Family,public and private religiousness and psychological well-being over time in at-risk adolescents

Positive effects of different dimensions of religiousness (including private, public and familial) on well-being as well as the stress buffering effects of religiousness have been documented. However, relatively little research has explored how these different facets of religiousness are related to psychological well-being in at-risk adolescents. This study examined family, public and private religiousness and their protective influence on psychological adjustment in adolescents at risk for poor psychological and behavioural outcomes. Participants include 186 urban teens divided between African Americans and European Americans. Structured interviews assessed religiousness, stress, as well as change in emotional distress and substance abuse problems over a one-year period. Greater private religiousness protects adolescents exposed to higher levels of stress from emotional and behavioural problems. In contrast, higher levels of family religiousness exacerbate emotional problems over time in adolescents exposed to greater stress. Findings demonstrate the complex influence of religiousness on psychological well-being in adolescence.     

Therapeutic Assessment With Children: A Pilot Study of Treatment Acceptability and Outcome

Therapeutic Assessment (TA) with children is a hybrid of psychological assessment and short-term intervention. It uses the ongoing process and results of psychological assessment to enhance parents' understanding of their child and to facilitate change. Clinical reports and single case studies suggest that TA with children is an acceptable and effective brief intervention. However, no aggregate data have been published to support this claim. This pilot study investigated the acceptability and preoutcome–postoutcome of TA with 14 clinically referred children with emotional and behavior problems and their parents. Results indicated high treatment acceptability as well as significantly decreased child symptomatology and enhanced family functioning as reported by children and mothers. In addition, mothers demonstrated a significant increase in positive emotion and a significant decrease in negative emotion pertaining to their children's challenges and future. The findings, although limited due to the design and small sample size, support assertions from published single case studies that TA is possibly an efficacious child and family intervention for children with emotional and behavioral problems and should be studied in a larger, comparison design.     

Distinction in Psychology and the Alma Mater

With use of several indices of distinction, the biographies of selected samples of psychologists were examined to determine which educational institutions produced a disproportionate number of those alumni who recently have occupied positions of eminence in the field. Unlike other investigations that have attempted to rank departments of psychology on the basis of the quality of their current faculties, the present study focused on the doctoral and baccalaureate origins of prominent psychologists rather than on the institutions where they now reside. In general, it was found that among well established psychology programs, the same few universities tend to have produced more than their share of doctoral students who made significant career contributions to the field, although the precise rank ordering varied according to the particular index of distinction employed. With notable exceptions, the higher ranking graduate programs were also the undergraduate alma maters of a significant proportion of this same generation of scholars.     

The Effect of Motor Preparation on Changes in H Reflex Amplitude During the Response Latency of a Warned Reaction Time Task

Monosynaptic Hoffman reflexes (H reflexes) were recorded from the soleus muscle during the response latency of a warned reaction time (RT) task that required plantarflexion of the foot. The task was done under four conditions of predictability of the response signal (RS), created by the factorial combination of foreperiod duration (1 and 4 s) and variability (fixed and variable). RT varied systematically with RS predictability and was facilitated in conditions that favored prediction of the RS. The response latency was divided into two successive phases by the onset of reflex augmentation: a premotor phase of constant reflex amplitude and a succeeding motor phase marked by progressively increasing reflex amplitude. Reflex augmentation during the motor phase was coupled more closely to the imminent movement than to the preceding signal to respond. The duration of the premotor phase was unaffected by RS predictability, but the duration of the motor phase (like RT) was shorter when the RS was more predictable. The maximum H reflex amplitude reached during the motor phase was greater when the RS was more predictable. The tonic level of H reflex amplitude during the premotor phase was greater in conditions that made prediction of the RS difficult. A second experiment showed that this difference was present throughout the foreperiod.

These results suggest that conditions that favor prediction of the RS enhance motor preparation. Changes in motor preparation (which affect RT) affect the processes underlying reflex augmentation in the motor phase. Enhanced preparation may allow more efficient organization of the descending commands to move, causing higher levels of spinal excitability to be reached in a briefer time. The higher tonic reflex amplitudes in the premotor phase and throughout the preceding foreperiod, in conditions that make prediction of the RS difficult, appear to reflect heightened general arousal.     

