Posttraumatic Stress in Women with Breast Cancer and Their Daughters

Using the PTSD Reaction Index, posttraumatic stress was assessed in 133 women with breast cancer and 64 of their daughters. Twenty-one percent of patients and 13% of daughters reported symptoms consistent with PTSD. PTSD in these patients without bone marrow transplants may be higher than reported in other samples, and the prevalence of PTSD symptoms in the daughters appear comparable to women with breast cancer. For patients, cancer stage at diagnosis was positively associated with posttraumatic stress severity. Mothers experiencing PTSD symptoms were significantly more likely to have daughters experiencing PTSD symptoms. Intergenerational patterns in reaction to breast cancer are discussed.     

Expecting More in Relationships – Implications of Relational Entitlement

Abstract

Sense of relational entitlement refers to what individuals’ believe they “should” expect from their romantic partner. When expectations are both unrealistic and not met by one’s partner, there is a potential for adverse consequences. Researchers surveyed 195 female participants between the ages 18-60. The study examined the influence of one’s sense of relational entitlement with varying conflict strategies. The findings revealed that extreme forms of one’s sense of relational entitlement was associated with conflict strategies like verbal aggression, and control & domination. Thus, one’s sense of relational entitlement appears to play a significant role in how individuals handle conflict.     

THE ECOLOGY OF SPELLING: A LENS MODEL ANALYSIS OF SPELLING ERRORS AND STUDENT JUDGMENTS OF SPELLING DIFFICULTY

Abstract

Students who were identified by their teachers as poor spellers were asked to judge the difficulty they would have in spelling each of 100 words that were representative of the sorts of words they tended to misspell in their various subject areas (the spelling ecology). After making difficulty judgments, the students were then asked to spell each word on the list. Spelling errors were scored as either phonetic or nonphonetic. The researchers rated each of the 100 words on ten characteristics: number of letters, syllables, letters per syllable, double and silent letters; schwa, ambiguous, and unusual sounds; and two measures of familiarity to the student. This task was replicated after a four‐week period to check for spelling and judgment consistency. Spelling errors and judgments of spelling difficulty were analyzed using the double system Lens Model using the ten word characteristics as “cues” in the analysis. Results showed only moderate agreement between difficulty judgments and spelling errors, and fairly consistent differences between those word characteristics that were predictive of perceived spelling difficulty and those predictive of phonetic and nonphonetic errors. Several different patterns of cue weights were noted for spelling errors whereas spelling difficulty judgments were primarily based upon word familiarity. Implications are drawn for the further investigation of spelling errors and of how students decide what constitutes a “hard” word to spell and for the potential improvement of the spelling judgment process using cognitive feedback from the Lens Model.

The characterization of spelling as a cognitive activity has received increasing attention in the educational research literature. For example, two recent issues of Reading Psychology (Numbers 2 and 3, 1989) were entirely devoted to research on spelling. Much of this work has focused on spelling strategies (e.g., Anderson, 1985, Kreiner & Gough, 1990, and Olson, Logan, & Lindsey, 1989), spelling problems and types of errors (e.g., see Frith, 1980, and Weber & Henderson, 1989), and the relationship between spelling and reading (e.g., Templeton, 1989, and Zutell & Rasinski, 1989). However, there has been very little research on the issues of the criteria individuals use in deciding that a particular word is difficult or easy to spell, and the accuracy and effects of such a decision. We refer here to the more metacognitive aspects of the task ecology of spelling, and the effects of which may be shown in decisions to avoid or at least minimize the cognitive efforts expended in spelling a perceived “hard” word.

The issue of judging spelling difficulty forms the focus of the present study. Here we attempt to document those features of a word that make students think it would be hard or easy to spell. We then relate this judgment process to errors made when students attempt to spell words. Finally, we compare the relative importance of various features of words as predictors of both difficulty judgments and actual spelling errors.     

Stressors Experienced by Women Within Marine Corps Families: A Qualitative Study of Discourse Within an Online Forum

The social constructionist perspective frames this exploration of the socioemotional and relational aspects of stress experienced by significant others of active duty Marines. Interpretive methods were applied to data from an online forum for Marine Corps wives, fiancées, and girlfriends. Open coding revealed six stressors: (a) stuck in a state of flux, (b) going through changes, (c) relational uncertainty, (d) loneliness, (e) alienation, and (f) anxiety related to deployment. Axial coding revealed three properties underlying these stressors: (a) issues of control and helplessness, (b) concerns over privileging individual or relational goals, and (c) the matter of locus of blame.     

