The biopsychosocial-spiritual health of active duty women

ABSTRACT

Women have been an active part of the military since the beginning of American history, holding various roles in the military for centuries. The purpose of this review is to explore the literature pertaining to the biopsychosocial and spiritual health of active duty women. These comparisons help to highlight factors that are most unique to women who are serving in our active duty armed forces. The current review revealed that while active duty women and men report similar levels of resiliency, and women may be no more susceptible to the negative effects of combat than men, there is evidence that active duty women experience higher levels of posttraumatic stress due to physical and sexual trauma in the military aside from combat exposure. Findings suggest that further research is needed to better understand the unique challenges of women in the military in order to create service delivery models that support the BPSS health of women in order to maintain mission readiness and retain women in the military.     

Social Responsibility among Low-Income Youth in Physical Activity-Based Positive Youth Development Programs: Scale Development and Associations with Social Relationships

Relationships with peers and adults are expected to foster social responsibility in physical activity-based positive youth development programs. Low-income youth (N = 479) were surveyed pre- and post-program.Psychometric properties of a new social responsibility scale were supported. Belonging predicted changes in social responsibility, and leader emotional support moderated the autonomy support- and belonging-social responsibility associations. Those with higher leader emotional support had a stronger positive association between autonomy support and social responsibility. Those with lower leader emotional support had a stronger positive association between belonging and social responsibility. Positive social relationships with peers and staff may facilitate social responsibility.     

Longitudinal Assessment of the Relationship Between Physical Self-Concept and Health-Related Behavior and Emotion in Adolescent Girls

This study investigated the changes in and the relationships among body mass index (BMI), global self-esteem, physical self-perceptions, social physique anxiety (SPA), physical activity, and dietary restraint in adolescent females over a 24-month period. Participants (N = 501) completed annual assessments in grade 9, 10, and 11. The results showed moderate covariance stability in all variables. There were several significant time effects (group mean change), with small increases in BMI, moderate decreases in physical activity, and very small changes over time in SPA and physical self-perceptions. Longitudinal analyses indicated that specific physical self-perceptions were important predictors of physical activity, dietary restraint and SPA; however, most of the variance was explained by previous year values. Evidence of bidirectional effects revealed that specific self-perceptions impact specific behaviors and SPA more so than the impact of behavior/emotion on self-perceptions. These results highlight the importance of understanding the physical self and its links to health-related behaviors and emotion in adolescents.     

Psychological and Physical Characteristics of U.S. Marine Recruits

This study examined psychological and physical health factors in a cohort of U.S. Marine recruits with the goal of developing a comprehensive understanding of attributes recruits bring to training. 1,350 male recruits completed a multimeasure survey during the first week of training. A 2-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to explore the relationship of hardiness dimensions on several psychological and physical factors. Compared with other military samples, this cohort reported similar levels on hardiness control and rigidity subscales. Recruits who reported higher scores on a measure of positive hardiness also reported higher scores on measures of grit, grit ambition, sensation seeking, training expectations, positive ways of coping, physical and mental health, fitness scores, and lower scores on a measure of depression. This study provides a more complete understanding of the complex array of attributes of Marine recruits and forms a foundation for predictive models of injury risk and/or attrition.     

Are bilingual children better at ignoring perceptually misleading information? A novel test

Does speaking more than one language help a child perform better on certain types of cognitive tasks? One possibility is that bilingualism confers either specific or general cognitive advantages on tasks that require selective attention to one dimension over another (e.g. Bialystok, 2001 ; Hilchey & Klein, 2011 ). Other studies have looked for such an advantage but found none (e.g. Morton & Harper, 2007 ; Paap & Greenberg, 2013 ). The present study compared monolingual and bilingual children's performance on a numerical discrimination task, which required children to ignore area and attend to number. Ninety‐two children, ages 3 to 6 years, were asked which of two arrays of dots had ‘more dots’. Half of the trials were congruent, where the numerically greater array was also larger in total area, and half were incongruent, where the numerically greater array was smaller in total area. All children performed better on congruent than on incongruent trials. Older children were more successful than younger children at ignoring area in favor of number. Bilingual children did not perform differently from monolingual children either in number discrimination itself (i.e. identifying which array had more dots) or at selectively attending to number. The present study thus finds no evidence of a bilingual advantage on this task for children of this age.     

Doing and Being: Mindfulness,Health, and Quiet Ego Characteristics Among Buddhist Practitioners

We examined the relationship between meditation experience, psychological mindfulness, quiet ego characteristics, and self-reported physical health in a diverse sample of adults with a range of Buddhist experience (N = 117) gathered from a web-based survey administered to Buddhist practitioners around the world between August 1, 2007 and January 31, 2008. Practicing meditation on a regular basis and greater experience with Buddhism was related to higher psychological mindfulness scores. Psychological mindfulness was correlated with a latent variable called “quiet ego characteristics” that reflected measures based on Bauer and Wayment’s (Transcending self-interest: psychological explorations of the quiet ego. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 7–19, 2008) conceptual and multidimensional definition of a “quiet ego”: wisdom, altruism, sense of interdependence with all living things, need for structure (reversed), anger/verbal aggression (reversed), and negative affectivity (reversed). In turn, quiet ego characteristics were positively related to self-reported health. Our findings provide continuing support for the key role psychological mindfulness may play in psychological and physical well-being.     

Upbeat and happy: arousal as an important factor in studying attention

The present study examined the effects of music-induced mood changes on different components of visual attention. Affective valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) were manipulated by having participants listen to one of four versions of a Mozart Sonata that varied in mode (major or minor) and tempo (fast or slow). Attention was measured in three domains-alerting, orienting, and executive control. Affective valence and arousal had an effect on executive control, but not on alerting or orienting. Individuals who experienced positive valence had less efficient control over their responses than those who experienced negative valence, but only when arousal levels were high. Positive and negative valence did not influence executive control measures when arousal levels were low. These findings demonstrate that affective valence and arousal interact with one another to influence the processing of items in visual attention.     

Attentional control moderates fearful responding to a 35% CO(2) challenge

Attentional control (AC) is an individual difference variable indexing the ability to voluntarily focus attention and shift attention when desired. AC is thought to impact the experience of fear by facilitating the disengagement of attention from threat and promoting the deployment of attentional resources toward regulatory or coping strategies. Whereas previous research has focused on visual threat cues, in the current study we examined whether this model also applies to interoceptive threat by evaluating the extent to which individual differences in AC moderated the relationship between trait anxiety and self-reported fear in response to a single vital capacity inhalation of a 35% CO(2), 65% balanced O(2) gas mixture. The sample comprised a large nonclinical group of young adults (N=128). Results indicated that AC moderated the relationship between trait anxiety and fearful responding to the challenge. Findings suggest that AC plays a significant and clinically important role in modulating self-reported fear.