Adult attachment styles and cognitive vulnerability to depression in a sample of undergraduate students: the mediational roles of sociotropy and autonomy

We analysed the mediational role of the personality dimensions of sociotropy and autonomy in the relationship between certain styles of attachment and depressive symptoms. In order for us to do so, a group of university students filled out the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Revised Personal Style Inventory (PSI-II) and the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ). Individuals having attachment styles with a negative model of self (preoccupied and fearful) obtained significantly higher scores in the BDI than those having attachment styles with a positive model of self (secure and dismissing), which coincides with previous research. We followed the standard procedure of Baron and Kenny of linear regression in order to perform the mediational analyses. The preoccupied attachment style-depressive symptoms relationship was mediated by sociotropy. It was also found that autonomy exerted a significant mediational effect on the relationship between the fearful attachment style and depressive symptoms. These results are consistent with the notion that insecure attachment predisposes individuals to the development of depressogenic personality styles. Thus, the findings of the present study contribute to improving the understanding of the factors involved in the development of vulnerability to depression. Furthermore, the results point out the importance of evaluating both attachment style and sociotropy/autonomy personality dimensions for the treatment of depressive patients.     

Repression and Coping Styles in Asthmatic Patients

The objectives of this study were to (a) determine prevalence of the dispositional repressive coping style as well as other situational coping styles in a sample of asthmatic patients and (b) to analyze the capacity of these styles to predict subsequent morbidity (emergency room visits or hospitalizations due to asthma) during a 12-month follow-up. A sample of 75 adult asthmatic patients was selected and information about sociodemographics, asthma severity, and patient’s perception of illness severity was collected. Repressive coping style was defined by a combination of scores obtained on the Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Coping styles were assessed with the dispositional version of the Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Inventory. Eighteen patients (24%) were classified as repressors. Repressor asthmatics obtained scores significantly lower on Emotion-Focused Coping compared to non-repressors (F _(1,72) = 5.15, p = .026). Patients who perceived their asthma as severe reported to use Emotion-Focused Coping more than those who judged it as mild or moderate (F _(2,71) = 4.83, p = .011). A higher use of Denial (an Emotion-Focused strategy of coping) explained 8% of variance of the frequency of emergency room visits during the 12-month follow-up. The prevalence of repressive coping style in the asthmatic population is similar to that registered in other populations of chronic patients, and it is also associated with the tendency to report a lower use of strategies traditionally considered as maladaptive. The use of Emotion-Focused Coping strategies seems to be related to a worse perception of the physical status, and among this group of strategies, Denial also could favor a poor clinical course in bronchial asthma.     

Development of eye-movement control

Cognitive control of behavior continues to improve through adolescence in parallel with important brain maturational processes including synaptic pruning and myelination, which allow for efficient neuronal computations and the functional integration of widely distributed circuitries supporting top-down control of behavior. This is also a time when psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders, emerge reflecting a particularly vulnerability to impairments in development during adolescence. Oculomotor studies provide a unique neuroscientific approach to make precise associations between cognitive control and brain circuitry during development that can inform us of impaired systems in psychopathology. In this review, we first describe the development of pursuit, fixation, and visually-guided saccadic eye movements, which collectively indicate early maturation of basic sensorimotor processes supporting reflexive, exogenously-driven eye movements. We then describe the literature on the development of the cognitive control of eye movements as reflected in the ability to inhibit a prepotent eye movement in the antisaccade task, as well as making an eye movement guided by on-line spatial information in working memory in the oculomotor delayed response task. Results indicate that the ability to make eye movements in a voluntary fashion driven by endogenous plans shows a protracted development into adolescence. Characterizing the transition through adolescence to adult-level cognitive control of behavior can inform models aimed at understanding the neurodevelopmental basis of psychiatric disorders.     

