Comparison of treatment seeking compulsive buyers in Germany and the United States

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this pilot study was to compare a German (Bavaria) and an American (North Dakota) sample of women suffering from compulsive buying. METHOD: Thirty-eight German and 39 American female compulsive buyers were screened with the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS), and the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale-Shopping Version (Y-BOCS-SV) prior to entering a group treatment study. Psychiatric co-morbidity was assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders (SCID). RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between the German sample and the American sample with regard to age (mean 43.7 and 45 years, respectively), and with regard to the scores on the CBS and the Y-BOCS-SV. A high lifetime co-morbidity rate with Axis I disorders, especially mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, OCD, and binge eating disorder was detected in both samples. Almost all participants met criteria for at least one lifetime Axis I disorder. However, German compulsive buyers showed significantly higher current prevalence rates of any affective disorder, and higher current and lifetime prevalence rates of any anxiety disorder and somatoform disorder. In addition, German compulsive buyers were significantly more likely to have more than one Axis I disorder. CONCLUSION: The groups did not differ with regard to age and with regard to the severity of compulsive buying and showed a high co-morbidity with Axis I disorders. However, the German compulsive buying sample presented with significantly more psychiatric co-morbidity compared to the American sample. Further research is needed to provide a better understanding of this disorder in general and cross-culturally.     

Children's and Adults' Understanding of the Feeling Experience of Courage

Children's and adults' feeling experience of courage was investigated using an interview technique for younger children and an open-ended questionnaire method for adolescents and adults. There were 80 subjects in four age groups, 6, 9, 14 years, and adults, with 20 subjects and equal numbers of males and females per age group. Six-year-olds described courage in terms of an internal state corresponding to behaviour, whereas with increasing age courage was described as a multifaceted internal state experience, centring on fear and overcoming fear. Increasingly with age, subjects believed that control over the complex experience of courage could be gained by psychological strategies, such as concentrating on one's abilities and allowing all one's feelings and thoughts. Child age groups viewed courageous activity in terms of physical risk-taking but older subjects focused on psychological risk-taking. Results are interpreted in terms of an increasingly mentalistic understanding of courage.     

Perceived Distributive Fairness of European Transfer Payments and EU‐Taxes in Austria,the Czech Republic,and the United Kingdom

The present research compared a distributive fairness model of EU transfer payments (Hartner, Rechberger, Kirchler, & Wenzel, 2011) between three countries: Austria, the Czech Republic, and the UK. The model postulates an interplay between EU‐tax compliance, distributive fairness, outcome favorability as well as national and European identification. Results across countries showed that EU‐tax compliance was positively related to distributive justice, which was in turn related to outcome favorability and identification. National identifiers perceived EU membership as unfavorable in financial and socio‐political terms, and thus considered the transfer payments as less fair. Dual identifiers perceived the socio‐political outcomes as more favorable, and thus evaluated the transfer payments as fairer. Although the basic structure of the model was valid across all three countries, two country‐specific results were found. First, in the UK individual tax paying behavior was influenced by outcome favorability, whereas in Austria and the Czech Republic this relationship was mediated via distributive fairness. Second, in the Austrian sample, the differentiation between patriots and nationalists proved fruitful since nationalists considered the EU transfer payments as unfair, unlike patriots. In the UK and the Czech Republic the distinction between nationalists and patriots did not add any further information.     

Depression,Positive and Negative Affect,Optimism and Health-Related Quality of Life in Recently Diagnosed Multiple Sclerosis Patients: The Role of Identity,Sense of Coherence,and Self-efficacy

The study aimed to describe the levels of depression, positive and negative affect, optimism and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in a group of recently diagnosed multiple sclerosis (MS) patients (up to 3 years since the diagnosis), taking into account gender, age, and disease duration differences, and to investigate the possible role of identity, sense of coherence (SOC), and self-efficacy in MS (SEMS) on patients’ depression, positive and negative affect, optimism, and HRQOL. The cross-sectional study involved 90 MS patients (61% women; age: M = 37, SD = 12) with an Expanded Disability Status Scale score between 1 and 4 (mild to moderate disability). Patients completed measures of depression (CESD-10), positive and negative affect (PANAS), optimism (LOT-R), HRQOL (SF-12), identity motives, SOC, and SEMS. Depression scores were near the cut-off level for clinically significant depressive symptoms, and negative affect was higher and HRQOL was lower than those in the general population. Women and younger patients reported better adjustment as time passes since the diagnosis. Results of multiple regressions indicated that higher SOC was related to higher mental health, lower negative affect and lower depression. Higher SEMS was predictive of greater positive affect and lower negative affect, whereas higher identity satisfaction was predictive of higher positive affect and optimism and lower depression. The results suggest the usefulness of addressing identity redefinition, SOC and self-efficacy in psychological interventions aimed at promoting patients’ adjustment to MS.     

Rise time and formant transition duration in the discrimination of speech sounds: the Ba-Wa distinction in developmental dyslexia

Across languages, children with developmental dyslexia have a specific difficulty with the neural representation of the sound structure (phonological structure) of speech. One likely cause of their difficulties with phonology is a perceptual difficulty in auditory temporal processing (Tallal, 1980). Tallal (1980) proposed that basic auditory processing of brief, rapidly successive acoustic changes is compromised in dyslexia, thereby affecting phonetic discrimination (e.g. discriminating /b/ from /d/) via impaired discrimination of formant transitions (rapid acoustic changes in frequency and intensity). However, an alternative auditory temporal hypothesis is that the basic auditory processing of the slower amplitude modulation cues in speech is compromised (Goswami et al., 2002). Here, we contrast children's perception of a synthetic speech contrast (ba/wa) when it is based on the speed of the rate of change of frequency information (formant transition duration) versus the speed of the rate of change of amplitude modulation (rise time). We show that children with dyslexia have excellent phonetic discrimination based on formant transition duration, but poor phonetic discrimination based on envelope cues. The results explain why phonetic discrimination may be allophonic in developmental dyslexia (Serniclaes et al., 2004), and suggest new avenues for the remediation of developmental dyslexia.     

Decoupling neural networks from reality: dissociative experiences in torture victims are reflected in abnormal brain waves in left frontal cortex

From a neuroscience perspective, little is known about the long-term effect of torture. Dissociative experiences and posttraumatic stress disorder are often the results of this experience. We examined psychological dissociation within a group of 23 torture victims and report its manifestations within neural networks in the human brain. In particular, we observed that dissociative experiences are associated with slow abnormal brain waves generated in left ventrolateral frontal cortex. Given that focal slow waves often result from depriving neural networks of major input, the present results may indicate decoupling of frontal affective processors from left cortical language areas. This interpretation is consistent with the fact that disturbed access to structured verbal memory concerning traumatic events is a core feature of the dissociative experience.