An investigation of psychosocial factors related to changes in physical activity and fitness among female adolescents

Research examined the effects of a supervised physical activity program on potential psychosocial mediators and determined whether changes in these psychosocial variables predicted changes in physical activity and fitness. Sedentary adolescent females were assigned to an intervention (n?=?79) or comparison (n?=?67) group. Cardiovascular fitness (cycle ergometer), physical activity (3-Day Physical Activity Recall), and psychosocial variables related to physical activity (i.e., self-efficacy, perceived barriers, social support, enjoyment) were assessed at three time points over the 9-month study. An intention-to-treat analysis showed that the intervention did not impact any of the psychosocial variables, with the exception of perceived barriers, which increased in the intervention group. Longitudinal analyses showed that improvements in fitness were associated with positive changes in global self-efficacy and exercise enjoyment. Psychosocial variables did not mediate the program's effects on fitness or activity. However, individual level changes in psychosocial variables were related to changes in cardiovascular fitness.     

Traditional Literacy Skills and Internet Use Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Children

Ninety children in third through sixth grade attending an elementary school in western Canada completed a 15-item rating scale of their Internet use across home, school, and community contexts. Children's literacy skills were assessed with standardized measures of reading fluency and sentence comprehension and teacher ratings of reading and writing ability. Results suggest that Internet use during childhood is a complex behavior that varies across children and across contexts. Instant messaging and community-based Internet use during childhood were associated with decreased literacy skills, while other applications used at home and school were associated with increased literacy skills.     

An open trial of a brief transdiagnostic internet treatment for anxiety and depression

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a brief version of an internet-administered transdiagnostic CBT protocol, the Wellbeing Program (Titov et al., 2011), designed to treat three anxiety disorders and major depression within the same program. This brief version included the same core CBT skills as the original, but condensed the materials from 8 to 5 online lessons, reduced the duration of treatment from 10 to 8 weeks and did not include an online forum. Thirty-two individuals with a principal diagnosis of major depression, generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder or social phobia received CBT-based online educational lessons, homework assignments, weekly contact from a clinical psychologist and automated emails. Eighty-one percent of participants completed the lessons within the 8 week program. Post-treatment and 3-month follow-up data were collected from 28/32 and 31/32 participants respectively. Participants improved significantly on the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales – 21 Item, Patient Health Questionnaire – 9 Item, and Generalised Anxiety Disorder – 7 Item scales, with corresponding within-group effect sizes (Cohen’s d) at follow-up of 1.05, .73, and .95, respectively. Participants rated the procedure as highly acceptable with gains of a similar magnitude as those found for the original program, but less time was spent per participant by the clinician in the present trial (mean = 44.61 min, SD = 34.45) compared to the original program (mean = 84.76 min, SD = 50.37). These results provide additional support for the efficacy of transdiagnostic iCBT in the treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders and indicate that a brief version may be of benefit.     

Differences in male and female patterns of communication in groups: A methodological artifact?

This study investigated communication patterns in an all-male, all-female, and mixed-sex group. All participants were white and middle class. These groups met for longer periods of time than those in most previous studies that reported differences between men and women in task and maintenance communication patterns. Most previous research investigations were based on groups that met for an hour or less and used unacquainted undergraduates. In this study, no significant differences were found in seven categories of verbal input. While there were no significant differences, the typical pattern reported in the literature was present in the first 30–60 minutes of the groups. After that time period, no consistent patterns were noted, and stereotypic sex differences vanished. This has led the authors to tentatively conclude that the findings of previous research may be due to the limited time period used in most investigations. Men and women did not differ on task and maintenance input, or other categories of verbal input, in groups meeting for 4 1/2 hours or 6 hours.     

Les passions de l'ame: on obsessive and harmonious passion

Passion is defined as a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, that they find important, and in which they invest time and energy. Two types of passion are proposed: obsessive and harmonious. Obsessive passion (OP) refers to a controlled internalization of an activity in one's identity that creates an internal pressure to engage in the activity that the person likes. Harmonious passion (HP) refers to an autonomous internalization that leads individuals to choose to engage in the activity that they like. HP promotes healthy adaptation whereas OP thwarts it by causing negative affect and rigid persistence. Results from four studies involving more than 900 participants from different populations supported the proposed conceptualization.     

The relationship between spoken language and speech and nonspeech processing in children with autism: a magnetic event‐related field study

It has been proposed that language impairments in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) stem from atypical neural processing of speech and/or nonspeech sounds. However, the strength of this proposal is compromised by the unreliable outcomes of previous studies of speech and nonspeech processing in ASD. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was an association between poor spoken language and atypical event‐related field (ERF) responses to speech and nonspeech sounds in children with ASD (n = 14) and controls (n = 18). Data from this developmental population (ages 6–14) were analysed using a novel combination of methods to maximize the reliability of our findings while taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the ASD population. The results showed that poor spoken language scores were associated with atypical left hemisphere brain responses (200 to 400 ms) to both speech and nonspeech in the ASD group. These data support the idea that some children with ASD may have an immature auditory cortex that affects their ability to process both speech and nonspeech sounds. Their poor speech processing may impair their ability to process the speech of other people, and hence reduce their ability to learn the phonology, syntax, and semantics of their native language.     

The Role of Race in the Association between Corporal Punishment and Externalizing Problems: Does Punishment Severity Matter?

Parental corporal punishment is frequently associated with emotional and behavioral problems among youth. Some researchers propose that this association does not exist in African–American families, although the literature is mixed. Among recent studies, there is a lack of standardization in the measure of corporal punishment, which may help explain the inconsistent findings. The present study used a community sample (N = 106, 34 % African–American, 48 % female) to test for racial differences in the association between corporal punishment and youths’ aggression and delinquency, while examining different corporal punishment types separately by severity level. The three corporal punishment variables were spanking, severe corporal punishment (hitting and hitting with an object), and total corporal punishment (a composite of spanking, hitting, and hitting with an object). Regression analyses revealed that race moderated the association between corporal punishment and delinquency, although this moderation was contingent upon the corporal punishment variable. Specifically, severe corporal punishment and total corporal punishment were associated with delinquency only for Caucasian and not African–American youth. The model testing spanking and delinquency was not moderated by race. Additionally, race moderated the association between severe corporal punishment and youth aggression. Findings suggest that corporal punishment is associated with youth externalizing problems, but that this varies based upon race, severity of corporal punishment, and type of externalizing problem.     

Face-sex categorization is better above fixation than below: Evidence from the reach-to-touch paradigm

The masked congruence effect (MCE) elicited by nonconsciously presented faces in a sex-categorization task has recently been shown to be sensitive to the effects of attention. Here we investigated how spatial location along the vertical meridian modulates the MCE for face-sex categorization. Participants made left and right reaching movements to classify the sex of a target face that appeared either immediately above or below central fixation. The target was preceded by a masked prime face that was either congruent (i.e., same sex) or incongruent (i.e., opposite sex) with the target. In the reach-to-touch paradigm, participants typically classify targets more efficiently (i.e., their finger heads in the correct direction earlier and faster) on congruent than on incongruent trials. We observed an upper-hemifield advantage in the time course of this MCE, such that primes affected target classification sooner when they were presented in the upper visual field (UVF) rather than the lower visual field (LVF). Moreover, we observed a differential benefit of attention between the vertical hemifields, in that the MCE was dependent on the appropriate allocation of spatial attention in the LVF, but not the UVF. Taken together, these behavioral findings suggest that the processing of faces qua faces (e.g., sex-categorization) is more robust in upper-hemifield locations.