Patterns of psychosocial risk and long-term outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis

This study examined the extent to which patterns of psychosocial risk were uniquely associated with long-term outcomes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), after demographic factors and self-reported symptom severity over time were accounted for. Data were collected over an 8-year period from 561 individuals with RA who were participants in the ongoing UCSF RA Panel Study in 1995. Panel members were interviewed annually, using a comprehensive structured telephone interview. Psychosocial factors assessed included mastery, perceptions about adequacy of social support, the impact of RA and self-assessed ability to cope with RA and satisfaction with health and function. Cluster analysis of psychosocial factors identified three distinctive patterns/levels of psychosocial risk (high, medium and low risk). The unique effects of psychosocial risk status on changes in depressive symptoms, basic functional limitations, global pain ratings and average annual doctor visits over an 8-year period were estimated, using growth curve analyses. Analyses controlled for demographic factors (gender, marital/partner status, education, age and ethnicity), disease duration and year in the panel and time-varying self-reported symptom severity (morning stiffness, swollen joint counts, co-morbid medical conditions, extra-articular RA symptoms and changes in joint appearance), as well as self-reported medications taken over time (disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs [DMARDS], and prednisone). Overall, 32.4% of total variance in depressive symptoms was accounted for by the fully-estimated model, with 12.9% uniquely associated with psychosocial risk status. Half of the total variance (50.0%) in basic functional limitations was explained, with 12.1% of variance uniquely predicted by psychosocial risk status. Psychosocial risk status accounted for comparatively little total explained variance in global pain ratings (total = 38.6%, incremental = 3.2%), and average annual total doctor visits (total = 10.9%, incremental = 1.5%). Thus, psychosocial risk factors are more closely linked to depressive symptoms and function over time. Global pain and utilization appear to be more closely related to disease factors.     

The Problem of Moral Spontaneity in the Guodian Corpus

This paper discusses certain conceptual tensions in a set of archeological texts from the Warring States period, the Guodian corpus. One of the central themes of the Guodian corpus is the disanalogy between spontaneous, natural familial relationships and artificial political relationships. This is problematic because, like many early Chinese texts, the Guodian corpus believes that political relationships must come to be characterized by unselfconsciousness and spontaneity if social order is to prevail. This tension will be compared to my earlier work on the “paradox of wu-wei (effortless action),” and the Guodian corpus’ “solution” to the problem of teaching spontaneity—drawing upon the transformative power of music—will be placed within the landscape of early “Confucian” and “Daoist” theories concerning human nature and self-cultivation.

Corpora of Vietnamese Texts: Lexical effects of intended audience and publication place

This article has two primary aims. The first is to introduce a new Vietnamese text-based corpus. The Corpora of Vietnamese Texts (CVT; Tang, 2006a) consists of approximately 1 million words drawn from newspapers and children's literature, and is available online at www.vnspeechtherapy.com/vi/CVT. The second aim is to investigate potential differences in lexical frequency and distributional characteristics in the CVT on the basis of place of publication (Vietnam or Western countries) and intended audience: adult-directed texts (newspapers) or child-directed texts (children's literature). We found clear differences between adult- and child-directed texts, particularly in the distributional frequencies of pronouns or kinship terms, which were more frequent in children's literature. Within child- and adult-directed texts, lexical characteristics did not differ on the basis of place of publication. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Maternal and child contributions to cortisol response to emotional arousal in young children from low-income, rural communities

Relations of maternal and child characteristics to child cortisol reactivity to and recovery from emotional arousal were examined prospectively at approximately 7 months of age (infancy) and then again at approximately 15 months of age (toddlerhood). The sample was diverse and population based (N = 1,292 mother-infant dyads) and included families from predominantly low-income, rural communities. Maternal behavior, family income-to-need ratio and social advantage, and child temperament, attention, and mental development were assessed, and children's saliva was sampled before and after standardized procedures designed to elicit emotional arousal. Maternal engagement in infancy was associated with greater cortisol reactivity at the infancy assessment and with reduced overall cortisol level at the toddler assessment. Also at the toddler assessment, child attention, mental development, and temperamental distress to novelty were associated with increased cortisol reactivity and regulation, whereas temperamental distress to limitations and African American ethnicity were associated with reduced cortisol reactivity. Findings are consistent with prior work linking early caregiving to the development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress response system and with a conceptual model in which developing temperament is characterized by the interplay of emotional reactivity and the emergence of the ability to effortfully regulate this reactivity using attention.     

