Effects of Happiness on All-Cause Mortality During 15 Years of Follow-Up: The Arnhem Elderly Study

Positive psychological characteristics may be beneficial for physical health. However, prospective data on the effects of happiness on survival is scarce. In a population-based cohort study, the Arnhem Elderly Study, happiness was measured by two items, being: “I have many moments of happiness” and “I often laugh happily”. In Cox proportional hazard models, happiness was analyzed as a predictor of 15 year all-cause mortality for 861 (85%) of 1,012 elderly subjects aged 65–85 years. Results showed that happiness was inversely associated with mortality (age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratio of 0.78 for happy subjects versus unhappy subjects; 95% confidence interval 0.64–0.95, P = 0.01 for trend), but that this relationship was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for physical activity and prevalent morbidity. Thus, happiness predicts for lower mortality, which may partly be mediated by more physical activity and lower morbidity.     

Discourse structure and relative clause processing

Studies in several languages have shown that subject-relative clauses are easier to process than object-relative clauses. Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers (2006) have proposed the topichood hypothesis to account for the preference for subject-relative clauses. This hypothesis claims that the entity in the relative clause that is most topicworthy will be chosen as the subject. By default, the antecedent of the relative clause will be chosen as the subject of the relative clause, because it is the topic of the relative clause. However, when the noun phrase (NP) in the relative clause is also topicworthy, the preference for the antecedent to be the subject will disappear. This was confirmed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested relative clauses with a personal pronoun in the relative clause. We obtained a preference for object-relative clauses, in line with the assumption that personal pronouns refer to a discourse topic and are thus topicworthy. In Experiment 2, the discourse status of the NP in the relative clause was manipulated; either it was not present in the preceding context, or it was the discourse topic. The experiment showed that when the NP in the relative clause refers to the discourse topic, the difficulty of object-relative clauses is reduced, in comparison with relative clauses with an NP that is new in the discourse, even in the absence of any explicit cue in the relative clause itself. The experiments show that discourse factors guide processing at the sentence level.     

A randomized clinical trial on the effectiveness of a reintegration training program versus booster sessions after short-term inpatient psychotherapy

Although several studies show symptomatic improvements in patients with personality disorders after short-term inpatient psychotherapy, reintegration remains difficult. In this study the effectiveness of a specifically designed reintegration training program is investigated. One hundred twenty-eight patients were randomized to either a reintegration training program aimed at improving general functioning and work resumption, or booster sessions. Outcome measures used were symptom level, work status, absence from and impediments at work. The results showed that compliance in the booster session group was significantly better than in the reintegration training program. The percentage of persons with a paid job increased during the booster sessions from 64 to 87%, but not during the reintegration training (76%). There were no differences in the other outcome measures. We concluded that reintegration training was not more (cost)-effective than booster sessions. Our hypothesis is that continuity of care (same therapists and program) explains the favorable results of the booster sessions.     

Trainee perspectives on their family therapy training

Although research into family therapy training is increasing it has so far mostly focused on the process of the teaching and acquisition of certain concepts and skills. In contrast, the experience of training as family therapists has rarely been investigated. This paper reports on the impact of family therapy training at one training institution in the UK on the personal, relational and professional identities of trainees. Six family therapy trainees were interviewed using semi‐structured interviews at regular intervals over a period of approximately twenty months. Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was employed to analyse the interviews. The results suggest that participants often found the experience of training as a family therapist overwhelming and de‐skilling, but that it nevertheless provoked a re‐evaluation of some of their established personal, relational and professional identities. In many cases these re‐evaluations seemed to have preceded a process of individuation, of assuming a different or more complex identity.     

Strategic Maneuvering: A Synthetic Recapitulation

As an introduction to the special issue on Perspectives on Strategic Maneuvering, this article provides a synthetic recapitulation of the various steps that were taken in developing the pragma-dialectical theory of strategic maneuvering. First, the concept of strategic maneuvering is described as a means to reconcile the simultaneous pursuit of dialectical and rhetorical aims. Second, strategic maneuvering is related to the various kinds of argumentative activity types in which it takes place. Third, the concept of dialectical profiles is discussed and the parameters that are pertinent to distinguishing between different types of strategic maneuvering. Fourth, the fallacies are viewed as derailment of strategic maneuvering. Fifth, as a case in point, strategic maneuvering with inconsistency is examined. This contribution brings together insights that earlier were put forward in a number of separate publications.     

Influences of spoken word planning on speech recognition

In 4 chronometric experiments, influences of spoken word planning on speech recognition were examined. Participants were shown pictures while hearing a tone or a spoken word presented shortly after picture onset. When a spoken word was presented, participants indicated whether it contained a prespecified phoneme. When the tone was presented, they indicated whether the picture name contained the phoneme (Experiment 1) or they named the picture (Experiment 2). Phoneme monitoring latencies for the spoken words were shorter when the picture name contained the prespecified phoneme compared with when it did not. Priming of phoneme monitoring was also obtained when the phoneme was part of spoken nonwords (Experiment 3). However, no priming of phoneme monitoring was obtained when the pictures required no response in the experiment, regardless of monitoring latency (Experiment 4). These results provide evidence that an internal phonological pathway runs from spoken word planning to speech recognition and that active phonological encoding is a precondition for engaging the pathway.     

No representation without awareness in the lateral occipital cortex

Recent research has shown that four small dots presented in the vicinity of, but not adjacent to, a target stimulus can banish that stimulus from conscious awareness. It is thought that the mental representation of the masked stimulus is "erased" by the trailing quartet of dots. Using functional magnetic resonance adaptation, we show that there is no persisting neural representation of the successfully masked stimulus in lateral occipital cortex, a region that has been implicated in the processing of object structure. This finding rules out the alternative interpretation that a lingering neural representation is merely rendered inaccessible to consciousness, as is the fate, for example, of monocular information under conditions of binocular rivalry.