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.     

Spirituality and Religiosity in Urban Adolescents with Asthma

Predictors of multiple dimensions of spirituality/religiosity (S/R) and adolescents’ preferences for having S/R (e.g., prayer) addressed in hypothetical medical settings were assessed in a sample of urban adolescents with asthma. Of the 151 adolescents (mean age = 15.8, 60% female, 85% African-American), 81% said that they were religious and spiritual, 58% attended religious services in the past month, and 49% prayed daily. In multivariable models, African-American race/ethnicity and having a religious preference were associated with higher levels of S/R (R ² = 0.07–0.25, P < .05). Adolescents’ preferences for including S/R in the medical setting increased with the severity of the clinical situation (P < .05).     

Contrast polarity preservation's role in perception: explained and unexplained stimuli

Roncato and Casco (2003, Perception & psychophysics 65 1252-1272) had shown that in situations where the Gestalt principle of good continuity is put into conflict with preservation of contrast polarity (CP) the perception that preserves CP prevails. Parlangeli and Roncato (2010, Perception 39 255-259) have studied this question of preservation of CP more closely and have added an addendum to the rule. They have used stimuli consisting of a checkerboard of perpendicularly arranged rectangular bricks (white, gray, or black) and draughtsmen white, gray, or black disks placed at the corners of the bricks. This study has caused them to add an addendum to the rule of CP-preserved path-conjunction binding: if there are two contour completions that preserve the CP, the one with the higher contrast will prevail. Parlangeli and Roncato find that, for certain shades of the disks and bricks, the perpendicular lines of the checkerboard appear strikingly to be slanted or undulating. Here we consider all possible arrangements of relative magnitudes of checkerboards consisting of bricks of two different shades and disks of two shades as well, as such arrangements with widely varying differences in the magnitude of brightness. We have found a number of cases where the perception is not explained by the rule and addendum of Roncato and Casco, and Parlangeli and Roncato, and a case where preservation of "distant" as well as local CP plays a role in perception. The previously known cases, and the new exceptional unexplained stimuli we have found, warrant further study.