Can self-affirmation exacerbate adverse reactions to stress under certain conditions?

Objective: Self-affirmation has repeatedly been shown to reduce adverse psychological and physiological responses to stress. However, it is plausible that self-affirmation could exacerbate negative reactions to stress under certain conditions. The current research explored whether self-affirmation would increase negative psychological responses to a stressor occurring in a central life domain characterised by low levels of control.

Design: Female participants (Study 1 N = 132; Study 2 N = 141) completed baseline measures of anxiety and mood. They were then randomly allocated to complete a self-affirmation or control task, before reading a narrative documenting a stressful birth and imagining themselves in the place of the woman giving birth. After completing this task, participants again reported their levels of anxiety and positive mood.

Main outcome measures: Anxiety and positive mood assessed at follow-up.

Results: Study 1 demonstrated that self-affirmed women experienced increased anxiety and less positive mood at follow-up, compared both to baseline and to women in the control condition. Study 2 revealed that the effect of self-affirmation on outcomes was moderated by fear of childbirth.

Conclusion: These results provide preliminary evidence that self-affirmation may worsen negative responses to stressors under certain conditions and for certain individuals.     

Making plans for future success: a timeline tool feasibility study

Many adolescents have hopes of college graduation, independent living, and satisfying careers. Career preparation is an important component that can facilitate these desires. However, many adolescents do not achieve these hopes in their desired timeframes due to interruptions, such as unplanned pregnancies. As illustrated by the Theory of Adolescent Sexual Decision-Making Influencing Teen Pregnancy (Weiss, 2012. Who will listen? Rural teen pregnancy reflections. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 8, 804–809. doi:10.1016/j.nurpra.2012.02.028), desiring future success can promote low-risk decision-making. Based on this theory, a Getting Plans Started (GPS) Timeline Tool (GPS Timeline©) was developed to help adolescents plan for future success by using a time perspective and, thereby, avoid interruptions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the GPS Tool©, how it might be used, and a study to determine the feasibility of using the GPS Tool©. Thirty adolescents found the tool easy to use and effective in helping them plan for the future. Their responses indicated almost unanimous desires for college graduation and independence with strong confidence in achieving their plans, but their responses also indicated a need for more effective planning to achieve their desired goals.     

Evolution of Cultural Interbehavior in a Turn-Based Matching-to-Sample Procedure

The Psychological Record - Kantor’s (1982) analysis of cultural interbehavior focuses on shared stimulus–response functions that are conventional across individuals and established...     

Investigating the mechanisms of visually-evoked tactile sensations

When attempting to detect a near-threshold signal, participants often incorrectly report the presence of a signal, particularly when a stimulus in a different modality is presented. Here we investigated the effect of prior experience of bimodal visuotactile stimuli on the rate of falsely reported touches in the presence of a light. In Experiment 1, participants made more false alarms in light-present than light-absent trials, despite having no experience of the experimental visuotactile pairing. This suggests that light-evoked false alarms are a consequence of an existing association, rather than one learned during the experiment. In Experiment 2, we sought to manipulate the strength of the association through prior training, using supra-threshold tactile stimuli that were given a high or low association with the light. Both groups still exhibited an increased number of false alarms during light-present trials, however, the low association group made significantly fewer false alarms across conditions, and there was no corresponding group difference in the number of tactile stimuli correctly identified. Thus, while training did not affect the boosting of the tactile signal by the visual stimulus, the low association training affected perceptual decision-making more generally, leading to a lower number of illusory touch reports, independent of the light.     

Test-induced priming increases false recognition in older but not younger children

The effect of test-induced priming on false recognition was investigated in children aged 5, 7, 9, and 11 years using lists of semantic associates, category exemplars, and phonological associates. In line with effects previously observed in adults, nine- and eleven-year-olds showed increased levels of false recognition when critical lures were preceded by four studied items. This pattern was present with all three list types. In contrast, no effects of test-induced priming were observed in five- or seven-year-olds with any list type. The results also support those of previous studies in showing a developmental shift from phonological to semantic false memories. The findings are discussed in terms of current theories of children's false memories.     

Fromm and Habermas: Allies for Adult Education and Democracy

The legacy of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research has been a powerful force for critically understanding social reality. Erich Fromm was one of the early and best known members of the Institute. Fromm emphasised the centrality of culture and interpersonal relations in the contruction of the psyche. The unconscious was not only the location for buried repressed matter but also for the imaginative potential of the human person. He is a forgotten and neglected contributor to the story of the Institute having been written out of this history. This retrospective of his ideas explores his work in the light of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas who is also an active but less controversial engager with the psychoanalytic tradition. The implications for adult education will be addressed. The paper outlines Fromm’s radical reinterpretation of psychoanalysis emphasising the importance of social existence as distinct from the impact of instincts; key concepts of the market, commodity fetishism and automaton conformity; The implications for adult education in the tradition of radical (Freire) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow) and addressed and make connections between Habermas and Fromm that further the project of critical theory. Both attempted in different times to identify and realise the potential of (though neither used the term) of lifelong learning as part of the process of bringing about a more just and caring society and a shared attention to the importance of having free conversations about how the emancipated life might be created and sustained.     