Perceptions of early relationships during the transition to motherhood: The mediating role of social support

Perceptions of the availability of social support were assumed to mediate the association between the future mother's perceptions of early relationships and positive postpartum outcomes. We explored the idea that pregnant women's perceptions of early caretaking relationships as optimal associate with the perceived availability of, and satisfaction with, social support, which in turn, were assumed to affect postpartum depressive symptomatology, the APGAR (i.e., rates of Appearance [color]; Pulse [heartbeat]; Grimace [reflex]; Activity [muscle tone]; and Respiration [breathing], Nelson, 1987) scores of the newborn, and the mother's perceptions of the infant. Using a longitudinal design, we enrolled 120 first‐time pregnant participants, who were assessed during the third trimester of pregnancy and eight weeks postpartum. Newborns were assessed immediately after birth. Findings confirmed the expected model, controlling for levels of depressive symptomatology during pregnancy. This model is discussed in the context of system and transactional models of mother–infant interactions. ©2002 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

How much was your shopping basket? Working memory processes in total basket price estimation

Although much attention has been paid to recall of a single price, research is lacking in understanding the process of how consumers estimate the total price of a shopping basket. Drawing on research on numeric cognition, memory processes, and mental accounting, we show in five studies that the accuracy of total price estimation as well as the timing of such estimation is systematically influenced by several factors. We find that the length (in syllables) of the prices in the basket and the attention that consumers pay to the prices influence the accuracy of the calculation of the total basket price. Furthermore, our studies also show that the timing of the calculation is influenced by the nature of the items in the basket (i.e., unrelated vs. complementary items).     

The effect of conspecifics on corticoadrenal response of rats to a novel environment

The effect of housing conditions and the presence of a conspecific on corticoadrenal response to a novel environment was studied in male Sprague-Dawley rats. The response to a novel environment was the same in rats housed in groups and rats housed alone for 20 days before testing, suggesting that isolation during adulthood did not affect corticoadrenal response to a novel environment. The presence of a nonfamiliar rat (proceeding from another home cage) did not modify corticoadrenal response to the novel environment but the presence of a rat proceeding from the same home cage induced a higher corticoadrenal response to this stressful stimuli. These results can be explained considering that rats exhibit greater emotional reactivity, as measured by adrenal function, in situations which combine familiar (the other rat) and novel (the box) elements than those completely unfamiliar.     

Grounding abstract object characteristics in embodied interactions

Recent studies in cognitive linguistics have demonstrated that objects are conceptualised in terms of the actions they afford, i.e., in terms of their spatial-functional meaning. Since our interactions are constrained by the structure of our body, these studies view conceptualisation as essentially embodied. In this paper we argue that an object's abstract/figurative meaning is also embodied in that it is grounded in patterns of recurrent interactions with our environment, referred to as image schemas. On the basis of the spatial, relational structure of three such image schemas, two everyday products, a jug and an alarm clock, were systematically varied on form dimensions. Experiment 1 showed that participants with a background in design relate abstract characteristics to the form changes in the way predicted. To rule out the possibility that the relations uncovered are due to learned associations, a replication of the experiment was conducted with nai ve participants (experiment 2), leading to highly similar results. In experiment 3, we tested the cross-cultural consistency of our findings by performing a second replication with Brazilian participants. The results of this experiment were only partly in line with our predictions, suggesting that cultural differences in interacting with the environment to some degree affect our understanding of the abstract meaning of objects.     

The Role of Alcohol and Gender in Choices and Judgments About Hypothetical Sexual Encounters1

The goal of this study was to explore the process by which sexual situations that involve alcohol are negotiated. A scenario depicting a drinking situation involving potential sexual activity was constructed and converted into a text-based interactive computer game, in which alcohol consumption of the subject and partner roles was varied. The program included a number of points at which the subject's response determined the subsequent course of action. At these choice points, questions were asked about perceptions of sexual interest and nervousness. The results showed strong gender differences in subjects' choices, judgments, and feelings throughout the hypothetical encounter, with men much more likely to choose responses leading to sexual activity and to express more attraction and sexual desire throughout. Alcohol interacted with gender such that among women, those in drinking scenarios were more likely than those in nondrinking scenarios to choose to have sex at the end of the scenario; this effect was not seen in male subjects.     

Protein-binding assays for adrenocorticoids

The measurement of the adrenocortical hormones, Cortisol and corticosterone, m blood plasma has previously best been done by procedures employing varying degrees of purification of the hormone, followed by photometric or fluorimetric quantitation. These methods have been relatively difficult or laborious, particularly in the case of the procedures that most specifically measure the hormoneof intent. These limitations are considerably overcome by new assays for Cortisol and corticosterone based on the principle of competitive protein-binding of the steroids in the presence of radioactively labeled steroid of the same molecular species. These methods are described and data on the specificity of such a method for corticosterone are presented and compared with one of the better fluorimetric assays.