Prospective cognition in rats

Efforts to develop animal models of memory are critical for understanding the neural substrate of memory. Memory is essential for daily life and enables information to be stored and retrieved after seconds to years. The ability to remember episodes from the past is thought to be related to the ability to plan for the future. Here we focus on a particular aspect of prospective cognition, namely the ability to remember to take action when a future scenario occurs. This review focuses on a recently developed method to evaluate prospective memory in the rat. Available evidence suggests that rats remember to take action in the future, but little is known about the temporal specificity of such memories or about the flexibility and limitations of prospective memories. Recent studies that suggest that rats remember a specific past episode are reviewed to underscore potential approaches that may be used to explore the range and limits of prospective cognition. The review highlights some directions to explore, including the temporal specificity of prospective cognition, the range of flexibility or creativity within prospective cognition, and the constraints imposed by multiple motivational systems.     

Integrating Social Identity and the Theory of Planned Behavior: Predicting Withdrawal from an Organizational Recruitment Process

This study develops and tests a model of applicant withdrawal. Drawing on tenets from social identity theory and the theory of planned behavior, this study proposes that applicants who highly identify with an organization will experience higher pursuit intentions and subsequently be less inclined to withdraw from recruitment. Data were collected from a sample of 669 applicants to the U.S. military at 2 intervals, separated by 3 months. Strong support was found for the proposed theoretical model. Implications for research and practice will be discussed.     

How does education lead to healthier behaviours? Testing the mediational roles of perceived control,health literacy and social support

Abstract

Objectives: Educational attainment is increasingly recognised as a unique dimension of socioeconomic status (SES) and a powerful determinant of health behaviour—and thus physical health and mortality. However, very little is known about the specific pathways through which education influences these health behaviours. Design: The present study used a nationally representative US survey to test three potential psychosocial pathways (perceived control, health literacy and social support) through which education might influence intake of fruits and vegetables (FV), physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB), controlling for other aspects of SES (income, health insurance status) and demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity). Results: Both aspects of perceived control (locus of control, cancer fatalism) mediated the impact of education on FV and PA while only locus of control mediated the impact of education on SB. Further, only one aspect of health literacy (ability to understand recommendations) mediated education’s effect on any health behaviour (FV). Social support did not mediate any of the effects of education on health behaviors. Conclusion: Future work explicitly assessing and testing these mediational pathways is needed to better understand how education influences people’s health behaviours throughout their lives.     

Cumulative trauma and midlife well-being in American women who served in Vietnam: effects of combat exposure and postdeployment social support

Background and Objectives: Research increasingly demonstrates that trauma exposure can have cumulative effects, yet much remains to be learned about effects of cumulative trauma, particularly regarding longer term adjustment. One such trauma, combat exposure, is insufficiently understood, especially for women, who are increasingly engaged in professional combat activities. Design: The study comprised a cross-sectional survey assessing multiple aspects of current well-being in women approximately 25 years after their service in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Methods: Participants were 1374 women (78% military and 22% nonmilitary; mean age = 59.7). This study investigated the relations between three separate categories of trauma exposure (childhood, adulthood, and combat) and well-being and examined whether perceived social support at return from Vietnam moderated the association between combat exposure and well-being. Results: While both childhood and adulthood trauma exposure related to midlife well-being, combat exposure still uniquely predicted outcomes. Further, postdeployment perceived social support moderated the association of combat and well-being: recollected higher perceived social support at homecoming buffered participants from the links between combat exposure and well-being. Conclusions: These results may have important implications for interventions to reduce the impact of traumatic experiences, particularly in light of the increasing exposure of women to direct combat events.     

Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS) Scores: Stability and Relationships With Psychological Adjustment

A humor test composed of cartoons, comic strips, and jokes was administered to 30 college couples (26 single, 4 married) who rated them for humor. Subjects also stated how much they loved and liked their partner, their probability of marrying the partner, and filled out Rubin's Liking and Love Scales. The hypotheses were that similarity of rating of the humorous stimuli would be associated with loving, liking, and predisposition to marry. Hypotheses were confirmed.     

Evaluating Differences in Cognitive Appraisal and Coping Over Stages of a Transaction

We evaluated appraisal of and coping with a college examination over three stages of the transaction for 138 American undergraduate students. The transactional process approach allowed for the identification of differences in the magnitude and direction of appraisal and coping between adjacent stages and stages separated by an intervening stage. Repeated measures tests revealed that differences in appraisal and coping could occur between all pairs of stages, suggesting that, in research limited to investigating changes between adjacent stages only, the concept of a transactional process may be attenuated and important changes overlooked as the process of a stressful encounter unfolds.     

Promoting Healthy Behavior from the Pulpit: Clergy Share Their Perspectives on Effective Health Communication in the African American Church

African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from health disparities when compared to other ethnicities (ACS 2010; CDC 2007). Research indicates that the church and the pastor in the African American community could be enlisted to increase effectiveness of health programs (Campbell et al. in Health Edu Behav 34(6):864–880, 2007; DeHaven et al. in Am J Public Health 94(6):1030–1036, 2004). The objective of this study was to investigate African American pastors’ perceptions about health promotion in the church and how these perceptions could serve as a guide for improving health communication targeting African Americans. Semi-structured interviews with African American clergy revealed that pastors feel strongly about the intersection of health, religion and spirituality; they also believe that discussing health screening and other health issues more frequently from the pulpit and their own personal experiences will ultimately impact health behavior among congregants. This study suggests that African American clergy see themselves as health promoters in the church and believe this communication (i.e., pastor-endorsed health information materials) will impact health behavior among underserved and minority populations.     

Heart failure patients’ desires for spiritual care,perceived constraints,and unmet spiritual needs: relations with well-being and health-related quality of life

Little information is available about HF patients’ desires regarding having their healthcare providers address their spiritual concerns, feeling constrained in doing so, and the extent to which their spiritual needs go unmet. Nearly half of our sample reported high levels of unmet spiritual needs and reported moderately strong desires to have their doctor or other healthcare professional attend to their spiritual needs, and moderately strong feelings of constraint in doing so. Spiritual constraint and unmet spiritual needs were associated with poorer spiritual, psychological and physical well-being, but these effects varied, depending on patients’ desire to discuss spiritual needs. These findings have important implications for clinical management of HF patients.     

Anger toward God: social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer

A recent model of collective action distinguishes 2 distinct pathways: an emotional pathway whereby anger in response to injustice motivates action and an efficacy pathway where the belief that issues can be solved collectively increases the likelihood that group members take action (van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004). Research supporting this model has, however, focused entirely on relatively normative actions such as participating in demonstrations. We argue that the relations between emotions, efficacy, and action differ for more extreme, nonnormative actions and propose (a) that nonnormative actions are often driven by a sense of low efficacy and (b) that contempt, which, unlike anger, entails psychological distancing and a lack of reconciliatory intentions, predicts nonnormative action. These ideas were tested in 3 survey studies examining student protests against tuition fees in Germany (N = 332), Indian Muslims' action support in relation to ingroup disadvantage (N = 156), and British Muslims' responses to British foreign policy (N = 466). Results were generally supportive of predictions and indicated that (a) anger was strongly related to normative action but overall unrelated or less strongly related to nonnormative action, (b) contempt was either unrelated or negatively related to normative action but significantly positively predicted nonnormative action, and (c) efficacy was positively related to normative action and negatively related to nonnormative action. The implications of these findings for understanding and dealing with extreme intergroup phenomena such as terrorism are discussed.