A decrease in suicide rates in Japanese rural towns after community-based intervention by the health promotion approach

A community-based intervention study for suicide prevention was conducted in six towns (total population 43,964) in Akita Prefecture of Japan according to a quasi-experimental design to reduce suicide rates in rural towns. Public awareness raising activities using a health promotion approach emphasizing the empowerment of residents and civic participation were conducted. The welfare measures of promoting a sense of purpose among senior citizens and creating a community network were also taken. As a result, the suicide rate per 100,000 in the intervention towns decreased from 70.8 before intervention (1999) to 34.1 after intervention (2004). The suicide rate per 100,000 in the control towns was 47.8 before intervention and 49.1 after intervention.     

Stress coping and the adjustment process among university freshmen

The purpose of the present study was to investigate causal relationships between dispositional and situational coping and health status in university freshmen. Two hundred and twenty-nine university freshmen completed questionnaires at Time 1 (immediately after university matriculation) and at Time 2 (approximately three months later) in a short-term, prospective study. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze causal relationships between four coping strategies (i.e., emotion expression, emotional support seeking, cognitive reinterpretation, and problem solving) and four health status variables (i.e., somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction, and depression). Increases in dispositional coping predicted increases in situational coping at certain time points. In addition, increases in dispositional emotion-focused coping, such as emotion expression and emotional support seeking, predicted poor health status. This relationship was mediated by situational coping variables. Finally, increases in dispositional problem-focused coping, such as cognitive reinterpretation and problem solving, predicted better health status. This relationship was direct or indirectly mediated by situational coping variables. Our data suggest that the use of coping skills such as cognitive reinterpretation and problem solving may promote better health and adaptation in university freshmen.     

Force Control of Ankle Dorsiflexors in Young Adults: Effects of Bilateral Control and Leg Dominance

Abstract

We investigated whether bilateral lower-limb control and leg dominance affect force control ability in 15 healthy young adults (9 males and 6 females, age =26.8?±?4.1 years). Participants performed isometric ankle dorsiflexion force control tasks, matching a visual target (10% of maximal effort) as quickly and precisely as possible in ballistic and tonic tasks. Performance was evaluated using force error, force steadiness, amount of muscle activity of the tibialis anterior, and response time characteristics. Results showed no significant effects of leg dominance during both ballistic and tonic tasks, while bilateral condition resulted in significantly larger error, less force steadiness, compared to unilateral condition, and only during the tonic task. Consequently, bilateral control, specifically in tasks utilizing feedback control (i.e., tonic task) might affect force control ability, possibly because of the interhemispheric inhibition to meet bilateral task complexity and integrate afferent bilateral sensory information from both right and left legs.     

Contagious resource depletion and anxiety? Spreading effects of evaluative concern and impression formation in dyadic social interaction

Two studies examined how adopting an impression formation or evaluative concern mindset affects individuals' own and their interaction partner's experience of potentially stressful social exchanges, such as first meeting situations and interethnic interaction. Our main hypothesis was that adopting an impression formation mindset would, by diverting individuals' focus away from themselves and toward others, reduce both their own and their partner's cognitive resource depletion and negative affect. Consistent with predictions, positive effects of impression formation were evident and were “contagious” in that they were evident across individuals who received the mindset instructions and their partners, who were unaware of the manipulation. The positive effects of impression formation instructions were generally evident both in comparison to evaluative concern instructions, which provided similar structure, and in comparison to no instructions at all. Thus, adopting an impression formation mindset seems an effective strategy for minimizing negative outcomes experienced in stressful social interactions.     

Origins of a theory of mind

Twenty-two pairs of typically developing toddlers (M = 24.32 months) and their mothers were observed in a play-room solving puzzles during 30 min. The target of the observations was hand-taking gesture. Researchers have thought that this gesture is rare among typically developing children and is more frequent among autistic children. Ten in 22 children showed this gesture in only 30 min. They should know “I can not do it by myself, but my mother can do it.” When we can assume that children know others’ mental mechanism, it might be the origins of a theory of mind.     

At the intersection of culture and religion: a cultural analysis of religion's implications for secondary control and social affiliation

Religion helps people maintain a sense of control, particularly secondary control-acceptance of and adjustment to difficult situations--and contributes to strengthening social relationships in a religious community. However, little is known about how culture may influence these effects. The current research examined the interaction of culture and religion on secondary control and social affiliation, comparing people from individualistic cultures (e.g., European Americans), who tend to be more motivated toward personal agency, and people from collectivistic cultures (e.g., East Asians), who tend to be more motivated to maintain social relationships. In Study 1, an analysis of online church mission statements showed that U.S. websites contained more themes of secondary control than did Korean websites, whereas Korean websites contained more themes of social affiliation than did U.S. websites. Study 2 showed that experimental priming of religion led to acts of secondary control for European Americans but not Asian Americans. Using daily diary methodology, Study 3 showed that religious coping predicted more secondary control for European Americans but not Koreans, and religious coping predicted more social affiliation for Koreans and European Americans. These findings suggest the importance of understanding sociocultural moderators for the effects of religion.     

Empathizing with a dissimilar other: the role of self-other distinction in sympathetic responding

Can we empathize effectively with someone who has a different sensitivity to physical events from ours? Or, are we susceptible to an egocentric bias in overprojection, which may lead us to under- or overreact in such cases? In this study, participants with normal visual and auditory capacity observed a video clip in which a sighted or blind target was exposed to a strong flash or high-frequency sound, while their physiological arousals during the observation were recorded. On average, participants displayed a differential arousal pattern to the aversive stimuli, according to the target's ability to perceive them. Degrees of arousal control were also correlated with dispositional differences in empathy. Participants who scored higher on the Empathic Concern subscale of Davis's Interpersonal Reactivity Index were better at controlling arousals in accordance with the Target × Stimulus interaction. The authors' findings have important implications for helping disabled people while respecting their inherent dignity and individual autonomy.     

Two cognitions observed in Taijin-Kyofusho and social anxiety symptoms

The offensive type is most characteristic in four types of social fear or anxiety in Japan, Taijin-kyofusho. This type is characterized by cognitions of other-offending and avoidance-by-others. The present purpose was to investigate which cognition is more important in the pathogenesis of the Offensive type. 220 undergraduates completed the Other-offending Cognition and the Avoidance-by-others Cognition Scale, the Interaction Anxiety Scale, and Audience Anxiety Scale. Partial correlations, controlling for each cognition in turn, showed a significant association only between scores on Social Anxiety Disorder and the other-offending cognition. Change in the other-offending cognition may have therapeutic importance.     

Time-shrinking,its propagation,and Gestalt principles

When a relatively short empty time interval is preceded by an even shorter one, its duration can be underestimated remarkably. This phenomenon, called time-shrinking, has been investigated with patterns consisting of two time intervals. In five experiments, we investigated whether underestimation of the last interval would occur when it was preceded by two time intervals. Significant underestimations of the last interval occurred in some of those patterns. The influence of the second preceding interval was dominant, but in some patterns, the first preceding interval could shrink the subjective duration of the last time interval directly. The first interval could also affect perception of the duration of the last one indirectly by shrinking the second interval, as a result of which the latter either shrank the last interval more strongly or became too short to shrink it. There were two types of temporal patterns in which the perceived duration of the last interval could not be explained by time-shrinking or its propagation through the pattern. It seemed plausible that auditory Gestalt principles invoked strong figural organizations in these patterns, which rendered the time-shrinking mechanism inoperative.