Personality traits in people with synaesthesia: Do synaesthetes have an atypical personality profile?

People with synaesthesia not only have – by definition – unusual experiences (e.g., numbers triggering colour), they also have a different cognitive profile (e.g., in terms of their memory and perceptual abilities) and a bias towards certain interests and activities (e.g., towards the arts). However, virtually nothing is known about whether synaesthetes have an atypical personality profile. In this study, a standard measure of personality was administered (Big Five Inventory) along with two questionnaire measures of empathy. Synaesthetes, relative to demographically matched controls, reported higher levels of ‘Openness to Experience’ which is known to be related to imagination and artistic tendencies. They also reported higher levels of ‘Fantasizing’ on one of the empathy measures, which is conceptually related to Openness, although their self-reported empathy did not differ in other respects. In addition, synaesthetes reported lower levels of Agreeableness which we did not predict in advance.     

Parent–child interaction,task-oriented regulation,and cognitive development in toddlers facing developmental risks

The importance of supportive parent–child interactions and the development of regulatory abilities with regard to growth in children's cognitive abilities has been established. This study investigated the longitudinal relations among parental supportiveness, child task-oriented regulation, and cognitive development for low-income children facing developmental risks. Interlocking growth models were fit to these variables based on measurements made when the children were 14, 24, and 36 months of age. Results showed that growth rates of child cognition were related to baseline (14 months) parental supportiveness and changes in child task-oriented regulation. We additionally found that baseline levels of cognition were related to the baseline levels of child task-oriented regulation. This study suggests that both parental supportiveness during infancy and the concurrent development of child task-oriented regulation are related to cognitive development among children facing developmental risks.     

“Viewing” Pregnancy as an Existential Threat: The Effects of Creatureliness on Reactions to Media Depictions of the Pregnant Body

Although pregnancy clearly evokes many positive reactions, women's pregnant bodies sometimes inspire negative responses. However, little if any empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the psychological reasons for such ambivalence. In this article we tried to fill this gap by using a conceptual analysis grounded in terror management theory. According to this perspective, because people are motivated to deny their similarity to animals (and the mortal vulnerability that entails), when such concerns are salient, they will react negatively to that which has the potential to highlight the creaturely aspects of humanity (i.e., pregnancy). In two experiments, priming the similarity between humans and animals led participants to respond more negatively to a pregnant compared to non-pregnant Demi Moore magazine cover (Study 1) and to perceive Gwyneth Paltrow as less competent when she was portrayed as pregnant (Study 2). We consider implications for understanding objectification and derogation of women.     

Tracking the implicit self using event-related potentials

Negative biases in implicit self-evaluation are thought to be detrimental to subjective well-being and have been linked to various psychological disorders, including depression. An understanding of the neural processes underlying implicit self-evaluation in healthy subjects could provide a basis for the investigation of negative biases in depressed patients, the development of differential psychotherapeutic interventions, and the estimation of relapse risk in remitted patients. We thus studied the brain processes linked to implicit self-evaluation in 25 healthy subjects using event-related potential (ERP) recording during a self-relevant Implicit Association Test (sIAT). Consistent with a positive implicit self-evaluation in healthy subjects, they responded significantly faster to the congruent (self–positive mapping) than to the incongruent sIAT condition (self–negative mapping). Our main finding was a topographical ERP difference in a time window between 600 and 700 ms, whereas no significant differences between congruent and incongruent conditions were observed in earlier time windows. This suggests that biases in implicit self-evaluation are reflected only indirectly, in the additional recruitment of control processes needed to override the positive implicit self-evaluation of healthy subjects in the incongruent sIAT condition. Brain activations linked to these control processes can thus serve as an indirect measure for estimating biases in implicit self-evaluation. The sIAT paradigm, combined with ERP, could therefore permit the tracking of the neural processes underlying implicit self-evaluation in depressed patients during psychotherapy.     

Mental Health Literacy of Australian Rural Adolescents: An Analysis Using Vignettes and Short Films

The mental health literacy (MHL) of rural adolescents has rarely been investigated. This study examined the MHL of 122 rural‐based adolescents (49 males, 73 females) aged 12–18 years (M = 16, SD = 1) using written vignettes and short films to examine knowledge about depression. For the written vignettes, 68% of the rural adolescents were able to correctly identify someone with depression, which is similar to the findings for metropolitan adolescents; however, knowledge about recovery times and avenues of assistance were below that of their metropolitan peers. Participants were less likely to correctly diagnose depression when suicidal intent was not expressed and when the scenario was presented in the more naturalistic form of a film. This finding raises questions about the place of films and written vignettes in future MHL research.     

