Revisiting self-regulatory techniques to promote physical activity in older adults: null-findings from a randomised controlled trial

Objective. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted to evaluate a three-hour face-to-face physical activity (PA) intervention in community-dwelling older German adults with four groups: The intervention group (IG) received behaviour change techniques (BCTs) based on the health action process approach plus a views-on-ageing component to increase PA. The second intervention group ‘planning’ (IGpl) contained the same BCTs, only substituted the views-on-ageing component against an additional planning task. An active control group received the same BCTs, however, targeting volunteering instead of PA. A passive control group (PCG) received no intervention.

Design. The RCT comprised 5 time-points over 14 months in N = 310 participants aged 64+.

Main outcome measures. Self-reported as well as accelerometer-assessed PA.

Results. Neither PA measure increased in the IG as compared to the other groups at any point in time. Bayes analyses supported these null-effects.

Conclusion. A possible explanation for this null-finding in line with a recent meta-analysis is that some self-regulatory BCTs may be ineffective or even negatively associated with PA in interventions for older adults as they are assumed to be less acceptable for older adults. This interpretation was supported by observed reluctance to participate in self-regulatory BCTs in the current study.     

Asian and Pacific Island American students' acculturation and etiology beliefs about typical counseling presenting problems

Asian American Pacific Island college students (N = 93) completed measures of acculturation and mental health worldview, in the form of beliefs about the likely causes of 24 typical counseling presenting problems. A criterion sample of 27 staff from 2 university counseling centers reported their beliefs about the most likely cause of the same 24 problems for a typical client. A response similarity index was calculated, with higher scores reflecting greater similarity between student and counselor mental health worldviews. Results suggest that higher acculturation was associated with greater level of match between the students' etiology beliefs and those of counselors. The greatest differences were observed for serious personal problems, whereas there was more belief convergence about causes of academic problems.     

The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: a comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete words

Are the concepts represented by emotion words different from abstract words in memory? We examined the distinct characteristics of emotion concepts in 3 separate experiments. The first demonstrated that emotion words are better recalled than both concrete and abstract words in a free recall task. In the second experiment, ratings of abstract, concrete, and emotion words were compared on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. Results revealed a difference between all 3 word types on each of the 3 scales. The third experiment investigated priming in a lexical decision task for homogeneous (abstract-abstract and emotion-emotion) and heterogeneous (abstract-emotion and emotion-abstract) associated word pairs. Priming occurred only for the homogeneous and heterogeneous abstract-emotion word pair conditions. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in terms of the circumplex, hierarchical, and semantic activation models. The results are most consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model.     

Linguistic Analysis of Written Narratives of Caregivers of Children and Adolescents with Chronic Illness: Cognitive and Emotional Processes and Physical and Psychological Health Outcomes

Used linguistic analysis of written narratives of caregivers of hospitalized youth with chronic illness to identify emotional and cognitive processes related to physical and psychological health outcomes following writing. Measures were administered at baseline and 4 months. Experimental group (n = 29) wrote about traumas whereas the control group (n = 24) wrote about summer activities for 20 min on three different days. Compared groups on negative emotion- and cognition-related word use. Tested change in negative emotion- and cognition-related word use as predictors of outcomes in experimental group. Consistent with hypotheses, experimental group used more negative emotion words [F(1, 53) = 77.55, p < .001] and cognition-related words than control group [F(1, 53) = 19.09, p < .001] and an increase in cognition words predicted Physical Health Summary Score on SF-36 (standardized = .37, p < .05). A decrease in negative emotion words was related to Physical Health Summary Score on SF-36 only when entered into regression with change in cognition words (standardized = –.31, p < .05). A decrease in negative emotion together with an increase in cognitive processing facilitated by written emotional disclosure has beneficial effects on physical health-related quality of life.     

Seeing failure in your life: Imagery perspective determines whether self-esteem shapes reactions to recalled and imagined failure

