Intolerance of Uncertainty, Fear of Anxiety, and Adolescent Worry

A 5 year, ten wave longitudinal study of 338 adolescents assessed the association between two forms of cognitive vulnerability (intolerance of uncertainty and fear of anxiety) and worry. Multilevel mediational analyses revealed a bidirectional and reciprocal relation between intolerance of uncertainty and worry in which change in one variable partially explained change in the other. Fear of anxiety and worry also showed evidence of a bidirectional relation, although change in fear of anxiety had a much weaker mediational effect on change in worry than vice versa. The findings show that relative to fear of anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty may play a greater role in the etiology of worry in adolescents.     

The effects of mortality reminders on posttraumatic growth and finding benefits among patients with life-threatening illness and their caregivers

Individuals confronted with a life-threatening illness often report posttraumatic growth (PTG) or finding benefits in disease. These positive evaluations of personal strength, perceptions of improved personal relations and new possibilities may represent a defensive response (cf Janus-face model). Three studies investigated the effects of mortality reminders on reports of PTG or benefit findings among people living with life-threatening illness or their caregivers. 80 people living with HIV (study 1), 164 breast cancer survivors (study 2) and 50 family caregivers for a patient with huntington disease (study 3) were randomly assigned to the experimental (mortality reminders) or control conditions. Across three studies, those exposed to mortality reminders reported lower PTG or benefit finding, compared to the controls. These effects were moderated by time elapsed since diagnosis: mortality reminders led to lower PTG/benefit finding among those who received the diagnosis more recently. The results provide an insight into the defensive character of PTG/finding benefits in illness and changes in the function of these beliefs over time elapsing since diagnosis.     

Dyadische Planungsintervention nach Prostatektomie

Background

Prostate cancer is one of the most prevalent forms of cancer in men. One treatment for localized prostate cancer is radical prostatectomy. Patients and partners have to deal with stressors associated with the diagnosis, the surgery and its consequences (e.g. incontinence). Dyadic planning prepares for the coping process with illness consequences in order to enhance self-regulation and reduce anxiety. Dyadic planning means generating plans together with a partner specifying when, where and how the target person wants to initiate a health behavior.

Patients and methods

In this longitudinal randomized controlled trial (RCT) 112 prostatectomy patients and their spouses were invited to participate in a dyadic planning intervention. Participants were randomly allocated to a dyadic pelvic floor exercise (pfe) planning group or one of three control groups (i.e., individual pfe planning, dyadic or individual nutrition planning). Patients and partners received questionnaires at baseline, 2 weeks and 6 months after surgery.

Results

Patients in the dyadic pfe planning group reported higher dyadic pfe planning 2 weeks after surgery than patients in the nutrition planning groups. No such differential effects were found in partners. Additionally, there were no group differences in patient reports on anxiety 6 months after surgery, whereas partners in the dyadic pfe planning group reported lower anxiety levels compared to partners in the individual pfe planning group. Self-reported pfe planning did not, however, mediate the effects of the intervention on partners?? anxiety.

Conclusion

Economical dyadic planning interventions may not only support change of health-relevant behaviour in target persons but also emotional adjustment of their partners.     

Atypical brain oscillations: a biological basis for dyslexia?

Examining rhythms in the brain reveals a biological basis for dyslexia. A new study provides evidence of atypical oscillatory patterns and hemispheric specialization in dyslexic adults. These patterns inform phonological processing and verbal memory problems, known to be core deficits in dyslexia.     

