Psychosocial Effects of Conditions of Military Deployment

Deployment may lead the soldiers to dichotomise their profession and their family life, resulting in unwanted effects on family or career. Effects on reintegration and functioning within family are considered. Reunions may be characterized by perceived negative reception and consequences could spill over to children as parents attempt to equivocate their differences. Risks exist for fragmentation of the family system or divorce. Social support may serve to buffer families with members on deployment.     

Assessment of dental anxiety: A facet approach

Dental anxiety is a complicated phenomenon, and its multicomponent nature is often not acknowledged in existing measurement instruments. Using a facet design, a new Dental Anxiety Inventory (DAI) was constructed. Facets chosen were: time (made up of four elements: at home, on your way to the denstist, in the denstist's waiting room, in the dental chair), situation (three elements: introductory aspects, dentist-patient interaction, actual dental treatment), and reaction (three elements: subjective feelings, physical reactions, cognitive reactions). Psychometric qualities of the DAI are good. The internal structure of the DAI was studied by linear and nonlinear techniques, and was partially recovered from the data. The construct and criterion validity of the DAI was supported in several studies.     

Predictors of Response and Mechanisms of Change in an Organizational Skills Intervention for Students with ADHD

The purpose of the study was to evaluate predictors of response and mechanisms of change for the Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) intervention for middle school students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Twenty-three middle school students with ADHD (grades 6–8) received the HOPS intervention implemented by school mental health providers and made significant improvements in parent-rated materials organization and planning skills, impairment due to organizational skills problems, and homework problems. Predictors of response examined included demographic and child characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, intelligence, ADHD and ODD symptom severity, and ADHD medication use. Mechanisms of change examined included the therapeutic alliance and adoption of the organization and planning skills taught during the HOPS intervention. Participant implementation of the HOPS binder materials organization system and the therapeutic alliance as rated by the student significantly predicted post-intervention outcomes after controlling for pre-intervention severity. Adoption of the binder materials organization system predicted parent-rated improvements in organization, planning, and homework problems above and beyond the impact of the therapeutic alliance. These findings demonstrate the importance of teaching students with ADHD to use a structured binder organization system for organizing and filing homework and classwork materials and for transferring work to and from school.     

The Role of Attachment Style and Depression in Patients with Hepatitis C

Patients infected with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) commonly suffer from the triad of depression, pain and fatigue. This symptom triad in HCV is likely influenced by additional psychological and interpersonal factors, although the relationship is not clearly understood. This retrospective study aimed to characterize the relationship between attachment style and depressive and physical symptoms in the HCV-infected population. Over 18 months, 99 consecutively referred HCV infected patients were assessed with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), Fatigue Severity Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-15 for physical symptoms and the Relationship Questionnaire for attachment style. An ANOVA was used to identify differences between attachment styles and Pearson correlations were used to evaluate the association between depression, fatigue and physical symptoms. Approximately 15 % of patients in the sample had a fearful attachment style. Patients with fearful attachment style had significantly higher depressive symptoms compared to a secure attachment style (p = .025). No differences in physical and fatigue symptoms were observed between attachment styles. Further, HDRS scores were significantly associated with fatigue scores (p < .001) and physical symptoms (p < .001), reinforcing the relationship between these symptom domains in HCV-infected patients. Although depressive, physical and fatigue symptoms are inter-related in HCV-infected patients, our study results suggest that only depressive symptoms were influenced by the extremes of attachment style. Screening of relationship styles may identify at-risk HCV-infected individuals for depression who may have difficulty engaging in care and managing physical symptoms.     

Supporting Universal Prevention Programs: A Two-Phased Coaching Model

Schools are adopting evidence-based programs designed to enhance students’ emotional and behavioral competencies at increasing rates (Hemmeter et al. in Early Child Res Q 26:96–109, 2011). At the same time, teachers express the need for increased support surrounding implementation of these evidence-based programs (Carter and Van Norman in Early Child Educ 38:279–288, 2010). Ongoing professional development in the form of coaching may enhance teacher skills and implementation (Noell et al. in School Psychol Rev 34:87–106, 2005; Stormont et al. 2012). There exists a need for a coaching model that can be applied to a variety of teacher skill levels and one that guides coach decision-making about how best to support teachers. This article provides a detailed account of a two-phased coaching model with empirical support developed and tested with coaches and teachers in urban schools (Becker et al. 2013). In the initial universal coaching phase, all teachers receive the same coaching elements regardless of their skill level. Then, in the tailored coaching phase, coaching varies according to the strengths and needs of each teacher. Specifically, more intensive coaching strategies are used only with teachers who need additional coaching supports, whereas other teachers receive just enough support to consolidate and maintain their strong implementation. Examples of how coaches used the two-phased coaching model when working with teachers who were implementing two universal prevention programs (i.e., the PATHS^® curriculum and PAX Good Behavior Game [PAX GBG]) provide illustrations of the application of this model. The potential reach of this coaching model extends to other school-based programs as well as other settings in which coaches partner with interventionists to implement evidence-based programs.     

