Relationships Between Married Couples’ Self-Differentiation/Individuation and Gottman’s Model of Marital Interactions

One hundred sixty-nine couples completed measures of Bowen’s concept of differentiation/individuation (including emotional reactivity to parents and triangulation into parental disputes), and Gottman’s concepts related to current marital dynamics (e.g., flooding, marital satisfaction/adjustment). The results of canonical correlations run separately for males and females supported hypothesized relationships between differentiation and flooding and satisfaction. Gender differences are discussed as well as implications for counseling/therapy.     

Evidenzbasierte Psychotherapie der Depression

Depressive disorders are among the most frequent reasons for utilizing the health care system. Despite the availability of efficacious treatments and further advances throughout the last years, there is still a need for improving diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. A promising approach is the implementation of evidence- and consensus-based guidelines. The German “Nationale VersorgungsLeitlinie Unipolare Depression” are evidence- and consensus-based clinical practise guidelines for patients with unipolar depression. All relevant stakeholders have been involved in its development and have passed the final version at the end of 2009 to foster compliance throughout. The available evidence allows the derivation of differentiated treatment recommendations, also with regard to concomitant antidepressant medication or as alternative treatment options. In acute therapy watchful waiting over 14 days is recommended for mild depression and psychotherapy after persistence of symptoms. In cases of moderate depression, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy are equally recommended, in cases of severe depression a combination of both is recommended.     

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for Primary School Teachers

Stress within the teaching profession has a negative impact on the health and well-being of individual teachers and on retention and recruitment for the profession as a whole. There is increasing literature to suggest that Mindfulness is a useful intervention to address a variety of psychological problems, and that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a particularly helpful intervention for stress. We investigated the effects of teaching a MBSR course to primary school teachers to reduce stress. The MBSR course was taught to a group of primary school teachers and evaluated to establish its effects on levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, as well as movement towards a stated goal and changes in awareness. The results showed improvement for most participants for anxiety, depression, and stress, some of which were statistically significant. There were also significant improvements on two of the four dimensions of a mindfulness skills inventory. These results suggest that this approach could be a potentially cost-effective method to combat teacher stress and burnout.     

Nonword repetition in children and adults: effects on movement coordination

Hearing and repeating novel phonetic sequences, or novel nonwords, is a task that taps many levels of processing, including auditory decoding, phonological processing, working memory, speech motor planning and execution. Investigations of nonword repetition abilities have been framed within models of psycholinguistic processing, while the motor aspects, which also are critical for task performance, have been largely ignored. We focused our investigation on both the behavioral and speech motor performance characteristics of this task as performed in a learning paradigm by 9‐ and 10‐year‐old children and young adults. Behavioral (percent correct productions) and kinematic (movement duration, lip aperture variability – an index of the consistency of inter‐articulator coordination on repeated trials) measures were obtained in order to investigate the short‐term (Day 1, first five vs. next five trials) and longer‐term (Day 1 vs. Day 2, first five vs. next five trials) changes associated with practice within and between sessions. Overall, as expected, young adults showed higher levels of behavioral accuracy and greater levels of coordinative consistency than the children. Both groups, however, showed a learning effect, such that in general, later Day 1 trials and Day 2 trials were shorter in duration and more consistent in coordination patterns than Day 1 early trials. Phonemic complexity of the nonwords had a profound effect on both the behavioral and speech motor aspects of performance. The children showed marked learning effects on all nonwords that they could produce accurately, while adults’ performance improved only when challenged by the more complex nonword stimuli in the set. The findings point to a critical role for speech motor processes within models of nonword repetition and suggest that young adults, similar to children, show short‐ and longer‐term improvements in coordinative consistency with repeated production of complex nonwords. There is also a clear developmental change in nonword production performance, such that less complex novel sequences elicit changes in speech motor performance in children, but not in adults.     

An examination of the structural, discriminant, nomological, and incremental predictive validity of the MSCEIT© V2.0

We examined the structural, discriminant, nomological, and incremental predictive validity of a behavioral measure of emotional intelligence, using data from two undergraduate student samples. Covariance structure modeling indicated that the eight subscales of the MSCEIT© V2.0 were best modeled with a solution consisting of three first-order factors, and supported the existence of one higher-order factor of overall emotional intelligence. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the higher-order factor had discriminant validity from personality and conformity. Contrary to prediction, the higher-order factor was more highly correlated to social desirability than to general mental ability or long term affect. Finally, hierarchical regression results indicated that overall emotional intelligence did not predict incremental variance in either GPA or life satisfaction.     

