Affectionate communication,health, and relationships

A robust body of research attests to the mental and physical health correlates and consequences of affectionate communication. Like much research on personal relationships, however, this work may overrepresent certain portions of the population, may underrepresent others, and may not effectively account for intersections of identities. We define intersectionality as comprising the unique effects of two or more social identities interacting with each other. To assess this literature with an eye toward intersectionality and representation, the present article reports a systematic review of 86 individual empirical studies representing 26,013 participants. The review concludes that there is no explicit or implicit attention to intersectionality in the existing research on affectionate communication and health, and that U.S. Americans, women, younger individuals, white individuals, and students are overrepresented in research samples. The review ends with future directions to encourage more inclusive research on this topic.     

On Associative Stigma: Implicit and Explicit Evaluations of a Mother of a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with psychiatric problems are subjected to highly damaging stigma. Some research suggests that this stigma may extend to associates (e.g., family, friends), who themselves report being devalued, avoided, and rejected. The research literature on associative stigma is largely qualitative, and extant quantitative research has utilized only explicit measures which are notably weakened by self-presentational motives. In the current study, 95 undergraduates were randomized to hear one of two audio recorded vignettes pertaining to a fictional mother of a child with either autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or severe asthma. Participants then completed an Implicit Association Test capturing implicit evaluations of the fictional mother and two separate measures of explicit stigma. No group differences for either explicit measure emerged. However, the predicted group difference in implicit stigma emerged, such that the mother of the child with ASD was evaluated less positively than the mother of the child with severe asthma. Implicit-explicit correlations were not statistically significant but in the small to medium range according to effect size conventions. This study offers evidence of implicit associative stigma in the psychiatric domain. It also points to a variety of interesting avenues for further illumination of this potentially important phenomenon.     

Stages of change and stuttering: a preliminary view

As a way to better understand the process of change that occurs in stuttering, Craig [Craig, A. (1998). Relapse following treatment for stuttering: a critical review and correlative data. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 23, 1-30] compared the behavioral changes that people who stutter often experience with and without treatment to those that have been observed for certain (non)addictive behavior disorders such as smoking, overeating, phobia and anxiety disorder. The process underlying these behavioral changes has been described by the transtheoretical or "stages of change" model, which is a model of behavior change that can illuminate "where" a person is in the process of change, and how this may relate to the outcome of either treatment or self-change attempts [Prochaska, J. O., & DiClemente, C. C. (1986). The transtheoretical approach. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Handbook of eclectic psychotherapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel]. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the extent to which the responses of adults who stutter on a modified Stages of Change Questionnaire yield interrelations among questionnaire items that are consistent with a stage-based interpretation. Results of both confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses indicated that while the modified questionnaire was a relatively good fit for participant responses, the structure derived from the exploratory analysis provided a significantly better fit to the observed data. Results suggest that a questionnaire incorporating items that better reflect the unique behavioral, cognitive and affective variables that characterize stuttering may better discriminate stages of change in people who stutter as they move through therapy, or are engaged in self-directed change. Educational objectives: After reading this paper, the learner will be able to: (1) describe the transtheoretical or "stages of change" model; (2) describe the various processes that are associated with different stages of change; (3) summarize research findings in stages of change as they apply to a variety of clinical populations; (4) discuss the applicability of the findings from the present study to stuttering treatment, and (5) relate conventional strategies and techniques used in stuttering therapy to different stages in the process of change.     

Dewey’s Theory of Experience,Traumatic Memory,and Music Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - Trauma’s ubiquity in society leads to an acknowledgement that damaging experiences likely affect more students than they leave untouched. Dewey...     

Affectionate Writing Reduces Total Cholesterol: Two Randomized,Controlled Trials

In two 5‐week trials, healthy college students were randomly assigned either to experimental or control groups. Participants in the experimental groups wrote about their affection for significant friends, relatives, and/or romantic partners for 20 minutes on three separate occasions; on the same schedule, those in the control groups wrote about innocuous topics. Total cholesterol was assessed via capillary blood at the beginning of the trials and again at the end. Participants in the experimental groups experienced statistically significant reductions in total cholesterol. Control participants in the first study experienced a significant increase during the same period, whereas those in the second study did not. Cholesterol changes were largely unmoderated by linguistic features of the writing produced in the intervention. Potential therapeutic implications are discussed.     

