Parents May Hold the Keys to Success in Immersion Treatment of Adolescent Obesity

This study examined the potential impact of parents on the long-term results of an immersion program for the treatment of adolescent obesity. Teenagers participated in a 4- to 8-week therapeutic camp. Those who continued losing weight 8- to 12-months postcamp were identified as “Losers”; those who regained weight were considered “Gainers.” Parents from both groups were interviewed about their own current lifestyle habits 1 to 1.5 years after camp ended. Results indicate that more of the initially overweight parents from the Loser group lost weight during the follow-up period than the overweight parents of Gainers. Losers' parents also reported better implementation of several aspects of the weight control program. The present results suggest that helping parents adopt lifestyle changes for themselves, even within the context of relatively short immersion treatments, may maximize outcomes for obese teenagers.     

Preschoolers’ Emotion Expression and Regulation: Relations with School Adjustment

Children's expression and regulation of emotions are building blocks of their experiences in classrooms. Thus, the authors’ primary goal was to investigate whether preschoolers’ expression or ability to regulate emotions were associated with teachers’ ratings of school adjustment. A secondary goal was to investigate how boys and girls differed across these associations. Children's social-emotional behaviors in Head Start and private childcare center classrooms were observed, and using a series of measures, teachers’ ratings of children's social competence, attitudes toward school, positive teacher relationships, and cooperative participation were collected. Three factors of children's school adjustment were extracted from these indicators. A series of hierarchical regressions revealed that emotion expression and regulation were indeed associated with children's reported school adjustment, with the strongest associations stemming from children's negative emotion expression and their emotion dysregulation. Many of these associations were also different for boys and girls. The results corroborate and extend the authors’ earlier findings, and have implications for social-emotional programming to maximize children's early school success.     

Stress Among African American Emerging Adults: The Role of Family and Cultural Factors

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of family and cultural variables on stress among African American emerging adults. Data from this study was collected as part of a larger study that examined cultural, family, and contextual factors and smoking among African American youth in 5th, 8th, and 12th grades. Data were collected from high school seniors at the end of their 12th grade year and 6 months post high school. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine whether racial identity, family cohesion, and parental monitoring influence students’ perceived frequency of stress. Higher levels of racial identity were associated with more perceived stress. There were no significant main effects for either parental monitoring or family cohesion on stress. There were significant interactions between racial identity and parental monitoring and between parental monitoring and family cohesion. Study implications are discussed regarding the importance of stress reduction programs for African American emerging adults and for parents of these adults.     

Two Kinds of Definition in Spinoza's Ethics

Spinoza scholars have claimed that we are faced with a dilemma: either Spinoza's definitions in his Ethics are real, in spite of indications to the contrary, or the definitions are nominal and the propositions derived from them are false. I argue that Spinoza did not recognize the distinction between real and nominal definitions. Rather, Spinoza classified definitions according to whether they require a priori or a posteriori justification, which is a classification distinct from either the real/nominal or the intensional/extensional classification. I argue that Spinoza uses both a priori and a posteriori definitions in the Ethics and that recognizing both types of definitions allows us to understand Spinoza's geometric method in a new way. We can now understand the geometric method as two methods, one resulting in propositions that Spinoza considers to be absolutely certain and another resulting in propositions that Spinoza does not consider certain. The latter method makes use of a posteriori definitions and postulates, whereas the former method uses only a priori definitions and axioms.     

The case of the magic bones: Dogs’ memory of the physical properties of objects

Dogs’ memory for properties of occluded objects was assessed using a looking-time procedure. The looking-time procedure has been used to indicate that a change in expectation has been observed, with longer looking times associated with change as compared with no change. In our experiments, a bone-shaped dog biscuit (bone) was placed behind a horizontal screen that then rotated up to occlude the object before the screen returned to its horizontal position. Dogs were shown one of two test events. In one (congruent) event, the screen rotated up to obscure the bone and then rotated back down to reveal the unchanged bone. In the other (incongruent) event, the screen rotated up to obscure the bone and then rotated back down to reveal a bone that had changed in size (Experiment 1) or color (Experiment 2). Looking times were measured to assess which events represented the detection of a change. Increased looking time on incongruent trials indicated that the dogs remembered the size and color of the occluded object.     

Rorschach personality predictors of weight loss with behavior modification in obesity treatment

Weight loss outcome for 49 obese patients after 6 months treatment in a behavior modification program was related to Rorschach personality characteristics according to the Comprehensive System (Exner, 2003), also including the Rorschach Oral Dependency Scale (Bornstein, 1996; Masling & Rabie, 1967). Less weight loss was predicted by signs of perceptual and cognitive distortions indicated by the Schizophrenia Index. More weight loss was predicted by Food Contents, suggesting a food preoccupation and possibly a benign dependency orientation. Patients with a focus on food and dependent needs could benefit above all from the treatment program implying learning how to handle food and eating in a supportive setting, as evidenced by more weight loss. Distortions in perception and cognition could constitute more profound difficulties in weight reduction important to recognize in obesity treatment.     

An evaluation of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-a true response inconsistency (TRIN) scales

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) True Response Inconsistency (TRIN) scales are measures of acquiescence and non-acquiescence included among the standard validity scales on these instruments. The goals of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of these scales in detecting varying degrees of acquiescence and non-acquiescence and to evaluate cutoff scores for clinical use. After the removal of invalid protocols from the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A normative samples, each normative sample was randomly divided in half. For each measure, one half of the normative sample served as a comparison group and the other half was modified with increasing degrees (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%) of randomly inserted true or false responses. The results for a 9.1% base rate of acquiescence or non-acquiescence provide support for TRIN cutoff scores at or near those presented in the MMPI-A and MMPI-2 manuals.     

Perceptions of stress and stress interventions in finance organizations: Overcoming resistance towards counselling

This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study conducted to gain further insight into the attitudes of finance organizations towards workplace stress and stress interventions. Semi-structured interviews were used and seven individuals, each representing their organization, participated in the study. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith, J., Jaraman, M., & Osborn, M. 1999 Smith J Jaraman M Osborn M 1999 Doing interpretative phenomenological analysis In M. Murray & K. Chamberlain (Eds) Qualitative Health Psychology London Sage [Crossref] [Google Scholar] was used to analyse the data. In M. Murray & K. Chamberlain (Eds), Qualitative Health Psychology. London: Sage.) was used to analyse the data. One main theme that emerged was “resistance towards counselling for stress”. This theme and several related sub-themes are discussed, and suggestions to reduce resistance to counselling for stress are presented in a model.     

Coordination in arm movements during crawl stroke in elite swimmers with a loco-motor disability

The purpose of this study was to investigate selected kinematics parameters of the arm stroke in crawl swimmers with disabilities and to examine the potential use of an index of arm coordination (IdC) to evaluate the stroking technique of swimmers with diverse functional abilities. The degree of overlap in the propulsive phases (superposition model) and lag time between the propulsive phases (catch-up model) was examined in 18 well-trained swimmers with loco-motor disabilities, 9 females and 9 males, from functional classes S3-S10 with S10 being most functional. Based on the results, correct coordination appears to be fundamental to swimming crawl stroke in both able-bodied swimmers as well as swimmers with a disability. Some swimmers with disabilities examined here exhibited extreme values at both ends of the index scale. This might be essential to maintaining balance while swimming when not all limb activity contributes to the forward movement.