Memory for emotional simulations: remembering a rosy future

Mental simulations of future experiences are often concerned with emotionally arousing events. Although it is widely believed that mental simulations enhance future behavior, virtually nothing is known about how memory for these simulations changes over time or whether simulations of emotional experiences are especially well remembered. We used a novel paradigm that combined recently developed methods for generating simulations of future events and well-established procedures for testing memory to examine the retention of positive, negative, and neutral simulations over delays of 10 min and 1 day. We found that at the longer delay, details associated with negative simulations were more difficult to remember than details associated with positive or neutral simulations. We suggest that these effects reflect the influence of the fading-affect bias, whereby negative reactions fade more quickly than positive reactions, and that this influence results in a tendency to remember a rosy simulated future. We discuss implications of our findings for individuals with affective disorders, such as depression and anxiety.     

Family Intervention to Prevent Depression and Substance Use Among Adolescents of Depressed Parents

Parental depression places offspring at elevated risk for multiple, co-occurring problems. The purpose of this study was to develop and preliminarily evaluate Project Hope, a family intervention for the prevention of both depression and substance use among adolescent-aged children (M?=?13.9?years) of depressed parents. The program was created by blending two empirically supported interventions: one for depression and another for substance use. Thirty families were randomly assigned to either Project Hope (n?=?16) or a wait-list control condition (n?=?14). Pretests, posttests (n?=?29), and 5-month follow-ups (n?=?28) were conducted separately with parents and youth via phone interviews. Questions asked about the family depression experience, family interactions, family management, coping, adolescent substance use beliefs and refusal skills, adolescent depression, and adolescent substance use. Project Hope was fully developed, manualized, and implemented with a small sample of targeted families. Engagement in the program was relatively high. Preliminary outcome analyses were conducted using 2 (Group) ×3 (Time) analyses of covariance. Results provided some evidence for significant improvements among intervention compared to control participants in indicators of the family depression experience, family management, and coping, and a statistically significant decrease from pretest to posttest in alcohol quantity for intervention compared to control youth. Next steps for this program of research are discussed.     

Occupational therapy and sensory integration for children with autism: a feasibility, safety, acceptability and fidelity study

Objective: To examine the feasibility, safety, and acceptability of a manualized protocol of occupational therapy using sensory integration principles for children with autism. Methods: Ten children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder ages 4-8 years received intensive occupational therapy intervention using sensory integration principles following a manualized protocol. Measures of feasibility, acceptability and safety were collected from parents and interveners, and fidelity was measured using a valid and reliable fidelity instrument. Results: The intervention is safe and feasible to implement, acceptable to parents and therapist, and therapists were able to implement protocol with adequate fidelity. These data provide support for implementation of a randomized control trial of this intervention and identify specific procedural enhancements to improve study implementation.     

For your Eyes Only: A Q-Methodology on the Ontology of Happiness Among Chronically Ill Filipino Elderly in a Penal Institution

Happiness is a positive phenomenon that is universal in nature and is therefore, pertinent to all human beings. However, the definition of happiness differs from person to person, and varies among cultures, economic status, social connectedness, spiritual upbringing and daily situations. An individual’s contextual perception of happiness can change when subjected to bleak conditions such as incarceration wherein inmates, especially those who are old and are experiencing health impairments are stripped off with their customary source of happiness. Since Filipinos are known to be as “happy people,” this study purports to surface the different facets of what constitute happiness in the context of a penal institution in the Philippine setting. The Q-methodology is the primary design used in the study. It combines the objectivity of quantitative approach with the essence of human experiences as explored in qualitative studies. The participants (P-sample) were twenty elderly inmates suffering from chronic ailments. They were asked to arrange 32 statements (Q-sample), derived from the initial interview, in the Q-sort table based on their degree of agreement, which were then further explicated in the post-sort interviews. The results were then subjected to by-person factor analysis with varimax rotation using the PQ Method version 2.11. Five profiles emerged from the by-person factor analysis, namely: (1) ‘Sense of Affinity’, (2) ‘Sense of Opportunity’, (3) ‘Sense of Indemnity’, (4) ‘Sense of Positivity’ and (5) ‘Sense of Resiliency’. The discussion focused on similarities and differences among profiles regarding the four principal themes (familial, social, internal and spiritual components of happiness) derived from the statements used as the Q-sample. The perception of happiness varies from profile to profile. The differences in views on what constitutes happiness among profiles are more prominent than their said similarities. Most leanings are directed toward the familial and spiritual aspects of happiness however, happiness can also be internally motivated and cognitively construed. While happiness has a direct relationship to an individual’s overall perception of well-being, the nurse, being the primary provider of holistic care, plays a pivotal role in promoting optimum health through awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of vis-a vis an unwavering involvement with the unique and distinct psychological and emotional needs of the elderly inmates characterized by respect, openness, authenticity and inter-subjectivity.