Socio-Economic Status,Time Spending,and Sleep Duration in Indian Children and Adolescents

In this article physical activity, screen time, and academic work are studied as mediators between socio-economic status and sleep duration among school children in India. Participants were 268 school children aged 10–15 from Pune, India. They were sampled from private schools and impoverished public schools. We found that the highest socio-economic status children reported almost an hour and a half less sleep than their lowest socio-economic status counterparts. The lower socio-economic status children reported more physical activity and screen time, and the higher socio-economic status children reported spending more time on academic work. Although screen time was negatively related to sleep duration, academic work was the strongest mediator between socio-economic status and sleep duration. Physical activity was not a significant mediator. In India, academic work is a strong predictor of a lower sleep duration among children and adolescents.     

Breast Cancer as Trauma: Posttraumatic Stress and Posttraumatic Growth

Diagnosis and treatment of cancer has been associated with both posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and posttraumatic growth (PTG). This cross-sectional study sought to assess the frequency, common predictors, and interrelationships of PTSD symptoms and PTG in breast cancer survivors (n = 65). In this sample, symptoms of PTSD and reports of PTG were common and were not significantly related to one another. Greater social constraints on talking about breast cancer and perception of cancer as a traumatic stressor were associated with greater PTSD symptomatology. Younger age and perception of cancer as a traumatic stressor were associated with greater PTG. Findings suggest the central role of subjective appraisal in adjustment to cancer. Psychosocial interventions should be sensitive to the potential for PTG, both in treatment design and in assessment of outcomes.     

Psychological Events and Constructs: An Alliance with Smith

The Psychological Record - The distinction between constructs and events is often overlooked in the sciences, as evidenced by a number of long-standing confusions of the former with the latter. The...     

Some social contexts of self-destructive behavior

This study investigated the social context of self-injurious behavior in autistic, schizophrenic, and mentally retarded children residing in a state hospital. Social interactions between subjects and staff were recorded along with subjects' self-destructive behavior. The results showed a substantial increase in self-destructive behavior following the staff's presentation of demands, denials, and punishments in 19 of the 20 subjects. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that self-injurious behavior is a social behavior, which is determined by persons in the environment. In addition, the self-destructive behavior of one subject may have been largely self-stimulatory in nature.     

Mind your words: positive and negative items create method effects on the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire

Mindfulness, a construct that entails moment-to-moment effort to be aware of present experiences and positive attitudinal features, has become integrated into the sciences. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), one popular measure of mindfulness, exhibits different responses to positively and negatively worded items in nonmeditating groups. The current study employed confirmatory factor analysis with a large undergraduate sample to examine the validity of a hierarchical mindfulness model and whether response patterns related to item wording arose from method effects. Results indicated that a correlated facets model better explained the data and that negative and positive wording constituted substantive method effects. This study suggests that the FFMQ measures components that may relate to, but do not seem to directly reflect, a latent variable of mindfulness. The authors recommend against the use of an FFMQ total score, favoring individual scale scores, and further examination of method effects in mindfulness scales.     

Establishing a trait anxiety threshold that signals likelihood of anxiety disorders

Abstract

Evidence suggests that the State Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety (STICSA) may be a more pure measure of anxiety than other commonly used scales. Further, the STICSA has excellent psychometric properties in both clinical and nonclinical samples. The present study aimed to extend the utility of the STICSA – Trait version by identifying a cut-off score that could differentiate a group of clinically diagnosed anxiety disorder patients (n=398) from a group of student controls (n =439). Two receiver operating characteristic curve analyses indicated cut-off scores of 43 (sensitivity=.73, specificity=.74, classification accuracy=.74) and 40 (sensitivity=.80, specificity=.67, classification accuracy=.73), respectively. In a large community sample (n =6685), a score of 43 identified 11.5% of individuals as probable cases of clinical anxiety, while a score of 40 identified 17.0% of individuals as probable cases of clinical anxiety. As a result of differences in sensitivity and specificity, the present findings suggest a cut-off score of 43 is optimal to identify probable cases of clinical anxiety, while a cut-off score of 40 is optimal to screen for the possible presence of anxiety disorders.     

A COMPARISON OF DISCRETE TRIAL TEACHING IMPLEMENTED IN A ONE‐TO‐ONE INSTRUCTIONAL FORMAT AND IN A GROUP INSTRUCTIONAL FORMAT

Discrete trial teaching (DTT) is a systematic form of intervention commonly implemented with children and adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Experimenters and clinicians have implemented DTT in both one‐to‐one instructional formats and group instructional formats to teach a wide variety of skills to children and adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this study was to compare DTT implemented in a one‐to‐one instructional format with DTT implemented in a group instructional format in order to determine which format was more effective, efficient, resulted in higher observational learning, and resulted in better maintenance when teaching a variety of expressive skills. The experimenters utilized a parallel treatment design, and the results indicated that both instructional formats were equally effective, there were mixed results in terms of maintenance and efficiency, and group instruction resulted in observational learning. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-Reported Use of Alcohol,Marijuana, and Hard Drugs and Aggression: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis of an Internet Survey of Long-Term Marijuana Users

In the largest study to date investigating aggressive behavior among long-time adult concomitant marijuana and alcohol users, respondents completed an Internet survey on substance use and aggressive behavior. Aggressive acts following alcohol consumption were more frequent than aggressive acts following marijuana consumption. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that there was no relationship between marijuana and aggression once recent alcohol use, hard drug history, gender, and age were taken into account. Alcohol use and history of hard drug use were associated with increased aggression. It also appears that increased aggression among males is partially mediated by alcohol use. This model fit the data better than plausible alternative models. Although the sample characteristics limit the generalizability of these findings, our data suggest that marijuana use does not lead to aggressive behavior in adults, even among frequent, long-time users.