The Use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Promote Mental Health and School Engagement in University Students: A Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial

The aim of this multisite randomized controlled trial was to determine whether an intervention based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was efficacious in improving university students’ psychological flexibility, mental health, and school engagement. Students were recruited in four Canadian universities and randomly assigned to an intervention (n = 72) or a wait-list control group (n = 72). Students in the intervention group took part in four 2.5-hour workshops during a 4-week period and were asked to do exercises at home (e.g., meditation, observation grids). Wait-list students received the intervention soon after the post measurements. MANCOVAs and ANCOVAs revealed that students in the intervention group showed greater psychological flexibility at postintervention than those in the control group. They also reported greater well-being and school engagement, and lower stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms. Taken together, results of this study suggest that an ACT-based intervention offers a valuable way to promote mental health and school engagement in postsecondary settings.     

The impact of presentation format on causal inferences

The impact of the presentation format of covariation information on causal judgements was examined in a fictitious virus-disease causal induction task. Six different judgement conditions were created by crossing two levels of virus-disease covariation (0, .5) with three levels of disease base rate (.25, .5, .75). The covariation information was presented differently to three groups of participants. In a first group, it was presented in propositional format summarising the frequencies of the four patient types, namely patients with or without the virus who either did have or did not have the disease. In a second group the same information was presented in a 2×2 table with the cell frequencies represented in terms of countable objects (the presence/absence of virus/disease was shown as schematic faces that varied in expression and colour). In a third group the covariation information was presented in terms of a cumulative frequency tree with the two main branches representing the frequencies of patients with and without the disease which further decomposed into subgroups of those with and without the virus. The ability to discriminate between the levels of covariation was poorest in Group 1; it was significantly improved in Group 2, and was best in Group 3. These results suggest that the format with which covariation information is presented to reasoners exerts a significant influence on causal judgements.     

The impact of external representation in a rule discovery task

The 2-4-6 rule discovery task introduced by Wason (1960) elicits generally poor hypothesis-testing behaviour as reflected by the underwhelming effort and creativity participants invest in the process before announcing their “best” guess. The traditional task departs from real-world hypothesis testing in a significant respect: Reasoners proceed to discover the rule solely from an internal representation of the problem space. Two studies reported here examined representational effects in the 2-4-6 task by developing task isomorphs that offered external, physically manipulable, representations of the dimensions of the problem space. These isomorphs led to a significantly higher incidence of successful rule discovery, driven by significantly greater diligence and creative exploration of the problem space, compared to other task isomorphs that did not offer such an external representation. These results confirm the fruitfulness of a research programme that explores the contextual determinants of sound hypothesis testing.     

Adaptation of Neuromuscular Synergies During Intentional Constraints of Space-Time Relationships in Human Gait

Tight frequency-to-amplitude relationships are observed in spontaneous human steady gait. They can be modified, if required; that flexibility forms a fundamental basis of the intentional adaptive capabilities of locomotion. In the present experiments, the processes underlying that flexibility were investigated at both the level of joint kinematics and the level of neuromuscular synergies. Subjects (N = 4) walked at the same speed either with a preferred or a nonpreferred frequency-to-amplitude relationship (i.e., constrained, short steps at a high frequency [COS condition] or constrained, long steps at a low frequency [COL condition]); their swing and stance phases were separately analyzed. In the COS condition, increases in EMG activity were specifically required during the swing phase. In the COL condition, several muscles required increases in EMG activity during the stance phase, but decreases of the hamstring muscles were needed during the swing phase. Whereas, in preferred walking, modification of the frequency affects the EMG patterns globally (the gain increasing with the frequency in both the stance and swing phases), the present results show that changing the frequency in a constrained manner either affects the swing phase specifically or affects both phases, but in the opposite direction. That finding indicates mat a separate control is needed in both the swing and the stance phases.     

