Error-monitoring ability predicts daily stress regulation

ABSTRACT— This study examined whether individual differences in error-related self-regulation predict emotion regulation in daily life, as suggested by a common-systems view of cognitive and emotional self-regulation. Participants ( N = 47) completed a Stroop task, from which error-related brain potentials and behavioral measures of error correction were computed. Participants subsequently reported on daily stressors and anxiety over a 2-week period. As predicted by the common-systems view, a physiological marker of error monitoring and a behavioral measure of error correction predicted emotion regulation in daily life. Specifically, participants higher in cognitive control, as assessed neurally and behaviorally, were less reactive to stress in daily life. The results support the notion that cognitive control and emotion regulation depend on common or interacting systems.     

Assessment of Major Life Events for Hong Kong Adolescents: The Chinese Adolescent Life Event Scale

Previous Chinese research on adolescent life stress adopted life event scales that were directly translated from Western measures. To address the methodological and cultural issues overlooked by the import approach, the present research aimed at constructing a life event scale for Hong Kong adolescents. Study 1 was conducted to congregate items for the Chinese Adolescent Life Event Scale (CALES). The CALES contains 44 items derived from 618 Hong Kong adolescents. Study 2 revealed adequate test–retest reliability and criterion-related validity for the CALES. Moreover, the CALES yielded stronger relationships with depression than did the translated life event measures. Results suggest that the CALES is appropriate for assessing life events for Hong Kong adolescents. Both unique features of the CALES and life events found only in the translated measures are examined. Implications for Chinese research on life stress are discussed.     

The current status of the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives. I: Drive concept, classification, and development

The evolution of Freud's theory of instinctual drives, with the accompanying models of a mental apparatus, is remarkable for its tenacious adherence to addressing the fundamental problems of human psychology, here phrased as the problems of body-mind-environment relationships. The concept of instinctual drives continues to be one of the most pervasive concepts of psychoanalysis, weathering considerable attack over the last several decades, although losing some clarity in the process. I have cited and discussed as basic issues of the concept of instinctual drives: the relationship of observational data and theoretical constructs in psychology; whether our construct of drives is or should be or can be purely psychological; the problem of conceptualizing the ontogenetic origin of mind; the issues of the "force-meaning conjunction" and the problem of psychic energy in psychoanalytic constructs; and the relation of our concept of instinctual drives to the concept of instincts in general. It seems that progress with these fundamental issues might be made by utilizing models that are more homologous with present knowledge in related fields than is Freud's reflex arc model of the nervous system, in order to build a better drive construct within the framework of psychoanalysis. The classification of instinctual drives remains a problem. Clinically, aggression seems to be a factor in conflict, very much like sexuality. Despite widespread acceptance of the idea of aggression as simply parallel to sexuality in all respects, there are major discrepancies. Perhaps aggression cannot be viewed as a drive after all; perhaps our drive construct needs to be modified to accommodate aggression. Certainly, controversy in this area has interfered with the production of good clinical studies which could begin to increase our understanding of aggression and its place in the human personality. The psychoanalytic theory of drive development has probably undergone less change in the last forty years than other aspects of drive theory, although careful observational work has led to alterations of our views of the age of onset of genital awareness, of female sexual development and function, and of the latency period. This is the conclusion of the first of two papers examining the post-Freud development of the theory of instinctual drives in psychoanalysis. The companion paper follows on p. 402 of this issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.     

Concordance Between Parent Reports of Children's Mental Health Services and Service Records: The Services Assessment for Children and Adolescents (SACA)

The concordance between parent reports of children's mental health services and medical and administrative service records were assessed in a field test of the Services Assessment for Children and Adolescents (SACA) interview instrument. Service use reports from primary caregivers, usually mothers, for their child's emotional or behavioral problems were compared against inpatient, outpatient, and school records in St. Louis, one of the pilot sites for the Multi-Site Study of Service Use, Need, Outcomes and Costs in Child and Adolescent Populations (UNOCCAP). A global any use service variable, comprised of inpatient, outpatient, and school reports, yielded an overall service use concordance kappa of .76 between parent reports and records. Parent reports of inpatient hospitalization services using the SACA yielded the highest agreement with medical records, with kappa statistics of 1.00 for use of any inpatient hospital care and for medication use. Parent reports of specific inpatient services concurred with medical records more moderately, yielding kappas from .50 to .66. Reports of any outpatient mental health services yielded variable rates of agreement, with kappas ranging from .67 for any use of outpatient care, to .66 for medication use, to negligible kappas for specific treatments. Parent reports of school services were weakly related to records for most services, except for moderate agreement (.48) on placement in special classrooms for emotional or behavioral problems. Family burden or impact discriminated more powerfully than other variables between respondents who concurred with records and those who did not.     

