Pocket-sized psychology studies: Exploring daily diary software for Palm Pilots

Daily dairies, also known as experience sampling methods (ESM) or everyday experience methods, are a common methodology utilized to provide insight into momentary psychological processes. Traditionally, such studies often have utilized paper-and-pencil surveys administered several times each day over a span of several days or weeks. However, advances in technology now allow these studies to be conducted using palmtop computers (i.e., personal digital assistants; PDAs). Three software packages for running these studies on the Palm operating system were explored and compared on a number of features. Specifically, ESP (Experience Sampling Program, by Feldman Barrett & Barrett, 2001), iESP Version 3.2 (Intel Experience Sampling Program, by Intel Research Seattle & the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Department), and PMAT Version 2.0 (Purdue Momentary Assessment Tool, by the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University) were examined, with their key features compared. These advances in software for running diary studies include a number of features that provide researchers with methods and information previously unavailable in diary studies and may expand the range of possibilities in diary study designs.     

Influence of education on the pattern of cognitive deterioration in AD patients: the cognitive reserve hypothesis

The cognitive reserve hypothesis proposes that a high educational level could delay the clinical expression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) although neuropathologic changes develop in the brain. Therefore, some studies have reported that when the clinical signs of the disease emerge, high-educated patients may decline more rapidly than low-educated patients because the neuropathology is more advanced. However, these studies have only investigated the decline of global cognition or an isolated cognitive process. To study the differential deterioration pattern of several cognitive processes according to education, the performance of 20 AD patients with a high educational level and a low educational level were compared with the performance of 20 control subjects on a neuropsychological battery. The results showed that cognitive deterioration of AD patients is different according to education, although the global performance was similar in AD patients. The high-educated patients exhibited greater impairment of abstract thinking whereas the low-educated patients showed greater impairment of memory and attentional function. This confirms that some cognitive processes, such as abstract thinking, decline more rapidly in high-educated patients whereas others seem to evolve more slowly if compared to low-educated patients. In this latter case, high-educated patients may still benefit from cognitive reserve after the diagnosis of the dementia.     

Defensive pessimism and precautionary action during the COVID pandemic

The purpose of this research was to test, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hypothesis that individuals who use defensive pessimism as a strategy to manage anxiety are likely to act to prevent or mitigate negative outcomes. Across three crowd-sourced samples (Total N = 1416), defensive pessimism was correlated with self-reports of more precautionary behavior (Studies 1, 2, & 3) and fewer COVID-positive results (Study 3).     

Centering on figurative features during the comprehension of sentences describing scenes

Summary Subjects were asked to read sentences which described scenes containing objects. In the scene described in each sentence, a specific part of a particular object was necessarily implied as having an important role. The object was named but none of its parts were. The assumption was that the subjects, while processing the sentence and immediately afterward, would cognitively center on the important part, as a function of the context created by the sentence. Immediately after reading the sentence, the subjects were probed with a picture of either the important part, or of an unimportant part of the object. Judgments of the compatibility of this picture probe with the sentence were faster for pictures of important parts than for pictures of other parts. This was taken as supporting the hypothesis of cognitive centration. In a second experiment, in which words were used as probes instead of pictures, a purely verbal process to account for the results was ruled out. In a third experiment, subjects were given instructions to intentionally form visual images of the scenes described by the sentences. In this case, overall response times to the picture probes were shorter than in the absence of such instructions, but this decrease was greater for pictures of unimportant parts. This finding was interpreted as showing that imagery instructions increase the rate of activation of features to varying degrees as a function of the previous level of activation.     

Impaired word naming in right-brain-damaged right-handers: error types and time-course analyses

The purpose of this study is to search for cues that could account for the fact that right-hemisphere lesions affect word naming when the criterion for naming is semantic. The authors analyzed the errors as well as the time course of productions of 35 vascular right-brain-damaged subjects (RBD) and 20 control subjects (C) in a semantic-based word-naming task. Results show that there are no differences between groups in terms of (a) the number of errors produced and, (b) the patterns of error types. However, results also show a reduction of verbal fluency for semantic criteria in RBD-subjects present only after the first 30 seconds of production. These results indicate that reduction of word production in RBD-subjects is not the consequence of nonspecific factors such as perseveration or spontaneity, but reflects problems with the less automatized processes permitting exploration of semantic organization, either because scanning process are affected, or because the presence of a discreet semantic impairment prevents scanning from being as efficient. Given that efficient exploration of semantic knowledge is important for lexico-semantic functioning, the present results suggest that the right hemisphere contributes to some aspects of lexico-semantic processing necessary for language production.     

Family Therapy in France: A Brief Overview

The major issues in contemporary family therapy in France are described: Difficult beginnings, the practice of family therapy today, training and professionalisation, organization for family therapy, journals and publishing, and perspectives for family therapy in France.A psychiatrist, Head of Hospital Psychiatric and Mental Health Center near Paris (Ville Evrard. France 93330) and a family therapist     

Faith and the developmental cycle

According to Paul Tillich, faith as a human response is an act of the total personality in which all the elements of man's personal life participate. This paper explores one aspect of this assertion that has been neglected by both psychologists and theologians-the heuristic idea that faith is a developmental phenomenon. Specifically, the paper contends that the dominant form of an individual's faith at any one time is determined in part by the particular developmental stage in which that individual is immersed. This contention is developed using the epigenetic approach of Erik Erikson. Eight developmental forms of faith are explored: among them, faith as trust, faith as obedience, and faith as self-surrender.