Reciprocal Associations Between Depressive Symptoms and Disordered Eating Among Adolescent Girls and Boys: A Multiwave,Prospective Study

Symptoms of depression and eating disorders increase during adolescence, particularly among girls, and they tend to co-occur. Despite this evidence, there is meager research on whether depression increases the risk of future eating pathology, or vice versa, and we do not know whether these processes are different for adolescent girls and boys. Accordingly, this study explored the prospective reciprocal associations between depressive symptoms and disordered eating at different time points from preadolescence to mid-adolescence and tested the moderator effect of gender on these associations. A community-based sample of Spanish youth (N?=?942, 49 % female) was assessed at ages of approximately 10-11 (T1), 12-13 (T2), 14-15 (T3), and 16-17 (T4) years. The bidirectional relationships between depressive symptoms and disordered eating were estimated in an autoregressive cross-lagged model with latent variables. A unidirectional, age-specific association between depressive symptoms at T1 and disordered eating at T2 was found. No other significant cross-lagged effect emerged, but the stability of the constructs was considerable. Gender did not moderate any of the links examined. Regardless of gender, the transition from childhood to adolescence appears to be a key period when depressive symptoms foster the development of disordered eating. These findings suggest that early prevention and treatment of depression targeting both girls and boys may result in lower levels of depressive symptoms and disordered eating in adolescence.     

Thomas Bradwardine on God and the Foundations of Modality

Scholars have claimed that the fourteenth-century thinker Thomas Bradwardine held that God's will freely determined what was necessary, possible and impossible and in this regard, he was a medieval precursor to Descartes. In this article, I argue against this interpretation of Bradwardine. I show that Bradwardine held that objects derive their modal status based on whether God's necessary and immutable being isrepugnant or non-repugnant to their existence. I offer readings of thepassages in which Bradwardine appears to state that God's will determines modality that render them consistent with the non-voluntarist interpretation of his modal theory.     

Lexicality and Stimulus Length Effects in Italian Dyslexics: Role of the Overadditivity Effect

The effect of lexicality and stimulus length was studied in 32 third- and fourth-grade Italian dyslexics and in 86 age-matched controls. A visual lexical decision task was used. As proposed by Faust et al. (1999) Faust, M. E., Balota, D. A., Spieler, D. H. and Ferraro, F. R. 1999. Individual differences in information-processing rate and amount: Implications for group differences in response latency. Psychological Bulletin, 125: 777–799. [INFOTRIEVE][CROSSREF][CSA][Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], the results were analyzed in terms of raw reaction time (RT) data and using the z-score transformation to control for the presence of overadditivity effects. In terms of RTs, dyslexics showed a larger difference between words and nonwords (lexicality effect) and between short and long stimuli (length effect) than proficient readers. When data were transformed into z scores, only the group by length interaction remained significant while that with lexicality vanished. This pattern indicates that stimulus length has a specific role in Italian dyslexics’ reading deficit; in contrast, slowness in responding to nonwords was not specific but was interpreted as one aspect of dyslexics’ general inability to deal with alphabetical material (overadditivity effect).     

Anxiety and Depression in Children with HFASDs: Symptom Levels and Source Differences

The purpose of this study was to: (1) examine symptom levels of anxiety and depression in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) compared with matched control children using child self-reports and parent ratings; and (2) examine source differences within the two condition groups. An overall multivariate effect indicated significantly elevated depression and anxiety symptoms for children with HFASDs based on parent reports; however no significant between-group differences based on child self-reports. Within-condition source comparisons (parent vs. child) revealed a significant multivariate effect indicating a significant difference in symptoms of depression and anxiety for the HFASD group but none for the control. Correlations between parent and child reports for the HFASD group suggested some positive association between child-reports and parent-reports for depressive symptoms only; however, the difference in average scores reflected a substantial discrepancy in the magnitude of symptoms by rater. Implications for clinical assessment and future research are provided.     

