When does anxiety help or hinder cognitive test performance? The role of working memory capacity

Cognitive interference theories (e.g. attentional control theory, processing efficiency theory) suggest that high levels of trait anxiety predict adverse effects on the performance of cognitive tasks, particularly those that make high demands on cognitive resources. We tested an interaction hypothesis to determine whether a combination of high anxiety and low working memory capacity (WMC) would predict variance in demanding cognitive test scores. Ninety six adolescents (12‐ to 14‐years‐old) participated in the study, which measured self‐report levels of trait anxiety, working memory, and cognitive test performance. As hypothesized, we found that the anxiety‐WMC interaction explained a significant amount of variance in cognitive test performance (ΔR² .07, p < .01). Trait anxiety was unrelated to cognitive test performance for those adolescents with average WMC scores (β = .13, p > .10). In contrast, trait anxiety was negatively related to test performance in adolescents with low WMC (β = ?.35, p < .05) and positively related to test performance in those with high WMC (β = .49, p < .01). The results of this study suggest that WMC moderates the relationship between anxiety and cognitive test performance and may be a determinant factor in explaining some discrepancies found in the literature. Further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms involved.     

Religion and Attitudes Toward Family Planning Issues Among US Adults

Although religion is an important influence on a variety of social attitudes, the relationship between religion and views on family planning remains underexplored, especially in terms of attitudes relating to public policy. Using data from a nationally-representative survey (N = 1,500) fielded in 1998, we examine the influence of religious affiliation, subcultural identification, and attendance on three aspects of attitudes toward contraception in the public sphere. Specifically, we explore opinions regarding the public consequences of contraception and the responsibility for making contraception available as part of health care services in the United States. More frequent religious attendance is linked to less-approving opinions about contraception and less support for its provision by the US government and health insurers. Catholic affiliation is not consistently associated with the examined opinions, and we find mixed results for conservative Protestants. Including religious subcultural identities yields additional information, with born-again Christians reporting less positive opinions about the consequences of contraceptive availability, while evangelical identity is linked to negative views on policy aimed at increasing access to family planning services. These findings contribute to knowledge about the relationship between religion and attitudes toward policy-relevant aspects of contraception, as well as the broader social influences of religious subcultural identification.     

Structured contexts and anaphoric dependencies

Sensitivity to the extra-linguistic context, as exhibited by indexical and demonstrative expressions, and sensitivity to the linguistic context, as exhibited by, for example, anaphoric uses of third person pronouns, are regularly regarded as different and independent phenomena. The data on indexicals, demonstratives, and third person pronouns, however, call for a more unified notion of context and of context sensitivity. This paper aims to develop such a unified picture by generalizing the notion of anaphora to encompass extra-linguistic context dependency and generalizing the notion of a structured discourse context so that contexts contain antecedents for expressions that refer to entities in the extra-linguistic context.     

I Cannot Afford to Have a Life: Employee Adaptation to Feelings of Job Insecurity

This study examines the links between employee perceptions of job insecurity, the work–nonwork interface, and stress‐related outcomes. Drawing on an adaptation perspective, we expect employees feeling greater job insecurity to engage in adaptive work behaviors including less use of work–nonwork support programs and greater willingness to let work permeate into one's personal life, which in turn will associate with greater work–nonwork conflict and emotional exhaustion. Data were collected from employees within a large energy company at 2 points in time. Results support the model, offering important insights into employee behavioral responses to job insecurity and key mechanisms through which insecurity may foster diminished employee well‐being.     

The Relationship Between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and Impairment in Children With and Without ADHD

This study examined impairment in multiple domains of functioning in children with and without ADHD who present with high or low levels of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) while taking into account the total symptom ratings of ADHD. Participants were 584 children in kindergarten through eighth grade (55.7 % male, 91.7 % Caucasian), drawn from five archival datasets. Two, 2 (SCT groups: high and low) x 3 (ADHD Status: ADHD-I, ADHD-C, and non-ADHD) MANCOVAs were conducted with the total ADHD symptom ratings and child age as covariates. One MANCOVA was conducted on scores on the teacher Impairment Rating Scale (IRS; Fabiano et al. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 35:369–385, 2006) and the other on the 6 scores on the parent IRS. The results indicated that the presence of SCT symptoms was associated with greater functional impairment at home according to parent report while it was associated with less functional impairment at school according to teacher report. Thus, the relationship between SCT symptoms and impairment differs depending on the informant and the context in which impairment is evaluated.     

Motivational profiles and achievement: A prospective study testing potential mediators

The purpose of the study was to examine students’ motivational profile at the beginning of a College program and to test whether these profiles were associated with students’ achievement through their relations with behaviors adopted during the semester. A prospective design with two time points of data collection was conducted in first-year students enrolled in a French University. Motivations were assessed at the beginning of the semester (510 participants at Time 1), and study strategies and temporal resources devoted to academics at the end of it (301 participants at Time 2). Administrative records were used to check for persistence in the program and to assess achievement. Cluster analyses revealed five distinct profiles: additive; self-determined; moderate; low; non self-determined. Furthermore, motivational profile was linked to final grade through the partial mediation of the percentage of classes attended. As a whole, students with a self-determined profile demonstrated the best academic adjustment, whereas those with a low or non self-determined profile displayed the poorest outcomes.     

The neural bases of distracter-resistant working memory

A major difference between humans and other animals is our capacity to maintain information in working memory (WM) while performing secondary tasks, which enables sustained, complex cognition. A common assumption is that the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for WM performance in the presence of distracters, but direct evidence is scarce. We assessed the relationship between fMRI activity and WM performance within subjects, with performance matched across distracter and no-distracter conditions. Activity in the ventrolateral PFC during WM encoding and maintenance positively predicted performance in both conditions, whereas activity in the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) predicted performance only under distraction. Other parts of the dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFCs predicted performance only in the no-distracter condition. These findings challenge a lateral-PFC-centered view of distracter resistance, and suggest that the lateral PFC supports a type of WM representation that is efficient for dealing with task-irrelevant input but is, nonetheless, easily disrupted by dual-task demands.     

Religious Doubt and Spiritual Growth Among Adults Bereaved of a Grandparent

Religious beliefs and bereavement provide contexts for personal growth (Benore & Park, 2004). The death of a grandparent may be especially well-suited to prompt such growth. Using data from 164 adults, ages 18 to 51 years, bereaved of a grandparent, the authors examined whether religious doubt relates to current grief via perceived spiritual growth. Mediation analyses showed that fewer religious doubts were associated with spiritual growth in bereavement, but spiritual growth was associated with higher levels of current grief. Results are discussed within a framework for including family processes in bereavement research that includes religious doubt and spiritual growth.     

Effectively Analyzing Change over Time in Laboratory Research on Stress and Health: A Multilevel Modeling Approach

Stress and health researchers often utilize standardized laboratory stress tasks to evaluate the physical and psychological consequences of challenging experiences. These laboratory sessions usually include multiple measurements of physical and psychological responses collected over time. Multilevel modeling allows researchers to make use of all available data points to model the trajectory of change over time, and within distinct task periods such as baseline, stressor, and recovery. To effectively predict future health outcomes it is important to examine both stress‐related reactivity and recovery. In this paper, we review the analytic approaches used in recent laboratory stress research and note that many recent articles have aggregated multiple responses, used difference scores, or conducted repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Relatively few studies used a multilevel modeling approach. We highlight the advantages of a multilevel modeling approach and provide an example for using this approach as an alternative to repeated measures ANOVA and difference scores.