Developing an instrument to measure physical activity related self-worth in women: Rasch analysis of the Women's Physical Activity Self-Worth Inventory (WPASWI)

ObjectivesThe objective of this study is to report on the development of an instrument to assess non-physical aspects of physical activity (PA)-related self-worth (SW).MethodsThree hundred thirty five women (mean age = 36.69 ± 15.94 yrs, BMI = 24.87 ± 4.56) completed the Women's Physical Activity Self-Worth Inventory (WPASWI), General SW Scale, and a PA Questionnaire. Rasch analysis was used to evaluate the WPASWI.ResultsThree PA-related SW subscales were identified: PA Knowledge (16 items), PA Emotional (13 items), and PA Social (8 items). Rasch analysis supported construct validity, and items demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90, 0.87 and 0.72) and test-re-test reliability (r = 0.79, 0.70, 0.81). Women who reported regular PA participation had higher PA Knowledge, PA Emotional, PA Social, and General SW than those who reported some or no PA (p < 0.01) and correlations between Knowledge, Emotional, and Social SW subscales and General SW were 0.207, 0.130, and 0.220, respectively. PA Knowledge and PA Emotional SW had stronger correlations with PA (r = 0.344, 0.273, respectively) than did General SW (r = 0.133).ConclusionsThe WPASWI demonstrated good internal consistency, reliability, construct validity and a stronger relationship with PA than a General SW instrument.     

Emotionally-focused therapy and treatment as usual comparison groups in decreasing depression: A clinical pilot study

Abstract

Decades of research have shown that depression can have deleterious effects on couple relationships. Emotionally-focused therapy (EFT; Johnson, 2004 Johnson, S. M. (2004). The practice of emotionally focused couple therapy: Creating connection. East Sussex, UK: Brunner-Routledge. [Google Scholar]) is an empirically validated form of couple therapy, which has shown effectiveness in reducing depressive symptoms in couples where the wife has depression. The aim of the current pilot study was to examine the extent to which EFT and the comparison treatment as usual (TAU) therapy group decrease depressive symptoms in distressed couples. Results show that both groups were effective in decreasing depressive symptoms, with EFT showing a clinically significant reduction. Clinical implications and future research are discussed.     

Expectancy bias mediates the link between social anxiety and memory bias for social evaluation

Social anxiety (SA) involves a multitude of cognitive symptoms related to fear of evaluation, including expectancy and memory biases. We examined whether memory biases are influenced by expectancy biases for social feedback in SA. We hypothesised that, faced with a socially evaluative event, people with higher SA would show a negative expectancy bias for future feedback. Furthermore, we predicted that memory bias for feedback in SA would be mediated by expectancy bias. Ninety-four undergraduate students (55 women, mean age = 19.76 years) underwent a two-visit task that measured expectations about (Visit 1) and memory of (Visit 2) feedback from unknown peers. Results showed that higher levels of SA were associated with negative expectancy bias. An indirect relationship was found between SA and memory bias that was mediated by expectancy bias. The results suggest that expectancy biases are in the causal path from SA to negative memory biases for social evaluation.     

The Confusion of Fear and Surprise: A Developmental Study of the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis Using Eye Movements

The goal of the present study was to test the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis in children and adults by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions and recording eye movements. Children 3–5 and 9–11 years old as well as adults were presented pairs of expressions and required to identify a target emotion. Children 3–5 years old were less accurate than those 9–11 years old and adults. All children viewed pictures longer than adults but did not spend more time attending to the relevant cues. For all participants, accuracy for the recognition of fear was lower than for surprise when the distinctive cue was in the brow only. They also took longer and spent more time in both the mouth and brow zones than when a cue was in the mouth or both areas. Adults and children 9–11 years old made more comparisons between the expressions when fear comprised a single distinctive cue in the brow than when the distinctive cue was in the mouth only or when both cues were present. Children 3–5 years old made more comparisons for brow only than both. The results of the present study extend on the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis showing an importance of both decoder and stimuli, and an interaction between decoder and stimuli characteristics.     

External Correlates of the Personality Assessment Inventory Higher Order Structures

This brief report explores the external correlates of 2 higher order structures of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991, 2007); Hoelzle and Meyer's (2009a, 2009b) PAI Components and Hopwood and Moser's (2011) Internalizing and Externalizing Dimensions. Scores from these higher order structures were correlated with life-event data including education, marital status, employment, suicide attempts, psychiatric hospitalizations, trauma, medical problems, hallucinations, paranoid ideation, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and arrest. Although some differences were noted, the results showed that both Hoelzle and Meyer's Components and Hopwood and Moser's Dimensions were meaningfully correlated with a wide range of life outcomes in a conceptually consistent manner. Overall, these findings provide support for the utility of these higher order variables.     

Reminder-induced recovery of associations to an overshadowed stimulus

The possibility of reversing the deficit produced by overshadowing through the use of memory reactivation was investigated. Using lick suppression as a measure of associative strength, water-deprived rats were conditioned in a Pavlovian paradigm which produced reliable overshadowing of a flashing light by a tone. It was found, however, that exposure to the overshadowed stimulus outside of the conditioning context during the retention interval (reminder treatment) caused an increase in lick suppression during testing in animals that had undergone overshadowing, relative to nonreminded overshadowed animals. Subjects that received the reminder treatment but were conditioned without overshadowing showed no increase in lick suppression. Additional control groups ensured that the increase in suppression observed in the overshadowed subjects following reminder treatment was not due to nonspecific fear. The results suggest that the performance deficit produced by overshadowing is due at least in part to a reversible failure to efficiently retrieve associations to the overshadowed stimulus at the time of testing, rather than a failure to form those associations during conditioning.     

The acquisition of conditioned responding

This report analyzes the acquisition of conditioned responses in rats trained in a magazine approach paradigm. Following the suggestion by Gallistel, Fairhurst, and Balsam (2004), Weibull functions were fitted to the trial-by-trial response rates of individual rats. These showed that the emergence of responding was often delayed, after which the response rate would increase relatively gradually across trials. The fit of the Weibull function to the behavioral data of each rat was equaled by that of a cumulative exponential function incorporating a response threshold. Thus, the growth in conditioning strength on each trial can be modeled by the derivative of the exponential--a difference term of the form used in many models of associative learning (e.g., Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). Further analyses, comparing the acquisition of responding with a continuously reinforced stimulus (CRf) and a partially reinforced stimulus (PRf), provided further evidence in support of the difference term. In conclusion, the results are consistent with conventional models that describe learning as the growth of associative strength, incremented on each trial by an error-correction process.