A Data Analysis Method for Using Longitudinal Binary Outcome Data from a SMART to Compare Adaptive Interventions

Sequential multiple assignment randomized trials (SMARTs) are a useful and increasingly popular approach for gathering information to inform the construction of adaptive interventions to treat psychological and behavioral health conditions. Until recently, analysis methods for data from SMART designs considered only a single measurement of the outcome of interest when comparing the efficacy of adaptive interventions. Lu et al. proposed a method for considering repeated outcome measurements to incorporate information about the longitudinal trajectory of change. While their proposed method can be applied to many kinds of outcome variables, they focused mainly on linear models for normally distributed outcomes. Practical guidelines and extensions are required to implement this methodology with other types of repeated outcome measures common in behavioral research. In this article, we discuss implementation of this method with repeated binary outcomes. We explain how to compare adaptive interventions in terms of various summaries of repeated binary outcome measures, including average outcome (area under the curve) and delayed effects. The method is illustrated using an empirical example from a SMART study to develop an adaptive intervention for engaging alcohol- and cocaine-dependent patients in treatment. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed technique.     

Attention capture while switching search strategies: Evidence for a breakdown in top-down attentional control

Whereas capture experiments typically repeat a single task many times, real world cognition is characterized by frequent switching. Lien, Ruthruff, and Johnston (2010) reported that the attentional control system can rapidly and fully switch between different search settings (e.g., red to green), with no carryover and no intertrial priming. The present study examined whether this impressive flexibility is possible even when the switch is not between different features along the same dimension, but between mutually incompatible search modes. On each trial, participants were prompted to find and identify the letter that was in a specific colour (feature search mode) or was uniquely coloured (singleton search mode). Within each block, search mode was either pure or mixed; the mixed blocks contained a fixed AABB search sequence (singleton-singleton-feature-feature) in Experiment 1 and a random sequence in Experiment 2. The target display was preceded by a noninformative cue display containing a nontarget colour singleton. In pure feature search blocks, these irrelevant singleton cues were generally unable to capture attention, replicating previous findings of “contingent capture”. In mixed blocks, however, irrelevant colour singletons captured attention on feature search trials. This breakdown indicates a limitation in the sharpness of attentional control following mode switches, which might be common in the real world.     

Brief Trust/Mistrust in God Scale: psychometric properties of the Farsi version in Muslims

In Iran, a Middle Eastern Islamic country, far too little attention has been paid to the validation and cultural adaptation of measures of religion/spirituality. This has limited the potential for research in this area. The objective of the paper is to assess the psychometric properties of the Farsi version of the Brief Trust/Mistrust in God Scale (BTMGS). After translation of the original English version of the measure into Farsi using a standard forward–backward method, the BTMGS along with the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) and Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity (Hoge IR) Scale was administered to 720 medical students, physicians, and nurses at Tehran University of Medical Sciences and affiliated hospitals. Internal consistency (α), test–retest reliability, concurrent validity, and construct validity were determined for the BTMGS. The Farsi version of the BTMGS had high internal consistency (α = 0.90 and 0.92 for trust and mistrust subscales, respectively) and test–retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.89 and 0.95 for trust and mistrust subscales, respectively), and was adequately correlated with other established measures of religiosity (i.e., the DUREL [r = 0.64, p < 0.001] and Hoge IR [r = 0.54, p < 0.001]) indicating support for the concurrent validity of the measure. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the Farsi version has two factors (i.e., Trust in God and Mistrust in God) consistent with the original scale. These findings suggest that the Farsi version of BTMGS is a valid and reliable measure in Farsi-speaking populations that may be used to assess relationships with health and well-being.     

The relationships between perfectionism,religious motivation,and mental health utilisation among latter-day saint students

The present study examined the influence of perfectionism and religious motivation on help-seeking and attitudes towards mental health services (ATMHS) in a Latter-Day Saint sample of 119 undergraduates. Increased levels of perfectionism significantly predicted more negative ATMHS. Higher intrinsic religious motivation was significantly and positively related to help-seeking from religious sources, but not from mental health professionals. Intrinsic religious motivation was also related to perfectionism, but only for adaptive subscales. The implications for focusing utilisation interventions towards religious populations are discussed.     

Resource loss,religiousness, health,and posttraumatic growth following Hurricane Katrina

This study examined associations among resource loss, religiousness (including general religiousness, religious comfort, and religious strain), posttraumatic growth (PTG), and physical and mental health among a sample of Mississippi university students soon after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005. Resource loss was negatively associated with health, but positively associated with PTG. Religious comfort was associated with positive outcomes, and religious strain was associated with negative outcomes. Religious comfort buffered the negative effects of resource loss on emotional health. Ancillary analyses indicated that associations between resource loss and health were mediated by religious strain. Implications of this research are described for mental health practitioners engaged in disaster recovery work.