Specificity of Information Processing Styles to Depressive Symptoms in Youth Psychiatric Inpatients

Although information processing has been widely studied with depressed adults, little emphasis has been placed on the specificity of resultant findings to depression, as opposed to other psychological disorders. Analogously, even less effort has been directed toward examining the information processing styles of depressed children and adolescents. The present study investigated the specificity of information processing styles to depression and anxiety among 58 youth psychiatric inpatients. To assess information processing, we used a self-referent encoding task, in which participants were presented with positive and negative adjectives; participants were asked whether these adjectives described them or not, and were then tested on recall of the adjectives. After controlling for age and gender, lower rates of positive adjective endorsement and lower rates of positive adjective recall were found to be associated with depression, but not anxiety. Additionally, negative adjective endorsement was associated with anxiety symptoms. These results suggest specific cognitive features of depressive symptoms.     

Negative-Feedback Seeking Leads to Depressive Symptom Increases Under Conditions of Stress

An earlier empirical investigation found the interaction of negative-feedback seeking and roommate rejection to be predictive of increases in depressive symptoms. This study replicated and elaborated this finding. Participants who sought negative feedback and performed below their personal standard of success were more likely to experience a subsequent increase in depressive symptoms compared with all other students. Furthermore, the interaction of negative-feedback seeking and midterm failure was specific to predicting increases indepressive symptoms, and did not predict anxious symptoms, thus supporting the specificity of the model to depression. These findings suggest that negative-feedback seeking, combined with a negative life event, may place an individual at increased risk for depressive symptoms. Potential methods and consequences of disrupting the pattern of negative-feedback seeking are discussed.     

Tympanic Membrane Temperature and Hemispheric Cognitive Style

The authors tested the hypothesis that there is a correlation between hemispheric cognitive style and ear temperature. A sample of 100 participants completed a measure of hemispheric cognitive style, the Hemispheric Consensus Prediction Profile. Ear temperatures were taken in 2 sessions, 2 times for each ear at each session. Average left ear temperature was subtracted from average right ear temperature as an index of dominant temperature. Only 56 of the participants showed a stable dominant ear temperature. For these 56 participants, there was a statistically significant positive correlation between scores on the Hemispheric Consensus Prediction Profile and tympanic member temperature (Spearman's ρ =.29, 95% CI [.04,.51]). Individuals with a left hemispheric cognitive style tended to have a warmer left tympanic membrane temperature while those with a right hemispheric cognitive style tended to have a warmer right tympanic membrane temperature. Tympanic membrane temperatures are easily obtained using inexpensive and noninvasive technology. The relationship suggested by these findings may open new opportunities for the study of cerebral asymmetry.     

Letter Position Coding with Fred Astaire: Inversion of Letter Position Substitution Effects in Reverse Spelled Words

The effects of letter substitutions have been linked to their position within a word (letter position effects). The current study expanded upon previous research by examining letter-position effects for letter substitutions using forward- and reverse-spelled word primes. Often substituting a letter on one side of a word will have a stronger impact on performance than substituting a letter on the other side of a word. In three experiments it was revealed that the letter-position effects of substitutions changed places when words were spelled backwards. This occurred when both the target and prime were spelled backwards. This was evidence of a congruency effect of letter-position priming. The ramifications of these results for word recognition and transfer are discussed. However, the need for future research should focus on the possibility of an inversion process/mechanism.     

Perceptions of Chaplains’ Value and Impact Within Hospital Care Teams

Many scholars have written about the role of spirituality in health care. One mechanism for incorporating spirituality into the care of patients is to integrate clinically trained chaplains into hospital care teams. We examined in a mixed-methods fashion, the effects of this type of integrated care team within a teaching hospital setting. The quality and impact of chaplain involvement were studied from patient and physician-in-training perspectives, using data from more than 200 patients and physicians in training. Findings clearly show that clinically trained chaplains can contribute meaningful expertise and real value to the quality and comprehensiveness of patient and physician experiences.     

Deconstructing the Time-Out: What Do Mothers Understand About a Common Disciplinary Procedure?

Time-out (TO) is one of the most common and effective disciplinary tactics used to address problem behavior; however, parents rate TO as one of the least useful behavior modification techniques. This may be due to a discrepancy between empirically supported TO procedures and how mothers are actually conducting TO. Fifty-five mothers were asked to define TO, provide information on how they conduct TO, and identify errors in TO procedures. Results indicate that maternal knowledge and implementation of TO differs considerably from the empirical ideal, potentially impacting the utility and frequency of TO usage in the home to address child problem behaviors.     

Building and sustaining work engagement – a participatory action intervention to increase work engagement in nursing staff

This study evaluated whether a participatory action research intervention with nursing staff on acute care older people National Health Service wards in the United Kingdom was effective for increasing work engagement. Mediation analyses between job resources (social support, influence in decision-making), job demands, work-related needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness), and work engagement explored the presumed psychological mechanisms underlying the intervention. A non-randomized, matched control group, pretest, post-test design involved three intervention and five control wards. A significant decrease in relatedness, and a borderline significant decrease in competence, was observed in the intervention group compared to the control group, with no effect on work engagement (N = 45). Work-related needs mediated between resources and work engagement, supporting the job demands-resources model and self-determination theory as an underlying explanatory theory. Intervention implementation was difficult, highlighting the need for participant and organizational readiness for change, and strong management support. This is the first known study to apply participatory techniques to increase work engagement in nursing staff and explore the underlying explanatory psychological mechanisms, offering a novel means of taking work engagement research forward. Crucially, it highlights the challenges involved in intervention research and the importance of including evaluations of intervention implementation alongside statistical evaluations to avoid erroneous conclusions.     

Family income and its relation to preschool children's adjustment for families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care

The current study examines relations of mean-level estimates, linear changes, and instability in income and family processes to child outcomes and addresses whether income, through its impact on family functioning, matters more for children living in poverty. Temporal changes and instability in family processes, but not income, predicted children's adjustment. Cross-sectional mediational analyses indicated that for families living at the poverty threshold, family processes fully mediated the effect of average income over the study period on social behavior but only partially mediated its effect on cognitive-linguistic development. The strength of these associations diminished as average income exceeded the poverty threshold. That is, income had a greater impact on the family functioning and development of poor children than of nonpoor children.     

Constructing an understanding of mind: the development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction.