Negative and positive cognition in depressed and nondepressed chronic-pain patients

Several studies have suggested that depressed pain patients evidence more cognitive distortion than nondepressed pain patients and healthy controls. Although these studies have generally supported notions relating cognitive distortion to depressive functioning, other aspects of dysfunctional cognition have not been assessed in the chronic-pain population. The present study examined negative and positive automatic thoughts and attributional style in depressed pain patients, nondepressed pain patients, and healthy controls. Depressed chronic-pain patients were found to exhibit significantly more negative automatic thoughts than nondepressed pain patients and healthy controls. Conversely, nondepressed chronic-pain patients reported significantly more positive automatic thoughts than did depressed patients and healthy controls. No significant differences were found for attributional style. These results suggest that different cognitive-behavioral interventions might be considered for depressed compared to nondepressed chronic-pain patients.     

A Historical Survey of Police Suicide in Queensland,Australia, 1843–1992

Police suicide research has yielded inconsistent results. An opportunity presented to survey Queensland police suicides in a historical context and add to the existing literature; the study describes changes in police suicide over time, the associated characteristics, and opportunities for intervention. Suicides were examined from the origins of police in Queensland in 1843 up to 1992. Suicide rates were higher earlier, around 60 per 100,000, declining to around 20 per 100,000 recently. The recent rate is lower than most other police studies but the same as the general community (employed). Most suicides were associated with psychological and physical ill health, alcohol abuse, and domestic problems, in keeping with general community surveys. However, occupational problems were more evident than is generally the case. The proximity in time of disciplinary events and suicides was striking. Future studies should explore the interactions between these factors.     

Extending Conceptualization and Measurement of Narrative Engagement After-the-Fact: Parasocial Relationship and Retrospective Imaginative Involvement

Engagement with narratives and identification with narrative characters is usually conceptualized as occurring during the narrative experience itself. However, much involvement with a story world and narrative characters may occur retrospectively and imaginatively. The present study, using a cross-sectional survey quota-sampled to represent U.S. demographic norms, provides conceptualization and measurement of parasocial relationships (PSR) that is clearly retrospective and conceptually distinct from parasocial interaction (PSI). Moreover, we distinguish PSR from another concept introduced and operationalized here, retrospective imaginative involvement (RII), and provide evidence for validity of these measures. We compare them to the related concepts of transportability and boundary expansion, and assess fit using measurement models and confirmatory factor analysis, refining measurement on half the data set and confirming fit on the other half. We demonstrate predictive validity with respect to a measure of self-reported effects of narratives on beliefs and behavior, controlling for these various related measures, and also validate short versions of these measures for greater ease of research use     

Neurocognitive ageing of storage and executive processes

Converging behavioural and neuropsychological evidence indicates that age-related changes in working memory contribute substantially to cognitive decline in older adults. Important questions remain about the relationship between working memory storage and executive components and how they are affected by the normal ageing process. In several studies using positron emission tomography (PET), we find age differences in the patterns of frontal activation during working memory tasks. We find that separable age differences can be linked to different cognitive operations underlying short-term information storage, and interference resolution. Some operations are associated with age-related increases in activation, with older adults displaying bilateral activations and recruiting prefrontal areas more than younger adults. Other operations are associated with age-related decreases in activation. We consider the implications of these results for understanding the working memory system and potential compensatory processes in the ageing brain.