An application of the fear avoidance model to three chronic pain problems.

The Fear Avoidance Model of Exaggerated Pain Perception was developed in an attempt to explain how, and why, some individuals develop a more substantial psychological overlay to their low back pain problem than do others. The present paper describes a study in which three chronic pain groups, consisting of Post-Herpetic neuralgia patients, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy patients and chronic low back pain patients were compared with three pain-free comparison groups using the Fear Avoidance Model of Exaggerated Pain Perception. The results show statistically significant differences between the chronic groups and the recovered comparison groups. These results demonstrate the usefulness of the Fear Avoidance Model as an explanation of psychological overlay in chronic pain conditions regardless of pathology.     

Reasoning Dialogues

When people argue with others in conversation, they make a variety of conversational moves: They make claims, ask for justification of others' claims, attack claims, and attack claims' justifications. The arrangement of these moves gives argumentation its characteristic shape. This article illustrates a proposed format for conversations of this type, and it reviews some findings about the way people understand and evaluate these conversations. The findings suggest that judgments of the arguers' burden depend not only on the content of their claims, but also on the conversation's structure. In addition, judgments of the strength of a justification—an arguer's evidence or explanation—are a function of the argument's setting.     

Individual differences in authenticity and mindfulness as predictors of verbal defensiveness

We examined the extent to which individual differences in authenticity and mindfulness predicted verbal defensiveness. Participants first completed measures of authenticity [Kernis, M. H., & Goldman, B. M. (2006). A multicomponent conceptualization of authenticity: Theory and research. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 38 (pp. 283–357).] and mindfulness [Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 822–848]. Within the next few weeks, participants completed the Defensive Verbal Behavior Assessment [Feldman Barrett, L., Williams, N. L., & Fong, G. T. (2002). Defensive verbal behavior assessment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 776–788]. Their responses to potentially self-threatening experiences subsequently were rated for the extent to which they reflected openness and honesty as opposed to defensiveness. Our findings indicated that authenticity and mindfulness correlated positively and that higher scores on each related to lower levels of verbal defensiveness. Additional analyses revealed that the relation between authenticity and verbal defensiveness was indirect, mediated by mindfulness. These findings support the view that higher authenticity and mindfulness relate to greater tendencies to engage self-relevant information in a relatively non-defensive manner.     

Posttraumatic stress symptoms following childbirth and mothers' perceptions of their infants

Postpartum psychological distress can adversely affect the early mother–infant relationship; however, this has not been investigated in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following childbirth. This article explores whether PTSD symptoms relating to labor and delivery are associated with mothers' early perceptions of their infant. Using labor and childbirth as the stressor criterion, 211 women were assessed at 6 weeks' postpartum for symptoms of intrusions, avoidance, and hyperarousal. Their perceptions of their infants, of mother‐to‐infant attachment, and infant behavioral characteristics also were evaluated. In sum, 3.8% of the women fulfilled full diagnostic criteria, and a further 21.3% reported clinically significant symptoms on at least one dimension of PTSD. Those meeting full or partial criteria perceived their attachment relationships to be significantly less optimal and reported more negative maternal representations in terms of their infants being less warm and more invasive. They also rated them as being temperamentally more difficult, prone to distress, and less easy to soothe. However, when the effects of depression were partialled, only the effect for perceived warmth remained. Posttraumatic stress symptoms relating to labor and delivery may adversely influence maternal perceptions of infants, with potentially adverse implications for the developing mother–infant relationship. The overlap with depressive symptoms requires further exploration.     

A family history of psychopathology modifies the decrement in cognitive control among patients with HIV/AIDS

The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of HIV/AIDS on cognitive control and to determine if the effect is modified by familial risk for either alcohol or mood disorders. Sixty HIV-1 seropositive and 75 seronegative volunteers were assigned to four subgroups defined by the crossing of a diagnosis of alcohol dependence in the biological father with diagnoses of either major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder in the biological mother. Cognitive control was evaluated during a task in which subjects were asked, on occasion, to inhibit the impulse to respond in the same physical direction as the stimulus and instead respond in the opposite direction. Event related brain potentials and measures of task performance were recorded. The task evoked a negative shift in a late slow potential (SP) as well as an increment in reaction time when cognitive control was challenged. An important finding was an interaction between trial type, HIV/AIDS, and family history: HIV/AIDS and family history each attenuated the negative shift in the SP to such a degree that no further attenuation could be accomplished by the other. The effects of familial risk for alcohol versus mood disorders were equivalent. In conclusion, the absence of change in a late slow potential following a challenge to cognitive control may represent a marker of familial risk for both externalizing and internalizing disorders. The effects of familial risk on this slow potential are sufficiently robust as to attenuate the effects of HIV/AIDS on the probable generators of the response: the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex.     

Finding Spirits in Spirituality: What are We Measuring in Spirituality and Health Research?

Journal of Religion and Health - What are we asking when we ask about spirituality? When research subjects check survey boxes for “religiosity” and “spirituality” measures...     

Assessor cognitive processes in an operational assessment center

The purpose of this study was (a) to provide additional tests of C. E. Lance, Newbolt, et al.'s (2000) situational specificity (vs. method bias) interpretation of exercise effects on assessment center postexercise dimension ratings and (b) to provide competitive tests of salient dimension versus general impression models of assessor within-exercise evaluations of candidate performance. Results strongly support the situational specificity hypothesis and the general impression model of assessor cognitive processes in which assessors first form overall evaluations of candidate performance that then drive more specific dimensional ratings.