Investigations of hemispheric specialization of self-voice recognition

Three experiments investigated functional asymmetries related to self-recognition in the domain of voices. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to identify one of three presented voices (self, familiar or unknown) by responding with either the right or the left-hand. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with auditory morphs between the self-voice and a familiar voice and were asked to perform a forced-choice decision on speaker identity with either the left or the right-hand. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with continua of auditory morphs between self- or a familiar voice and a famous voice, and were asked to stop the presentation either when the voice became "more famous" or "more familiar/self". While these experiments did not reveal an overall hand difference for self-recognition, the last study, with improved design and controls, suggested a right-hemisphere advantage for self-compared to other-voice recognition, similar to that observed in the visual domain for self-faces.     

Pattern of perceived stress and anxiety in pregnancy predicts preterm birth.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the pattern of prenatal stress, as compared to prenatal stress assessed at a single gestational time point, predicts preterm delivery (PTD). DESIGN: Perceived stress and anxiety were assessed in 415 pregnant women at 18-20 and 30-32 weeks' gestation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Gestational length was determined by last menstrual period and confirmed by early pregnancy ultrasound. Births were categorized as preterm (< 37 weeks) or term. RESULTS: At neither assessment did levels of anxiety or perceived stress predict PTD. However, patterns of anxiety and stress were associated with gestational length. Although the majority of women who delivered at term exhibited declines in stress and anxiety, those who delivered preterm exhibited increases. The elevated risk for PTD associated with an increase in stress or anxiety persisted when adjusting statistically for obstetric risk, pregnancy-related anxiety, ethnicity, parity, and prenatal life events. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that the pattern of prenatal stress is an important predictor of PTD. More generally, the findings support the possibility that a decline in stress responses during pregnancy may help to protect mother and fetus from adverse influences associated with PTD.     

Limits on learning phonotactic constraints from recent production experience

Adults can learn new artificial phonotactic constraints by producing syllables that exhibit the constraints. The experiments presented here tested the limits of phonotactic learning in production using speech errors as an implicit measure of learning. Experiment 1 tested a constraint in which the placement of a consonant as an onset or coda depended on the identity of a nonadjacent consonant. Participant speech errors reflected knowledge of the constraint but not until the 2nd day of testing. Experiment 2 tested a constraint in which consonant placement depended on an extralinguistic factor, the speech rate. Participants were not able to learn this constraint. Together, these experiments suggest that phonotactic-like constraints are acquired when mutually constraining elements reside within the phonological system.     

Indispensability and group identification as sources of task motivation

Traditional Instrumentality × Value (I × V) models have attributed gains in performance groups to various conditions affecting the instrumentality of group members’ effort for a variety of valued outcomes. Social identity models have challenged this interpretation, suggesting that the instrumentality of effort may be irrelevant when group identification is high. A laboratory study is reported in which both indispensability and group identification are manipulated, and participants’ effort on a physical persistence task is assessed. Contrary to the social identity predictions but consistent with I × V predictions, the indispensability of effort had a positive effect on participants’ effort. Group identification had no direct or moderating effects on effort.     

Inanspruchnahme, Verlauf und Ergebnis ambulanter Psychotherapie

This paper summarizes the major results of the study ?Optimizing psychotherapy service provision via transparency and outcome orientation: evaluating outpatient psychotherapy“ (TRANS-OP). Between September 1998 and February 2000, all insured persons of a major German health insurance company (?Deutsche Krankenversicherung“) who requested reimbursement of outpatient psychotherapy were asked to participate in the study. Comprehensive data concerning structural, process and outcome criteria of outpatient psychotherapy were collected from 714 participants and from the majority of their psychotherapists during a 2-year observation period. Participants applied for the following treatments eligible for reimbursement in the German health insurance system: psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy (52%), cognitive behavioral therapy (31%), and psychoanalytic psychotherapy (17%). The amounts of sessions claimed for reimbursement were approved almost without exception. Participants in the three treatment modalities did not differ in socio-demographic characteristics, or in initial symptom severity as assessed by standardized measures. Even though courses of improvement of the symptoms varied, therapy outcome after 2 years was similar in the three forms of treatment. In addition, a cost offset was found, i.e. medical costs, especially for hospital days, substantially decreased during the course of psychotherapy. These findings support the effectiveness as well as the economic significance of outpatient psychotherapy across different treatment modalities in routine care. However, allocation of psychotherapeutic resources should be more considerate of individual patient needs and treatment outcome.