Context sensitivity in children's reasoning about ability across the elementary school years

Children's sensitivity to context when making inferences about ability was investigated. In three studies, elementary school children (ages 5 to 10, total N = 332) were asked to reason about the relation between academic ability and the speed with which characters completed puzzle tasks. Participants were primed to interpret the characters' task completion rates with reference to either (1) the character's perceptions of the difficulty of the task, or (2) the character's level of effort on the task. Children who were primed to consider the perceived difficulty of the task were more likely to view ability as a static quality, a pattern of reasoning that included a tendency to associate task completion rates with ability, and to agree that not all individuals are capable of achieving high levels of success. These results provide evidence that even early elementary school children are sensitive to subtle contextual cues when making inferences about ability, and are consistent with the possibility that children make use of implicit cues available to them in their social environment to derive meaning from achievement situations.     

Cognitive processes underlying coping flexibility: differentiation and integration

This study investigates how individuals formulate flexible coping strategies across situations by proposing differentiation and integration as two stress-appraisal processes. Results showed that participants who coped more flexibly adopted the dimensions of controllability and impact in differentiating among different stressful situations. They also deployed an integrated strategy: the deployment of more monitoring in situations perceived as controllable but less of this strategy in situations perceived as uncontrollable. Participants who coped less flexibly did not adopt any given dimensions and tended to use more monitoring regardless of situational characteristics. These results suggest that individuals with different extents of coping flexibility differ in the cognitive processes. Individuals who cope more flexibly display a greater extent of differentiation and integration than do those who cope less flexibly. These findings are translated into strategies for stress management workshops.     

Social risk and protective factors for suicide attempts in low income African American men and women

A case-control study was conducted to examine a broad array of potential social risk and protective factors for suicide attempt among 200 African American men and women receiving care at a large, public, urban hospital. Specifically, we examined the effect of the following potential risk factors for suicide attempt: life hassles, partner abuse, partner dissatisfaction, and racist events; as well as the following potential protective factors: effectiveness of obtaining resources, social embeddedness, and social support. Using logistic regression, suicide attempter status was predicted by two independently significant social variables: one risk factor (life hassles) and one protective factor (social support). Male versus female suicide attempters were not distinguished by the social variables. These findings, which support the utility of an ecological conceptualization of risk and protective factors for suicide attempt, help to clarify the independently significant social environment risk and protective factors for suicide attempts among economically disadvantaged African Americans in particular. Research on both risk factors and protective factors provide a basis for culturally competent interventions aimed at reducing both the risk of future suicide attempts and completions.     

Treatment of panic disorder: live therapy vs. self-help via the Internet

A randomized trial was conducted comparing 10 individual weekly sessions of cognitive behaviour therapy for panic disorder (PD) with or without agoraphobia with a 10-module self-help program on the Internet. After confirming the PD diagnosis with an in-person structured clinical interview (SCID) 49 participants were randomized. Overall, the results suggest that Internet-administered self-help plus minimal therapist contact via e-mail can be equally effective as traditional individual cognitive behaviour therapy. Composite within-group effect sizes were high in both groups, while the between-group effect size was small (Cohen's d=16). One-year follow-up confirmed the results, with a within-group effect size of Cohen's d=0.80 for the Internet group and d=0.93 for the live group. The results from this study generally provide evidence to support the continued use and development of Internet-distributed self-help programs.     

Disclosure of HIV-Positive Status to Latino Gay Men's Social Networks

This study explored disclosure of serostatus in a sample of 155 HIV-positive Latino gay men from New York City and Washington, DC. We examined rates of disclosure to different members of the social network: mothers, fathers, close friends, and primary sexual partners. There were high rates of disclosure of HIV-positive serostatus to main partners and closest friends and lower rates to fathers and mothers. We examined the role of 3 contextual target-dependent factors (emotional closeness to target, anticipated reactions from target, and target's knowledge of sexual orientation), as well as acculturation and time since diagnosis. Three separate logistic regression models were performed to predict disclosure of HIV-positive status to 3 targets: mothers, fathers, and closest friends. We found that disclosure was not a generalized tendency, but rather different factors were influential depending on the target. Whether the target was aware of participant's sexual orientation was associated with disclosure in all 3 models. Greater emotional closeness also predicted disclosure to mother and father; greater U.S. acculturation was associated with disclosure to father and marginally to mother. A longer time since diagnosis was associated with disclosure to the closest friend. These findings highlight the importance of taking into account roles and relationships, and their effect on disclosure.