Fear of Physical Harm: Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties of the Injury/Illness Sensitivity Index

Three fundamental fears—anxiety sensitivity, fear of negative evaluation, and injury/illness sensitivity—are believed integral components of anxiety-related psychopathologies. S. Taylor (1993) performed a cumulative factor analysis on measures of these and found them factorially distinct. Subsequently, separate factor analyses have been performed on measures of anxiety sensitivity and fear of negative evaluation. No such analysis exists for the Injury/Illness Sensitivity Index (ISI; S. Taylor, 1993). The ISI, an 11-item self-report questionnaire intended to measure fear of illness and injury, has the potential to inform the understanding of mechanisms underlying anxiety-associated chronic health conditions. The primary purpose of this study was to assess the factor structure and psychometric properties of the ISI. A principal components analysis with oblique rotation, conducted on data from 122 participants, suggests the ISI comprises two distinct lower order factors—Fear of Illness and Fear of Injury—that load onto a higher order factor of Fear of Physical Harm.     

Degrees of freedom and motor planning in purposive movement

This paper presents empirical evidence suggesting that healthy humans can perform a two degree of freedom visuo-motor pursuit tracking task with the same response time delay as a one degree of freedom task. In contrast, the time delay of the response is influenced markedly by the nature of the motor synergy required to produce it. We suggest a conceptual account of this evidence based on adaptive model theory, which combines theories of intermittency from psychology and adaptive optimal control from engineering. The intermittent response planning stage has a fixed period. It possesses multiple optimal trajectory generators such that multiple degrees of freedom can be planned concurrently, without requiring an increase in the planning period. In tasks which require unfamiliar motor synergies, or are deemed to be incompatible, internal adaptive models representing movement dynamics are inaccurate. This means that the actual response which is produced will deviate from the one which is planned. For a given target-response discrepancy, corrective response trajectories of longer duration are planned, consistent with the principle of speed-accuracy trade-off. Compared to familiar or compatible tasks, this results in a longer response time delay and reduced accuracy. From the standpoint of the intermittency approach, the findings of this study help make possible a more integral and predictive account of purposive action.     

Psychosocial Issues That Face Patients With Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease: The Role of Genetic Counseling

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease is a hereditary debilitating progressive muscular atrophy and sensory neuropathy of the distal extremities. CMT is usually nonlife threatening. Signs of the disease usually present in childhood or in young adulthood and the level of disability can be variable within and between families. Research addressing specific psychosocial and emotional issues faced by individuals with CMT is limited. Fourteen adults with a clinical and/or molecular diagnosis of CMT (ages 32–74 years) consented to an audio taped interview. The format of the interview was based around an informal questionnaire to prompt and guide the interviewee to describe their experiences of living with a disabling genetic disorder. The interviews focused on their experiences of first symptoms and diagnosis, their life experience with CMT, their limitations due to disability and the role of genetic counseling. This study identifies and explores life issues that individuals with CMT may face, specifically grief over the loss of independence, emotional pain and stress such as embarrassment and guilt of passing on a gene mutation, impact on quality of life, the impact of wearing orthopedic devices, and fear of progressive disability. Our findings suggest that that there are emotional and psychosocial issues specific to affected individuals at different life stages and genetic counselors need to be aware of these issues in order to provide age appropriate support and advice to individuals affected by CMT.     

Impact of a Brief Intervention on Patient Anxiety Prior to Day Surgery

Patients anticipating surgical procedures experience significant anxiety, resulting in adverse outcomes and increased expenditures. Research has investigated the impact of anxiety-reducing interventions, frequently the provision of surgical information, with inconsistent results. The present study (N = 98) examined preference for information, or monitor-blunter coping style, and the impact of a pre-surgical phone call from an anesthesiologist on anxiety in which treatment group participants (n = 51) dictated the amount of information received. Monitors were hypothesized to desire more information than blunters, and changes in anxiety for monitors/blunters were hypothesized to be moderated by length of call. Monitors and blunters demonstrated equal call durations and anxiety levels remained equivalent across groups. Findings and implications for future research are discussed.     

Cholinergic septo-hippocampal innervation is required for trace eyeblink classical conditioning

We studied the effects of a selective lesion in rats, with 192-IgG-saporin, of the cholinergic neurons located in the medial septum/diagonal band (MSDB) complex on the acquisition of classical and instrumental conditioning paradigms. The MSDB lesion induced a marked deficit in the acquisition, but not in the retrieval, of eyeblink classical conditioning using a trace paradigm. Such a deficit was task-selective, as lesioned rats were able to acquire a fixed-interval operant conditioning as controls, and was not due to nonspecific motor alterations, because spontaneous locomotion and blink reflexes were not disturbed by the MSDB lesion. The deficit in the acquisition of a trace eyeblink classical conditioning was reverted by the systemic administration of carbachol, a nonselective cholinergic muscarinic agonist, but not by lobeline, a nicotinic agonist. These results suggest a key role of muscarinic denervation on the acquisition of new motor abilities using trace classical conditioning procedures. It might also be suggested that muscarinic agents would be useful for the amelioration of some associative learning deficits observed at early stages in patients with Alzheimer's disease.     

