Do research assessments make college students more reactive to alcohol events?

This study examines possible synergistic effects of alcohol-related events and postevent assessments on changes in college student readiness to change alcohol use, frequency of alcohol use, and negative consequences. Students were participants in a longitudinal study of drinking behavior. A portion of those reporting negative alcohol events/consequences (e.g., injury, vomiting, memory loss) during the parent study were randomly selected to participate in the present study (n = 492) and randomized to a postevent assessment (n = 296) or a no-assessment control (n = 196). Participants in the postevent assessment group were interviewed soon after their event, and participants in both conditions were interviewed three months after their event. Linear regression models showed higher 3-month readiness to change alcohol use in participants who received a postevent assessment than those who did not. There were reductions in drinking days, heavy drinking days, and further consequences postevent, but no differences by assessment group. However, female participants showed greater reductions in drinking days and heavy drinking days if they were assigned to assessment compared to control. There also was greater postevent reduction in drinking days among assessment group participants with high precollege alcohol severity compared to low precollege alcohol severity. Conversely, participants who reported high aversiveness of their event and were in the control group showed greater reduction in heavy drinking days than those assigned to the assessment group. Findings suggest that college student heavy drinking is reactive to alcohol events, whereas reactivity to postevent assessments may depend on gender, alcohol severity, and event aversiveness. This work highlights the importance of considering possible interactions among extratherapeutic factors in clinical outcome research.     

Behavioral training and predisposed coping strategies interact to influence resilience in male Long-Evans rats: implications for depression

Effective coping strategies and adaptive behavioral training build resilience against stress-induced pathology. Both predisposed and acquired coping strategies were investigated in rats to determine their impact on stress responsiveness and emotional resilience. Male Long-Evans rats were assigned to one of the three coping groups: passive, active, or variable copers. Rats were then randomly assigned to either an effort-based reward (EBR) contingent training group or a non-contingent training group. Following EBR training, rats were tested in appetitive and stressful challenge tasks. Physiological responses included changes in fecal corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) metabolites as well as neuropeptide Y (NPY)-immunoreactivity in the hippocampus and amygdala. Regardless of a rat's predisposed coping strategy, EBR rats persisted longer than non-contingent rats in the appetitive problem-solving task. Furthermore, training and coping styles interacted to yield the seemingly most adaptive DHEA/corticosterone ratios in the EBR-trained variable copers. Regardless of training group, variable copers exhibited increased NPY-immunoreactivity in the CA1 region.     

Actual Reports and Perceptions of Body Image Concerns of Young Women and Their Friends

The present study was conducted to examine the role of friends in women’s body image concerns. Self and peer reports were completed by a convenience sample of 75 pairs of same gender female friends (N?=?150) from a small undergraduate university in Eastern Canada. In a conceptual replication of previous research, we first showed that self-reports of perceived pressure to be thin significantly predicted women’s own body image concerns when controlling for body mass. Of interest was the finding that body-related talk between friends that focused on exercise significantly predicted less body dissatisfaction. Additionally, by examining the relationships between self and peer reports, we showed that women’s perceptions of their friends’ body image concerns aligned to both self-reports and to friends’ actual reports suggesting that women likely projected their own self-views when perceiving friends. Moreover, using multiple regression analyses, we demonstrated that perceptions of friends, and not friends’ actual reports, predicted own body concerns. Besides the suggestions for future research stemming from limitations of the present study, we suggest that researchers interested in similarities between friends on women’s body image concerns include both perceptions of peers and actual peer reports.     

Similarities and Differences in Semantic and Phonological Processing with Age Patterns of Functional MRI Activation

Abstract

In a study modelled after Hashtroudi, Johnson, and Chrosniak (1989), young and older adults were examined in two conditions requiring reality monitoring (i.e., discriminating between one external and one internal source) and two conditions requiring source monitoring (i.e., discriminating between two external or two internal sources). Results indicated age-related deficits in internal source monitoring, although the two age groups did not differ in reality monitoring or external source monitoring. Explicit instructions to remember the source of information had no effect on performance. In addition, performance on putative tests of frontal lobe functioning (i.e., the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and tests of verbal fluency) was unrelated to source memory performance. the results are discussed relative to the view that aging may affect the ability to encode perceptual information in a distinctive manner, as well as the ability to reconstruct perceptual information and its relationship to item information.     

Koffka's Rorschach Experiment

A factor analysis of responses to a temporal experience questionnaire from 110 Ss, and related intensive personality assessment research with 17 of them, extracted four bipolar temporal experience factors and investigated their personality correlates. An Immediate Time Pressure factor (harassed lack of control vs. relaxed mastery and adaptive flexibility) was correlated with high emotionality and nervous tension, imaginative fantasy and self-absorption, and sensitivity. A Long-Term Personal Direction factor (continuity and steady purpose vs. discontinuity and lack of direction) correlated with happiness and elated mood levels, and self-esteem and identity. A Time Utilization factor (efficient scheduling vs. procrastination and inefficiency) correlated with precision and orderliness, and confidence and initiative. A Personal Inconsistency factor (inconsistency and changeability vs. consistency and dependability) correlated with affective lability and low repression, and impulsiveness.     

