Day-to-day variability in nap duration predicts medical morbidity in older adults

Objective: The objectives for the present study were to (a) examine within-person variability of nap duration and (b) assess how variability in nap duration is related to the number of health conditions in a sample of older adults. For highly variable behaviors such as sleep, it is important to consider fluctuations within the person instead of solely comparing averages of behaviors across persons. Method: Data were drawn from a previous study examining sleep in 103 community-dwelling older adults. Subjective estimates of napping behavior were obtained from sleep diaries and objective estimates of napping behavior were obtained using actigraphy. Both measures were collected for 14 consecutive days. The sampled data were aggregated in terms of (a) average daily time spent napping and (b) average within-person fluctuations in daily nap duration. The health measure consisted of the number of self-reported health conditions. Results: Both the objective and subjective measures revealed that there was considerable day-to-day fluctuation in nap duration and that variability in nap duration, not mean duration, uniquely predicted the number of health conditions, b = .03, b* = .26, t(100) = 2.71, p = .01. Conclusions: Duration of napping in older adults is a highly variable behavior, fluctuating as much within- as between-persons. Furthermore, variability in nap duration from day to day is predictive of greater medical morbidity, suggesting that clinicians should assess for inconsistencies in nap behavior in addition to duration, frequency, and timing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

No More Away: Techno-Attachments and the Relational Future

This paper speculates about the impact of techno-connectedness on our children, ourselves, our grandchildren. Triggered by recollections from Victorian novels that describe European summers “away” from home, a concern about loss of opportunity, the “space” for self-discovery in this young generation will be explored in a relational context. Brought about by pervasive dependence upon computer technology, is self-experience fragmented and attachment changed by the ubiquitous technological presence and is the more isolated, reflective experience being eroded?     

Unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders: a randomized controlled trial

This study further evaluates the efficacy of the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP). A diagnostically heterogeneous clinical sample of 37 patients with a principal anxiety disorder diagnosis was enrolled in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving up to 18 sessions of treatment and a 6-month follow-up period. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either immediate treatment with the UP (n=26) or delayed treatment, following a 16-week wait-list control period (WLC; n=11). The UP resulted in significant improvement on measures of clinical severity, general symptoms of depression and anxiety, levels of negative and positive affect, and a measure of symptom interference in daily functioning across diagnoses. In comparison, participants in the WLC condition exhibited little to no change following the 16-week wait-list period. The effects of UP treatment were maintained over the 6-month follow-up period. Results from this RCT provide additional evidence for the efficacy of the UP in the treatment of anxiety and comorbid depressive disorders, and provide additional support for a transdiagnostic approach to the treatment of emotional disorders.     

Manipulations of start and food locations affect navigation on a foraging task

Rats were able to search multiple food cups in a foraging task and successfully return to a fixed, but not a variable, start location. Reducing the number of food cups to be searched resulted in an improvement in performance in the variable start condition. Performance was better when only one or two food cups had to be visited but was still impaired if the food was not found in the first cup searched. Variable start locations impaired performance when only one food cup had to be searched, if that cup was moved over the table. These findings suggest that there is an interaction between memory processes and the navigational processes that allows an animal to return to its start location after a foraging trip. It appears that a fixed location for the food or the start point of a foraging trip is a necessary precondition for accurate performance.     

Validation of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) in a sample of persons recovering from myocardial infarction--the Swedish version

When people's health is threatened, they generally develop illness perceptions to make sense of their illness. The Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R), developed by Moss-Morris et al (2002), has been widely used in many countries to measure such representations. However, since studies in this crucial research area are lacking in Sweden a Swedish version of IPQ-R was validated with a focus on the seven subscales: timeline acute/chronic, timeline cyclical, consequences, personal control, treatment control, illness coherence and emotional representations. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the aim of the present study was to validate the internal structure of the Swedish version in a sample of 202 persons (144 men and 58 women) who had been diagnosed with myocardial infarction four months earlier. Additionally, inter-correlations among the seven subscales and external concurrent validity were also investigated. The results of confirmatory factor analysis revealed that, in line with the English version of the IPQ-R, the specified seven-factor model had a satisfactory fit. One item was however not considered reliable and was therefore excluded from the instrument. The internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficients) and the inter-factor correlations were relatively similar to those reported in the validation study of the original English IPQ-R. In tests of concurrent validity, the seven IPQ-R subscales were, as hypothesized, mainly associated with external variables. To conclude, the Swedish version of the IPQ-R's seven dimensions, with one item removed, (total 37 items) was found to be a reliable and valid measure of illness perception.     

