Gender Differences in the Social Functioning of Adolescents with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been associated with social difficulties. Boys with IBD may have increased risk for social problems due to delayed growth and puberty, but gender differences in social functioning have not been investigated. This study examined gender differences in multiple areas of social functioning for adolescents with IBD compared to healthy adolescents. Participants were 92 adolescents 11-17?years (50 with IBD, 42 healthy) and parents who completed questionnaires assessing social functioning. IBD was associated with poorer social functioning in the areas of social competence and social problems. Boys with IBD had worse social competence, with no gender differences for social problems. Gender predicted the use of social contact as a coping strategy, but no significant group differences were found for other areas of social functioning. Adolescents with IBD experience significant social difficulties in some areas, and boys are at risk for poor social competence. However, previously reported social difficulties may not extend to all areas of social functioning.     

Early Career Boot Camp: A Novel Mechanism for Enhancing Early Career Development for Psychologists in Academic Healthcare

The purpose of this article is to describe a pilot mentoring program for Early Career Psychologists (ECPs) working in Academic Health Centers (AHCs) and synthesize the lessons learned to contribute to future ECP and AHC career development training programs. The authors describe an early career development model, named the Early Career Boot Camp. This intensive experience was conducted as a workshop meant to build a supportive network and to provide mentorship and survival tools for working in AHCs. Four major components were addressed: professional effectiveness, clinical supervision, strategic career planning, and academic research. Nineteen attendees who were currently less than 5 years post completion of doctoral graduate programs in psychology participated in the program. The majority of boot camp components were rated as good to excellent, with no component receiving below average ratings. Of the components offered within the boot camp, mentoring and research activities were rated the strongest, followed by educational activities, challenges in AHCS, and promotion and tenure. The article describes the purpose, development, implementation, and assessment of the program in detail in an effort to provide an established outline for future organizations to utilize when mentoring ECPs.     

Provider Perspectives on Barriers and Strategies for Achieving Culturally Sensitive Mental Health Services for Immigrants: A Hamilton, Ontario Case Study

As research reveals that the healthy immigrant effect, whereby the health of immigrants at the time of arrival is high but subsequently declines and converges toward that of the native-born population, also extends to mental well-being, this paper aims to examine the barriers to mental health care for immigrants in Hamilton, Ontario. Through the use of face-to-face interviews with eight service providers, barriers to care were revealed to include cultural insensitivity, stigma and shame, and limited resources. Suggestions for improvements to mental health care are also discussed.     

Electrodermal responses to sources of dual-task interference

There is a response selection bottleneck that is responsible for dual-task interference. How the response selection bottleneck operates was addressed in three dual-task experiments. The overlap between two tasks (as indexed by the stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]) was systematically manipulated, and both reaction time and electrodermal activity were measured. In addition, each experiment also manipulated some aspect of the difficulty of either task. Both increasing task overlap by reducing SOA and increasing the difficulty of either task lengthened reaction times. Electrodermal response was strongly affected by task difficulty but was only weakly affected by SOA, and in a different manner from reaction time. A fourth experiment found that the subjectively perceived difficulty of a dual-task trial was affected both by task difficulty and by SOA, but in different ways than electrodermal activity. Overall, the results were not consistent with a response selection bottleneck that involves processes of voluntary, executive attention. Instead, the results converge with findings from neural network modeling to suggest that the delay of one task while another is being processed reflects the operation of a routing mechanism that can process only one stream of information for action at a time and of a passive, structural store that temporarily holds information for the delayed task. The results suggest that conventional blocked or event-related neuroimaging designs may be inadequate to identify the mechanism of operation of the response selection bottleneck.     

Deconstructing the age-prevalence curve of alcohol dependence: why "maturing out" is only a small piece of the puzzle

Epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated that heavy alcohol use and alcohol dependence (AD) tend to increase in adolescence and emerging adulthood and then show a large decline in the late 20s, a phenomenon called maturing out. This decline has been explained as an effect of "role incompatibility" in which involvement in new roles and activities interferes with a heavy drinking lifestyle. However, maturing out has been conceived mostly as a decrease in offset, with little attention paid to reductions in new onset or recurrence across decades of life. Moreover, although role incompatibility processes have been studied with young samples, little is known about the effect of life transitions (e.g., marriage, parenthood, changes in employment status) on AD later in life and whether similar effects are observed. Using longitudinal data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a nationally representative epidemiologic survey, we examined the patterns of stability and change in AD across the life span and the differential effect of life transitions on AD across different age strata. Results showed that persistence of AD tended to increase with age, although not dramatically, and that onset and recurrence tended to decrease with age. Moreover, the effects of life transitions on the course of AD varied across the life span and were different for men and women. These results indicate that life transitions differentially affect the patterns of stability and change in younger versus older people, have a different impact for men and women, and highlight the need to consider the unique aspects of each stage of adult development on the course of AD.     

Reducing stereotype threat in order to facilitate learning

Recent stereotype threat research has demonstrated that negative stereotypes about women's math ability can impair their mathematical learning. This experiment extends this research by examining whether presenting “gender fair” information can reduce learning decrements (on a focal and transfer task) and if the timing of this information matters. Women (N = 140) and men (N = 60) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control, stereotype threat only, stereotype threat removed before learning, and stereotype threat removed after learning. Compared with women in the control condition and women who had stereotype threat removed before learning, learning and transfer were poorer for women in the stereotype threat only condition and women who had stereotype threat removed after learning but before learning assessment. Men's learning and transfer were unaffected by condition. These findings suggest that a manipulation that can reduce performance deficits can also reduce learning decrements if it is presented before learning occurs. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A behavioral test of Horney’s linkage between authenticity and aggression: People living authentically are less-likely to respond aggressively in unfair situations

This study links Horney’s account of human growth and neurosis to authenticity by examining aggressive responses on the point subtraction aggressive paradigm, providing the first empirical test of whether authenticity can predict objective behavior. Data from undergraduate, postgraduate, and mature students demonstrate that when controlling for age, gender, trait-anger, agreeableness, and functional dimensions of coping, individuals who measure high on authentic-living respond less aggressively to attacks and counter-attacks in unfair situations. Authentic-living uniquely accounted for 14.2% of variance in aggressive-responses (r = −.37). The findings suggest that inauthenticity is a strong predictor of aggressive behavior, and therefore increasing levels of authenticity in counseling practice may reduce maladaptive levels of anger. We suggest future exploration between authenticity and models of emotional regulation will unearth the cause and effects of aggression within inauthentic individuals.