Loss of control over eating reflects eating disturbances and general psychopathology

This study examined the clinical significance of the loss of control over eating as a key component of eating disorders. It investigated the association of eating-related psychopathology and general psychopathology with objective bulimic episodes (OBEs; experiencing a loss of control while consuming large amounts of food) and subjective bulimic episodes (SBEs; experiencing a loss of control while consuming small/moderate amounts). A community sample of 81 women with a range of disordered eating was recruited: binge-eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, subclinical eating disturbances, or no eating disorders. They were interviewed using the Eating Disorder Examination and completed measures of eating-related and general psychopathology. Both OBE and SBE frequencies correlated significantly with measures of eating-related and general psychopathology, and no significant differences were found between the magnitudes of the correlations with either binge episode type. SBE frequency significantly and independently predicted global eating disorder psychopathology. The loss of control over eating, without consuming large amounts of food, was as closely associated with specific eating disorder psychopathology and general mental health as were traditionally defined OBEs. SBEs may be an important target of treatment and should be considered for future diagnostic classifications of eating disorders.     

Husbands' and wives' alcohol use disorders and marital interactions as longitudinal predictors of marital adjustment

In this longitudinal study, the relationships among wives' and husbands' lifetime alcoholism status, marital behaviors, and marital adjustment were tested. Participants were 105 couples from the Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS), an ongoing multimethod investigation of substance use in a community-based sample of alcoholics, nonalcoholics, and their families. At baseline (T1), husbands and wives completed a series of diagnostic measures, and lifetime diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (AUD, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.), was assessed. Couples completed a problem-solving marital interaction task 3 years later at T2, which was coded for the ratio of positive to negative behaviors. Couples also completed a measure of marital adjustment at T4 (9 years after T1 and 6 years after T2). Results showed that husbands' lifetime AUD predicted lower levels of their wife's positive marital behaviors 3 years later but was not related to their own or their wife's marital adjustment 9 years from baseline. By contrast, wives' lifetime AUD had direct negative associations with their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 9 years later, and wives' marital behaviors during the problem-solving task predicted their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 6 years later. Findings indicate that marital adjustment in alcoholic couples may be driven more by the wives' than the husbands' AUD and marital behavior. Implications for intervention with alcoholic couples were discussed.     

Changing Perspective: Building Creative Mindsets

The search for new ideas often frustratingly cycles back to old ones, a phenomenon known as fixation. Recent research has shown ways to kick-start finding new uses for familiar objects, a prototypical creativity task: wandering in the mind or the world or working on a messy desk. Those techniques seem to succeed by helping break fixation, but do not guide the search for new ideas. The perspective-taking or human-centric or empathic mindset championed by many in HCI and in design firms does provide a search strategy. We compared the mind-wandering mindset to a perspective-taking mindset, the latter priming thinking of ways that people in different roles (gardener, artist, etc.) might use the objects. In two studies, the Perspective-Taking mindset yielded more ideas and more original ideas than Mind-Wandering, which did not differ from a No-Mindset control. Original ideas came late, rewarding persistence. The perspective-taking mindset is productive for problem-solving, forecasting, and social interactions as well as innovation.     

Marital interaction in alcoholic and nonalcoholic couples: alcoholic subtype variations and wives' alcoholism status

The authors examined problem-solving marital interactions of alcoholic and nonalcoholic couples (N = 132). Four alcoholic groups (husband alcoholic with antisocial personality disorder or not, paired with alcoholic or nonalcoholic wives) were compared with each other and with a both-spouses-nonalcoholic group. Consistent with the alcoholic subtypes hypothesis, couples with an antisocial alcoholic husband had higher levels of hostile behavior regardless of wives' alcoholism status. In contrast, rates of positive behaviors and the ratio of positive to negative behaviors were greatest among couples in which either both or neither of the spouses had alcoholic diagnoses and were lowest among alcoholic husbands with nonalcoholic wives. Discussion focuses on possible mechanisms linking antisocial alcoholism and discrepant alcoholic diagnoses to poorer marital outcomes.