Context specificity of latent inhibition in the snail Cornu aspersum

Animal Cognition - The present study was conducted to assess the context specificity of latent inhibition (LI) in the snail Cornu aspersum, using the appetitive Pavlovian Conditioning procedure of...     

Gender Differences in Psychological Well-Being in Emerging Adulthood

Gender is recognized as an important social determinant of health, but past research on gender differences in psychological well-being have not produced conclusive results. This study investigated gender differences in eudaimonic well-being and life satisfaction in emerging adulthood. A cross-sectional study with a sample of 1990 emerging adults (50% males) from the Spanish general population was conducted. Participants were assessed through five questionnaires. Results showed that women scored higher than men in purpose in life and personal growth. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that the most important predictors of emerging adult men’s and women’s eudaimonic well-being and life satisfaction were higher self-confidence and lower negative self-evaluation. Other significant variables in the eudaimonic well-being of both women and men were higher score in the masculine/instrumental trait, higher emotional social support, higher educational level, and higher score in the feminine/expressive trait. Furthermore, higher instrumental social support was associated with eudaimonic well-being in females. Other predictors of women’s and men’s life satisfaction were higher score in the feminine/expressive trait, less age, higher educational level and higher instrumental social support. In addition, higher emotional social support was associated with life satisfaction in males. The results suggest that gender is important in the psychological well-being of people in emerging adulthood, although self-esteem and instrumental social support are, in both emerging adult women and men, the most important predictors of psychological well-being.

     

Measurement of Quality of Life in Spanish Regions

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The present paper measures quality of life through a set of dimensions included in the following partial indicators of objective well-being: demography,...     

Pain Control and Chaplaincy in Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper summarizes the results of 100 New Zealand health care chaplains with regard to their involvement in issues concerning pain control within the New Zealand health care context. Both quantitative (via survey) and qualitative methods (in-depth interviewing) were utilized. The findings of this study indicated that approximately 52 % of surveyed hospital chaplains had provided some form of pastoral intervention directly to patients and/or their families dealing with issues concerning pain and that approximately 30 % of hospital chaplains had assisted clinical staff with issues concerning pain. NZ chaplaincy personnel involved in pain-related issues utilized a number of pastoral interventions to assist patients, their families and clinical staff. Differences of involvement between professionally stipended hospital chaplains and their volunteer chaplaincy assistants are noted, as are the perspectives of interviewed chaplains about their pastoral interventions with issues relating to pain. Some implications of this study with respect to chaplaincy utility, training and collaboration with clinical staff are noted, as are comparisons with international findings.     

Client as Expert: Incorporating Spirituality Using the Tree Ring Technique

Addressing spirituality with clients from diverse spiritual backgrounds is a facet of culturally competent and ethical practice, yet various obstacles contribute to spirituality being overlooked. This article features a counseling technique used with clients who are experiencing difficulty with issues of a spiritual nature. Based on constructivist principles, the tree ring technique provides a context and process for examining clients’ spiritual conflicts, whereby the client is the expert and the counselor adopts a not‐knowing stance.     

Acceptability of virtual reality interoceptive exposure for the treatment of panic disorder with agoraphobia

Interoceptive exposure (IE) is a standard component of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for panic disorder and agoraphobia. The virtual reality (VR) program ‘Panic-Agoraphobia’ has several virtual scenarios designed for applying exposure to agoraphobic situations; it can also simulate physical sensations. This work examines patients' acceptability of the IE component as applied in two different ways: using VR versus traditional IE. Additionally, it explores the relationship between users' treatment expectations and satisfaction and clinically significant change. Results showed that VR and traditional IE were well accepted by all participants. Furthermore, treatment expectations predicted efficacy.     

