Attentional and behavioural responses of spider fearfuls to virtual spiders

This study employed an immersed virtual environment (IVE) in the Nijmegen RIVERlab to study spider fearfuls’ attentional and motor reactions to virtual spiders. The participants were exposed to virtual spiders while completing an unrelated task, walking freely through a virtual museum. Compared to non-fearful controls, spider fearfuls showed an increase in state anxiety, they spent more time looking at spiders, and they exhibited spontaneous behavioural avoidance of spiders and visually similar objects. The results extend, and to some degree contradict, those of earlier studies with static pictures, and they speak to the usefulness of state-of-the-art IVEs in fundamental anxiety research.     

Pragmatic Psychodynamic Psychotherapy—Bridging Contemporary Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice and Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Practice

Pragmatic psychodynamic psychotherapy (PPP; Summers & Barber, 2009 Barber, J. P. 2009. Toward a working through of some core conflicts in psychotherapy research. Psychother. Res, 19(1): 1–12. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) describes the therapeutic principles and approaches found in many forms of manualized psychodynamic psychotherapies, which are being used in research studies with the aim of building an evidence-based psychodynamic practice. This article focuses on one such treatment, Supportive-expressive psychotherapy (SEP; Luborsky 1984), which employs the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method to formulate core interpersonal problems and treatment goals and identify therapeutic interventions. To illustrate SEP, we describe the 40-session treatment of a patient who met diagnostic criteria for several personality disorders. The case illustrates how complex ego-syntonic character pathology is expressed in CCRT terms and worked through in the transference, gradually becoming ego-dystonic and amenable to modification. In this case, the patient became more aware of his interpersonal wishes and vulnerability. Although his anxiety increased somewhat, he had an improvement in psychosocial functioning.     

Zum sprachlichen Verständnis von kol. 2, 23

In this article, the author attempts to clarify the motivation and goals of early Christian ascetics by treating asceticism as a political concept. By reading the ascetic tracts of Isaac of Nineveh (7^th century), and drawing on some views on the role of the body in the practice of resistance in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the author argues that ascetics like Isaac used their bodies to resist the control of ancient society and to create a tangible image – or icon – of a different way of living and of a different kind of society – the kingdom of God. Using a threefold typology of asceticism as transformative, performative and bodily, and focusing especially on the role of the body, a new way of understanding Christian asceticism emerges that, on the one hand, clearly distances itself from earlier models that viewed asceticism as an alien element in the Christian tradition; and, on the other hand, makes it possible to use the concept of asceticism to understand present day forms of resistance.     

Emotion processing and regulation in women with morbid obesity who apply for bariatric surgery

Emotional eating, the tendency to eat when experiencing negative affect, is prevalent in morbid obesity and may indicate that ways to deal with emotions are disturbed. Our aim was to compare emotion processing and regulation between 102 women with morbid obesity who apply for bariatric surgery and 102 women from the general population (control group) and to examine in the group with morbid obesity the association of emotion processing and regulation with emotional eating. The group with morbid obesity reported higher scores on difficulty identifying feelings (alexithymia, p?=?0.002) and suppression of emotions (p?=?0.003) than the control group. In the women with morbid obesity, more negative affect and a higher difficulty identifying feelings were correlated with more emotional eating (r?=?0.36 and r?=?0.35, p?<?0.001). Our study suggests that negative emotions and unhealthy emotion processing may play a role in emotional eating, and it indicates the possible relevance of emotion processing and emotional regulation as initiating or perpetuating mechanisms in morbid obesity.     

Validating Measures of Psychological Well-being by Contrasting Samples Employed in Hazardous and Less Hazardous Work

The study investigated whether differences between contrasting groups reflect significant differences in psychological well-being scores. Membership of hazardous vs. less hazardous occupations in the same profession served as proxy measures of well-being. Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence (SOC), Block & Kremen's Ego-resiliency, and Goldberg's Emotional Stability scales were validated. Study 1 compared mine rescue team members and ordinary miners (n = 34, 41) and Study 2 police special task force members and regular officers (n = 43, 41). In Study 1, SOC and job satisfaction predicted group membership. In Study 2, satisfaction with life and extraversion scales predicted group membership, as did SOC in a secondary analysis. The SOC scale could predict psychological well-being in hazardous work settings.     

Pathways to flourishing among pharmacy students: The role of study demands and lecturer support

This study investigated possible pathways to flourishing among pharmacy students attending a South African university (N = 799; females = 81.6%; Afrikaans-speakers = 84.7%, mean age = 20.42 years, SD = 2.25 years). The students completed the Mental Health Continuum – Short Form (MHC-SF) and an Overload and Lecturer Support Survey. Of the 779 pharmacy students, 40.3% self-reported as flourishing, with high mean scores on workload and lecturer support. The level of emotional well-being of year group 2 was the highest. Following structural equation modelling, overload and lecturer support explained between 18% and 31% of the variance in the flourishing of the different year groups. From the second to the third year, the predictive value of overload and lecturer support for flourishing decreased by 8.8%. Lecturer support and low overload appear to play a positive role in the flourishing of higher education students.     

Anxiety in Swedish School Children: Situational Specificity,Informant Variability and Coping Strategies

In a school sample, 463 Swedish children aged between 8 and 12 years reported their experience of anxiety during 11 "typical" home and school setting activities. In addition to rating the frequency and type of anxiety experienced, the children reported whether they used coping strategies to reduce their anxiety. Parents and teachers also rated the anxiety levels in the same children. Nine percent of the children reported that they experienced anxiety "often" during at least 1 of the 11 home and school activities and 1.5% reported an anxiety level of "often" averaged across all of the 11 activities. The parents reported that 9% of the children experienced "moderate" to "very much" anxiety levels averaged across the home-related activities, whereas the teachers reported that 38.5% of the children had such anxiety levels at school. Overall, the children's ratings of their frequency levels of anxiety were found to depend more on age than on gender. The children and their parents both regarded anxiety to be most common during "leaving home for school" and "going to bed at night" activities. The correspondence between child, parent and teacher reports of overall anxiety in the children was low; similar findings were obtained for anxiety among children in the various setting activities. The 8-year-old children reported a higher use of various coping strategies than did the 12-year-olds. The results are discussed in view of the current literature on anxiety and fears in children.     

Interactive insight problem solving

Insight problem solving was investigated with the matchstick algebra problems developed by Knoblich, Ohlsson, Haider, and Rhenius (1999 Knoblich, G., Ohlsson, S., Haider, H. and Rhenius, D. 1999. Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 25: 1534–1555. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). These problems are false equations expressed with Roman numerals that can be made true bymoving one matchstick. In a first group participants examined a static two-dimensional representation of the false algebraic expression and told the experimenter which matchstick should be moved. In a second group, participants interacted with a three-dimensional representation of the false equation. Success rates in the static group for different problem types replicated the pattern of data reported in Knoblich et al. (1999 Knoblich, G., Ohlsson, S., Haider, H. and Rhenius, D. 1999. Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 25: 1534–1555. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, participants in the interactive group were significantly more likely to achieve insight. Problem-solving success in the static group was best predicted by performance on a test of numeracy, whereas in the interactive group it was best predicted by performance on a test of visuo-spatial reasoning. Implications for process models of problem solving are discussed.