Do Background Stressors Influence Reactivity to and Recovery From Acute Stressors?1

This review examines the effect of background stressors with acute stressor reactivity and recovery in the 19 available studies. Background stressors were associated with increased acute stressor reactivity in slightly over half of the studies of ongoing stressors. However, a substantial minority of studies demonstrated reduced acute stressor reactivity, suggesting habituation for certain people in certain situations. Background stressors were associated with delayed blood-pressure and immunological recovery from acute stressor events, but were not associated with delayed heart-rate recovery. Possible mechanisms underlying the association between background stressors and acute stressor reactivity and recovery are discussed. Background stressors should be measured thoroughly in future acute stress research to understand the meaning of the acute stress responses.     

Defining and diagnosing involuntary emotional expression disorder

Uncontrollable episodes of emotional expression occur in a variety of neurological conditions. This emotional disinhibition syndrome is characterized by episodes of crying or laughing that are unrelated to or out of proportion to the eliciting stimulus. This syndrome is common among patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, stroke, and traumatic brain injury and a variety of terms and definitions have been used to describe it. The confusing nomenclature has been a barrier to understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of this disorder. The authors propose a unifying term, involuntary emotional expression disorder (IEED), and provide diagnostic criteria for this disorder.     

Producing biased diagnoses with unambiguous stimuli: The importance of feature instantiations

In this article, the authors demonstrate a laboratory analogue of medical diagnostic biasing (V. R. LeBlanc, G. R. Norman, & L. R. Brooks, 2001) in 2 experiments and explore the basis of this effect. Before categorizing novel exemplars, participants first evaluated the likelihood that the item was a member of the category suggested on that trial: either the correct category or a plausible alternative category. This was sufficient to produce a substantial bias toward the suggested category despite the use of unambiguous stimuli, explicit rules, and unhurried conditions--each of which would be likely to limit diagnostic bias. The authors argue that the production of this effect requires distinguishing between particular feature instantiations and more abstract representations of those features as well as allowing people to adopt a particular decision strategy mediating the use of instantiated features: a feature-recognition heuristic.     

Changing food preference as a function of mood

The authors investigated the effect of mood on food selection. Participants (N = 98) indicated the likelihood of general eating and the likelihood of eating specific foods after reading and projecting themselves onto the events and emotions described in a sad and a happy vignette. Both men and women believed they were more likely to consume food following a happy versus a sad event, and men believed they were significantly more likely to eat than did women. However, the type of food men and women believed they would consume interacted with the type of event experienced. Vegetarian snack foods were more likely to be consumed following a happy versus a sad event, with men more likely to eat snack foods. Men did not significantly change in likelihood of consuming sweet foods as their mood changed. However, women believed they were more likely to consume sweet foods following a sad event. The authors discuss the results in terms of a self-medication hypothesis and the effect of carbohydrates on central serotonin and endogenous opioids. Overall, results demonstrated that mood influences belief in the likelihood of food selection.     

Apparitions in the Fog Commentary on Paper by Adrienne Harris and Barbara H. Gold

Although an intersubjective analytic approach reflects postmodern concerns about the problems associated with authority and influence, it does not altogether escape them. Interpreting subjective states invokes a veiled analytic authority, and labeling them as dissociative creates a pathway for the influence of questionable assumptions about the origins of dissociation as a defense against trauma. Harris and Gold's paper can be used to illustrate these ideas.     

Risk factors for psychological morbidity in women attending a one-stop diagnostic clinic with suspected breast disease

Abstract

The present study was designed to identify risk factors for psychological morbidity in women attending a one-stop diagnostic clinic with suspected breast disease. A cohort of 158 women were recruited and were asked to complete scales measuring psychological morbidity and psychosocial factors in the period immediately before their appointment and to repeat the assessments of psychological morbidity on the day of the appointment. Relevant clinical and demographic data were also collated. Within the cohort 1.4% of respondents received a diagnosis of malignant disease. Psychological morbidity, both prior to and during the diagnostic appointment was strongly predicted by psychosocial factors (i.e., acceptance-resignation coping, personal self esteem and discrepancies in social support), accounting for 54% and 63% of the variance at pre-appointment and appointment day phases respectively. Other measured variables were found not to be correlated with and/or to account for a significant proportion of the variance in the measures of morbidity. These results suggest that these psychosocial variables should be targeted in interventions designed to reduce psychological morbidity in this patient group.