Working memory retrieval differences between medial temporal lobe epilepsy patients and controls: A three memory layer approach

Multi-store models of working memory (WM) have given way to more dynamic approaches that conceive WM as an activated subset of long-term memory (LTM). The resulting framework considers that memory representations are governed by a hierarchy of accessibility. The activated part of LTM holds representations in a heightened state of activation, some of which can reach a state of immediate accessibility according to task demands. Recent neuroimaging studies have studied the neural basis of retrieval information with different states of accessibility. It was found that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) was involved in retrieving information within immediate access store and outside this privileged zone. In the current study we further explored the contribution of MTL to WM retrieval by analyzing the consequences of MTL damage to this process considering the state of accessibility of memory representations. The performance of a group of epilepsy patients with left hippocampal sclerosis in a 12-item recognition task was compared with that of a healthy control group. We adopted an embedded model of WM that distinguishes three components: the activated LTM, the region of direct access, and a single-item focus of attention. Groups did not differ when retrieving information from single-item focus, but patients were less accurate retrieving information outside focal attention, either items from LTM or items expected to be in the WM range. Analyses focused on items held in the direct access buffer showed that consequences of MTL damage were modulated by the level of accessibility of memory representations, producing a reduced capacity.     

Attachment,Infidelity, and Loneliness in College Students Involved in a Romantic Relationship: The Role of Relationship Satisfaction,Morbidity, and Prayer for Partner

This study examined the mediating effects of relationship satisfaction, prayer for a partner, and morbidity in the relationship between attachment and loneliness, infidelity and loneliness, and psychological morbidity and loneliness, in college students involved in a romantic relationship. Participants were students in an introductory course on family development. This study examined only students (n = 345) who were involved in a romantic relationship. The average age of participants was 19.46 (SD = 1.92) and 25 % were males. Short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8), (Hays and DiMatteo in J Pers Assess 51:69–81, doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa5101_6, 1987); Relationship Satisfaction Scale (Funk and Rogge in J Fam Psychol 21:572–583, doi:10.1037/0893-3200.21.4.572, 2007); Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (De Haes et al. in Measuring the quality of life of cancer patients with the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL): a manual, Northern Centre for Healthcare Research, Groningen, 1996); Prayer for Partner Scale, (Fincham et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 99:649–659, doi:10.1037/a0019628, 2010); Infidelity Scale, (Drigotas et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 77:509–524, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.3.509, 1999); and the Experiences in Close Relationship Scale-short form (Wei et al. in J Couns Psychol 52(4):602–614, doi:10.1037/0022-0167.52.4.602, 2005). Results showed that relationship satisfaction mediated the relationship between avoidance attachment and loneliness and between infidelity and loneliness. Physical morbidity mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and psychological morbidity. Psychological morbidity mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and physical morbidity. The present results expand the literature on attachment by presenting evidence that anxious and avoidant partners experience loneliness differently. Implications for couple’s therapy are addressed. Future research should replicate these results with older samples and married couples.     

Effects of the psycholinguistic variables on the lexical decision task in Spanish: A study with 2,765 words

In order to explore the role of the main psycholinguistic variables on visual word recognition, several mega-studies have been conducted in English in recent years. Nevertheless, because the effects of these variables depend on the regularity of the orthographic system, studies must also be done in other languages with different characteristics. The goal of this work was to conduct a lexical decision study in Spanish, a language with a shallow orthography and a high number of words. The influence of psycholinguistic variables on latencies corresponding to 2,765 words was assessed by means of linear mixed-effects modeling. The results show that some variables, such as frequency or age of acquisition, have significant effects on reaction times regardless of the type of words used. Other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or imageability, were significant only in specific groups of words. Our results highlight the importance of taking into account the peculiarities of each spelling system in the development of reading models.     

Exploration in free word association networks: models and experiment

Free association is a task that requires a subject to express the first word to come to their mind when presented with a certain cue. It is a task which can be used to expose the basic mechanisms by which humans connect memories. In this work, we have made use of a publicly available database of free associations to model the exploration of the averaged network of associations using a statistical and the adaptive control of thought–rational (ACT-R) model. We performed, in addition, an online experiment asking participants to navigate the averaged network using their individual preferences for word associations. We have investigated the statistics of word repetitions in this guided association task. We find that the considered models mimic some of the statistical properties, viz the probability of word repetitions, the distance between repetitions and the distribution of association chain lengths, of the experiment, with the ACT-R model showing a particularly good fit to the experimental data for the more intricate properties as, for instance, the ratio of repetitions per length of association chains.