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.     

Identifying environmental contributions to autism: provocative clues and false leads

The potential role of environmental factors in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is an area of emerging interest within the public and scientific communities. The high degree of heritability of ASD suggests that environmental influences are likely to operate through their interaction with genetic susceptibility during vulnerable periods of development. Evaluation of the plausibility of specific neurotoxicants as etiological agents in ASD should be guided by toxicological principles, including dose-effect dependency and pharmacokinetic parameters. Clinical and epidemiological investigations require the use of sufficiently powered study designs with appropriate control groups and unbiased case ascertainment and exposure assessment. Although much of the existing data that have been used to implicate environmental agents in ASD are limited by methodological shortcomings, a number of efforts are underway that will allow more rigorous evaluation of the role of environmental exposures in the etiology and/or phenotypic expression of the disorder. Surveillance systems are now in place that will provide reliable prevalence estimates going forward in time. Anticipated discoveries in genetics, brain pathology, and the molecular/cellular basis of functional impairment in ASD are likely to provide new opportunities to explore environmental aspects of this disorder.     

Rising and surviving: a conceptual model of active coping among Black lesbians

This study tested a conceptual model of active coping among a predominantly middle-class sample (N = 92) of Black lesbians (ages 18 to 68) attending a Black lesbian retreat. F. B. Tyler's (1978) active coping dimension of psychosocial competence and L. P. Anderson, C. L. Eaddy, and E. A. Williams's (1990) psychosocial competence model for Black Americans emphasizing the role of individual and environmental factors provided the theoretical framework for the study. A theoretical model was developed to examine whether internal (self-esteem, race and lesbian identification) and external (social support, perceived available lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered resources) factors predicted active coping. Results confirmed that the model of internal and external factors was a statistically significant predictor of active coping.     

Something from nothing: exploring dimensions of children's knowing through the repeated reading of favourite books

Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio explore some of the dimensions of knowing that children, teachers and parents may engage together during story‐time. They reflect on some of their own long‐term relationships with children and children's books, especially Phoebe Gilman's Gilman P 1992 Something from nothing (New York, NY, Scholastic Inc)  [Google Scholar] Something from nothing (published in 1992) and Simms Taback's Taback S 1999 Joseph had a little overcoat (New York, NY, Viking‐Penguin)  [Google Scholar] Joseph had a little overcoat, published in 1999. The authors probe issues such as why children ask to hear a favourite story over and over and why they suddenly abandon all interest and move on to a new book. They explore the meaning of the silences that sometimes arise during story‐time, pooling around the young listeners as the last words of the book are read. Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio remind us of the value of literature in the lives of children and they affirm that the reading and re‐reading of favourite stories enables the understanding of complex human issues and contributes significantly to social, emotional and spiritual growth.     

Psychopathy is related to negative affectivity but not to anxiety sensitivity

Although the hypothesis that psychopathic individuals are characterized by a reduced capacity for experiencing anxiety is central to many theories of psychopathy, most prior studies have examined anxiety and fear measures generally considered outdated in the literature. Moreover, prior findings are mixed, with several studies reporting no relationships between psychopathy and anxiety, and others suggesting negative relationships for the affective, interpersonal aspects of the disorder and positive relationships for the antisocial behavior dimension. To examine whether psychopathy dimensions are associated with contemporary measures of anxiety, the Anxiety Sensitivity Index and State Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait scale were administered to 157 male inmates. Participants also completed the MMPI-derived Welsh Anxiety Scale (WAS), commonly used in psychopathy studies. Analyses provide no evidence for a negative relationship between psychopathy's affective, interpersonal factor and anxiety sensitivity after controlling for trait anxiety. Trait anxiety and WAS scores were positively associated with the antisocial behavior dimension of psychopathy. Findings do replicate prior relationships between the WAS and psychopathy, suggesting the WAS may measure aspects of negative affectivity that differ from anxiety.     

Memory effects in syntactic ERP tasks

The study presented here investigated the role of memory in normal sentence processing by looking at ERP effects to normal sentences and sentences containing grammatical violations. Sentences where the critical word was in the middle of the sentence were compared to sentences where the critical word always occurred in sentence-final position. Grammaticality judgments were required at the end of the sentence. While the violations in both conditions result in the expected increase in the P600 component (reflecting the fact that the syntactic violation is being processed), the sentences with the sentence-medial critical word also result in a late frontal negativity effect. It is hypothesized that this effect is due to greater memory requirements that are needed to keep the violation in mind until a response can be made at the end of the sentence. The maintenance of the decision that a sentence is ungrammatical must be kept in memory longer for sentence-medial violations as opposed to when the violation occurs at the end of the sentence (immediately preceding the moment at which the judgment can be made).     

Interoceptive sensitivity and self-reports of emotional experience

People differ in the extent to which they emphasize feelings of activation or deactivation in their verbal reports of experienced emotion, termed arousal focus (AF). Two multimethod studies indicate that AF is linked to heightened interoceptive sensitivity (as measured by performance on a heartbeat detection task). People who were more sensitive to their heartbeats emphasized feelings of activation and deactivation when reporting their experiences of emotion over time more than did those who were less sensitive. This relationship was not accounted for by several other variables, including simple language effects. Implications for the role of interoception in experienced emotion and the validity of self-reported emotion are discussed.     

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.