Age differences in managing response to sadness elicitors using attentional deployment,positive reappraisal and suppression

The current study investigated age differences in the use of attentional deployment, positive reappraisal and suppression while regulating responses to sadness-eliciting content. We also tested to what extent these emotion regulation strategies were useful for each age group in managing response to age-relevant sad information. Forty-two young participants (M_age = 18.5, SE = .15) and 48 older participants (M_age = 71.42, SE = 1.15) watched four sadness-eliciting videos (about death/illness, four to five minutes long) under four conditions—no-regulation (no regulation instructions), attentional deployment (divert attention away), positive reappraisal (focus on positive outcomes) and suppression (conceal emotional expressions). We assessed negative emotional experience, expression, skin conductance level (SCL) and visual fixation duration while participants watched the emotional clips and followed the instructions for each condition. Results suggest that older adults were more successful than younger adults at implementing both attentional deployment and positive reappraisal. Ability to suppress emotions appears to remain stable with age. Within age-group comparisons suggested that for the older adults, positive reappraisal was a more useful emotion regulation strategy than the others, while the pattern among younger adults was less conclusive. Age-relevant differences in motivation and successful emotion regulatory efforts based on theoretical and empirical literatures are discussed.     

‘Undesirable’ and ‘desirable’ shifts in children's responses to repeated questions: age differences in the effect of providing a rationale for repetition

This study examined factors influencing children's tendency to shift responses when questions are repeated within an interview. Forty nine 4–5‐year‐olds and 40 7–8‐year‐olds were questioned about a video they had seen, with questions repeated by the same or a different interviewer. Half the children were given a rationale for question repetition, and half were not. Overall, the older children shifted less than the younger children, and, unlike the younger children, more to misleading than unbiased questions. The rationale did not affect overall shifting, but reduced the probability of ‘undesirable’ shifts (towards inaccuracy) in the younger children, and increased ‘desirable’ shifts (towards accuracy) at both ages. In the younger children, the rationale reduced total number of shifts, but only with the same interviewer, while in the older children the reverse applied. The results suggest developmental progression in the relative contributions of memorial and social/motivational factors to shifting. Implications for investigative interviewing with children are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why Do You Regulate What You Eat? Relationships Between Forms of Regulation, Eating Behaviors, Sustained Dietary Behavior Change, and Psychological Adjustment

In 3 studies, the authors examined how autonomous and controlled forms of motivation for the regulation of eating behaviors were related to self-reported eating behaviors, and sustained dietary behavior change. Studies 1 and 2 supported the factorial structure and the psychometric properties of a scale designed to measure different forms of regulation as defined by Self-Determination Theory. A motivational model of the regulation of eating behaviors suggested that an autonomous regulation was positively associated with healthy eating behaviors whereas a controlled regulation was positively associated with dysfunctional eating behaviors and negatively associated with healthy eating behaviors. In Study 3, long-term adherence to healthier dietary behaviors in a population at risk for coronary artery disease was examined over a 26-week period. A general measure of self-determined motivation assessed at week 1 was found to be a reliable predictor of the level of self-determination for eating behaviors 13 weeks later. In turn, self-determination for eating behaviors was a significant predictor of dietary behavior changes at 26 weeks. Finally, the dietary behavior measures were related to improvements in weight and blood lipid parameters (LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides). Results are discussed in terms of their implication for the integration and maintenance of a successful healthy regulation.     

Psychosoziale Interventionen bei Patientinnen mit Brustkrebs

Breast cancer patients are subject not only to physical strain but also to substantial psychological and social stress as well as major threats and challenges.The paper presented gives an overview of the research status on psychosocial interventions to support patients in their coping endeavours.Psychosocial basic care of women with breast cancer is performed by the physicians treating oncologically and includes information fitting patients' information needs,and responding to their emotional stress.Evaluated training and educational programs are available for physicians to enhance their psychosocial competence.Psychosocial basic care is completed by psychoeducational interventions.In 20–30% of women with breast cancer, there is a need for a special psychotherapeutic treatment.Especially, supportive and cognitive-behavioral therapies in an individual or a group setting contribute to a reduction of anxiety and depression. Even anticipated side-effects of somatic treatments can be diminished by psychotherapy. Research in the field supports that there is a need for broad integration of psychosocial interventions into disease management programs for women suffering from breast cancer.     

