Influence of time-of-day on joint Navon effect

The shared attention theory suggests that people devote greater cognitive resources to those features co-attended simultaneously with others, determining better performance in several types of tasks. When co-actors performed a go/no-go Navon task attending different features of target letters, the performance was impaired, reflecting a joint Navon effect (the representation of a co-actor’s attentional focus made it more difficult to select and apply one’s own focus of attention), probably due to asynchronous co-attention with a decrease in cognitive resources involved. Researches in chronobiology and chronopsychology demonstrated that not only selective attention (involved in a Navon task), but also cognitive resources have a daily fluctuations, mainly paralleling the circadian rhythm of body temperature (i.e. increasing values from the morning to evening with a subsequent decline in the night). The study was conducted to assess whether the presence of joint attention, as measured by the joint Navon effect, was influenced by the time-of-day. Sixteen pairs of participants sitting next to each other were required to respond to the identity letters in a go/no-go Navon task twice: in the morning (09:00–10:00) and early afternoon (13:00–14:00). The results showed a joint Navon effect in the morning session only, suggesting that joint attention was affected by the time-of-day effect on cognitive resources.     

Determinants of Quality of Life in Pre-Frail Older Adults According to Phenotypic Criteria: the VERISAUDE Study

Frailty is a dynamic clinical syndrome considered as part of an age-associated continuum of severity, including pre-frailty as an intermediate frailty status with potential reversibility to robustness. The main purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between the different domains of quality of life, functional dependence and depressive symptomatology in older adults diagnosed as pre-frail, before progression to frailty occurs. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine whether sex, age, level of education and scores in the Geriatric Depression Scale 15-item Short Form (GDS-SF) and the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Lawton scale determine the worst score in the WHOQOL-BREF (World Health Organization Quality of Life) in older adults meeting one or two frailty phenotypic criteria. Depressive symptomatology (GDS-SF score) was the main determinant of poor quality of life in both groups, and in all areas of WHOQOL-BREF. Age was only associated with poor satisfaction with own health. Female sex and low educational level were linked to low physical QOL and poor self-rated health, respectively, but only in older adults meeting one frailty criterion. Association between functional status and WHOQOL-BREF scores was only found in the univariate analysis. These results underline the importance of identifying multiple aspects, but mainly the presence of depressive symptomatology, as risk factors for all dimensions of quality of life in the pre-frailty process, where interventions might be targeted to reduce the progression of pre-frailty and frailty in older adults.     

Now you see it, now you don't: explicit versus implicit measures of the personal/group discrimination discrepancy

When making explicit self-report ratings, members of status- and racial-minority groups report less personal experience with discrimination than that encountered by their group—a phenomenon called the personal/group discrimination discrepancy (PGDD). This study provides evidence, for the first time, that the PGDD may be, in part, a product of the procedure used to measure it. White women and men completed explicit and implicit measures of personal and group discrimination based on sex. The PGDD surfaced among women in the explicit measures, but not in the implicit measures. These findings suggest that explicit and implicit measures might provide different assessments of experience with discrimination.     

Knowledge and imagery of contractile mechanisms do not improve muscle strength

Improving performance in strength tasks requires modifications charateristic of motor skill learning, such as more efficacious motor-unit firing behavior. Because domain-specific knowledge is integral to learning and performing motor kills, the present purpose was to examine selected factors of strength-specific knowledge and effects they might have on acquiring strength. Following baseline testing for maximal strength on a knee-extension task, participants were matched by sex and strength and placed into control (n=8) and treatment (n=8) groups. Quadriceps muscle electromyographic data were also collected. The treatment group underwent two educational sessions detailing muscle physiology, neural control of muscle force, and imagery training using this knowledge. The control group underwent two educational sessions about health and fitness. Following the educational sessions the participants were retested for strength. Analysis indicated that the education and imagery treatment had no effect on strength, nor did electromyographic measures indicate that the treatment group benefitted from intervention. It was concluded that the knowledge was simply not relevant to knee extension-force production or that use of the knowledge involved a disadvantageous internal focus of attention away from relevant task demands.     

Attentional Processing of Threat in Bipolar Disorder: Going Beyond Mood-Congruency

Emotional processing in bipolar disorder (BD) entails a complex attentional pattern not merely restricted to happy or sad biases, but also directed towards threatening information. This study examined threat-related bias on attentional orienting when participants were not instructed about the presentation of emotional stimuli (i.e., implicit instructions). An emotional dot-probe task in which an emotional face (i.e., threat, sad, happy) is simultaneously displayed with a neutral face was applied to BD individuals in their different episodes: mania (n?=?26), depression (n?=?24), and euthymia (n?=?28) as well as to a group of healthy controls (n?=?28). Symptomatic BD patients (i.e., in a manic or depressive episode) showed an attentional orienting bias toward threatening faces but not for happy or sad faces, while euthymic BD patients did not exhibit any attentional bias for emotional stimuli. A bias toward happy faces was found in the control group. Threat-related bias was not related to the severity of affective and anxiety symptoms in BD. When attention is not explicitly directed to emotional information, threat-related bias may characterize attentional orienting during mania and depression, but may be attenuated during euthymia.

     

Comparison of cognitive-behavioural therapy and psychodynamic therapy in the treatment of anxiety among university students: an effectiveness study

The aim of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural (CBT) and psychodynamic (PDT) therapies in the treatment of anxiety among university students. To this aim, the Symptom Questionnaire (SQ) was completed by 30 students assigned to CBT and by 24 students assigned to PDT, both at the beginning and at the end of treatment. The main problem presented by all patients was anxiety. Except for one sub-scale, we observed significant differences in the scores of all sub-scales and scales of SQ, with lower scores at the end of the therapy, indicating lower distress, regardless of the type of treatment. The present findings suggest that both therapies are effective in the treatment of anxiety among university students.     

Comparing Education,Employment, Social Support and Well-being among Youth with Disabilities and Their Peers in South Africa

Youth with disabilities face many challenges in life which are thought to have a negative impact on their well-being. Evidence, however, suggests that individuals differ in their resilience to deal with adverse life-events and protect their well-being. These differences may be explained by an individual’s resources such as education, employment, and social support. Studies on how youth with disabilities perceive their well-being and resources important to their well-being are, however, lacking. In this study we therefore compared education, employment, social support, and well-being between youth with disabilities (n?=?120) and their peers (n?=?117) in South Africa. In addition, we investigated the relationship between background characteristics, having a disability, access to resources, and well-being. The unemployment rate among youth with disabilities is higher, they are less educated, receive less social support and report poorer states of well-being. Our study showed that having a disability, social support, and employment were associated with the well-being of youth in South Africa. While having a disability predicted well-being in youth, the effect was mediated by employment and social support, indicating that those two resources influence wellbeing through both a direct and buffer effect. Therefore, employment and social support may mitigate the negative consequences of a disability and have a substantial role in improving or maintaining well-being.