Structural validity and reliability of the Spanish version of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) in a sample of the general Spanish population

This paper introduces the validation of the Spanish adaptation of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) by Wegner and Zanakos (1994). A sample of 833 people from the general population completed the WBSI along with other questionnaires. The exploratory factor analysis and the confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor solution accounting for 51.8% of the cumulative variance. This structure is comprised of the two following factors: unwanted intrusive thoughts (alpha = .87, r = .70) and actions of distraction and suppression of thoughts (alpha = .80, r = .60). Both internal consistency reliability (alpha = .89) and test-retest reliability (r = .71) showed adequate homogeneity, sound consistency, and stability over time. The results are discussed bearing in mind both isolated factors and the possible relationships of the suppression factor with automatic negative thoughts and insomnia.     

Interdisciplinary research and interprofessional collaborative care in a memory clinic for rural and northern residents of western Canada: Unique training ground for clinical psychology graduate students

Abstract: In Canada, interprofessional education (IPE) and interdisciplinary health research initiatives are beginning to transform the academic health sciences, including graduate training programs for clinical psychologists. In response to mandates and directives from national health policy and research funding bodies, academic training programs are re‐structuring course offerings, practicum training experiences, and research activities to better prepare students for their future roles within interdisciplinary research groups and collaborative patient‐centred clinical teams. As an example of this transformative movement in IPE, described herein are the recent training initiatives in the Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan, and the role of clinical neuropsychology in an innovative interprofessional rural and remote memory clinic.     

La connaissance du gain d’autrui : une incitation au risque ?

This research aims at suggesting a causal model of risk-taking, following the announcement of another player's gains in a gamble with elementary characteristics. Risk-taking was measured by investment ratio, the amount the participant decided to bet divided by his current total assets. According to Langer's definition [J Perso Soc Psychol 32 (1975) 311-328], the illusion of control was measured by the level of personal success. The results show that the knowledge of another's gain increased risk-taking and the expectancy of personal success. These results validated the causal-model wherein the effect of the knowledge of another's gain on risk-taking was mediated by the expectancy of personal success. The discussion relates mainly to the need for taking into account the fact that gamblers are not isolated decision-makers, but takes account of some social parameters which guide their choices and actions.     

“You’re Just Saying That.” Contingencies of self-worth, suspicion, and authenticity in the interpersonal affirmation process

A model of the role and costs of contingent self-worth in the partner-affirmation process was tested. Actors whose self-worth was contingent on appearance or intelligence claimed to have expressed their particular heightened sensitivity to their romantic partners. Suggesting a cost to these reactions, actors’ beliefs about having expressed heightened sensitivity, in turn, predicted their doubts about the authenticity of partners’ positive feedback in the domain of contingency, independently of whether partners claimed to deliver inauthentic feedback. Suggesting a cost for partners, partners of contingent actors appeared to detect actors’ expressions of sensitivity in the domain of contingency and respond by delivering inauthentic feedback to actors in the domain, which in turn predicted partners’ increased relationship anxiety and decreased satisfaction. Results suggest that contingent self-worth may undermine the functioning of the partner-affirmation process through actors discrediting partners’ positive feedback and partners behaving in an inauthentic and controlled manner.     

Stress Generation in Adolescent Depression: The Moderating Role of Child Abuse and Neglect

The present study examined the role of childhood abuse and neglect and depression recurrence in moderating the generation of stressful life events in adolescent depression. Maltreatment history and stressful life events were assessed using two rigorous contextual interviews and rating systems. In a sample of 59 community depressed adolescents we found significantly higher rates of interpersonal events in the 3-month period immediately following depression episode onset versus the 3-month period immediately preceding onset in adolescents with a history of childhood maltreatment. By contrast, rates of events remained constant over a matched period in a control group of non-maltreated adolescents. Furthermore, the generation of interpersonal events only held among those on a first onset of depression. These results suggest that a history of childhood abuse and neglect exacerbates the psychosocial dysfunction associated with the onset of depression, particularly in the very first episode.     

Familiarity enhances visual working memory for faces

Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or inverted and a low- or high-load concurrent verbal WM task was administered to suppress contribution from verbal WM. Even with a high verbal memory load, visual WM performance was significantly better and capacity estimated as significantly greater for famous versus unfamiliar faces. Face inversion abolished this effect. Thus, neither strategic, explicit support from verbal WM nor low-level feature processing easily accounts for the observed benefit of high familiarity for visual WM. These results demonstrate that storage of items in visual WM can be enhanced if robust visual representations of them already exist in long-term memory.     

The positives of negative emotions: willingness to express negative emotions promotes relationships

Four studies support the hypothesis that expressing negative emotion is associated with positive relationship outcomes, including elicitation of support, building of new close relationships, and heightening of intimacy in the closest of those relationships. In Study 1, participants read vignettes in which another person was experiencing a negative emotion. Participants reported they would provide more help when the person chose to express the negative emotion. In Study 2, participants watched a confederate preparing for a speech. Participants provided more help to her when she expressed nervousness. In Study 3, self-reports of willingness to express negative emotions predicted having more friends, controlling for demographic variables and extraversion. In Study 4, self-reports of willingness to express negative emotion measured prior to arrival at college predicted formation of more relationships, greater intimacy in the closest of those relationships, and greater received support from roommates across participants' first semester of college.     

Age Comparisons in Workplace Sexual Harassment Perceptions

Few studies have systematically examined the influence of perceivers’ age on perceptions of sexual harassment. We sought to fill this gap, determine whether sexist attitudes mediate relations between age and sexual harassment perceptions, and whether relations between gender, sexist attitudes and perceptions are moderated by age. Results from an age-stratified sample of 965 students and staff employees at a US Midwestern university found a positive relationship between age and sexual harassment perceptions. Hostile sexism partially mediated this relationship, but age did not moderate correlations with gender or sexist attitudes. College-aged samples are less sensitive to harassment than older-aged samples, but the validity of other predictors of sexual harassment perceptions, such as gender and sexist attitudes, remains intact regardless of sample age.     

Age of acquisition's effect on memory for semantically associated word pairs

This experiment investigated the effects of age of acquisition (AoA) in memory for associated word pairs in a cued recall task. Participants studied a list of frequency-controlled early- and late-acquired words in semantically related pairs and then were asked to recall the second word of the pair when cued with the first. Reaction time effects were found, showing that a late-acquired cue for an early-acquired target word was responded to significantly faster than other combinations. Additionally, late-acquired target words resulted in significantly more accurate responses. As significant differences were found even when frequency was controlled, the effects must therefore stem from the manipulations ofAoA. Given this evidence, the implications for AoA's effects on the organization of semantic memory are explored.