Predictors of online information seeking by international students when disaster strikes their countries.

This study explores factors influencing international students' likelihood of using the Internet to seek disaster-related information should a disaster affect their countries. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in two universities in America between August 1 and September 30, 2005. Two hundred twenty-nine (n = 229) students completed the self-administered questionnaires. ANOVA analyses found that respondents' Internet self-efficacy had no significant impact on their intentions to seek disaster-related information on the Internet. However, respondents' Internet dependency and attitude toward seeking information online were found to have a significant effect on such intentions.     

Psychological Treatments That Cause Harm

ABSTRACT— The phrase primum non nocere ("first, do no harm") is a well‐accepted credo of the medical and mental health professions. Although emerging data indicate that several psychological treatments may produce harm in significant numbers of individuals, psychologists have until recently paid little attention to the problem of hazardous treatments. I critically evaluate and update earlier conclusions regarding deterioration effects in psychotherapy, outline methodological obstacles standing in the way of identifying potentially harmful therapies (PHTs), provide a provisional list of PHTs, discuss the implications of PHTs for clinical science and practice, and delineate fruitful areas for further research on PHTs. A heightened emphasis on PHTs should narrow the scientist–practitioner gap and safeguard mental health consumers against harm. Moreover, the literature on PHTs may provide insight into underlying mechanisms of change that cut across many domains of psychotherapy. The field of psychology should prioritize its efforts toward identifying PHTs and place greater emphasis on potentially dangerous than on empirically supported therapies.     

Anxiety and defensiveness: individual differences in affective startle modulation

Anxious individuals selectively attend to threatening information, and defensiveness may influence the experience and expression of anxiety. Fifty-eight undergraduates scoring high and low on measures of anxiety and defensiveness viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures. Acoustic startle probes were presented 60, 240, or 2,000 ms after picture onset. At 60 ms and 240 ms, repressors (low anxiety, high defensiveness) showed weaker blinks during both pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral pictures, suggesting enhanced early attention to affective stimuli, regardless of valence. At 2,000 ms, high-anxious but not low anxious participants showed potentiated startle responses during unpleasant compared to pleasant pictures. Although this result replicated previous research on anxiety and valence modulation of startle, exploratory analyses suggested that the valence effect was restricted to trait anxious individuals tending toward a defensive coping style. Across probe conditions, defensiveness was associated with heightened startle reactivity independent of self-reported anxiety and foreground stimulus characteristics.

Smoking and Type A behaviour

This study examines the relationship between Type A behaviour and smoking. Data were gathered from a random sample of 100 undergraduate male daily smokers, with a mean age of 21.2 years (SD = 2.72), using the Type A Behaviour Scale (Bortner and Rosenman, 1967). Results reveal that Type A smokers are heavier daily consumers of cigarettes than Type B smokers (t = 2.90, p less than 0.01). The observed relationship between smoking and Type A behaviour remains significant even when the influence of aggression in partialled out. The need to further investigate the interplay of genetic and non-genetic predispositions, and smoking in the incidence of coronary heart diseases (CHD) is suggested.     

Underlying Spatial Skills to Support Navigation Through Large,Unconstrained Environments

Studies of spatial navigation in real‐world settings have been limited to neighborhoods, campuses, and buildings. These locations have structural components, such as roads or hallways, which may direct navigation. The current study assessed navigational skills within a large‐scale forested environment that contained few pre‐established paths. Participants were asked to find flags using only a map and compass; dependent variables included target‐finding accuracy and efficiency. In addition, measurements of sense of direction, strategy, and working memory were taken to identify how these cognitive abilities influence performance. The results demonstrate the expected correlations between sense of direction and navigational success. An unexpected correlation between spatial working memory and navigational success was also found, which was the only significant predictor of performance when all measures were regressed together. These results suggest that studies should not forget basic cognitive abilities, which may predict success more than measures of sense of direction. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.