Identifying subgroups that succeed or fail with three levels of physical activity intervention: the Activity Counseling Trial.

The authors used recursive partitioning methods to identify combinations of baseline characteristics that predict 2-year physical activity success in each of 3 physical activity interventions delivered in the multisite Activity Counseling Trial. The sample consisted of 874 initially sedentary primary care patients, ages 35-75 years, who were at risk for cardiovascular disease. Predictors of 2-year success were specific to each intervention and represented a range of domains, including physiological, demographic, psychosocial, health-related, and environmental variables. The results indicate how specific patient subgroups (e.g., obese, unfit individuals; high-income individuals in stable health) may respond differently to varying levels and amounts of professional assistance and support. The methods used provide a practical first step toward identifying clinically meaningful patient subgroups for further systematic investigation.     

The role of illness uncertainty on coping with fibromyalgia symptoms.

This study examined the role of illness uncertainty in pain coping among women with fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain condition of unknown origin. Fifty-one FM participants completed initial demographic and illness uncertainty questionnaires and underwent 10-12 weekly interviews regarding pain, coping difficulty, and coping efficacy. Main outcome measures included weekly levels of difficulty coping with FM symptoms and coping efficacy. Multilevel analyses indicated that pain elevations for those high in illness uncertainty predicted increases in coping difficulty. Furthermore, when participants had more difficulty coping, they reported lower levels of coping efficacy. Results were consistent with hypothesized effects. Illness uncertainty accompanied by episodic pain negatively influenced coping efficacy, an important resource in adaptation to FM.     

The impact of informant gender on children’s endorsement of scientific and non-scientific information

By roughly 6 years of age, children acquire the stereotype that men are more competent than women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), potentially leading to greater trust in scientific information provided by men. This study tested whether 3- to 8-year-old children differentially endorsed conflicting information about science and toys presented by male and female informants depicted as a ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (Exp1) or ‘scientists’ (Exp2). Children were expected to endorse toy testimony from gender-matched informants; thus, the key question concerned endorsement of science testimony. In Exp1 (N = 149), boys and girls showed a same-gender informant preference for toy testimony; however, girls endorsed the male informant's testimony more for science than for toys – but only when tested by a male experimenter. In Exp2 (N = 264), boys and girls showed a same-gender preference, irrespective of content. Findings suggest that STEM-related gender stereotypes might lead girls to trust scientific information presented by men over women in certain contexts.     

Lateralized interference effects: evidence for a processing style by modality interaction

A time-sharing paradigm was used to study potential interference effects of concurrent successive-auditory/vocal, successive-visual/motor, simultaneous-auditory/vocal, and simultaneous-visual/motor tasks on right- and left-handed manual-motor behaviors of differential levels of difficulty. Participants were selected from each of three developmental levels from 9 through 20 years of age. Results suggested that processing style (i.e., successive or simultaneous) interacts with modality (i.e., auditory/vocal or visual/motor) in terms of lateralized interference effects; however, potential effects due to age level were obfuscated by differential concurrent-task difficulties.     

Echoic memory processes in good and poor readers

Four experiments were conducted to determine whether echoic memory plays a role in differences between good and poor readers. The first two experiments used a suffix procedure in which the subject is read a list of digits with either a tone control or the word go appended to the list. For lists that exceeded the length of the subjects memory span by one digit (i.e., that avoided ceiling effects), the poor readers showed a larger decrement in the suffix condition than did the good readers. The third experiment was directed at the question of whether the duration of echoic memory is different for good and poor readers. Children shadowed words presented to one ear at a rate determined to give 75-85% shadowing accuracy. The items presented to the nonattended ear were words and an occasional digit. At various intervals after the presentation of the digit, a light signaled that the subject was to cease shadowing and attempt to recall any digit that had occurred in the nonattended ear recently. Whereas good and poor readers recalled the digit equally if tested immediately after presentation, the poor readers showed a faster decline in recall of the digit as retention interval increased. A fourth experiment was conducted to determine whether the differences in echoic memory were specific to speech stimuli or occurred at a more basic level of aural persistence. Bursts of white noise were separated by 9-400 ms of silence and the subject was to say whether there were one or two sounds presented. There were no differences in detectability functions for good and poor readers.