Evidence-based psychological treatments for distress in family caregivers of older adults

This review identifies evidence-based psychological treatments (EBTs) for reducing distress, and improving well-being, of family members caring for an older relative with significant cognitive and/or physical impairment. Three categories of psychologically derived treatments met EBT criteria: psychoeducational programs (N = 14 studies), psychotherapy (N = 3 studies), and multicomponent interventions (N = 2 studies). Specifically, support within the psychoeducational category was found for skill-training programs focused on behavior management, depression management, and anger management and for the progressively lowered threshold model. Within the psychotherapy category, cognitive-behavioral therapy enjoys strong empirical support. Within the multicomponent category, programs using a combination of at least 2 distinct theoretical approaches (e.g., individual counseling and support group attendance) were also found to be effective. Suggestions for future research include the development of more well-integrated multicomponent approaches, greater inclusion of ethnically diverse family caregivers in research protocols, and greater incorporation of new technologies for treatment delivery.     

Emotional ambivalence in risk behaviors: the case of occasional excessive use of alcohol

The purpose of this paper is to study the differential and complementary role played by the theory of planned behavior (TPB) variables and by participants' emotions when recalling and describing previous experiences of such risk behavior in the prediction of the intention to repeat a risk behavior in the immediate future. We chose the behavior of occasional excessive drinking, a risk behavior characterized by evoking attitudinal ambivalence and eliciting mixed emotions, joy and sadness. The results show that emotional ambivalence is not equivalent to attitudinal ambivalence (whose indexes include that of the affective component), and that this emotional information is relevant for predicting the intention to repeat the risk behavior in the near future, enhancing the prediction of the TPB model.     

The effects of counting blessings on subjective well-being: a gratitude intervention in a Spanish sample

This study examined a gratitude intervention repeating Emmons and McCullough study (2003) in a Spanish sample, Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (gratitude, hassles and any event) and kept daily records during 2 weeks of gratitude, affect, quality of relationships, physical and subjective well-being. We added design features to assess the intervention long-term impact (follow-up measures), and to improve the design control (pre-treatment measures). Following the cited authors' analysis, i.e., comparing groups only in the post-test, we replicated their results, finding differences in positive affect and gratitude between the gratitude condition and the hassles condition. However, when including both the pre and the follow-up measures in the analysis, results were replicated only partially, as the difference in gratitude disappeared. Moreover, the difference in positive affect between groups in the post-test seemed to be influenced mainly by a decrease in positive affect in the hassles group. Post-test differences between groups in positive affect disappeared in the follow-up. Gratitude interventions may have an effect on well-being, but we consider other methods to promote gratitude besides gratitude journals should be tested.     

Desensibilización sistemática,inoculación de estrés y terapia inespecífica en el tratamiento de la ansiedad a las matemáticas

RESUMEN

Las autoras comienzan ofreciendo una panorámica general de las investigaciones sobre el síndrome de fobia a las matemáticas y la ansiedad ante los exámenes, explicando a continuación que el objetivo general de su estudio es desarrollar procedimientos de modificación de conducta que ayuden a estudiantes de Psicología, con una historia previa de conductas de evitación a los exámenes, a enfrentarse a las pruebas de psicología matemática. Más específicamente, se quiere comparar la eficacia de la Desensibilización Sistemática tradicional con un paquete cognitivo complejo desarrollada por ellas siguiendo el modelo de Inoculación de Estrés, y el valor de estas dos intervenciones específicas se compara, a su vez, con un grupo de terapia no orientado al problema. Tras describir el método y resultados, las autoras destacan en la discusión la eficacia de las tres intervenciones y el hecho de que se lograse afectar al rendimiento y no sólo a la ansiedad en matemáticas. Finalmente afirman que sus resultados apoyan la actualidad de la obra de Frank (1973, 1982), quien señala que una parte muy importante de los efectos psicoterapéuticos se debe a factores comunes a todas las terapias, en los que habitualmente no recae el peso explicativo.     

