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.     

Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function – Preschool Version (BRIEF-P): Test Review and Clinical Guidelines for Use

The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version (BRIEF-P) is a standardized questionnaire that measures executive functioning in preschoolers. This test review provides an overview of the BRIEF-P, including scale structure, administration, norms, score interpretation, current reliability and validity evidence, and provides general guidelines for clinical use.     

Simultaneous attentional guidance by working-memory and selection history reveals two distinct sources of attention

Recent theories of attention have proposed that selection history is a separate, dissociable source of information that influences attention. The current study sought to investigate the simultaneous involvement of selection history and working-memory on attention during visual search. Experiments 1 and 2 used target feature probability to manipulate selection history and found significant effects of both working-memory and selection history, although working-memory dominated selection history when they cued different locations. Experiment 3 eliminated the contribution of voluntary refreshing of working-memory and replicated the main effects, although selection history became dominant. Using the same methodology, but with reduced probability cue validity, both effects were present in Experiment 4 and did not significantly differ in their contribution to attention. Effects of selection history and working-memory never interacted. These results suggest that selection history and working-memory are separate influences on attention and have little impact on each other. Theoretical implications for models of attention are discussed.     

Loss of feeling in the university counsellor: Some clinical illustrations of personal illness in a university context

Abstract

This paper is concerned with anaesthesia, loss of feeling or state of lifelessness, including numbness, helplessness and paralysis in the university counsellor, and explores briefly contributions to such states in a university counsellor.     

Recognition memory and the mere exposure effect

Repeated exposure to novel stimuli tends to make the stimuli better liked. Examined here is the relation between this increment in liking and recognition of the stimuli. An attempt was made to replicate findings taken as evidence that liking is used as a basis for inferring prior exposure and thus for making recognition decisions (e.g., Matlin, 1971; Moreland & Zajonc, 1977). The claim was not supported. Although in each of five experiments liking and recognition were positively correlated, liking was less sensitive to prior exposure than was recognition. Moreover, statistical analyses suggested that if liking and recognition were causally related, recognition mediated liking rather than the other way around.