-of-fit statistics and is available in (generally) easy-to-use computer packages. Although the number of tasks for which SEM provides a persuasive psychological model is small, it is very useful in identifying the important variables and their inter-relations that contribute to task performance, and thus can constitute a valuable intermediate staging point between raw data and a fully fledged psychological theory.     

A trans-disciplinary study of the therapist's self

Participation in personal therapy during training is required by British accreditation bodies for counselling psychology as well as by most psychotherapy trainings. By contrast, trainee clinical psychologists are not required to undertake personal therapy, although they may elect to. Prior research in Britain and the US suggests that practitioners have a wide range of motives for entering therapy as well as motives for not doing so (Norcross &; Connor, 2005). This study addresses the fact that no research to date has specifically explored what individuals beginning their counselling psychology, clinical psychology and counselling training think and feel about participation in personal therapy during training. Data from open-ended questionnaires was analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Two main themes were identified. These consisted of: ‘Personal therapy helps me to be a better practitioner’, and ‘Personal therapy costs me’. The study results are considered in light of the limited prior research and recommendations for training are made.     

A grasp from afar: Überschau and the givenness of life in Husserlian phenomenology

In this paper I explore the issue of how our personal life is given to us in experience as a whole to be actively shaped and determined. I examine in detail Husserl’s analysis of the kind of experience responsible for this achievement, which he terms Überschau and which thus far has never been addressed by scholars of phenomenology. First, I locate Überschau in the context of self-determination and highlight the difference between the unthematic pre-givenness of life in the phenomenon of self-awareness and the actual, i.e. thematic givenness of life in acts of Überschau. Second, I contextualize Husserl’s discovery of Überschau in his analyses of ethical life and the possibility of a universal epoché. I argue that for Husserl the very possibility of ethical life and of phenomenology itself rest on the totalizing apprehension of one’s life rendered possible by Überschau. In the third section I spell out the essential characteristics of Überschau by contrasting this peculiar kind of consciousness with reproductive forms of consciousness such as recollection and expectation, which otherwise might be easily conflated with Überschau. In section four I reply to a possible objection to the very possibility of Überschau based on the consideration of the infinitely open stream of time-consciousness. I argue that the possibility of Überschau is tightly connected with the egological nature of consciousness as understood by Husserl. The ego does not coincide with its own conscious acts and thus enjoys a special vantage point on the totality of its own life. To conclude, I advance a speculative suggestion about the phenomenological origin of Überschau in the structure of self-awareness. This opens up a variety of possible lines of research that would connect Husserl with philosophers such as Augustine or Heidegger who are more immediately associated with the issue of personal life and its unity or lack thereof.     

The relationship between Big-5 personality traits and cognitive ability in older adults – a review

It is well established that fundamental aspects of cognition such as memory and speed of processing tend to decline with age; however, there is substantial between-individual variability in levels of cognitive performance in older adulthood and in rates of change in cognitive abilities over time. Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies concerned with examining personality characteristics as possible predictors of some of this variability in cognitive aging. The purpose of this article is to review the literature, and identify patterns of findings regarding the relationships between personality (focusing on the Big-5) and cognitive ability across nonclinical populations of older adults. Possible mechanisms underlying associations of personality characteristics with cognition are reviewed, and assessed in the context of the current literature. Some relatively consistent relationships are identified, including positive associations between openness and cognitive ability, and associations of conscientiousness with slower rates of cognitive decline. However, the relationships between several personality traits and cognitive abilities in older adults remain unclear. We suggest some approaches to research design and analysis that may help increase our understanding of how personality differences may contribute to cognitive aging.     

Activity experiences shape perceived fitness trajectories: Results from a 6-month randomized controlled trial in older women

ABSTRACT

In this study we addressed the subjective benefits of activity interventions that were designed to improve cognitive fitness in old age. Two hundred and fifty-nine women (aged 70–93 years) were randomized to participate in an exercise or a computer course or a control condition for 6 months. Subjective ratings of the perceived change of cognitive and physical fitness components were captured before, during, after the intervention interval, and at a 10-month follow-up. Positive and negative affect levels and objective cognitive fitness parameters served as possible covariates. Multilevel modeling revealed that the computer group rated memory and concentration as having improved at 4 months and again at 6 months. The exercise group, in contrast, perceived physical capacities as maintained or improved. The characteristics of the activity experience seem to determine the perceived fitness changes. We conclude that actual learning experiences improve one's self-concept of abilities.     

Attentional capture by emotional faces in adolescence

Poor decision making during adolescence occurs most frequently when situations are emotionally charged. However, relatively few studies have measured the development of cognitive control in response to emotional stimuli in this population. This study used both affective (emotional faces) and non-affective (letter) stimuli in two different flanker tasks to assess the ability to ignore task-irrelevant but distracting information, in 25 adults and 25 adolescents. On the non-emotional (letter) flanker task, the presence of incongruent flanking letters increased the number of errors, and also slowed participants’ ability to identify a central letter. Adolescents committed more errors than adults, but there were no age-related differences for the reaction time interference effect in the letter condition. Post-hoc testing revealed that age-related differences on the task were driven by the younger adolescents (11-14 years); adults and older adolescents (15-17 years) were equally accurate in the letter condition. In contrast, on the emotional face flanker task, not only were adolescents less accurate than adults but they were also more distracted by task-irrelevant fearful faces as evidenced by greater reaction time interference effects. Our findings suggest that the ability to self-regulate in adolescents, as evidenced by the ability to suppress irrelevant information on a flanker task, is more difficult when stimuli are affective in nature. The ability to ignore irrelevant flankers appears to mature earlier for non-affective stimuli than for affective stimuli.     

Foreign accent strength and listener familiarity with an accent codetermine speed of perceptual adaptation

We investigated how the strength of a foreign accent and varying types of experience with foreign-accented speech influence the recognition of accented words. In Experiment 1, native Dutch listeners with limited or extensive prior experience with German-accented Dutch completed a cross-modal priming experiment with strongly, medium, and weakly accented words. Participants with limited experience were primed by the medium and weakly accented words, but not by the strongly accented words. Participants with extensive experience were primed by all accent types. In Experiments 2 and 3, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to a short story before doing the cross-modal priming task. In Experiment 2, the story was spoken by the priming task speaker and either contained strongly accented words or did not. Strongly accented exposure led to immediate priming by novel strongly accented words, while exposure to the speaker without strongly accented tokens led to priming only in the experiment’s second half. In Experiment 3, listeners listened to the story with strongly accented words spoken by a different German-accented speaker. Listeners were primed by the strongly accented words, but again only in the experiment’s second half. Together, these results show that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid but depends on accent strength and on listener familiarity with those strongly accented words.     

Task switches under Go/NoGo conditions and the decomposition of switch costs

Alternating switches between two simple S-R tasks are combined with Go/NoGo tasks. Non-switches after Go trials are assumed to selectively profit from stimulus driven repetition benefits, whereas switches after NoGo trials are assumed to be selectively delayed by stimulus driven negative priming. Intentionally driven reconfiguration costs are assessed by RT differences between switches after Go trials (no negative priming) and non-switches after NoGo trials (no repetition benefits). Experiment 1 indicates that with short preparation time repetition benefits, negative priming costs, and intentional components contribute approximately additively to switch costs. Experiment 2 confirms that the delay of switches after NoGo trials is indeed due to negative priming. Experiments 3 and 4 show that repetition benefits and intentional components of switch costs are properly assessed only if the settings assure that participants reconfigure the required task set in NoGo as well as Go trials.