The prevalence of symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among soldiers with amputation of a limb or spinal injury: a report from a rehabilitation centre in Sri Lanka

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has been identified as one of the most commonly occurring mental illnesses in combatants. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among soldiers who had undergone amputation of a lower or an upper limb or sustained a spinal cord injury in the battlefield, and to compare the prevalence among these categories. The research presented seeks to increase the awareness of this condition among those treating war casualties so that appropriate treatment choices could be made to address them. The study was carried out in 2009 at a rehabilitation centre for combatants of war. Data were collected from 96 male army veterans between the ages of 18-49 years using a pre-tested self-administered questionnaire based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the Impact of Event Scale and the PTSD symptom scale. Soldiers with injuries sustained at least four weeks prior to the study were selected by a convenience sampling technique. Soldiers with multiple injuries, head injuries or those diagnosed with psychiatric disorders were excluded. The results revealed that 41.7% of the study population was compatible with the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Within the three groups, 42.5% of the lower limb amputees, 33.3% of the upper limb amputees and 45.7% of the participants with spinal cord injury had symptoms compatible with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. There was no difference between the prevalence among the different injury categories considered. This study highlights the need to pay more attention in providing psychological care as a part of the overall health management of injured combatants. Early preparation of soldiers for stressors of war and screening for and proper management of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder will improve the overall outcome of rehabilitation.     

Examining the validity of the family investment and stress models and relationship to children's school readiness across five cultural groups

Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) dataset, this study examined whether the family investment and the family stress models generalized to non-European American (EA) families. Specifically, we examined whether parenting processes mediated the association between family demographics and children's school readiness, and whether the pathways vary across cultural groups. Both models were most salient for EAs followed by African Americans (AAs) and Spanish-speaking Hispanics, but less so for English-speaking Hispanics (EHs) and Asian Americans. Findings indicated that sensitive parenting was a salient mediator between family demographics and children's school readiness for all groups except EHs; negative parenting and parent-child activities were salient mediators for EAs only.     

Reciprocal relations between cognitive neuroscience and formal cognitive models: opposites attract?

Cognitive neuroscientists study how the brain implements particular cognitive processes such as perception, learning, and decision-making. Traditional approaches in which experiments are designed to target a specific cognitive process have been supplemented by two recent innovations. First, formal cognitive models can decompose observed behavioral data into multiple latent cognitive processes, allowing brain measurements to be associated with a particular cognitive process more precisely and more confidently. Second, cognitive neuroscience can provide additional data to inform the development of formal cognitive models, providing greater constraint than behavioral data alone. We argue that these fields are mutually dependent; not only can models guide neuroscientific endeavors, but understanding neural mechanisms can provide key insights into formal models of cognition.     

Public understanding of climate change in the United States

This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment. Public understanding is affected by the inherent difficulty of understanding climate change, the mismatch between people's usual modes of understanding and the task, and, particularly in the United States, a continuing societal struggle to shape the frames and mental models people use to understand the phenomena. We conclude by discussing ways in which psychology can help to improve public understanding of climate change and link a better understanding to action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).     

Flexible and inflexible task sets: asymmetric interference when switching between emotional expression, sex, and age classification of perceived faces

The present study investigated whether the processing characteristics of categorizing emotional facial expressions are different from those of categorizing facial age and sex information. Given that emotions change rapidly, it was hypothesized that processing facial expressions involves a more flexible task set that causes less between-task interference than the task sets involved in processing age or sex of a face. Participants switched between three tasks: categorizing a face as looking happy or angry (emotion task), young or old (age task), and male or female (sex task). Interference between tasks was measured by global interference and response interference. Both measures revealed patterns of asymmetric interference. Global between-task interference was reduced when a task was mixed with the emotion task. Response interference, as measured by congruency effects, was larger for the emotion task than for the nonemotional tasks. The results support the idea that processing emotional facial expression constitutes a more flexible task set that causes less interference (i.e., task-set "inertia") than processing the age or sex of a face.     

Parts and wholes in person recognition: developmental trends

This study's aim is the investigation of short-term visual person recognition in 8- and 10-year-olds and adults, within the part-whole paradigm introduced by. Natural unfamiliar whole persons were contrasted with natural unfamiliar faces to test for differences between person processing and face processing. Two experiments showed advantages of whole face recognition over isolated face feature recognition. Also, these was a complete over part probe advantage (CPA, ) for person recognition in all age groups. Thus, recognition became more accurate between 8 years and adulthood, but no developmental shift in visual information processing was observable with face and whole person recognition. I conclude that person recognition does not rely on processes completely different from those of face recognition and that this holds for 8- and 10-year-olds as well as for adults.     

Parental Influence on Students' Educational Choices in the United States and Germany: Different Ramifications—Same Effect?

Despite the historical trend in all Western societies to increase educational participation irrespective of students' social origin, the correlation between parents' education and socio-economic status and the educational outcomes of their offspring remains a rather universal phenomenon. Although comparative studies have consistently found this association in various nations which differ in many ways in their educational systems, little is known about the mechanism behind this effect. Drawing on the assumption that career decision points are the major gateway for social background influences, we assume that similarities, as well as differences in the structure of the correlation between parents' socioeconomic background and students' school success, can be explained. Using two longitudinal data sets from the United States (N=1425) and Germany (N=1755) covering the school careers from Grade 7 to Grade 10, the analyses supported the hypothesis that (a) achievement information is the best predictor of career relevant decisions in both nations, (b) parents' background variables are independent additional predictors of career decision but not for actual learning progress, and (c) the assumed accumulation process of social background influences is more pronounced in the German than in the U.S. school system.     

Both early and late changes in psychological variables relate to treatment outcome for musculoskeletal pain patients at risk for disability

We know little about why some people get better after psychological treatments for pain disability, whereas other people do not. In order to understand differences in treatment response, we need to explore processes of change during treatment. It has been suggested that people with pain complaints who change early in treatment have better outcomes. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether changes in psychological variables at different time points are related to outcome, and whether early or late changes are better predictors of outcome. We used the fear avoidance model as a theoretical framework. We followed 64 patients weekly over 6–7 weeks and then determined outcome. Our findings indicate that people who decrease in catastrophizing and function early in treatment as well as in depressive symptoms, worry, fear avoidance beliefs and function late in treatment have better outcomes. Early decreases in function, and late decreases in depressive symptoms and worry uniquely predict improvements in disability. While early and late changes covaried concurrently, there were no significant sequential relationships between early and late changes. Changes in the proposed process variables in the fear avoidance model, early as well as late in treatment, thus add valuable information to the explanation of outcome.     

Psychotherapie, Globalisierung, Hartz?IV

The mental effects of globalization, the economic crisis and unemployment must not be underestimated. In general they have to be looked upon as a complex system of structural traumatization which is causing severe psychological mental disorders, such as depression. Not only that, a psychotherapist has to pay particular attention to this. More than in physical illnesses the psychotherapist has to be solidly united with the patient, which might also result in political action.