Situational,Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal Characteristic Associations With Adolescent Conflict Forgiveness

Given the voluntary nature of adolescent friendships, forgiveness of interpersonal transgressions has been identified as a critical aspect of maintaining these relationships. However, transgression forgiveness is related to a range of situational (e.g., transgression severity), interpersonal (e.g., friendship commitment), and intrapersonal (e.g., victim's empathy) factors. Data from 161 adolescents were used to examine the nature of the relationships between these factors and forgiveness and to examine the differential association patterns for adolescent boys and girls. Results for the overall adolescent sample indicated both situational and interpersonal factor associations with forgiveness (R ² = .52, p < .001). Examination of separate female and male forgiveness reports indicated similar interpersonal factor associations and differential situational factor associations with female (R ² = .46, p < .001), and male (R ² = .60, p < .001) forgiveness. Findings suggest the likelihood of forgiving may be contextually dependent, and that researchers should consider transgression, relationship, and intrapersonal characteristics when examining forgiveness. Further, the present study suggests the contextual factors associated with forgiveness may be further differentiated by gender.     

Etiological Contributions to the Covariation Between Children’s Perceptions of Inter-Parental Conflict and Child Behavioral Problems

Prior work has suggested that inter-parental conflict likely plays an etiological role in child behavior problems. However, family-level measurement of inter-parental conflict in most traditional child twin studies has made it difficult to tease apart the specific causal mechanisms underlying this association. The Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict scale (CPIC) provides a child-specific measurement tool for examining these questions, as its subscales tap multiple dimensions of conflict assessed from the child’s (rather than the parent’s) perspective. The current study examined (1) the degree of genetic and environmental influence on each of the CPIC subscales, and (2) etiological contributions to the covariation between the CPIC scales and parental reports of child behavioral problems. The CPIC was completed by 1,200 child twins (aged 6–11 years) from the Michigan State University Twin Registry (MSUTR). Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to assess child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Multivariate models were examined to evaluate the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to both the CPIC scales and to their overlap with child behavioral outcomes. Modeling results indicated no significant moderation of sex or age. Significant environmental overlap emerged between the CPIC conflict properties scale and child internalizing and externalizing problems. By contrast, significant genetic correlations emerged between the CPIC self-blame scale and externalizing problems as well as between the CPIC threat scale and internalizing problems. Overall, findings suggest that the subscales of the CPIC are somewhat etiologically diverse and may provide a useful tool for future investigations of possible gene-environment interplay.     

A Child Mourns the Family He Cannot Come From1

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the clinical material from the analysis of a young adolescent who was conceived using artificial reproduction techniques (ART). After reviewing the scant literature regarding how a child is conceived through the use of ART, the use of the term birth other is employed to understand this child’s longstanding sadness and sense of isolation. The material from his analysis demonstrates that the meaning of birth other as Eherensaft suggested (2005, 2007) is not the only meaning that an individual can assign to his experience. This child created a fantasy of a family from which he felt excluded because his parents had birth other families within which they were conceived. The material indicated that his attempt at mourning his lack of a genetically based family in a way that not even adopted children often mourn, occurred only in an unconscious manner, inhibiting him from focusing on more age-appropriate concerns. The psychological issues that he brought to his analysis clearly reflected the complexity of the circumstances of his birth and that he felt he existed outside of a family that he could identify with.     

Emotional Dysregulation and Interpersonal Difficulties as Risk Factors for Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Adolescent Girls

The purpose of this study was to examine a model of factors that place psychiatrically hospitalized girls at risk for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). The role of familial and peer interpersonal difficulties, as well as emotional dysregulation, were examined in relationship to NSSI behaviors. Participants were 99 adolescent girls (83.2% Caucasian; M age = 16.08) admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Structural equation modeling indicated the primacy of emotional dysregulation as an underlying process placing adolescents at risk for NSSI and mediating the influence of interpersonal problems through the family and peer domains. When family and peer relationships were characterized by conflict and lack of support for managing emotions, adolescents reported more dysregulated emotion processes. Family relational problems were directly and indirectly related to NSSI through emotional dysregulation. The indirect processes of peer relational problems, through emotional dysregulation, were significantly associated with NSSI frequency and severity. The findings suggest that the process by which interpersonal difficulties contribute to NSSI is complex, and is at least partially dependent on the nature of the interpersonal problems and emotion processes.