Ruminative self-focus and negative affect: an experience sampling study

The authors conducted an experience sampling study to investigate the relationship between momentary ruminative self-focus and negative affect. Ninety-three adults recorded these variables at quasi-random intervals 8 times daily for 1 week. Scores on questionnaire measures of dispositional rumination were associated with mean levels of momentary ruminative self-focus over the experience sampling week. Concurrently, momentary ruminative self-focus was positively associated with negative affect. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that whereas ruminative self-focus predicted negative affect at a subsequent occasion, negative affect also predicted ruminative self-focus at a subsequent occasion. Decomposition of the dispositional rumination measure suggested that brooding, but not reflective pondering, was associated with higher mean levels of negative affect. Though broadly consistent with Nolen-Hoeksema's (1991) response styles theory, these results suggest that a reciprocal relationship exists between ruminative self-focus and negative affect.     

Recently attended masks are less effective

Much work has been done to investigate participants' ability to detect repeated targets, but the presentstudy examined the influence of recently attended stimuli on target masking. Participants performed a target identification task in which the item that masked the target was either a recently attended item or a novel item. When it was identical to a previously attended stimulus, the mask was rendered considerably less effective. We have termed this effect a repeated mask reduction (RMR). This simple manipulation resulted in a large, reliable effect on the efficacy of visual masking in a single-target identification paradigm. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, we demonstrated the basic effect and noted that the RMR increased as task difficulty increased. Experiments 4 and 5 suggested that attention to the first instance of the mask was crucial to this effect by showing that the magnitude of the RMR was unaffected by repetition of nonmask distractors and that the magnitude of the effect was reduced when less attention was paid to the first instance of the mask.     

Teaching inference in personality test interpretation: verbal abstract reasoning and the TAT

Instructors of personality assessment are challenged with teaching students how to execute the tacit thinking skills necessary to make sound test interpretations. The author provides a concrete tool for teaching students how to make interpretive inferences from verbal personality test data utilizing the construct of verbal abstract reasoning. Applied specifically to Thematic Apperception Test interpretation, the author discusses how the construct of verbal abstract reasoning can be utilized: as a model for providing explicit instruction on the implicit process of drawing inferences in test interpretation; for grounding students in data when constructing interpretations and avoiding making overpersonalized interpretations; as a means of basing interpretations on a convergence of data; as a means of gauging the level of confidence one can place in interpretations; and for understanding inferences drawn from other tests, such as the Rorschach.     

A Game of Inches: Spontaneous Use of Counterfactuals by Broadcasters During Major League Baseball Playoffs1

We tested whether counterfactuals are made spontaneously outside of the laboratory by coding sportscasters’ online verbalizations during 1998 and 1999 Major League Baseball (MLB) playoff broadcasts, and we assessed whether naturally occurring game features relating to closeness (score closeness, series closeness, game end, and playoff end) delineated some conditions under which counterfactuals were more likely. Sportscasters made counterfactuals quite frequently during these MLB playoff games. In addition, sportscasters uttered greater numbers of counterfactuals as games progressed from early to late innings, which was particularly true when scores were close. Counterfactuals were also uttered in greater numbers with closer scores when series were tied than when one team had a lead. Results are discussed in terms of spontaneous counterfactuals, closeness as an antecedent, and the ecological validity of such thoughts.     

Overestimating the Importance of the Given Information in Multiattribute Consumer Judgment

Consumer judgment often is based on incomplete or limited knowledge of the relevant attributes. We performed 3 experiments to investigate why these judgments are often insensitive to set size and why evaluations based on limited information tend to be stronger (more extreme and confident) than is warranted. The findings indicate that the importance of the given or known attributes is often overestimated, leading to evaluations that are overly extreme. The experiments also revealed important factors moderating this insensitivity to limited information. The overweighing of the given evidence was attenuated when participants were knowledgeable of the target domain. Overweighing and the formation of extreme judgments based on limited information was also diminished when participants considered their judgmental criteria prior to evaluating a target or when a comparison target described by different attributes was present.     

Is Consequential Luck Morally Inconsequential? Empirical Psychology and the Reassessment of Moral Luck

Philosophical discussions of the phenomenon that has come to be known as ‘moral luck’ have either dismissed it as illusory or touted it as the evidence for doubting the probative value of our commitment to certain widely avowed views concerning interpersonal assessments of responsibility. In this discussion, we present a third, distinctive interpretation of the moral luck phenomenon. Drawing upon empirically robust results from psychological studies of judgment bias, we argue that the phenomenon of moral luck is demonstrably not illusory. What we suggest, however, is that the phenomenon ought not to be taken to countenance doubts about the standards generally taken to be regulative of assessments of interpersonal responsibility. Rather, its significance lies in foregrounding certain generally unacknowledged obstacles we face in the process of conclusively applying general valid moral standards in making specific judgments of responsibility and desert.¹