Life stressors, emotional avoidance and breast cancer

Two groups of women were assessed in psychological aspects considered by some authors of interest for personal well-being. The sample consisted of 118 women, 58 diagnosed with breast cancer and 60 healthy women, of similar ages and personal circumstances. The purpose of the study was: (a) to explore the existence of stressful life events in the women's history and their degree of subjective distress and (b) to determine whether or not there is an emotional avoidance style in the group of women with breast cancer. The following assessment instruments were employed: the "Cuestionario de Formas de Afrontamiento" (CEA), the Five-Factor Inventory NEO-PI-R, and the State-Trait Anger Inventory (STAXI). The results revealed more stressful vital events in the last two years in the group of women with breast cancer and significant differences in the degree of current distress. They also obtained higher scores in current anger, resignation, and neuroticism.     

Quality of Life and General Health Perception in Women with Obesity

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences in general health status and quality of life between patients who present “non-normative eating behaviours” (namely, binge eating disorder, night eating syndrome, sweet /fat food cravings and continuous nibbling) and patients without these eating behaviour characteristics. A cohort of 168 women with obesity, all candidates to bariatric surgery, aged between 15 and 65 (M = 39.04; SD = 10.86), with a body mass index ranging between 30.37 and 80.65 (M = 48.79; SD = 8.37), was studied. Participants answered to a clinical interview, to SF-36 and to ORWELL-97, after their informed consent. Results suggest that women with obesity reporting binge eating disorder, night eating syndrome and continuous nibbling show poorer general health status and worst quality of life than those who do not present these “non-normative eating behaviours”. Moreover, the general health status and the quality of life of patients with sweet/fat food cravings do not differ from those who do not report this eating behaviour. Nevertheless, patients reporting the eating behaviours studied do not differ from the others regarding their body mass index.     

A process analysis of linguistic change

In this paper a process analysis of linguistic change is shown through the methodology of task analysis. From the linguistic therapy of evaluation will be shown the relevance of an intensional orientation for human evaluation problems and the relevance of an extensional orientation for more proper evaluations, along with some other therapeutic operations which represent how human beings use language and how language's use is modified with one of the main techniques of the linguistic therapy of evaluation: the abstraction orders. Also the relevance for the evolvement of cognitive psychotherapy of following a process research methodology will be discussed and addressed. The state of the art of cognitive psychotherapy will be greatly influenced by process research methodology which helps us to delineate the process of change and that combined with outcome research will improve our cognitive theories and methods.     

Social support, positive states of mind, and HIV treatment adherence in men and women living with HIV/AIDS.

Numerous studies have linked social support to better medication adherence among illness groups, but few have examined potential mechanisms for this relationship. Relationships were examined between social support, depression, positive states of mind (PSOM), and medication adherence among HIV positive men who have sex with men (n = 61) and women (n = 29) on highly active antiretroviral therapy. Depression and PSOM were evaluated as potential mediators of the relationship between support and adherence. Cross-sectional data showed that greater social support and PSOM related to better adherence whereas higher depression scores related to nonadherence. PSOM partially mediated the relationship between social support and adherence. PSOM may be an important mechanism through which social support is related to better medication adherence in this population.     

Is it advisable to include negative attributes to assess the stereotype content? Yes,but only in the morality dimension

Competence, morality and sociability dimensions have shown to be essential to measure stereotypes. Theoretically, the attributes associated with the negative pole of morality are more reliable and have shown to have higher evaluative weight. However, the current research usually employs only positive attributes to measure each dimension. Since the advantages of the inclusion of negative morality are clear it would be interesting to know about the effects of the inclusion of such type of attributes (i.e., it is good or bad for the measurement). The purpose of this study is to examine if the addition of negative items makes possible to improve the stereotype content measures. This study compares the differences between scales with various compositions of positive and negative items of stereotypes to predict three related variables: anger, fear and a semantic differential of evaluation. The study was carried out with a sample of 550 Spaniards. The data found highlights the importance of using attributes of the negative pole of morality in studying stereotypes. Their use was able to explain the intergroup emotional responses and the semantic differential more efficiently.     

