Religious Coping and Quality of Life Among Severely Ill Lung Patients in a Secular Society

This survey study investigated the prevalence of religious beliefs and religious coping and possible associations between religious factors and quality of life (QoL) among a group of severely ill lung patients (lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) in Denmark (N = 111). Almost two thirds (64.8%) reported having some belief in God and/or a spiritual power. Patients who reported believing in God and patients who believed in God and a spiritual power reported better QoL than patients who reported that they believed in a spiritual power only. Religious coping was prevalent; for positive religious coping strategies, those used from least to most often, respectively, were invoked 15% to 37% of the time; for negative religious coping strategies the percentages were 3% to 16%. Negative religious coping was associated with lower QoL (β = ?0.320, p < .006), whereas no associations were found between positive religious coping and QoL. Results are discussed in relation to the cultural context of secularized societies like the Scandinavian countries.     

Warmth and Contingency and Their Relationship to Maternal Attitudes Toward Parenting

In this study, the authors addressed the question of whether maternal parenting behaviors in terms of sensitivity, warmth, and contingency with respect to small infants were equally represented in attitudes toward parenting. Sixty mothers from central Germany with middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds were videotaped with their 1st born 3-month-old infant in a free-play and a caregiving episode in their home. The different maternal parenting components were behaviorally analyzed. Maternal attitudes toward parenting were assessed with self-report measures. The results showed that behavioral sensitivity was significantly associated with attitudes related to contingency, whereas behavioral warmth and contingency were not associated with maternal attitudes. The authors interpreted differential associations as a reflection of intuitive and explicit parenting strategies, with only sensitivity being explicitly represented.     

Major Factors of Personality

Summary

French has recently resurveyed the literature regarding personality factors in order to (a) update his previous survey and (b) complement, in the noncognitive domain, the prestigious French, Ekstrom, and Price kit of reference tests for cognitive factors. This recent survey of personality factors is limited in at least two respects: (a) it relies on studies which are, in most cases, limited in size of item pools; (b) it has been greatly influenced by the two systems of Cattell and Guilford. Rather than rely on the pre-1971 literature (which belongs to an era when the factor analysis of a hundred variables was “a large factor analysis”), the writer has undertaken research aimed at accurate delineation of personality factors using itemfactoring coupled with item analysis. The article has two purposes: (a) to compare the factors in French's survey with those emerging in very recent work, and (b) to make the point that we are now likely to achieve greater comprehensiveness and accuracy in the identification of major personality factors.     

The Process of Personal Change Through Reading Fictional Narratives: Implications for Psychotherapy Practice and Theory

This qualitative study provides an understanding of how and when individuals experience transformational change as a consequence of reading narratives. Six participants who attributed significant personal changes to reading were recruited and interviewed. The investigators used grounded theory method to analyze these interviews and identify processes through which change unfolded. The core category of the analysis was identification with characters' experiences created a safe venue to consider threat and experiment with new possibilities and perspectives. Empathizing with protagonists enabled readers to integrate new modes of responding to personally difficult situations. Implications for bibliotherapy and narrative therapy are discussed.     

Comparison of the role of self-efficacy and illness representations in relation to dietary self-care and diabetes distress in adolescents with type 1 diabetes

This cross-sectional study examined the joint effects of self-efficacy and illness representations on dietary self-care and diabetes distress in adolescents with type 1 diabetes by comparing two theoretical models: the Self-regulation Model (Leventhal, H., Meyer, D., & Nerenz, D. (1980). The common-sense representations of illness danger. In S. Rachman (Ed.), Medical Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 7–30). New York: Pergamon.) and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, A. (1997). Self efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.). One hundred and fifty-one adolescents with type 1 diabetes completed self-report measures of dietary self-efficacy, illness representations, dietary self-care and diabetes distress. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The model best supported by the data (Leventhal's Self-regulation Model) showed that dietary self-efficacy, perceived consequences and treatment effectiveness had direct and independent effects on both dietary self-care and diabetes distress. Together with dietary self-efficacy, perceived short-term treatment effectiveness was a significant predictor of dietary self-care. Age was found to be a negative predictor of short-term treatment effectiveness beliefs. Diabetes distress was best predicted by self-efficacy and perceived consequences. It can be concluded that to target effectively dietary self-care and distress, clinicians should focus on key illness representation variables (perceived short-term treatment effectiveness and perceived consequences) in conjunction with self-efficacy.     

Cue competition effects in the planarian

The learning abilities of planarian worms (Dugesia tigrina) were assessed by using a number of Pavlovian conditioning paradigms. Experiment 1 showed that planaria were susceptible to basic conditioning in that they readily developed a conditioned response to a change in ambient luminance when it was consistently paired with an electric shock over a number of trials. In Experiment 2, the change in luminance was presented in a compound with a vibration stimulus during conditioning. Subsequent tests revealed poor conditioning of the elements compared with control groups in which the animals were conditioned in the presence of the elements alone, an instance of overshadowing. In Experiment 3, pre-training of one of the elements before compound conditioning resulted in blocking of learning about the other element. These results add to other studies that have reported cue competition effects in animal species belonging to different phyla (chordate, mollusk, arthropod), suggesting that learning in these phyla could be ruled by similar principles. The results are discussed adopting an evolutionary-comparative approach.     

Infants' Developing Sensitivity to Object Function: Attention to Features and Feature Correlations

In this research we examine the relation between executive function (EF) and false-belief (FB) understanding in young children. Specifically, we proposed that performance on tasks combining 2 executive demands: (a) working memory and (b) inhibitory control would be most predictive of performance on FB tasks. Forty-eight children between the ages of 3 and 5 years were given a battery of EF and FB measures. As predicted we found that performance on executive tasks that combined demands for memory and inhibitory control were highly predictive of performance on FB tasks. To further test the relation of EF and FB understanding we also introduced an experimental manipulation designed to reduce the working memory demands of FB tasks. This manipulation did not significantly improve performance. The results from this study provide support for the relation between EF and FB understanding, although the exact nature of the relation requires further clarification.     

Movement in the ipsilesional hand is segmented following unilateral brain damage

Unilateral stroke results in hemiplegia or hemiparesis of the contralateral side of the body. The ipsilateral side of the body, the so-called "good" side, is often assumed to have no deficit. However, there is increasing evidence that the function of the unaffected limbs, especially the upper extremities, is different from that of normal age-matched controls. In the present study, we examined the motor control of both hands of chronic stroke subjects, 6 with left hemisphere brain damage (LHBD) and 5 with right hemisphere brain damage (RHBD). The control group consisted of 5 normal age-matched subjects. The task of the subject was to move a handle by flexing his/her fingers until the target position was reached. The target position was set as 33% of the range of each subject. No time constraints were imposed. The movements of the normal subjects were basically smooth, with few hesitations. In contrast to this, the movements of both hands in the two stroke groups were segmented and characterized by multiple starts and stops. As compared to normals, the time to reach the target, the number of pauses during the movement, and the percent of time spent in pauses, were significantly greater for both hands of the LHBD group. In the RHBD group, the percent of time spent in pauses was significantly greater than the control group for the ipsilesional hand. The increased segmentation seen in the movements of the ipsilesional, as well as the contralesional. hands of the hemiplegic subjects suggests that the motor deficits in stroke patients may be due to a global inability to correctly plan and carry out movements.