No templates for rejection: a failure to configure attention to ignore task-irrelevant features

ABSTRACT

Knowing the colour of an upcoming target allows one to bias attention towards objects of that colour. It is far less clear whether knowing the colour of an up-coming distractor can allow one to suppress attention to items of that colour. Arita, Carlisle, and Woodman (2012) suggest that people can create a template for rejection. However, the method used in Arita et al. may have allowed people to adopt a strategy of internally generating a positive cue for the target colour or target hemifield. Here we use a method very similar to theirs, but manipulate the display layouts and the number of un-cued colours in ways that should thwart such strategies. Across three experiments, we find a negative cuing benefit only in a very special circumstance that encourages a strategic shift to internally generating a positive cue (the same circumstance used by Arita et al.). We conclude that people are unable to use a negative feature-cue on a trial-by-trial basis to suppress attention to upcoming distractors, and attribute the finding in Arita et al. to a strategic shift rather than a template for rejection.     

A reversal of the search asymmetry favouring negative schematic faces

Quite a number of studies have tested whether the affective valence of stimuli can guide attention in visual search. Studies using schematic affective faces frequently found a relative search asymmetry (RSA), with more efficient search for a negative face in a friendly crowd than vice versa. Whether, however, this effect relates to differences in affect or to the confounded differences in perceptual features is unknown. The present study proposes and tests a similarity-based account for the RSA. Experiments 1a and 1b first replicate the typical RSA. Experiment 2 shows that the stimulus could be simplified to some degree without losing the RSA. Experiments 3 and 4, finally, demonstrate that the RSA could be reversed by a rather simple stimulus change, that leaves the facial expression intact. It is concluded that the strong dependence of the RSA on stimulus factors seriously questions the claim that emotional factors drive the RSA.     

Equality of Opportunity and Other-Affecting Choice: Why Luck Egalitarianism Does Not Require Brute Luck Equality

The luck egalitarian view famously maintains that inequalities in individuals’ circumstances are unfair or unjust, whereas inequalities traceable to individuals’ own responsible choices are fair or just. On this basis, the distinction between so-called brute luck and option luck has been seen as central to luck egalitarianism. Luck egalitarianism is interpreted, by advocates and opponents alike, as a view that condemns inequalities in brute luck but permits inequalities in option luck. It is also thought to be expressed in terms of the view that no individual ought to be worse off other than because of a fault or choice of his or her own. I argue that these two characterizations of luck egalitarianism are not equivalent and that, properly understood, luck egalitarianism is compatible with widespread, potentially radical, inequalities in brute luck.     

A severe capacity limit in the consolidation of orientation information into visual short-term memory

Previous research has suggested that two color patches can be consolidated into visual short-term memory (VSTM) via an unlimited parallel process. Here we examined whether the same unlimited-capacity parallel process occurs for two oriented grating patches. Participants viewed two gratings that were presented briefly and masked. In blocks of trials, the gratings were presented either simultaneously or sequentially. In Experiments 1 and 2, the presentation of the stimuli was followed by a location cue that indicated the grating on which to base one’s response. In Experiment 1, participants responded whether the target grating was oriented clockwise or counterclockwise with respect to vertical. In Experiment 2, participants indicated whether the target grating was oriented along one of the cardinal directions (vertical or horizontal) or was obliquely oriented. Finally, in Experiment 3, the location cue was replaced with a third grating that appeared at fixation, and participants indicated whether either of the two test gratings matched this probe. Despite the fact that these responses required fairly coarse coding of the orientation information, across all methods of responding we found superior performance for sequential over simultaneous presentations. These findings suggest that the consolidation of oriented gratings into VSTM is severely limited in capacity and differs from the consolidation of color information.