Memory distrust and acceptance of misinformation

Relying on a community sample (N = 80), the present study examined whether memory distrust is related to an increased tendency to accept misinformation and whether it interacts with passage of time. Participants were shown video footage of an armed robbery. Approximately 30 minutes later, they were asked to describe as accurately as possible what they had seen. Either 1 day or 2 weeks later they were presented with their own statements, to which five misinformation items had been added. The results showed that people suffering from memory distrust accepted more misinformation than those with optimistic beliefs about their memory. In addition, both age and free recall seemed to modulate this relationship. However, memory evaluation did not interact with time interval. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale-Computer

Alexithymia is an important concept in both psychosomatic medicine and emotion research. A valid instrument for the assessment of alexithymia is the Levels Of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS; English version by R. Lane, German version by C. Subic-Wrana). Subjects are asked to evaluate in their own words the emotional content of briefly depicted interpersonal situations. Wide use of the LEAS has so far been hampered by a relatively complex evaluation procedure of answers that could not easily be automated. This was the motivation to create a digital version of the LEAS that allows subjects to give their answers directly to the computer and evaluates them automatically (LEAS-C). A custom-made algorithm for text analysis assesses the level of emotional awareness of each answer based on a valid glossary of emotionally relevant words. First data of the application of the LEAS-C in a sample of 187 healthy subjects are reported here. With its high interrater reliability (r=0.86–0.90) compared with human raters, the LEAS-C can be considered a reliable means of assessing alexithymia.     

Psychiatrische Versorgung im europäischen Strafvollzug

Objective and methods:

We analysed administrative national data regarding mental health care and psychiatric prevalence in the penitentiary systems of 24 European countries. Data was provided by national experts via questionnaire.

Results:

There is a mixed approach for prison mental health care in European countries that either rely on separated psychiatric prison services or collaborate with specialized forensic or general mental health care services. Care provision in general is assessed as deficient. At all decisive points of detention, adequate screening or diagnostic routines are lacking. As a consequence, nothing is known about the prevalence of mental disorders in European prisons. At the moment, only a very limited number of secondary indicators are available for describing the problem.

Conclusion:

There is an urgent need for improving the reporting routines on mental disorders in prison inmates as a first step for improving substantially the mental health care provision for prisoners in European countries.     

Grenzen des Traumakonzepts und klinische Irrt��mer

The assessment of traumatization requires special knowledge and experience with the legal consequences, the concept of disorders and the implications of trauma for the exploratory process and evaluation. It is crucial to differentiate between symptom-related problems and trauma-specific aspects in social relationships as well as problems in defining the difference between disorders related to trauma and those that are not. Another problematic aspect is insufficient knowledge of the legal background. It is particularly difficult to determine whether a psychiatric problem is the result of trauma or not. For this reason, traumatological assessments may lead to different conclusions in the same case.     

The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: it's getting better all the time

Bertram, R., Kuperman, V., Baayen, R. H. & Hyönä, J. (2011). The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: It’s getting better all the time. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 530–544. Inserting a hyphen in Dutch and Finnish compounds is most often illegal given spelling conventions. However, the current two eye movement experiments on triconstituent Dutch compounds like voetbalbond“footballassociation” (Experiment 1) and triconstituent Finnish compounds like lentokenttätaksi“airporttaxi” (Experiment 2) show that inserting a hyphen at constituent boundaries does not have to be detrimental to compound processing. In fact, when hyphens were inserted at the major constituent boundary (voetbal‐bond“football‐association”; lentokenttä‐taksi“airport‐taxi”), processing of the first part (voetbal“football”; lentokenttä“airport”) turns out to be faster when it is followed by a hyphen than when it is legally concatenated. Inserting a hyphen caused a delay in later eye movement measures, which is probably due to the illegality of inserting hyphens in normally concatenated compounds. However, in both Dutch and Finnish we found a learning effect in the course of the experiment, such that by the end of the experiments hyphenated compounds are read faster than in the beginning of the experiment. By the end of the experiment, compounds with a hyphen at the major constituent boundary were actually processed equally fast as (Dutch) or even faster than (Finnish) their concatenated counterparts. In contrast, hyphenation at the minor constituent boundary (voet‐balbond“foot‐ballassociation”; lento‐kenttätaksi“air‐porttaxi”) was detrimental to compound processing speed throughout the experiment. The results imply that the hyphen may be an efficient segmentation cue and that spelling illegalities can be overcome easily, as long as they make sense.     

Stressbew?ltigungsintervention am Arbeitsplatz

Background

Occupational stress is considered a major risk factor for a wide range of health outcomes. To examine long-term effects on perceived stress reactivity a randomized controlled trial [1?year after stress management intervention (SMI)] was implemented in a metal working plant.

Method

A total of 174 participants were randomly assigned to an intervention (IG) or a waiting control group (CG) and underwent a group-based program over 2 days, followed by 2-3?h booster sessions. The primary endpoint was perceived stress reactivity (Stress Reactivity Scale, SRS), while secondary endpoints were anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS), salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase.

Results

SRS scores decreased in both groups. A two factor ANOVA proved greater reduction in the IG. For SRS, the effect size (Cohen??s d) after 1?year was d=0.416 in the IG and d=0.166 in the CG. Alpha-amylase as a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation decreased more strongly in the IG. Reduction of depression and anxiety was higher in the IG but did not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion

The conducted SMI is effective over a longer period in reducing perceived stress reactivity and sympathetic activation.