Book review

Job's illness, loss, grief and integration. A psychological interpretation J. H. Kahn, M.D., F.R.C. Psych., D.P.M. Published by Pergamon Int. Library £6.00

Explorations in autism: A psycho-analytical study by Donald Meltzer, John Bremner, Shirley Hoxter, Doreen Wedell and ISCA Wittenberg     

Predictors of the first onset of a major depressive episode and changes in depressive symptoms across adolescence: stress and negative cognitions

This 6-year longitudinal study examined stressors (e.g., interpersonal, achievement), negative cognitions (self-worth, attributions), and their interactions in the prediction of (a) the first onset of a major depressive episode (MDE), and (b) changes in depressive symptoms in adolescents who varied in risk for depression. The sample included 240 adolescents who were first evaluated in Grade 6 (M = 11.86 years old; SD = 0.57; 54.2% female) and then again annually through Grade 12. Stressful life events and depressive diagnoses were assessed with interviews; negative cognitions and depressive symptoms were assessed with self-report questionnaires. Discrete time hazard modeling revealed a significant interaction between interpersonal stressors and negative cognitions, indicating that first onset of an MDE was predicted by high negative cognitions in the context of low interpersonal stress, and by high levels of interpersonal stressors at both high and low levels of negative cognitions. Analyses of achievement stressors indicated significant main effects of stress, negative cognitions, and risk in the prediction of an MDE, but no interactions. With regard to the prediction of depressive symptoms, multilevel modeling revealed a significant interaction between interpersonal stressors and negative cognitions such that among adolescents with more negative cognitions, higher levels of interpersonal stress predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms, whereas at low levels of negative cognitions, the relation between interpersonal stressors and depression was not significant. Risk (i.e., maternal depression history) and sex did not further moderate these interactions. Implications for intervention are discussed.     

Emerging Adulthood and Leaving Foster Care: Settings Associated with Mental Health

The present study examined the role of contextual support on mental health during the transition to adulthood within a vulnerable group, adolescents leaving foster care because of their age. Participants were 265 19- to 23-year-olds who retrospectively reported on 3 main contexts of emerging adulthood: housing security, educational achievement, and employment attainment in the first 2 years after leaving foster care. Mental health measured self-reported emotional distress, substance abuse, and deviancy at the time of interview. Growth Mixture Modeling empirically identified 3 latent trajectory classes. Stable-Engaged (41%) experienced secure housing and increasing connections to education and employment over time. Stable-Disengaged (30%) maintained housing but reported decreasing rates of education and small increases in employment. Instable-Disengaged (29%) experienced chronic housing instability, declined connection to education, and failed to attain employment. Stable-Engaged and Stable-Disengaged classes reported better mental health compared to the Instable-Disengaged class, indicating the importance of housing in transitioning to adulthood.     

Self-esteem and passion for activities

The Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand, 2010) regards passion as a strong inclination toward a self-defining activity that one loves, values, and in which one invests a substantial amount of time and energy. The model proposes two distinct types of passion, harmonious and obsessive, that predict adaptive and less adaptive outcomes, respectively. We hypothesized that individuals relatively high on explicit self-esteem would experience higher levels of harmonious passion, given their implementation of relatively adaptive self-regulatory strategies. Individuals relatively low on implicit self-esteem, on the other hand, would experience higher levels of obsessive passion, given their ego fragility and defensiveness. Participants completed the Passion Scale, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, and the self-esteem Implicit Association Task. Path analyses revealed that, consistently with hypotheses, explicit self-esteem positively predicted harmonious passion, whereas implicit self-esteem negatively predicted obsessive passion.     

Delay discounting as impaired valuation: Delayed rewards in an animal obesity model

Obesity is a major public health problem, which, like many forms of addiction, is associated with an elevated tendency to choose smaller immediate rather than larger delayed rewards, a response pattern often referred to as excessive delay discounting. Although some accounts of delay discounting conceptualize this process as impulsivity (placing the emphasis on overvaluing the smaller immediate reward), others have conceptualized delay discounting as an executive function (placing the emphasis on delayed rewards failing to retain their value). The present experiments used a popular animal model of obesity that has been shown to discount delayed rewards at elevated rates (i.e., obese Zucker rats) to test two predictions that conceptualize delay discounting as executive function. In the first experiment, acquisition of lever pressing with delayed rewards was compared in obese versus lean Zucker rats. Contrary to predictions based on delay discounting as executive function, obese Zucker rats learned to press the lever more quickly than controls. In the second experiment, progressive ratio breakpoints (a measure of reward efficacy) with delayed rewards were compared in obese versus lean Zucker rats. Contrary to the notion that obese rats fail to value delayed rewards, the obese Zucker rats' breakpoints were (at least) as high as those of the lean Zucker rats.     

Reactivity to Stress: When Does a History of Medical Adversity Foster Resilience Versus Vulnerability?

Young adults with (or without) a history of medical or physical disorders (MPDs) were exposed to repeated laboratory stress. The effects of MPD status on habituation (as measured by changing levels of cortisol) were found to be moderated by the extent to which respondents reported “attachment feelings” in their relationships (as measured by the Social Provisions Scale). Students in the MPD group who reported attachment feelings showed (a) cortisol increases during their first exposure to a laboratory stressor; and (b) cortisol decreases during a second exposure to the same stressor 1 week later. No equivalent benefit was found for students who lacked this medical history. Findings suggest the extent to which medical adversity—under the right interpersonal circumstances—promotes resilience.