Appraisals of dependent stressor controllability and severity are associated with depression and anxiety symptoms in youth

Background and objectives: Stress is well established as a strong risk factor for internalizing psychopathology. Learned helplessness research demonstrates that perceived controllability of stressors affects internalizing symptoms. Furthermore, subjective perceived stress is associated with psychopathology. However, most recent research has focused on measuring the frequency and expert-rated severity of stressful life events despite evidence for the importance of stress perceptions. The present study brings together past and current literatures to investigate the importance of perceived severity and controllability of recent life events in the association between stressors and internalizing symptoms.

Design and methods: We used a revised version of the Adolescent Life Events Questionnaire (ALEQ) that asked participants (ages 13–22, N?=?328) to rate the frequency of 65 stressful events typical to youth, as well as the perceived stressfulness and control they felt over each event. Events were categorized prior to analysis as dependent (self-generated), independent (fateful) or neither.

Results: Controllability and severity appraisals were associated with depression and anxiety symptoms, controlling for stressor frequency (which also predicted symptoms), for dependent but not independent stressors.

Conclusions: These results highlight the importance of controllability and severity appraisals as potential risk factors for internalizing disorders, exposing a potential target for therapy.     

The Role of Visual Feedback about Motion of the Ground on Postural Sway

Abstract

We asked whether body sway would be influenced by visual information about motion of the ground surface. On a ship at sea, standing participants performed a demanding visual search task or a simple visual inspection task. Display content was stationary relative to the ship or relative to the Earth. Participants faced the ship’s bow or its port side. Performance on the visual search task was representative of terrestrial studies. Body sway was greater during viewing of the Earth Stationary displays than during viewing of the Ship Stationary displays. We discuss possible implications of these results for theoretical and applied issues.     

Feature representations and analytic/nonanalytic processing.

Lee Brooks' original formulation of instance theory embedded the notion of an instance within the larger conception of a distinction between analytic and nonanalytic processing. Brooks has recently argued that features can be represented either in terms of their specific feature appearance, or in terms of the abstract information some particular instantiation embodies. This work reviews some recent studies that link reliance on different types of feature representations to different decision-making processes, and to different patterns of categorization behaviour. This in turn complicates the analytic/nonanalytic distinction, suggesting a more precise reformulation.     

Suicide Attempts and Suicide among Marines: A Decade of Follow‐up

Suicidal behavior among military personnel is of paramount public health importance because of the increased risk of death from suicide in this population. Pre‐ and post‐Marine recruit training risk factors for suicide attempts among current and former Marines were examined in 10 years following recruit training. The characteristics of the subsample of current and former Marines who died by suicide during this time are also described. Stressful and traumatic life events (e.g., childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, sexual harassment during recruit training) and pre‐recruit training suicide attempts emerged as having strong associations with post‐recruit training attempts. Half of those who died by suicide in the 10 years following recruit training endorsed at least one significant life stressor prior to joining the Marines. This study highlights the importance of screening for stressful and potentially traumatic experiences occurring both before and during military service as part of a comprehensive suicide risk assessment in military samples.     

Step by step: A microgenetic study of the development of strategy choice in infancy

To examine patterns of strategy choice and discovery during problem‐solving of a novel locomotor task, 13.5‐ and 18‐month‐old infants were placed at the top of a staircase and encouraged to descend. Spontaneous stair descent strategy choices were documented step by step and trial by trial to provide a microgenetic account of problem‐solving in action. Younger infants tended to begin each trial walking, were more likely to choose walking with each successive step, and were more likely to lose their balance and have to be rescued by an experimenter. Conversely, older infants tended to begin each trial scooting, were more likely to choose scooting with each successive step, and were more likely to use a handrail to augment balance on stairs. Documenting problem‐solving microgenetically across age groups revealed striking similarities between younger infants' strategy development and older children's behaviour on more traditionally cognitive tasks, including using alternative strategies, mapping prior experiences with strategies to a novel task, and strengthening new strategies. As cognitive resources are taxed during a challenging task, resources available for weighing alternatives or inhibiting a well‐used strategy are reduced. With increased motor experience, infants can more easily consider alternative strategies and maintain those solutions over the course of the trial.     

FROM FREUD TO FEMINIST PERSONALITY THEORY: GETTING HERE FROM THERE

After a discussion of the impact of psychoanalysis on psychological thinking about personality theory and the changes that have been taking place within psychoanalytic theory about women, eight criteria arising out of feminist therapy theory are stated. These criteria represent suggested minimum conditions that a woman-based theory of female development and personality needs to fulfill. Freudian theory, current psychoanalytic theory, and several feminist theories are then evaluated in light of the stated criteria. The author concludes that feminists have arrived at some degree of general agreement about personality theory, although they have often arrived at their specific approaches via diverse theoretical routes.