Emotion Dysregulation and Eating Disorder Symptoms: Examining Distinct Associations and Interactions in Adolescents

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Emotion dysregulation has been posited as a key transdiagnostic factor of mental health difficulties, including eating disorders. However, how...     

Psychological Wellbeing,Dyadic Adjustment,and Parental Stress among Spanish Families during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Due to COVID-19, many countries, like Spain, imposed lockdown on the entire population to prevent the virus from spreading. The purpose of this exploratory...     

Inhibition in aging: What is preserved? What declines? A meta-analysis

Aging has been assumed to go along with deficient inhibitory processes in cognitive performance. According to this inhibition deficit hypothesis, older adults are less able to suppress or ignore irrelevant thoughts and actions than young adults are. This hypothesis has been investigated in a large number of studies. We conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether there is an inhibition deficit in older age and whether this deficit is general or task-specific. We selected 176 studies in which young and older adults were tested on tasks commonly assumed to measure inhibition (i.e., the color Stroop, flanker, Simon, stop-signal, go/no-go, global–local, positive and negative compatibility tasks, as well as the paradigm assessing n-2 repetition costs in task switching). For most tasks (i.e., the color Stroop, flanker, and local tasks, as well as the n-2 repetition costs), the results speak against an inhibition deficit in older age. Only in a few tasks (i.e., the go/no-go and stop-signal tasks), older adults showed impaired inhibition. Moreover, for four tasks (i.e., the Simon, global, positive and negative compatibility tasks), the results suggest that more studies are necessary to draw a firm conclusion. Together, the present findings call into question the hypothesis of a general inhibition deficit in older age.     

People with severe and profound intellectual disability: Nurse carer experiences in a South African setting

We explored nurse carer experiences with people with severe and profound intellectual disability in a care and rehabilitation centre in South Africa. Informants were a convenience sample of 10 nurses (females = 7; males = 3; mean years of service = 7.8, SD = 4.8 years). They completed an unstructured interview on their care provision experiences. The data were thematically analysed using Tesch’s method of open coding. Findings resulted in the following three themes to characterise the nurse carer experiences: compassion, person-centred care, and importance of parent involvement. Compassionate and person-centred care is fundamental to the establishment of a therapeutic relationship between nurse carers and people with severe and profound intellectual disability.     

What’s Your Style? Preliminary Validation of the Gaming Styles Questionnaire

Within-group differences amongst gamers must be considered when studying the psychological correlates of gameplay. A conceptual framework, whereby gaming may be treated as a means to other ends—such as coping with boredom or bonding with friends—or as an end in itself, was the basis upon which the Gaming Styles Questionnaire was developed. Factor analysis and criterion-group validity, based on data obtained from a heterogeneous sample of gamers, offered support to a continuum of gamers, ranging from those for whom gaming is a means to other ends to those for whom gaming is an end in itself. Although age did not correlate with gaming style, men’s endorsement of gaming as an end in itself was stronger than women’s.     

A Dilemma for Calibrationism

The aim of this paper is to describe a problem for calibrationism: a view about higher order evidence according to which one's credences should be calibrated to one's expected degree of reliability. Calibrationism is attractive, in part, because it explains our intuitive judgments, and provides a strong motivation for certain theories about higher order evidence and peer disagreement. However, I will argue that calibrationism faces a dilemma: There are two versions of the view one might adopt. The first version, I argue, has the implausible consequence that, in a wide range of cases, calibrationism is the only constraint on rational belief. The second version, in addition to having some puzzling consequences, is unmotivated. At the end of the paper I sketch a possible solution.     

The fight against stigma: an overview of stigma-reduction strategies and interventions

In many health conditions, people are severely affected by health-related stigma and discrimination. A literature review was conducted to identify stigma-reduction strategies and interventions in the field of HIV/AIDS, mental illness, leprosy, TB and epilepsy. The review identified several levels at which interventions and strategies are being implemented. These are the intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational/institutional, community and governmental/structural level. Although a lot of work has been carried out on stigma and stigma reduction, far less work has been done on assessing the effectiveness of stigma-reduction strategies. The effective strategies identified mainly concentrated on the individual and the community level. In order to reduce health-related stigma and discrimination significantly, single-level and single-target group approaches are not enough. What is required is a patient-centred approach, which starts with interventions targeting the intrapersonal level, to empower affected persons to assist in the development and implementation of stigma-reduction programmes at other levels.     

Chunking in task sequences modulates task inhibition

In a study of the formation of representations of task sequences and its influence on task inhibition, participants first performed tasks in a predictable sequence (e.g., ABACBC) and then performed the tasks in a random sequence. Half of the participants were explicitly instructed about the predictable sequence, whereas the other participants did not receive these instructions. Task-sequence learning was inferred from shorter reaction times (RTs) in predictable relative to random sequences. Persisting inhibition of competing tasks was indicated by increased RTs in n- 2 task repetitions (e.g., ABA) compared with n- 2 nonrepetitions (e.g., CBA). The results show task-sequence learning for both groups. However, task inhibition was reduced in predictable relative to random sequences among instructed-learning participants who formed an explicit representation of the task sequence, whereas sequence learning and task inhibition were independent in the noninstructed group. We hypothesize that the explicit instructions led to chunking of the task sequence, and that n- 2 repetitions served as chunk points (ABA-CBC), so that within-chunk facilitation modulated the inhibition effect.     

Event-related brain potentials elicited during word recognition by adult good and poor phonological decoders

Cognitive processing of lexical and sub-lexical stimuli was compared for good and poor adult phonological decoders. Sixteen good decoders and 16 poor decoders, average age 19 years, silently read 150 randomly computer presented sentences ending in incongruous regular, irregular, or nonwords and 100 congruent filler sentences. Electro-encephalographic recordings were made from the final word of each incongruous sentence. Although no significant group differences were found, good decoders showed specialised hemispheric word recognition processing at P200 and P300. Nonwords elicited greater N200 and P300 amplitudes for both good and poor decoders. Larger amplitude P200s were elicited by poor decoders when processing nonwords. These findings provide evidence for separable lexical and sub-lexical procedures and support a psychophysiological basis for a core phonological deficit in poor phonological decoders.