Unanswered questions: A preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs

Given the widespread appeal of conspiratorial beliefs, it is surprising that very little empirical research has examined the psychological variables associated with such beliefs. In the present study, we examined individual and demographic predictors of beliefs in conspiracy theories concerning the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon among a representative British sample of 254 women and men. Results of structural equation modelling showed that 9/11 conspiracist beliefs were positively associated with belief in other conspiracy theories, exposure to 9/11 conspiracist ideas, political cynicism, defiance of authority and the Big Five personality factor of Agreeableness. In total, a model including demographics, personality and individual difference variables explained over 50% of the variance in 9/11 conspiracist ideas. The implications of these findings for the literature on conspiracy theories are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consensual Beliefs about the Fairness and Accuracy of Selection Methods at University

This study investigated student's perception of the accuracy and fairness of 17 different assessment methods to measure 8 different traits/characteristics thought to be desirable in a student. Results for accuracy and fairness judgments were similar with drug, general knowledge and intelligence tests being thought of a least accurate and fair while panel interviews and references were thought of as among the fairest selection methods. Factor analyses of the accuracy data showed that two underlying components existed labelled test and face‐to‐face methods. There was considerable consensus among the 322 respondents. The only individual difference variable which was shown to explain any variance in accuracy perceptions was self‐assessed intelligence. The possible explanations for these findings, as well as study limitations and suggested directions for future research are discussed.     

Assessment of the efficacy of a peer mentoring program in a university setting

In the present study, the efficacy of a formal mentoring program applied to fourth and fifth year students of the Psychology Faculty of the Complutense University is assessed. In this program, fifth-year students took on the role of mentors and fourth-year students, the role of mentees. To assess the efficacy, the group of mentors was compared with a group of non-mentors and the group of mentees with a group of non-mentees, before and after the program, taking into account the variables related to career development function (knowledge acquired of the academic setting and satisfaction with the career of Psychology) and the psychosocial function (self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and involvement). The results show a statistically significant increase in the knowledge acquired about the academic setting as a consequence of the program, both in the group of mentors and in the group of mentees. Moreover, the mentors achieved a better average grade in the subjects of the specialty of Work Psychology. There were no statistically significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in satisfaction with the career of Psychology, or in self-concept, self-esteem, or self-efficacy.     

The Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) reduces stress-related psychological distress in healthcare professionals

This semi-experimental study examines how Mindfulness facilitates a distress reduction in a group of health professionals. The sample comprises 29 professionals seeking stress reduction who undertook an 8 weeks psico-educative intervention, involving 28 hours of class, based on a program called Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction or MBSR. Results show a 35% reduction of distress, from percentile 75 to 45, combined with a 30% reduction in rumination and a 20% decrease in negative affect. These benefits lasted during the 3 months of the follow up period. The correlation analysis indicates that the decrease in distress is significantly related to the other two variables. These results confirm the effectiveness of MBSR to decrease distress and its applicability in training programs for health professionals.     

Neurobehavioral Assessment of Children Presenting Diverse Congenital Cardiopathologies

Brain maturation in 1–36 month old children suffering from congenital cardiopathologies was assessed after a study of psychomotor development. The Rogers’ test (Rogers et al., Developmental programming for infants and young children. Volume 2. Early intervention developmental profile, Revised edition, ESL/ELT Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1981) was applied to 65 children, of whom 21 presented with simple cardiopathologies (CpS) and 22 with complex cardiopathologies (CpC). All children were matched by age, sex and socioeconomic status to 22 healthy children in a control group (C). Mean differences between the three groups were established by applying the Kruskal–Wallis test, and mean differences between the C and CpS/CpC groups were determined using the Mann–Whitney test. The proportion of cases evaluated as “low” in each group was calculated by applying the Rogers’ test, and a test of proportion differences was applied between the C and CpS/CpC groups. CpS children performed similarly to the C, whereas CpC children scored significantly lower than C children on all variables. It is highly likely that the suboptimal psychomotor performance observed in CpC children was due to compromised hemodynamics and related to subclinical immaturity of cerebral development.