Do We Feel the Same Way If We Think the Same Way? Shared Attitudes and the Social Induction of Affect

Drawing on the literature on emotional mimicry, we argue that attitude similarity between a sender and a receiver influences the social induction of affect. Studies 1, 2, and 3 supported this reasoning by showing that similarity fostered, whereas dissimilarity blocked concordant reactions to a happy sender (but not to a sad sender). We also examined the mechanism behind these effects and found that similarity influenced liking of the happy sender but did not affect liking of the sad sender. Study 4 provided causal evidence for this idea by showing that similarity influenced the induction of positive affect through liking.     

Eine historische Fallstudie

Barbara Marie Eisele wurde 1900 in die Psychiatrische Klinik Heidelberg eingeliefert und starb 1903 in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Emmendingen. Die Briefe Eiseles dokumentieren ihre zahlreichen Bemühungen, aus der Anstalt entlassen zu werden, um wieder in Freiheit leben zu k?nnen.     

Deliberate real-time mood regulation in adulthood: the importance of age, fixation and attentional functioning

While previous research has linked executive attention to emotion regulation, the current study investigated the role of attentional alerting (i.e., efficient use of external warning cues) on younger (N=39) and older (N=44) adults' use of gaze to regulate their mood in real time. Participants viewed highly arousing unpleasant images while reporting their mood and were instructed to deliberately manage how they felt and to minimise the effect of those stimuli on their mood. Fixations toward the most negative areas of the images were recorded with eye tracking. We examined whether looking less at the most negative regions, compared to each individual's own tendency, was a beneficial mood regulatory strategy and how it interacted with age and alerting ability. High alerting older adults, who rely more on external cues to guide their attention, experienced a smaller decline in mood over time by activating a less-negative-looking approach (compared to their own average tendency), effectively looking away from the most negative areas of the images. More negative gaze patterns predicted better mood for younger adults, though this effect decreased over time. Alerting did not moderate gaze-mood links in younger adults. Successful mood regulation may thus depend on particular combinations of age, fixation, and attention.     

A prospective study of some effects of aircraft noise on cognitive performance in schoolchildren

Before the opening of the new Munich International Airport and the termination of the old airport, children near both sites were recruited into aircraft–noise groups (aircraft noise at present or pending) and control groups with no aircraft noise (closely matched for socioeconomic status). A total of 326 children (mean age 5 10.4 years) took part in three data–collection waves, one before and two after the switch–over of the airports. After the switch, long–term memory and reading were impaired in the noise group at the new airport. and improved in the formerly noise–exposed group at the old airport. Short–term memory also improved in the latter group after the old airport was closed. At the new airport, speech perception was impaired in the newly noise–exposed group. Mediational analyses suggest that poorer reading was not mediated by speech perception, and that impaired recall was in part mediated by reading.     

Assessment of hostility in patients with coronary heart disease

One of the problems in efforts to more clearly conceptualize hostility is the amount of method variance, which ranges from self-report techniques to interview-based methods and mirrors the multidimensional nature of hostility and related constructs. In addition, rather few studies concerned with the assessment of hostility have specifically used samples of coronary heart disease (CHD) patients. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to examine the multidimensionality of the construct of hostility in a sample of male coronary patients with some frequently used instruments. Factor analysis was used to detect the relevant underlying constructs, which were assessed using a variety of hostility measures in a sample of cardiac patients undergoing baseline assessment in an ongoing health-education intervention study. Measurement included both questionnaires and interviews. Participants (N = 235) were divided into 3 diagnostic groups: patients who had recently undergone (a) a myocardial infarction, (b) coronary artery bypass grafting, or (c) percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty. A 4-factor solution appeared to provide the best fit, and the following factors were isolated: Anger-Out, Negative Affect, Coping, and Anger-In. All intercorrelations were less than .50. Medical diagnosis did not differ with regard to the 4 factors found. The total hostility construct as measured by the structured interview (SI) did not fit into the 4-factor model. This study was the first to show that dimensions of anger and hostility constitute valid and relevant aspects of the general construct of hostility for a representative group of CHD patients. The 4 aspects of hostility isolated using some well-known hostility questionnaires and the SI explained most of the observed variance. Although the SI appeared to tap more general state anger, the 4 aspects of hostility may be differentially related to health in those who are coronary prone. Future studies on the role of hostile or negative emotions in CHD patients should, therefore, pay greater attention to the multidimensional nature of hostility and may clearly benefit from the use of the 4-factor model described in this article.