Adolescents' participation in organized activities and developmental success 2 and 8 years after high school: do sponsorship, duration, and intensity matter?

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, the authors examined relations between educational, civic, and occupational success in young adulthood and the duration and intensity of participation in organized activities during high school. They also examined these relations as a function of sponsorship (i.e., school- vs. community-sponsored organized activities). They found that youths who participated in organized activities for 2 years demonstrated more favorable educational and civic outcomes in young adulthood than those who participated for 1 year. More intensive participation was also associated with greater educational, civic, and occupational success in young adulthood--particularly among youths who participated in activities for 2 years. Educational attainment often mediated the relations between temporal measures of participation and young adult civic and occupational outcomes. With the exception of analyses examining occupational success, findings varied little as a function of sponsorship. Of note, analyses revealed that both temporal measures of participation were positively associated with young adult outcomes as many as 8 years after high school.     

Children's emotions and memory for affective narrative content

The present study was an investigation of effects of emotional states on children's learning and memory for a short narrative. Happy, sad, or neutral moods were induced in 72 second-grade boys and girls by a standard affect induction procedure. This mood induction was accomplished either before or after they heard a story in which two protagonists encountered a variety of experiences having an affective character. For half of the subjects, the initial story event had a positive affective valence, and for half it was negative. Children's memory for events in the narrative was assessed immediately afterward, using measures offo free recall, cued recall, and recognition. Children recalled more affective content than neutral content, and boys recalled more than girls. Valence of the initial story item and sex of subject influenced the relationship between mood state and memory for story events. Under some conditions, positive moods reduced recognition accuracy for positive material. The findings suggest that simple patterns of mood-influenced memory found in previous studies are modified by factors such as characteristics of the learner and the organization of the material to be learned. The relationship between mood and memory thus appears to be more complex than previously recognized.This experiment was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8308147) to John C. Masters. The authors wish to thank Bill Harris, Suzanne Chabaud, and Saneya Hassan for assistance in data collection and coding.     

Extensions of Rasch's multiplicative poisson model

Consideration will be given to a model developed by Rasch that assumes scores observed on some types of attainment tests can be regarded as realizations of a Poisson process. The parameter of the Poisson distribution is assumed to be a product of two other parameters, one pertaining to the ability of the subject and a second pertaining to the difficulty of the test. Rasch's model is expanded by assuming a prior distribution, with fixed but unknown parameters, for the subject parameters. The test parameters are considered fixed. Secondly, it will be shown how additional between- and within-subjects factors can be incorporated. Methods for testing the fit and estimating the parameters of the model will be discussed, and illustrated by empirical examples.     

Group climate and group development in a community meeting on a short-term inpatient psychiatric unit

Group climate and group development of the community meeting on a short-term inpatient psychiatric unit are examined. The Group Climate Questionnaire (GCQ) was administered to all staff and patients present at the weekly community meeting on an acute treatment unit in a teaching hospital over a 12-week period. Results show that staff and patients perceive the community meetings in relatively similar ways, that the group climate of a community meeting can attain a positive working state, and that, at times, the meeting can progress through developmental stages of group process. Behavioral observations support the GCQ as a measure of group interaction.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mary Pat Donnelly with the statistical analyses and the cooperation of all staff and patients who participated in this study.     

Differences in high and low anxiety sensitive women's responses to a laboratory-based cold pressor task

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) has been linked to a variety of disabling chronic health conditions, including pain-related conditions. A recent study has found that healthy women with high AS reported significantly higher levels of sensory and affective pain on an experimental cold pressor task compared to women with low AS. However, this study found no differences between AS groups for pain tolerance or pain threshold. In the present study, which was designed to replicate and extend these findings, 90 undergraduate university women were selected for inclusion in 1 of 2 AS groups (high or low) based on their screening scores on a 16-item measure of AS. Participants were tested individually on a lab-based cold pressor task using a variety of self-report and observer-measured variables. Data analyses revealed that, as expected, the high AS participants reported significantly more fear in response to the cold pressor on a relevant item of the McGill Pain Questionnaire-Short Form (SF-MPQ) than did the low AS participants. Also as expected, the high AS participants reported more pain in response to the cold pressor on the Present Pain Index (PPI) of the SF-MPQ than did the low AS participants. High AS participants did not differ from low AS participants on other aspects of the cold pressor response (e.g. pain threshold, pain tolerance, pain recovery). These results support the role of pain-related fear as a mediating variable between AS and increased perceived pain intensity.     

Why do they exercise less? Barriers to exercise in high-anxiety-sensitive women

Anxiety sensitivity (AS; fear of arousal sensations) is a risk factor for mental and physical health problems, including physical inactivity. Because of the many mental and physical health benefits of exercise, it is important to better understand why high-AS individuals may be less likely to exercise. The present study's aim was to understand the role of barriers to exercise in explaining lower levels of physical exercise in high-AS individuals. Participants were undergraduate women who were selected as high (n = 82) or low (n = 72) AS. High-AS women participated in less physical exercise and perceived themselves as less fit than low-AS women. Mediation analyses revealed that barriers to exercise accounted for the inverse relationships between AS group and physical exercise/fitness levels. Findings suggest that efforts to increase physical exercise in at-risk populations, such as high-AS individuals, should not focus exclusively on benefits to exercise but should also target reasons why these individuals are exercising less.     

A brief cognitive-behavioral approach to reducing anxiety sensitivity decreases pain-related anxiety

Anxiety sensitivity (AS; fear of anxiety-related sensations) is a known risk factor for anxiety disorders and recently has been linked to pain disorders. The present study was guided by the hypothesis that a program designed to reduce AS levels might also result in a decrease in anxiety related to pain sensations. Female undergraduates, selected as either high or low in AS according to screening scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), were randomly assigned to participate in 3 1-hour, small group sessions of either cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; psycho-education, cognitive restructuring, and interoceptive exposure) or a non-specific treatment (NST). Immediately prior to and following the intervention, participants completed the 20-item Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (PASS-20). Consistent with hypothesis, results revealed a 3-way interaction between AS group, intervention condition, and time on PASS-20 total scores. Only participants with high pre-morbid levels of AS assigned to the CBT condition showed a significant reduction in scores on the PASS-20 from pre- to post-treatment. Implications for improving CBT approaches for pain disorders are discussed.