Characteristics of Repetitive Thought Associated with Borderline Personality Features: A Multimodal Investigation of Ruminative Content and Style

Increased ruminative style of thought has been well documented in borderline personality disorder (BPD); however, less is known about how the content of rumination relates to domains of BPD features. Relationships between forms of rumination and BPD features were examined in an undergraduate sample with a wide range of BPD features. Participants completed self-report measures of rumination and a free-writing task about their repetitive thought. Rumination on specific themes, including anger rumination, depressive brooding, rumination on interpersonal situations, anxious rumination, and stress-reactive rumination were significantly associated with most BPD features after controlling for general rumination. Coded writing samples suggested that BPD features are associated with repetitive thought that is negative in valence, difficult to control, prolonged, unhelpful, and unresolved. Although rumination is often described as a form of self-focused attention, BPD relationship difficulties were correlated with greater other-focus in the writing samples, which may reflect more interpersonal themes. Across both self-reports and the writing task, the BPD feature of self-destructive behavior was associated specifically with anger and hostility, suggesting this content may play a particularly important role in fueling impulsive behavior. These findings suggest that both the style and the content of repetitive thought may play a role in BPD features.     

The Psychosocial Impact of Undergoing Prophylactic Total Gastrectomy (PTG) to Manage the Risk of Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer (HDGC)

Individuals identified as at high risk of developing Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer (HDGC) are advised to undergo prophylactic surgery - have their stomach removed - in their early twenties. Research with (older) cancer patients who undergo gastrectomy for curative reasons suggests that gastric resection has a number of physical and psychosocial sequelae. Because it is difficult to extrapolate the findings of studies of older cancer patients to younger healthy patients who are considering prophylactic total gastrectomy (PTG), the aim of this qualitative interview study was to determine the psychosocial implications of undergoing prophylactic surgery to manage genetic risk. Fourteen men and 13 women from the UK’s Familial Gastric Cancer study who had undergone PTG were invited to participate in qualitative interviews. Most reported that undergoing surgery and convalescence was easier than anticipated. There was evidence that age affected experiences of PTG, with younger patients tending to report faster recovery times and more transient aftereffects. All saw the benefits of risk reduction as outweighing the costs of surgery. Surgery was described as having a range of physical impacts (disrupted appetite, weight loss, fatigue, GI symptoms) that had related psychological, social and economic implications. Those considering PTG need to be aware that its impact on quality of life is difficult to predict and negative sequelae may be ongoing for some individuals.     

Maternal insightfulness and preschoolers' emotion and behavior problems: Reciprocal influences in a therapeutic preschool program

Mothers' insightfulness, which involves understanding the motives underlying the child's behavior in a complete, open, and accepting way, was examined both at the beginning and at the end of a therapeutic preschool program for preschoolers using the Insightfulness Assessment (Oppenheim & Koren‐Karie, 2002). The goal of the study was to examine the links between improvement in mothers' insightfulness and reduction in children's behavior problems. Thirty‐two children referred to a therapeutic preschool program for a range of behavioral and emotional problems and their mothers participated in the study. Results showed that mothers who shifted from noninsightfulness before treatment to insightfulness after treatment had children whose behavior problems decreased whereas mothers who did not make such gains had children whose behavior problems increased. The social skills of all children improved during treatment. The possible mechanisms linking the gains of mothers and children are discussed within the framework of attachment theory.     

Structure and measurement of depression in youths: applying item response theory to clinical data

Our goals in this article were to use item response theory (IRT) to assess the relation of depressive symptoms to the underlying dimension of depression and to demonstrate how IRT-based measurement strategies can yield more reliable data about depression severity than conventional symptom counts. Participants were 3,403 children and adolescents from 12 contributing clinical and nonclinical samples; all participants had received the Kiddie Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Aged Children. Results revealed that some symptoms reflected higher levels of depression and were more discriminating than others. Furthermore, use of IRT-based information about symptom severity and discriminability in the measurement of depression severity was shown to reduce measurement error and increase measurement fidelity.     

