University students’ sleep during an exam period: the role of basic psychological needs and stress

During exam periods university students are at risk for poor sleep. To understand variability in this vulnerability for poor sleep, the role of the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness was examined by assessing university students (N?=?121; 78% female; M_age?=?21.69, SD?=?1.39, range 19–25) before, during, and after an exam period. Need-based and sleep-related functioning deteriorated during the exam period and then improved after the exam period. As need satisfaction decreased (i.e., from pre-exam to exam period) sleep quality, sleep quantity and daytime functioning deteriorated, while subsequent increases in need satisfaction (i.e., from exam to the post-exam period) were accompanied by improvements in sleep quality and daytime functioning. These correlated changes in need-based experiences and the sleep-related outcomes were largely accounted for by changes in stress, suggesting that stress may play an explanatory role in these associations.     

Response to Lombardi

We address some of the individual points that Lombardi makes, some that we agree with and some that as infant mental health clinicians we do not agree with—for example, that at the beginning of life the mind is still not there—and try to show why we think that is.     

Mental health counselling in the Black American Church: reflections and recommendations from counsellors serving in a counselling ministry

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between “The Black Church”, the mental health needs of its members, and addressing those needs from the perspective of counsellors within the church. Four in-depth interviews were conducted with members of the mental health counselling team at one large, African American-serving church in the Midwest to explore their thoughts about their church pastor’s desire to expand their current ministry to a fully operating counselling centre. The findings suggest that “the Black Church” not only has a role and responsibility in addressing the mental health needs of African Americans within and outside of the church but can also use religiosity as a facilitator rather than a barrier to mental health service use among African Americans.     

Changing-state disruption of lip-reading by irrelevant sound in perceptual and memory tasks

Three experiments investigated irrelevant sound interference of lip-read lists. In Experiment 1, an acoustically changing sequence of nine irrelevant utterances was more disruptive to spoken immediate identification of lists of nine lip-read digits than nine repetitions of the same utterances (the changing-state effect; Jones, Madden, & Miles, 1992). Experiment 2 replicated this finding when lip-read items were sampled with replacement from the nine digits to form the lip-read lists. In Experiment 3, when the irrelevant sound was confined to the retention interval of a delayed recall task, a changing-state pattern of disruption also occurred. Results confirm a changing-state effect in memory for lip-read items but also point to the possibility that, for lip-reading, changing-state effects may occur at an earlier, perceptual stage.     

The relationship between factorial composition of test items and measures of test reliability

For continuous distributions associated with dichotomous item scores, the proportion of common-factor variance in the test,H ², may be expressed as a function of intercorrelations among items.H ² is somewhat larger than the coefficienta except when the items have only one common factor and its loadings are restricted in value. The dichotomous item scores themselves are shown not to have a factor structure, precluding direct interpretation of the Kuder-Richardson coefficient,r _K-R, in terms of factorial properties. The value ofr _K-R is equal to that of a coefficient of equivalence,H ² , when the mean item variance associated with common factors equals the mean interitem covariance. An empirical study with synthetic test data from populations of varying factorial structure showed that the four parameters mentioned may be adequately estimated from dichotomous data.This study was supported in part by an Air Force project (Contract Number AF18(600-170), monitored by the Crew Research Laboratory, Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center, Randolph Air Force Base, Randolph Field, Texas. Permission is granted for reproduction, translation, publication, use and disposal in whole and in part by or for the United States Government. Further support was given by the Northwestern University Graduate School. The computational assistance of Mr. Norman Miller is acknowledged. Professor Meyer Dwass provided mathematical advice both directly and indirectly relevant to the paper.     

Preliminary development of the Body Image Affect Scale

A new body-image questionnaire was developed to measure the affect associated with a negative body image. Responses showed a Cronbach coefficient alpha of .84 and a negative correlation of -.21 with using humor in times of stress.     

Cognitive inhibition in selection and sequential retrieval

Inhibitory models of working memory efficiency (Engle, 1996; Zacks & Hasher, 1994) assert that individual differences in working memory reflect the efficiency of inhibitory processes that exclude irrelevant information and suppress no-longer-relevant information. The present study examined the implication that these two inhibitory processes operate at consistent levels of efficiency within individuals by examining the correlation between two cognitive inhibition effects, negative priming and negative error priming. Negative priming involves slower response to a probe-trial target that was used as a to-be-ignored distractor on the immediately preceding prime trial. Negative error priming is the phenomenon that errors in a sequence of simple arithmetic trials are unlikely to involve the correct answer to the preceding problem. Participants received distractor-target pairs of simple addition problems and were required to produce the target problem sum. Negative priming was observed for prime distractors, whereas negative error priming was observed in connection with previous targets but not distractors. Consistent with the assumptions of these working memory models, the magnitudes of the two effects were significantly correlated.     

Presence/absence-sample matching by pigeons: divergent retention functions may result from the similarity of behavior during the absence sample and the retention interval

Divergent choose-absence retention functions typically found in pigeons following presence/absence-sample matching have been attributed to the development of a single-code/default coding strategy. However, such effects may result from adventitious differential responding to the samples. In Experiment 1, retention functions were divergent only when differential sample responding could serve as the basis for comparison choice. In Experiment 2, when pecking did not occur during the retention interval, a choose-absence bias was found, but when pecking occurred during the retention interval, a choose-presence bias resulted. In Experiment 3, positive transfer was found when a stimulus associated with the absence of pecking replaced the absence sample but not when a stimulus associated with pecking replaced the presence sample. Thus, presence/absence-sample matching may not encourage the development of a single-code/default coding strategy in pigeons.     

Comparison of MMPI-2 profiles of Gulf War veterans with epileptic and nonepileptic seizure patients

As part of a larger study of illnesses related to service in the Gulf War, MMPI-2 profiles of epileptic seizure (ES) patients; nonepileptic seizure (NES) patients; Gulf War veterans with unexplained cognitive, psychological, musculoskeletal, fatigue, or dermatologic symptoms; and asymptomatic Gulf War veterans (Controls) were analyzed. There were 70 people in each group. Seizure diagnosis was based upon intensive EEG monitoring. Gulf War cases were mildly abnormal on MMPI-2 Scales Hs and D and significantly higher than controls on 8 of 10 MMPI-2 clinical scales, but they were significantly lower than NES patients on several scales including Hs and Hy.     

Recognition accuracy and reaction time of vocal expressions of emotion by African-American and Euro-American college women

This study examined the relationship of racial group membership and vocal expressions of emotion. Recognition accuracy and reaction time were examined using the Diagnostic Assessment of Nonverbal Accuracy 2 Receptive Paralanguage subtests with 18 young Euro-American and African-American women. Participants listened to Euro-American children and adults speaking a neutral sentence, and identified the emotion as happy, sad, angry, or fearful. Analysis identified a significant effect for race on reaction time. Euro-American participants had faster mean RT than the African-American women for the recognition of vocal expression of emotion portrayed by Euro-Americans. However, no significant differences were found in mean accurate identification between the two groups. The finding of a significant difference in recognition RT but not in accuracy between the stimuli spoken by an adult and a child was unexpected. Both racial groups had faster mean RT in response to vocal expression of emotion by children.