The present research reveals that when it comes to recalling and imagining failure in one's life, changing how one looks at the event can change its impact on well-being; however, the nature of the effect depends on an aspect of one's self-concept, namely, self-esteem. Five studies measured or manipulated the visual perspective (internal first-person vs. external third-person) individuals used to mentally image recalled or imagined personal failures. It has been proposed that imagery perspective determines whether people's reactions to an event are shaped bottom-up by concrete features of the event (first-person) or top-down by their self-concept (third-person; L. K. Libby & R. P. Eibach, 2011b). Evidence suggests that differences in the self-concepts of individuals with low and high self-esteem (LSEs and HSEs) are responsible for self-esteem differences in reaction to failure, leading LSEs to have more negative thoughts and feelings about themselves (e.g., M. H. Kernis, J. Brockner, & B. S. Frankel, 1989). Thus, the authors predicted, and found, that low self-esteem was associated with greater overgeneralization--operationalized as negativity in accessible self-knowledge and feelings of shame--only when participants had pictured failure from the third-person perspective and not from the first-person. Further, picturing failure from the third-person, rather than first-person, perspective, increased shame and the negativity of accessible knowledge among LSEs, whereas it decreased shame among HSEs. Results help to distinguish between different theoretical accounts of how imagery perspective functions and have implications for the study of top-down and bottom-up influences on self-judgment and emotion, as well as for the role of perspective and abstraction in coping.     

Exogenous attention influences visual short-term memory in infants

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that developing visual attentional mechanisms influence infants' Visual Short-Term Memory (VSTM) in the context of multiple items. Five- and 10-month-old infants (N = 76) received a change detection task in which arrays of three differently colored squares appeared and disappeared. On each trial one square changed color and one square was cued; sometimes the cued item was the changing item, and sometimes the changing item was not the cued item. Ten-month-old infants exhibited enhanced memory for the cued item when the cue was a spatial pre-cue (Experiment 1) and 5-month-old infants exhibited enhanced memory for the cued item when the cue was relative motion (Experiment 2). These results demonstrate for the first time that infants younger than 6 months can encode information in VSTM about individual items in multiple-object arrays, and that attention-directing cues influence both perceptual and VSTM encoding of stimuli in infants as in adults.     

Recounting the same events again and again: children's consistency across multiple interviews

Children (2–13 years at time of injury) were interviewed four times about an injury that required hospital Emergency Room treatment, namely at 1 week, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years. The consistency of children's reports was assessed and all children gave mostly the same information at each interview, although consistency was higher for older children and for injury rather than hospital details. Furthermore, details recalled at every interview were virtually always accurate while details that were sometimes omitted were a little less likely to be accurate. New information that was introduced after 6 months was more likely to be accurate than inaccurate but new information introduced at 1 or 2 years post‐injury was just as likely to be wrong as right (except for 12–13‐year‐olds). Implications for forensic situations are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Infants’ identification of three-dimensional form from transformations of linear perspective

The ability of infants to perceive three-dimensional structure from transformations of linear perspective was investigated in two studies. Infants were habituated to the pattern of linear perspective transformations corresponding to a particular three-dimensional object, and their relative preference for that object as compared with a different three-dimensional object was assessed both before and after habituation. The habituation displays showed the distorting shadow cast by a rotating object and therefore provided only transformations of linear perspective as information specifying three-dimensional form. The pre- and posttest displays involved the actual three-dimensional objects and provided binocular, shading, and texture information specifying three-dimensional form, but did not provide informative transformations of linear perspective. In Study 1, 6-month-olds showed changes in preference from pre- to posttest that were related to the identity of the object whose shadow they had seen during habituation; 4-month-olds, however, did not show preference changes related to the habituation object. In Study 2, rhythm information that may have served as a basis for responding in Study 1 was eliminated from the test displays. Six-month-olds again showed changes in preference that were dependent on their habituation experience. It is concluded that, by 6 months of age, infants are able to perceive object structure from the isolated cue of transformations of linear perspective. The findings are discussed with reference to infants’ three-dimensional form perception based on other cues and also with reference to the emergence of certain spatially related moter activities.     

STEPPING UP TO MOTHERHOOD AMONG INNER-CITY TEENS

This mixed-methods, context-oriented study explored transitions to motherhood among pregnant and newly parenting inner-city teenagers ( n = 80) attending an alternative public school. Additionally, a novel research approach was assessed. Using data from a 2-year psychotherapy trial, inductive content analyses of therapy sessions and post hoc interviews of clinicians were synthesized with questionnaires and other more traditional data sources to develop a strength-focused understanding of prominent life themes, as experienced by participants. Results suggested that, although few teens had planned to have a baby, a large majority were pleased to discover their pregnancies. A heightened sense of purpose emerged, connected with drastically increased safety-conscious behaviors. Still, public and familial alienation was common. Grandmothers and additional female mentors became central, and their support of the pregnancy was protective against teen mothers' depression. The research technique assessed in this study provided broad-ranging information with substantial validity and minimal time and expense.