Working memory and attention are still impaired after three years in patients with stress‐related exhaustion

Cognitive impairment is one of the most pronounced symptoms reported by patients with stress‐related mental health problems. Impairments related to executive function and to some extent speed and attention are therefore common in patients with stress‐related burnout/exhaustion. In this paper we present a follow‐up of cognitive performance in patients with stress‐related exhaustion several years after they initially sought medical care. Thirty patients and 27 healthy controls, mean age 49 years (SD 6.5) and 55 years (SD 6.7) respectively, were included, all of whom had undergone baseline measurements of neuropsychological functioning. The mean follow‐up time was three years. Half of the patients still reported mental health problems at follow‐up and over time no major changes in cognitive performance were noted. The patients still performed significantly poorer than controls with regard to cognitive functions, mainly related to speed, attention and memory function. Long‐lasting impairment of cognitive functions related to speed, attention and memory function noted in patients with stress‐related exhaustion should be acknowledged and taken into consideration during treatment and when discussing a return to work. Follow‐up periods longer than three years are needed to explore the persistence of the cognitive impairment.     

Swedish women's perceptions of and conformity to feminine norms

The relatively high gender equality in the Swedish society is likely to exert an influence on gender role construction. Hence, the present research aimed to investigate Swedish women's perceptions of and conformity to feminine norms. A mixed methods approach with two studies was used. In Study 1, young Swedish women’s gender role conformity, as measured by the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory 45 (CFNI‐45), was compared to the results from previously published studies in Canada, the United States, and Slovakia. Overall, Swedish women displayed less conformity than their foreign counterparts, with the largest difference on the subscale Sexual fidelity. In Study 2, focus group interviews with young Swedish women added a more complex picture of feminine norms in the Swedish society. For instance the results indicated that Swedish women, while living in a society with a strong gender equality discourse, are torn between the perceived need to invest in their appearances and the risk of being viewed as non‐equal when doing so. In sum, despite the fact that traditional gender roles are less pronounced in Sweden, gender role conformity is still a pressing issue. Since attending to the potential roles of feminine norms in women’s lives previously has been proposed to be useful in counseling and therapeutic work, the present research also offers valuable information for both researchers and practitioners. [Correction added on 5 May 2017, after first online publication in April 2017: An incorrect Abstract was inadvertently captured in the published article and has been corrected in this current version.]     

Physical, Sociocultural, and Behavioral Factors Associated with Body-Esteem in 16-Year-Old Swedish Boys and Girls

Body Mass Index (BMI), weight loss attempts, pubertal timing, body ideal internalization, and peer appearance teasing were examined in relation to three dimensions of body-esteem; weight-based body-esteem (Weight), appearance-based body-esteem (Appearance), and beliefs about how others view one’s body and appearance (Attribution). Participants were 758 Swedish 16-year-olds. Results showed that the factors examined varied in importance depending on gender and body-esteem dimension. Whereas a majority of the factors examined were related to the Weight dimension, fewer were related to the Appearance dimension, and almost none were related to the Attribution dimension. Furthermore, the factors examined were generally able to explain a much greater amount of variance in girls’ body-esteem than boys’.     

Why the social sciences are irreducible

Synthese - It is often claimed that the social sciences cannot be reduced to a lower-level individualistic science. The standard argument for this position (usually labelled explanatoryholism) is...     

Active Powers and Passive Powers – Do Causal Interactions Require Both?

Philosophia - Many powers metaphysicians postulate both active and passive powers, understood as distinct kinds of intrinsic causal properties of objects. I argue that the category of passive power...     

Influence of Attachment Style on Sexual Abuse Survivors' Posttraumatic Growth

This study investigated the directional relationship between adults' (N = 292) attachment styles and perceived impact of child sexual abuse with their experience of posttraumatic growth (PTG). Structural equation modeling results identified that attachment style served as a partial mediator between trauma and PTG scores, with the mediating effect contributing to 8% of the variance in the presence of PTG (p < .05; standardized coefficient = ?.31).     

Comparison of longitudinal phenotypes based on alternate heavy drinking cut scores: a systematic comparison of trajectory approaches III.

The goal of the present study was to empirically determine the effect of employing different cut scores for frequency of heavy episodic drinking (HED; an often-used indicator of problematic alcohol involvement) within a longitudinal framework. Using data from a large prospective (9-wave) college student sample, the authors used latent class growth analyses to characterize developmental trajectories of HED based on alternate cut scores that varied in frequency of HED (defined by 5+ drinks per occasion), as well as to measure very heavy episodic drinking (12+ drinks per occasion). As cut score severity increased and base rates for HED correspondingly decreased, individuals were increasingly categorized into less severe classes. Concordance between trajectories ranged from small to moderate, with concordance using highly discrepant definitions of frequent HED being particularly low. HED trajectories based upon different cut scores were validated against a range of etiological and consequential correlates. No single cut score was superior to others in explaining variance in external validity indicators, suggesting that the choice of cut score should be based upon theoretical and clinical considerations. This study further extends the authors' prior work examining the effects of methodological factors that are critical to characterizing the developmental course of alcohol involvement.     

Letter search does not affect semantic priming in a probe naming task

The normally robust semantic priming effect observed in lexical decision is usually reduced to the point of being absent, when a letter search has to be performed on the prime. It has been argued that semantic activation is thus not an automatic process but rather cognitively controlled and therefore adaptable to task demands. We examined the effects of letter search priming on pronunciation times and found a reliable semantic priming effect, following letter search that was not affected at all relative to a standard condition, where participants silently read the prime. Thus the nature of the prime task did not seem to affect the processing mode employed, semantic access occurred even though attention was focused on surface properties of the prime.     

Egocentric and allocentric visual cues influence the specification of movement distance and direction

The authors investigated whether visuomotor transformations that support the computation of movement distance (i.e., extent) and movement direction rely differentially on integration of egocentric and allocentric visual information. To accomplish that objective, the authors factorially arranged 17 participants' open-loop reaching movements from 2 movement-start locations with mediolateral (ML) and anteroposterior (AP) variants of the induced Roelofs effect (IRE). The 2 movement-start locations in combination with the 2 IRE configurations enabled the authors to examine the impact of illusory movement pertaining to distance (i.e., AP-IRE) and direction (i.e., ML-IRE) information. AP-IRE and ML-IRE configurations across the 2 movement-start locations reliably influenced reaching endpoints in a direction consistent with the perceptual effects of the illusion. These findings suggest that unitary visual information involving interactive egocentric and allocentric visual cues supports the specification of both movement distance and movement direction.     

Domus Ecclesiae: Rethinking a Category of Ante-Pacem Christian Space

Historians of religion, art, and archaeology often invoke theterm domus ecclesiae (oo ) as a technical category to denotea house or building that had been materially adapted for Christianritual during the ante-pacem period. Most employ the term inthe belief that it is genuinely pre-Constantinian, and thatChristians in this period described their cult spaces as renovatedhouses. This essay demonstrates the inaccuracy of both assumptions,and shows that the first attested literary use of the term datesno earlier than 313 CE, when Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) usedit in his writings to designate a church building without anyindication of its architectural form or history. Following adiscussion of the term's modern history and an analysis of theancient literary evidence, the essay concludes with a brieflook at the material evidence for domus ecclesiae, which, withone exception (the complex at Dura-Europos), also dates to thepost-Constantinian period.