Na+,K(+)-ATPase activity is reduced in hippocampus of rats submitted to an experimental model of depression: effect of chronic lithium treatment and possible involvement in learning deficits

This study was undertaken to verify the effects of chronic stress and lithium treatments on the hippocampal Na+,K(+)-ATPase activity of rats, as well as to investigate the effects of stress interruption and post-stress lithium treatment on this enzyme activity and on spatial memory. Two experiments were carried out; in the first experiment, adult male Wistar rats were divided into two groups: control and submitted to a chronic variate stress paradigm, and subdivided into treated or not with LiCl. After 40 days of treatment, rats were killed, and Na+,K(+)-ATPase activity was determined. In the second experiment, rats were stressed during 40 days, and their performance was evaluated in the Water Maze task. The stressed group was then subdivided into four groups, with continued or interrupted stress treatment and treated or not with lithium for 30 additional days. After a second evaluation of performance in the Water Maze, rats were killed and Na+,K(+)-ATPase activity was also measured. Results showed an impairment in Na+,K(+)-ATPase activity and in Water Maze performance of chronically stressed rats, which were prevented by lithium treatment and reversed by lithium treatment and by stress interruption. These results suggest that the modulation of Na+,K(+)-ATPase activity may be one of the mechanisms of action of lithium in the treatment of mood disorders.     

Vitamins E and C pretreatment prevents ovariectomy-induced memory deficits in water maze

We investigated whether the pretreatment with vitamins E (alpha-tocopherol) and C (ascorbic acid) would act on ovariectomy-induced memory deficits in Morris water maze tasks. Adult female Wistar rats were divided into three groups: (1) naive (control), (2) sham (submitted to surgery without removal of ovaries) and (3) ovariectomized. Thirty days after surgery, they were trained in the Morris water maze in order to verify ovariectomy effects both on reference and working memory tasks. Results show that ovariectomized rats presented impairment in spatial navigation in the acquisition phase, as well as in the time spent in target quadrant and in the latency to cross over the location of the platform in test session, when compared to naive and sham groups (controls), in the reference memory task. Ovariectomy did not affect performance in the working memory task. Confirming our hypothesis, ovariectomized rats pretreated for 30 days with vitamins E and C had those impairments prevented. We conclude that ovariectomy significantly impairs spatial reference learning/memory and that pretreatment with vitamins E and C prevents such effect. Assuming this experimental memory impairment might mimic, at least in part, the cognitive deficit sometimes present in the human condition of lack of reproductive hormones, our findings lend support to a novel therapeutic strategy, based on vitamins E and C, to cognitive impairments in post-menopausal women.     

Ethnic identity and mentoring among Latinas in professional roles

This study examined ethnic identity and mentoring (a known strategy to promote career success and advancement) in a sample of 103 Latina women with professional roles in the areas of business, academia, policy, and politics. Other variables examined included traditional gender roles and perceptions of professional success. Findings indicated that the women's ethnic identity was consistent with a bicultural profile; some received mentoring and, if given a choice, would prefer to be mentored by someone of similar ethnicity. This finding is critical and can allow researchers, service providers, and policy developers to apply culturally responsive strategies in communities and in organizations. Other hypotheses were not supported. A discussion of the findings, implications, and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Forming a stable memory representation in the first year of life: why imitation is more than child's play

Although 9-month-old infants are capable of retaining temporally ordered information over long delays, this ability is relatively fragile. It may be possible to facilitate long-term retention by allowing infants to imitate event sequences immediately after their presentation. The effects of imitation on immediate and delayed recognition and on long-term recall were investigated using event-related potentials (ERPs) and elicited imitation, respectively. Mnemonic facilitation resulting from the opportunity to imitate was apparent using both assessments. ERP assessments at immediate and delayed recognition tests suggested that infants who were allowed to imitate had stronger memory representations of familiar stimuli relative to infants who only viewed the presentation of the events. In addition, infants who were allowed to imitate evidenced higher levels of ordered recall after 1 month relative to infants who only watched the experimenter's demonstration. Therefore, imitation proved to have beneficial effects on explicit memory in 9(1/2)-month-olds, providing evidence of its effectiveness as a tool to augment mnemonic capabilities in infancy.