Non-verbal number acuity correlates with symbolic mathematics achievement: but only in children

The process by which adults develop competence in symbolic mathematics tasks is poorly understood. Nonhuman animals, human infants, and human adults all form nonverbal representations of the approximate numerosity of arrays of dots and are capable of using these representations to perform basic mathematical operations. Several researchers have speculated that individual differences in the acuity of such nonverbal number representations provide the basis for individual differences in symbolic mathematical competence. Specifically, prior research has found that 14-year-old children’s ability to rapidly compare the numerosities of two sets of colored dots is correlated with their mathematics achievements at ages 5–11. In the present study, we demonstrated that although when measured concurrently the same relationship holds in children, it does not hold in adults. We conclude that the association between nonverbal number acuity and mathematics achievement changes with age and that nonverbal number representations do not hold the key to explaining the wide variety of mathematical performance levels in adults.     

Perceived impact of socially anxious behaviors on individuals' lives in Western and East Asian countries

The current study compared the predicted social and career impact of socially withdrawn and reticent behaviors among participants from Western and East Asian countries. Three hundred sixty-one college students from 5 Western countries and 455 students from 3 East Asian countries read hypothetical vignettes describing socially withdrawn and shy behaviors versus socially outgoing and confident behaviors. Participants then answered questions following each vignette indicating the extent to which they would expect the subject of the vignette to be socially liked and to succeed in their career. Participants also completed measures of their own social anxiety and quality of life. The results indicated significant vignette-by-country interactions in that the difference in perceived social and career impact between shy and outgoing vignettes was smaller among participants from East Asian countries than from Western countries. In addition, significant negative correlations were shown between personal level of shyness and experienced quality of life for participants from both groups of countries, but the size of this relationship was greater for participants from Western than East Asian countries. The results point to the more negative impact of withdrawn and socially reticent behaviors for people from Western countries relative to those from East Asia.     

It's either a cook or a baker: patients with conduction aphasia get the gist but lose the trace

Patients with conduction aphasia have been characterized as having a short-term memory deficit that leads to relative difficulty on span and repetition tasks. It has also been observed that these same patients often get the gist of what is said to them, even if they are unable to repeat the information verbatim. To study this phenomenon experimentally, patients with conduction aphasia and left hemisphere-injured controls were tested on a repetition recognition task that required them to listen to a sentence and immediately point to one of three sentences that matched it. On some trials, the distractor sentences contained substituted words that were semantically-related to the target, and on other trials, the distractor sentences contained semantically-distinct words. Patients with conduction aphasia and controls performed well on the latter condition, when distractors were semantically-distinct. However, when the distractor sentences were semantically-related, the patients with conduction aphasia were impaired at identifying the target sentence, suggesting that these patients could not rely on the verbatim trace. To further understand these results, we also tested elderly controls on the same task, except that a delay was introduced between study and test. Like the patients with conduction aphasia, the elderly controls were worse at identifying target sentences when there were semantically-related distractors. Taken together, these results suggest that patients with conduction aphasia rely on non-phonologic cues, such as lexical-semantics, to support their short-term memory, just as normal participants must do in long-term memory tasks when the phonological trace is no longer present.     

Variation in the serotonin transporter gene modulates selective attention to threat

The 5-HTTLPR is an insertion/deletion polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene. Prior research has revealed associations between the short-allele variant of this polymorphism, enhanced self-reported negative emotionality, and hypersensitivity of fear relevant neural circuits. In a sample of 50 healthy women we examined the role of 5-HTTLPR for cognitive-affective processing of phylogenetical fear-relevant stimuli (spiders) in a dot probe task. In contrast to homozygote long-allele carriers (ll), participants carrying at least 1 short allele (ss and sl) selectively shifted attention toward pictures of spiders, when these were presented for a duration of 2,000 ms. These results argue for an involvement of 5-HTTLPR in cognitive processing of threatening stimuli and thus, underpin its general role for individual differences in negative affect.     

Are we there yet? A review of gender comparisons in three behavioral journals through the 20th century

Despite overwhelming evidence that gender plays a significant role in the course of numerous psychological disorders, researchers have historically neglected to address gender similarities and differences in their research. Previous reviews of the psychological literature have indicated that personality, psychotherapy, and behavioral psychology journals have published few studies that focus on gender comparisons. The current review examined published articles in three prominent behavioral psychology journals—Behavior Therapy, Behavior Modification, and Behaviour Research and Therapy—from their inception through 2001. Raters coded each article (N = 4,635) for gender content in the title or abstract, analyses of gender differences, and discussion of gender. Overall, very few articles focused on gender content in the title, abstract, or discussion or analyzed data by gender. Implications of these results and suggestions for enhancing attention to gender comparisons are discussed.