The impact of discrepancies from ingroup norms on group members' well‐being and motivation

The social identity approach assumes that group members are internally motivated to adhere to group norms. Even though there is plenty of evidence for this assumption, research on how group norms translate into behavior is scarce. If ingroup norms are internalized, they should elicit the same effect as individual standards. Derived from research on internally motivated individual standards, it was predicted that discrepancies from group norms result in more negative affect, lower levels of well‐being, and—based on self‐completion theory—in compensatory effort in case of an opportunity to reduce the discrepancy. One correlational study and four experiments support these predictions. The results are discussed in relation to self‐regulation approaches and the social identity approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implementing Changes in Institutions to Improve Young Children's Development

An estimated 8 million children, mostly birth to approximately 6-8 years of age, live in institutions worldwide. While institutional environments vary, certain characteristics are common, including relatively large groups; high children:caregiver ratios; many and frequently changing caregivers; homogeneous grouping by age and disability status; periodic graduations to new groups of peers and caregivers; and an "institutional style of caregiving" that minimizes talking, provides rather dispassionate perfunctory care, and offers little warm, sensitive, contingently-responsive caregiver-child interactions. The development of children in residence is usually delayed, sometimes extremely so, in every physical and behavioral domain. Although efforts are being made in many countries to care for children without permanent parents in family environments (e.g., domestic adoption, foster and kinship care, reunification with biological parents), it is not likely that transitions to family alternatives will be completed in all countries in the near future; thus, institutions are likely to exist for many years if not decades. But institutions need not operate in the current manner; they can be modified to be substantially more family-like in structure and in the behavior of caregivers. Research indicates that when such changes are made the development of children, both typically developing and those with special needs, is improved substantially. Based on the available literature and the authors' experience, this paper describes steps that can be taken to implement such changes in residential institutions for infants and young children.     

A Picture-Based Activity Schedule Intervention to Teach Adults with Mild Intellectual Disability to Use an iPad During a Leisure Activity

Individuals with developmental disabilities have limited opportunities to participate in leisure activities, frequently due to lack of skills. The purpose of the current study was to teach three adults diagnosed with mild intellectual disability to use an iPad in the context of playing the video game Angry Birds. We used an adapted multiple baseline across participants research design to teach the task, which included opening the cover of the iPad, unlocking the device, opening Angry Birds, playing the game, and putting the iPad away. Instruction took place during breaks in a private room at a sheltered workshop. During intervention, participants had access to an activity schedule to aid in completion of the task. In some cases, extra prompts were provided to increase attention to the activity schedule. All three participants showed improvement in the target skill with intervention and gains were sustained during the maintenance phase.     

The need for public policies to promote healthier food consumption: A comment on Wansink and Chandon (2014)

Current approaches to addressing obesity have fallen short. This is largely due to the many environmental forces that undermine people's self-regulatory capacity to be personally responsible for their food choices. Novel insights from the social sciences are needed to inform voluntary, health-promoting actions by companies, institutions, and citizens as well as the design of public health policies. Voluntary interventions that rely on nudges should complement traditional public health strategies such as taxation and restriction of child-targeted marketing in schools. In this commentary, we discuss four food policy issues that would benefit from consumer psychology research: (a) the restriction of food marketing to children, (b) provision of nutrition information through food labels, (c) improving school food environments, and (d) placing limits on portion sizes. Identifying effective solutions for obesity will require approaches that integrate psychological, public health, and legal perspectives and methods.