Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders Among Children of Different Ethnic Origin

The present study assesses the population prevalence of DSM-IV disorders among native and immigrant children living in low socio-economic status (SES) inner-city neighborhoods in the Netherlands. In the first phase of a two-phase epidemiological design, teachers screened an ethnically diverse sample of 2041 children aged 6–10 years using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). In the second phase, a subsample of 253 children was psychiatrically examined, while their parents were interviewed. In addition, teachers completed a short questionnaire about 10 DSM-IV items. Prevalence was estimated using the best-estimate diagnosis based on parent, child and teacher information. Projected to the total population, 11% of the children had one or more impairing psychiatric disorders, which did not differ between native and non-native children. In the total group a clear relationship was observed between the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and gender, parental psychopathology, peer problems and school problems, but not among all ethnic groups separately. This study suggests that the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among non-treated minority and native children in low SES inner-city neighborhoods does not materially differ. However, associated mechanisms may be influenced by ethnicity.     

Emotional irritation before mental stress is associated with enhanced peripheral norepinephrine

Research suggests equivocal findings on associations of catecholamines and mood. Our study investigated the associations of emotional state, blood pressure and catecholamines in 55 healthy males undergoing mental stress. We especially checked the reported link between norepinephrine (NE) and emotional irritation. Blood pressure (SBP, DBP) and heart rate (HR) were continuously monitored. NE and epinephrine (EPI) were measured before, after, and 20 minutes after stress. Participants were divided into irritated versus non-irritated and anxious versus non-anxious subjects by median split on their baseline questionnaires. The task elicited significant cardiovascular, hormonal, and psychological stress responses. NE levels were significantly correlated with irritation before stress. Irritated subjects showed significantly higher DBP and NE than non-irritated subjects. The higher NE and DBP levels in the irritated participants suggest detrimental psycho-physiological interrelations promoting the development of stress-mediated cardiovascular diseases. Heightened emotional irritation before stress may be regarded as a psychological risk factor.     

On the Nature of Continuous Physical Quantities in Classical and Quantum Mechanics

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Within the traditional Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics, it is not possible to describe a particle as possessing, simultaneously, a sharp position value...     

Truth & Use

I show why the standard textbook argument against thepragmatist reconstruction of truth should be dismissedas a fallacy. It only works if one inadvertentlysubstitutes for the pragmatist concept of knowledge anunreconstructed one that predates the experimentalrevolution in philosophy (likened to the Copernicanrevolution in astronomy) started by Kant and completedby Dewey. I argue (as did Dewey against Russell) thatthe concept of propositions as mental reconstructionsof what is the case converts a function in inquiryinto an independent structure, which is anotherfallacy.     

Buddhist Meditation as a Mystical Practice

Philosophia - On the basis of many years of personal experience the paper describes Buddhist meditation (Zazen, Vipassanā) as a mystical practice. After a short discussion of the role of some...     

A psychometric evaluation of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ) in a Swedish sample

Personality is generally considered to be biologically founded in temperament, and temperamental qualities have proven to be relatively stable across childhood and into adulthood (Caspi, Roberts & Shiner, 2005 ). Temperament predicts important developmental outcomes such as academic performance (Muris, 2006 ), and social functioning (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie & Reiser, 2000 ), and it has also been found to be strongly related to the etiology and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in children (Muris, Meesters & Blijlevens, 2007 ; Nigg, 2006 ). To allow for the possibility of making early interventions, identification of potential risk factors (such as temperamental dispositions) is of great importance (Rettew & McKee, 2005 ). As temperament is multidimensional and has many different manifestations, parents and teachers are valuable sources in providing information about children's temperament (Rothbart & Bates, 2006 ; Tackett, Slobodskaya, Mar et al., 2012 ), and caregiver questionnaires are frequently used in child personality research. However, such questionnaires are only useful if their reliability and validity have been established. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ; Simonds, Kieras, Rueda & Rothbart, 2007 ), which focuses specifically on the ages between 7 and 11 years. The TMCQ is the least validated of the Rothbart measures, and although reliability data have been presented, together with some validity data, for a computerized self‐report version of the questionnaire (Simonds & Rothbart, 2004 ), information about the reliability and validity for the caregiver version is scant. In the present paper, we report such data for a Swedish sample.     

Nice or Naughty? The Role of Emotions and Digital Media Use in Explaining Adolescents’ Online Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior

The opportunities and mostly the risks of digital communication technologies for adolescents have been documented extensively in the last two decades, but less is known about how adolescents interact with each other online, especially regarding positive interactions. Moreover, since online prosocial and antisocial behavior have rarely been assessed simultaneously, it is hard to obtain a balanced view of adolescents’ online behavior. Therefore, in this study, we examined both dimensions of online social behavior and how these are related to adolescents’ experienced emotions and their uses of digital media. Findings indicated that participants performed and received more prosocial than antisocial behavior online. Experiencing negative as well as positive emotions was related to online social behavior, and these associations were mediated by adolescents’ use of social and audiovisual media, but not by gaming or functional Internet use. The social sharing of emotions and mood management theory are used to discuss the results.     

Dissociative style and individual differences in verbal working memory span

Dissociative style is mostly studied as a risk factor for dissociative pathology, but it may also reflect a fundamental characteristic of healthy information processing. Due to the close link between attention and working memory and the previous finding of enhanced attentional abilities with a high dissociative style, a positive relationship was also expected between dissociative style and verbal working memory span. In a sample of 119 psychology students, it was found that the verbal span of the high-dissociative group was about half a word larger than of the medium and low-dissociative groups. It is suggested that dissociative style may be one of only very few individual differences that is directly relevant to consciousness research.