Contextual interference processing during fast categorisations of facial expressions

We examined interference effects of emotionally associated background colours during fast valence categorisations of negative, neutral and positive expressions. According to implicitly learned colour–emotion associations, facial expressions were presented with colours that either matched the valence of these expressions or not. Experiment 1 included infrequent non-matching trials and Experiment 2 a balanced ratio of matching and non-matching trials. Besides general modulatory effects of contextual features on the processing of facial expressions, we found differential effects depending on the valance of target facial expressions. Whereas performance accuracy was mainly affected for neutral expressions, performance speed was specifically modulated by emotional expressions indicating some susceptibility of emotional expressions to contextual features. Experiment 3 used two further colour–emotion combinations, but revealed only marginal interference effects most likely due to missing colour–emotion associations. The results are discussed with respect to inherent processing demands of emotional and neutral expressions and their susceptibility to contextual interference.     

Sources

The Modern Encyclopedia of Religions in Russia and the Soviet Union edited by Paul D. Steeves. Vol. I (Aaron‐Annunciation). Academic International Press, 1988. 255 pp.

Glasnost, Christen und Genossen (Glasnost’, Christians and Comrades) edited by Norbert Sommer. Berlin: Wichern‐Verlag, 1988. Paperback, 188 pp.

Soviet Charismatics: the Pentecostals in the USSR by William C. Fletcher. New York: Peter Lang, 1985. 200 pp.

The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union by Amy W. Knight. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. 348 pp.

Every Person is First of all a History by Fr Mykhaylo Havryliv. Rome: Ukrainian Press Service, 1987. 158 pp.

The Razing of Romania's Past by Diav C. Giurescu. New York: United States Committee/International Council on Monuments and Sites, 1989. 68 pp. plus photographs     

Norms for grip agreement for 296 photographs of objects

An increasing number of studies are investigating the cognitive processes underlying human–object interactions. For instance, several researchers have manipulated the type of grip associated with objects in order to study the role of the objects’ motor affordances in cognition. The objective of the present study was to develop norms for the types of grip employed when grasping and using objects, with a set of 296 photographs of objects. On the basis of these ratings, we computed measures of agreement to evaluate the extent to which participants agreed about the grip used to interact with these objects. We also collected ratings on the dissimilarity between the grips employed for grasping and for using objects, as well as the number of actions that can typically be performed with the objects. Our results showed grip agreements of 67 % for grasping and of 65 % for using objects. Moreover, our pattern of correlations is highly consistent with the idea that the grips for grasping and using objects represent two different motor dimensions of the objects.     

Risques psychosociaux au travail : le rôle modérateur des stratégies de coping

It is now a fact that health and well being at work are enhanced by organizational characteristics (Dupret, Bocéréan, Teherani, & Feltrin, 2012) and individual characteristics such as coping strategies used in a stressful situation (Truchot & Fisher, 2002). The purpose of this research is to study the interaction between organizational characteristics and coping strategies in the emergence of psychosocial risks factors. This study was conducted with 427 employees, as part of a psychosocial risk assessment. The analysis (Sobel tests and LISREL modelization) show the moderating influence between coping strategies and the organizational variables on occupational health and life quality.     

University Students’ Subjective Well-being: The Role of Autonomy Support from Parents, Friends, and the Romantic Partner

This study investigated the relations between perceived autonomy support from three significant sources (parents, friends, and the romantic partner) and university students’ subjective well-being (SWB) using two approaches: a variable-centered and person-centered approach. Participants were 256 university students (191 women, 65 men) involved in a romantic relationship. Results from both approaches revealed that students’ perception that significant individuals support their autonomy predicted higher levels of SWB. Furthermore, results from a person-centered approach suggested that students reported the highest levels of SWB when all sources were perceived to be highly autonomy supportive. Together, these findings support a sensitization process of need satisfaction. Implications for SWB and self-determination theory are discussed.     

Embodiment, ownership and disownership

There are two main pathways to investigate the sense of body ownership, (i) through the study of the conditions of embodiment for an object to be experienced as one's own and (ii) through the analysis of the deficits in patients who experience a body part as alien. Here, I propose that E is embodied if some properties of E are processed in the same way as the properties of one's body. However, one must distinguish among different types of embodiment, and only self-specific embodiment can lead to feelings of ownership. I address issues such as the functional role and the dynamics of embodiment, degrees and measures of ownership, and shared body representations between self and others. I then analyse the interaction between ownership and disownership. On the one hand, I show that there is no evidence that in the Rubber Hand Illusion, the rubber hand replaces the biological hand. On the other hand, I argue that the sense of disownership experienced by patients towards their body part cannot be reduced to the mere lack of ownership.