Prospective duration judgments: The role of temporality and executive demands of concurrent tasks

It is known that concurrent non-temporal tasks shorten reproduced temporal durations in prospective duration judgments. Two experiments were carried out, one comparing a concurrent temporal task to a minimally demanding concurrent task (Experiment 1) and one comparing an executive concurrent (Simon) task with a less demanding non-executive concurrent task (Experiment 2). An effect of the concurrent task type on temporal reproductions was found. Furthermore, a duration length effect was found, where longer durations were underestimated more than shorter durations. This effect tended to be stronger for the experiments that included a concurrent task that demanded high attention.     

Using Raw VAR Regression Coefficients to Build Networks can be Misleading

Many questions in the behavioral sciences focus on the causal interplay of a number of variables across time. To reveal the dynamic relations between the variables, their (auto- or cross-) regressive effects across time may be inspected by fitting a lag-one vector autoregressive, or VAR(1), model and visualizing the resulting regression coefficients as the edges of a weighted directed network. Usually, the raw VAR(1) regression coefficients are drawn, but we argue that this may yield misleading network figures and characteristics because of two problems. First, the raw regression coefficients are sensitive to scale and variance differences among the variables and therefore may lack comparability, which is needed if one wants to calculate, for example, centrality measures. Second, they only represent the unique direct effects of the variables, which may give a distorted picture when variables correlate strongly. To deal with these problems, we propose to use other VAR(1)-based measures as edges. Specifically, to solve the comparability issue, the standardized VAR(1) regression coefficients can be displayed. Furthermore, relative importance metrics can be computed to include direct as well as shared and indirect effects into the network.     

Aprendiendo de La Vida (Learning from Life): Development of a Radionovela to Promote Preventive Health Care Utilization among Indigenous Farmworkers from Mexico Living in California

Journal of Medical Humanities - Mixtecs and Zapotecs, originating from the Oaxaca area in Mexico, are among the largest indigenous groups of workers in California. Many adults in this community...     

Fantasized recipient-donor relationships following lung transplantations: a qualitative case analysis based on patient narratives

The present study examines the relationships between lung transplant recipients and their unknown, deceased donors. Out of 20 semi-structured interviews, eight narratives, by three female and three male recipients respectively, were identified in which the figure of the donor played a role. These narratives were examined using JAKOB, a qualitative research tool that analyses relational configurations and diagnoses psychodynamic conflicts. Analysis revealed a broad range of varying themes and relationships with equally varying wish and fear themes. All the narrators dealt either explicitly or implicitly with whether and how they are connected to their donors. In five narratives, specific personality traits were attributed to the figure of the donor; in four narratives, latent feelings of guilt concerning the donor's death were expressed. Indeed, the figure of the donor was not always perceived as an independent person, separate from the narrator's self: in two cases, the donor appears as part of the recipient's self, while in another case, the donor is presented as a transitional object for the recipient. The findings of the narrative analysis are discussed within a theoretical model of psychical organ integration.     

The next generation of psychological autopsy studies: part 2. Interview procedures

The psychological autopsy (PA) is a systematic method of assessing the psychological and contextual circumstances preceding suicide. The method requires interviews with one or more proxy respondents (i.e., informants) of suicide decedents. Procedural challenges that need to be addressed to conduct PA interviews are described in this article and recommendations for meeting these challenges in future PA investigations are made. Procedures addressed include determining the timing of PA interviews after suicide, designing the structure and flow of interviews, selection of proxy respondents, integrating interview data with information gathered from records, and selecting and training interviewers. This methodological article is the second in a two-part series-the first article focused on interview content.     

Episodic repetitive thought: dimensions, correlates, and consequences

Repetitive thought (RT) - attentive, prolonged, or frequent thought about oneself and one's world - plays an important role in many models of psychological and physical ill health (e.g., rumination and worry), as well as models of recovery and well-being (e.g., processing and reminiscing). In these models, repetitive thought is typically treated as stable or trait-like. In contrast, episodic RT reflects what people have "on their minds" at a particular point in time. In four studies, young women (N=94), college students (N=166), first-year law students (N=73), and older adults (N=174) described their episodic RT, which was then rated for qualities including valence, purpose, and theme. Episodic RT valence was associated with mood and depressive symptoms both between (Studies 1-4) and within people (Studies 3-4), and it mediated the effects of dispositional coping through emotional approach (Study 1). The effect of episodic RT valence in turn was moderated by other properties of episodic RT, including purpose, "trait" valence, and theme (Studies 1-4). The study of episodic RT complements that of trait RT and allows for observations of how RT and psychological adjustment change in concert and in context, as well as examining how the RT qualities that are not reflected in trait measures affect adjustment.     

Working memory, long-term memory, and medial temporal lobe function

Early studies of memory-impaired patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage led to the view that the hippocampus and related MTL structures are involved in the formation of long-term memory and that immediate memory and working memory are independent of these structures. This traditional idea has recently been revisited. Impaired performance in patients with MTL lesions on tasks with short retention intervals, or no retention interval, and neuroimaging findings with similar tasks have been interpreted to mean that the MTL is sometimes needed for working memory and possibly even for visual perception itself. We present a reappraisal of this interpretation. Our main conclusion is that, if the material to be learned exceeds working memory capacity, if the material is difficult to rehearse, or if attention is diverted, performance depends on long-term memory even when the retention interval is brief. This fundamental notion is better captured by the terms subspan memory and supraspan memory than by the terms short-term memory and long-term memory. We propose methods for determining when performance on short-delay tasks must depend on long-term (supraspan) memory and suggest that MTL lesions impair performance only when immediate memory and working memory are insufficient to support performance. In neuroimaging studies, MTL activity during encoding is influenced by the memory load and correlates positively with long-term retention of the material that was presented. The most parsimonious and consistent interpretation of all the data is that subspan memoranda are supported by immediate memory and working memory and are independent of the MTL.