Parents’ Positive Interpersonal Coping After a Child’s Death

Despite the challenging context of grieving for the death of a child, evidence shows that it is possible for parents to manage and preserve their relationship. The aim of this study was to examine parents’ perceptions of positive interpersonal coping processes that helped their relationship after the death of their child. Individual semi-structured interviews with 17 bereaved maritally committed parents were conducted. The interview guide included questions covering themes such as parents’ coping together, relationship strengths and mutual support. Data were analyzed through constructivist grounded theory methods. Three main themes were identified: search for meaning (reframing of partners’ different coping processes and the changes/difficulties in the relationship, and development of shared beliefs); communication with the partner (direct and indirect feedback, and mutual learning); and care-in-relation (caring for the partner and the relationship). Dyad-level interventions should aim at promoting mutual empathy, development of shared appraisals, and the identification and consideration of each other’s boundaries.     

Moved by words: Affective ratings for a set of 2,266 Spanish words in five discrete emotion categories

The two main theoretical accounts of the human affective space are the dimensional perspective and the discrete-emotion approach. In recent years, several affective norms have been developed from a dimensional perspective, including ratings for valence and arousal. In contrast, the number of published datasets relying on the discrete-emotion approach is much lower. There is a need to fill this gap, considering that discrete emotions have an effect on word processing above and beyond those of valence and arousal. In the present study, we present ratings from 1,380 participants for a set of 2,266 Spanish words in five discrete emotion categories: happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness. This will be the largest dataset published to date containing ratings for discrete emotions. We also present, for the first time, a fine-grained analysis of the distribution of words into the five emotion categories. This analysis reveals that happiness words are the most consistently related to a single, discrete emotion category. In contrast, there is a tendency for many negative words to belong to more than one discrete emotion. The only exception is disgust words, which overlap least with the other negative emotions. Normative valence and arousal data already exist for all of the words included in this corpus. Thus, the present database will allow researchers to design studies to contrast the predictions of the two most influential theoretical perspectives in this field. These studies will undoubtedly contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects of emotion on word processing.     

Depression,Panic-Fear,and Quality of Life in Near-Fatal Asthma Patients

The aim of this study was to assess the relationships between depressive symptoms and symptom-centered panic-fear (P-F), and reports of health-related quality of life (HRQOL), in persons with near-fatal asthma (NFA), controlling for age, gender, and pulmonary function. Forty persons with NFA were interviewed. Sociodemographic and clinical asthma-related information were collected. HRQOL was assessed by the SF-36 Health Questionnaire, depressive symptoms were assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory, and P-F was assessed by the P-F scale of the Asthma Symptom Checklist. Multiple regression analyses were carried out with the Physical Component Summary (PCS) and the Mental Component Summary (MCS) of the SF-36 as a dependent variable, and depressive symptoms, P-F, age, gender, and pulmonary function as independent variables. Results showed that P-F and age were associated with PCS, whereas depressive symptoms accounted for a marked percentage of the variance explained in MCS. Neither gender nor pulmonary function were related to HRQOL. In conclusion, depressive symptoms and P-F play an important role in how persons with NFA assess their HRQOL. These patient-centered variables are potentially modifiable and may offer new ways to intervene in order to improve HRQOL in persons with NFA.     

Memory bias for threatening information related to anxiety: an updated meta-analytic review

The evidence for an anxiety-related memory bias is contradictory. We compiled 171 articles published until October 2016 including a group with clinical or subclinical anxiety and a control group in tasks involving implicit or explicit memory using threatening stimuli. There was an anxiety-related memory bias in free recall tasks, but it was not observed in another memory task. The between-groups differences showed that the anxious group recalled more threatening stimuli than the control group (d?=?0.321). When we compared the group differences (anxious vs. control participants) in the within-groups effect (threatening vs. neutral stimuli), a moderate effect size emerged (d_bw?=?0.714). This anxiety-related memory bias was observed with shallow processing, that is consistent with attentional biases related to anxiety. There was also evidence that high-anxious persons recall fewer positive stimuli. Future research is needed to investigate whether this result is a memory or encoding bias and explore other moderator variables.