Delivering your daily dose of well-being to the workplace: a randomized controlled trial of an online well-being programme for employees

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a newly developed brief, cost-effective, flexible, and broadly accessible online programme designed to enhance employee well-being. Considering the demands of the working world, the development of the positive intervention (PI) programme was based on empirical findings and latest theoretical advances from the field of positive psychology, namely the PERMA model of well-being. The new PERMA-based programme’s effectiveness to increase employee well-being was evaluated with a longitudinal field experiment, including a wait list control group and an already established PI programme (i.e., gratitude programme) for comparison (three-armed randomized controlled trial; n = 303, N_male = 99, N_female = 203, M_age = 41.16, SD = 12.26). Repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) supported that on average, participants of the gratitude programme and the PERMA-based programme reported significant increases in employee well-being after the intervention, as compared to no increases in the wait list control group. The significant increases yielded small effect sizes for general subjective well-being and medium effect sizes for work-related subjective well-being. Post-hoc analyses controlling for baseline well-being also supported the efficacy of the PIs. Contrary to the prediction of the PERMA-based programme’s superiority, participants of both online PI programmes reported similar gains in employee well-being components. Practical implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.     

Exploring Child and Parent Factors in the Diagnostic Agreement on the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule

Worryingly low levels of parent–child agreement on child psychiatric diagnosis are reported. This study examined parent–child agreement on diagnostic categories and severity ratings with the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule, Child and Parents versions (ADIS-C/P). Children’s age, gender, motivation and self-concept and parent’s general psychopathology and diagnoses were examined. Participants were 110 children (aged 8–14 years) with a principal specific phobia diagnosis, and their parents. Findings revealed excellent parent–child agreement on principal specific phobia diagnosis (97.3%), and fair levels of concordance on most co-occurring secondary diagnoses. As expected, children with high motivation had generally stronger parent–child agreement on diagnoses and severity ratings (for ADHD p?p?p?相似文献   

Perceptual flexibility is coupled with reduced executive inhibition in students of the visual arts

Artists often report that seeing familiar stimuli in novel and interesting ways plays a role in visual art creation. However, the attentional mechanisms which underpin this ability have yet to be fully investigated. More specifically, it is unclear whether the ability to reinterpret visual stimuli in novel and interesting ways is facilitated by endogenously generated switches of attention, and whether it is linked in turn to executive functions such as inhibition and response switching. To address this issue, the current study explored ambiguous figure reversal and executive function in a sample of undergraduate students studying arts and non-art subjects (N = 141). Art students showed more frequent perceptual reversals in an ambiguous figure task, both when viewing the stimulus passively and when eliciting perceptual reversals voluntarily, but showed no difference from non-art students when asked to actively maintain specific percepts. In addition, art students were worse than non-art students at inhibiting distracting flankers in an executive inhibition task. The findings suggest that art students can elicit endogenous shifts of attention more easily than non-art students but that this faculty is not directly associated with enhanced executive function. It is proposed that the signature of artistic skill may be increased perceptual flexibility accompanied by reduced cognitive inhibition; however, future research will be necessary to determine which particular subskills in the visual arts are linked to aspects of perception and executive function.     

Speech in spinocerebellar ataxia

Spinocerebellar ataxias (SCAs) are a heterogeneous group of autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias clinically characterized by progressive ataxia, dysarthria and a range of other concomitant neurological symptoms. Only a few studies include detailed characterization of speech symptoms in SCA. Speech symptoms in SCA resemble ataxic dysarthria but symptoms related to phonation may be more prominent. One study to date has shown an association between differences in speech and voice symptoms related to genotype. More studies of speech and voice phenotypes are motivated, to possibly aid in clinical diagnosis. In addition, instrumental speech analysis has been demonstrated to be a reliable measure that may be used to monitor disease progression or therapy outcomes in possible future pharmacological treatments.     

Occupational Therapists' Experience Concerning Occupational Performance in Adults With Asperger Syndrome

Persons with Asperger Syndrome often seem to have difficulty performing everyday occupations. This study aimed to describe occupational therapists' experience concerning abilities to occupational performance among adults with Asperger Syndrome. Data were collected in interviews with eight occupational therapists and analyzed using a qualitative method. Results showed that clients with Asperger Syndrome often possess abilities but seem to have difficulties knowing when, where, and how they should use them. The ability to adapt behavior in accordance with cues from the environment was identified as the core category. Environment plays a major role in how these persons interact in different situations.     

Trauma and processes of separation from parental figures

Abstract

Extreme conditions in some young persons' life-experiences might postpone or even hinder the natural process of mourning of lost childhood omnipotence, ambivalent feelings towards and separation from parental figures. The psychic mechanisms behind these youngsters' flight from the loving grip of their parents to the conflicting situations which later traumatise them are described. The traumatic events following their choice of leaving the parental home were later unconsciously experienced as punishment—a direct consequence of the forbidden separation. Guilt problems otherwise within the normal range of development, here get a special colouring which can be recognised among others in the difficulties to establish a working-alliance with the therapist and problems in establishing intimate relationships later in life.     

The framework of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy with traumatised patients and the institution

Abstract

Lindbom-Jakobson M, Lindgren L. The Framework of Psychoanalytically Oriented Psychotherapy with Traumatised Patients and the Institution. Int Forum Psychoanal 1997;6:217-224. ISSN 0803-706X.

Psychotherapies performed at multidisciplinary institutions will be influenced by the ongoing dynamics and inevitable group processes of the institution. The difficulties of these processes become extremely hard to handle when the patient category is a severely traumatised one. The prerequisite of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, the illusion of the sealed room and fixed framework, gets disturbed by the information flow in an institution. The institutions for these patients tend to become stages on which the patients as well as staff can perform and repeat their intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts, non-adaptive defences and disturbed object relations. The predominant dynamic that arises around tortured refugees as a patient category is sado-masochistic relating.     

Effects of Age on the Temporal Organization of Working Memory in Deaf Signers

ABSTRACT

Deaf native signers have a general working memory (WM) capacity similar to that of hearing non-signers but are less sensitive to the temporal order of stored items at retrieval. General WM capacity declines with age, but little is known of how cognitive aging affects WM function in deaf signers. We investigated WM function in elderly deaf signers (EDS) and an age-matched comparison group of hearing non-signers (EHN) using a paradigm designed to highlight differences in temporal and spatial processing of item and order information. EDS performed worse than EHN on both item and order recognition using a temporal style of presentation. Reanalysis together with earlier data showed that with the temporal style of presentation, order recognition performance for EDS was also lower than for young adult deaf signers. Older participants responded more slowly than younger participants. These findings suggest that apart from age-related slowing irrespective of sensory and language status, there is an age-related difference specific to deaf signers in the ability to retain order information in WM when temporal processing demands are high. This may be due to neural reorganisation arising from sign language use. Concurrent spatial information with the Mixed style of presentation resulted in enhanced order processing for all groups, suggesting that concurrent temporal and spatial cues may enhance learning for both deaf and hearing groups. These findings support and extend the WM model for Ease of Language Understanding.