Evaluating Group-Based Interventions When Control Participants Are Ungrouped

Individually randomized treatments are often administered within a group setting. As a consequence, outcomes for treated individuals may be correlated due to provider effects, common experiences within the group, and/or informal processes of socialization. In contrast, it is often reasonable to regard outcomes for control participants as independent, given that these individuals are not placed into groups. Although this kind of design is common in intervention research, the statistical models applied to evaluate the treatment effects are usually inconsistent with the resulting data structure, potentially leading to biased inferences. This article presents an alternative model that explicitly accounts for the fact that only treated participants are grouped. In addition to providing a useful test of the overall treatment effect, this approach also permits one to formally determine the extent to which treatment effects vary over treatment groups and whether there is evidence that individuals within treatment groups become similar to one another. This strategy is demonstrated with data from the Reconnecting Youth program for high school students at risk of school failure and behavioral disorders.     

Double trouble: restrained eaters do not eat less and feel worse

Objective: While high levels of dietary restraint do not appear to reflect actual caloric restraint, it has been found to be a risk factor for a wide array of maladaptive eating patterns. These findings raise the question what, if not caloric restriction, dietary restraint entails. We propose that the very finding that restrained eaters do not eat less than they intend to do can provide an answer. Based on this disparity between the intention to restrain oneself and actual behaviour, we therefore hypothesised that high levels of restraint are associated with eating-related guilt.

Method: Three studies (N?=?148) using unobtrusive measures of food intake; different restraint scales; and different measures of guilt tested whether restraint is related to eating-related guilt.

Results: Results indicated that restraint was not associated with food intake, but instead was associated with increased levels of guilt after eating. Guilt was explicitly related to food intake. Moreover, the observed guilt could not be attributed to a general increase in negative affect.

Conclusion: The results of these studies suggest that restraint is not an indicator of actual restricted food intake, but rather a reflection concerns about food and eating manifested in eating-related guilt.     

Situational aspects are more important in shaping proactive coping behaviour than individual characteristics: A vignette study among adults preparing for ageing

It seems likely that proactive coping is an important mechanism for dealing successfully with threats to personal goals, yet little empirical research has been conducted in relation to this concept. The aim of the present study is to examine to what extent proactive coping is influenced by situation-specific features as well as by personal characteristics. Three vignettes, each representing a potential decline in an important resource (health, social relationships and finance), were presented to 123 adults between 50 and 70 years old. Multilevel analyses show that proactive coping is highly variable within persons and that three situational factors (type of stressor, appraised threat and appraised control) affected the employment of proactive coping strategies. Future temporal orientation was identified as a significant, positive predictor of proactive coping, but none of the other personal factors were found to be relevant.     

Socio-economic health inequalities: Their origins and implications

Abstract

Evidence attests to substantial variations in health contingent on socioeconomic position. It is argued that these effects cannot be dismissed as artefact nor can they be explained, in the main, by either social selection or an unequal distribution of accepted behavioural risk factors among different social groups. The most likely explanation would seem to be social causation. However, it is continuing social and material inequality that appears most implicated; accounts which locate the effects in childhood social and material causes are far less compelling. The persistence of socioeconomic health differentials into the materially better-off social strata and the possible determining role of relative as well as absolute living standards suggest that psychological, in addition to material, variables are likely to be involved. Isolating the key psychological variables and identifying the nature of their influences will not be easy tasks, although social relations, psychological stress, uplifts, and control have emerged as possible candidates. However, psychological mediators of this sort most probably constitute surface rather than basic causes. Socio-economic inequality, it is contended, remains the basic cause, and, as such, the proper target for intervention. Psychological interventions are unlikely to yield much in the way of dividends in this context and indeed could inadvertently contribute to victim blaming.     

How highlighted utensils influence consumption in a dark setting

Abstract

Objective: Previous research has shown that people consume less food in the dark compared to normal vision conditions. While this effect is commonly attributed to increased attention to internal cues, it could also be caused by increased difficulty to maneuver in a dark setting. This study investigated this potential alternative explanation.

Design: A 2 (dark versus normal vision setting)?×?2 (highlighted versus non-highlighted utensils) between-subjects design was employed.

Main outcome measures: Perceived difficulty of maneuvering and consumption of yoghurt were assessed as main outcome measures.

Results: Participants consumed marginally less in dark compared to normal vision conditions, and experienced higher difficulty of maneuvering. Importantly, both effects were qualified by a significant interaction with highlighting, which increased consumption and reduced perceived difficulty compared to no highlights. Difficulty of maneuvering did not mediate the interactive effect of vision and highlighting on consumption.

Conclusion: Difficulty to maneuver should be considered when investigating eating behaviour under dark conditions. In line with an embodied cognition account, results also reveal the necessity of visual information for interaction with objects in the environment and imply that detail-deprived object information may be sufficient for activation of the motor system.