Depressive symptoms in outpatients with heart failure: Importance of inflammatory biomarkers,disease severity and personality

Objective: Depressive symptoms are highly prevalent in heart failure (HF) patients, however the underlying etiology of depression in HF patients remains yet unclear. Hence, the goal is to examine the relative importance of inflammation, disease severity and personality as predictors of depression in HF patients. Design: Depressive symptoms (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, depression subscale) were assessed at baseline and one-year follow-up in 268 HF patients (75.6% men; mean age?=?66.7?±?8.7). Markers of inflammation (TNFα, sTNFr1, sTNFr2, IL-6 and IL-10), disease severity (e.g. New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification) and personality (Type D personality, loneliness) were assessed at baseline. Results: At baseline, NYHA class, body mass index, educational level, Type D personality and loneliness were significantly associated with depression. Higher NYHA class (B?=?2.25; SE?=?.83), higher educational level (B?=?1.41; SE?=?.48), Type D personality (B?=?2.56; SE?=?.60) and loneliness (B?=?.19; SE?=?.05) were also independently associated with higher depression levels at one-year follow-up (all p-values?<?.005). Inflammation, brain natriuretic peptide and left ventricular ejection fraction were not related to depression over time. Conclusions: Personality factors, but not inflammation, were independent concomitants of depressive symptoms in patients with HF. Gaining more insight into the etiology of depression in HF patients is important in order to identify potential targets for novel interventions.     

Hierarchical modeling of contingency-based source monitoring: A test of the probability-matching account

According to the probability-matching account of source guessing (Spaniol & Bayen, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 28:631–651, 2002), when people do not remember the source of an item in a source-monitoring task, they match the source-guessing probabilities to the perceived contingencies between sources and item types. In a source-monitoring experiment, half of the items presented by each of two sources were consistent with schematic expectations about this source, whereas the other half of the items were consistent with schematic expectations about the other source. Participants’ source schemas were activated either at the time of encoding or just before the source-monitoring test. After test, the participants judged the contingency of the item type and source. Individual parameter estimates of source guessing were obtained via beta-multinomial processing tree modeling (beta-MPT; Smith & Batchelder, Journal of Mathematical Psychology 54:167–183, 2010). We found a significant correlation between the perceived contingency and source guessing, as well as a correlation between the deviation of the guessing bias from the true contingency and source memory when participants did not receive the schema information until retrieval. These findings support the probability-matching account.     

Inventing Sex: The Short History of Sex Addiction

This article takes a critical look at the recent history of the concept of sex addiction, an archetypal modern sexual invention. Sex addiction began as a 1980s product of late twentieth-century cultural anxieties and has remained responsive to those tensions, including its most recent iteration, “hypersexual disorder.” Its success as a concept lay with its medicalization, both as a self-help movement in terms of self-diagnosis, and as a rapidly growing industry of therapists on hand to deal with the new disease. The media has always played a role in its history, first with TV, the tabloids, and the case histories of claimed celebrity victims all helping to popularize the concept, and then with the impact of the internet. Though it is essentially mythical, creating a problem that need not exist, sex addiction has to be taken seriously as a phenomenon. Rarely has a socio-psychological discourse taken such a hold on the public imagination—and proven an influential concept in academic circles too. We argue that this strange, short history of social opportunism, diagnostic amorphism, therapeutic self-interest, and popular cultural endorsement is marked by an essential social conservatism—sex addiction has become a convenient term to describe disapproved sex. Sex addiction is a label without explanatory force.     

Done in 60 s? Inferring teachers’ subjective well-being from thin slices of nonverbal behavior

Being a teacher is known to be a particularly stressful occupation and as a consequence many teachers suffer from reduced well-being. Thus, it is important to know as soon as possible which individuals are likely to experience reduced well-being in their employment. Therefore, this study investigated whether it is possible to infer teachers’ future well-being from minimal nonverbal information, i.e., thin slices of behavior. Between 2003 and 2006, 50 teachers were filmed while holding a lesson. Naïve observers were shown 60-s clips of these teachers and were asked to predict the teachers’ satisfaction with job, life, and health in 5–8 years. Five to eight years later, the teachers’ satisfaction with job, life, and health was assessed. It was shown that judges highly agree in their predictions. Additionally, these predictions were shown to be accurate for life and job satisfaction. Thus, it is possible to predict a teacher’s well-being on the basis of thin slices of the nonverbal behavior they show while performing their job. These thin slices might therefore allow for a risk assessment in the context of teacher education and such approaches might contribute to teacher professionalism.