Do Envy and Compassion Pave the Way to Unhappiness? Social Preferences and Life Satisfaction in a Spanish City

Mounting evidence shows that people’s self-reported life satisfaction (LS) is negatively related to income inequality. Under the interpretation that the relationship between macro-level variables and LS reflects individuals’ social preferences, this finding indicates that most people display inequality-averse preferences. We explore the relationship between self-reports on inequality aversion and LS in a citywide representative survey/experiment conducted in Spain. If self-reported well-being can be used to infer people’s social preferences, LS should correlate negatively with both “envy” and “compassion” scores (i.e., how much one suffers from disadvantageous and advantageous inequality, respectively). We find that LS relates negatively to envy but positively to compassion, which would imply that suffering from observing poorer others, paradoxically, increases well-being. Using an incentivized Dictator Game as a measure of generous behavior, we reject the hypothesis that the positive link between compassion and LS is actually driven by generosity. We discuss how these findings could indicate that the way LS is used to assess social preferences in the population should be revised.     

Multidimensional processing of dynamic sounds: more than meets the ear

Strong cross-modal interactions exist between visual and auditory processing. The relative contributions of perceptual versus decision-related processes to such interactions are only beginning to be understood. We used methodological and statistical approaches to control for potential decision-related contributions such as response interference, decisional criterion shift, and strategy selection. Participants were presented with rising-, falling-, and constant-amplitude sounds and were asked to detect change (increase or decrease) in sound amplitude while ignoring an irrelevant visual cue of a disk that grew, shrank, or stayed constant in size. Across two experiments, testing context was manipulated by varying the grouping of visual cues during testing, and cross-modal congruency showed independent perceptual and decision-related effects. Whereas a change in testing context greatly affected criterion shifts, cross-modal effects on perceptual sensitivity remained relatively consistent. In general, participants were more sensitive to increases in sound amplitude and less sensitive to sounds paired with dynamic visual cues. As compared with incongruent visual cues, congruent cues enhanced detection of amplitude decreases, but not increases. These findings suggest that the relative contributions of perceptual and decisional processing and the impacts of these processes on cross-modal interactions can vary significantly depending on asymmetries in within-modal processing, as well as consistencies in cross-modal dynamics.     

Spelling,reading and adult illiteracy

Summary This is a study of the relationship of spelling to reading in adults. The spelling of six adult literacy students who read well or poorly was analysed to discover whether error patterns resembled those previously reported for children. Three tasks were administered, including dictation and free writting of real words, and dictation of nonsense words. Good readers made many more phonetic errors than poor readers did, indicating that their cognitive processes in spelling are similar to children's. In the nonword task, poor readers were less able than good readers in translating phonemes to graphemes. It is argued that implicit knowledge of the relationships of letters to sounds provides a strategy for dealing with unfamiliar written material and it is in this process that poor readers are impaired.     

Successful aging: criteria and predictors

In the Anglo-Saxon scientific literature, successful aging has been consolidated during the last four decades. Nevertheless, several terms have been used as synonymous: healthy, active, productive, optimal, positive aging. Although, all these terms have been described through a broad set of bio-psycho-social factors, usually, research in this field reduces successful aging to daily life functioning and physical health. Also, in spite of the fact that authors consider that determinants might be multi-domain, empirical research usually reduces them to life styles. Logically, the prevalence of this kind of ageing found empirically is not very consistent and research of its determinants or predictors refers to biomedical conditions. In this study, data from 458 participants (170 males and 288 females; mean age: 66.47, range: 55-75) from ELEA ("Longitudinal Study of Active Aging") were examined. The results show (depending on the simple or multidimensional definitions used) a very varied range of proportions of successfully aging older persons as well as a large number of multi-domain predictors of successful ageing, among which are intelligence, personality and motivational psychological characteristics.     

Who participates in which health promotion programs? A meta-analysis of motivations underlying enrollment and retention in HIV-prevention interventions

This meta-analysis examines whether exposure to HIV-prevention interventions follows self-validation or risk-reduction motives. The dependent measures used in the study were enrolling in an HIV-prevention program and completing the program. Results indicated that first samples with low prior condom use were less likely to enroll than samples with high prior condom use. Second, samples with high knowledge were less likely to stay in an intervention than were those with low knowledge. Third, samples with medium levels of motivation to use condoms and condom use were more likely to complete an intervention than were those with low or high levels. Importantly, those patterns were sensitive to the interventions' inclusions of information-, motivation-, and behavioral-skills strategies. The influence of characteristics of participants, the intervention, and the recruit procedure are reported.