Migrant mental health: a model for indicators of mental health and health care consumption.

OBJECTIVE: This study explores the relationship between mental health and health care consumption among migrants in the Netherlands. DESIGN: Samples of the Turkish (n = 648), Moroccan (n = 102), and Surinamese (n = 311) populations in Amsterdam were examined. The study tested a hypothesized model of risk factors for psychiatric morbidity, indicators of well-being, and indicators of health care consumption. The model was specified on the basis of information from earlier research on the sample and literature on the topic. The model was tested and refined using structural equation modeling. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Psychiatric morbidity and well-being measures were assessed with the CIDI 1.1 and MOS-sf-36 subscales, respectively. Health care consumption was assessed by the question "Have you ever consulted one or more of these professionals or health care facilities with respect to mental health problems or problems related to alcohol or drugs usage?" RESULTS: The primary result of this study was the confirmation that health care consumption among migrants is predicted by need and predisposition factors, such as health condition and sociodemographic characteristics. In addition, mental health care consumption of migrants is predicted by acculturation characteristics. This result suggests an effect of cultural and migrant-specific factors in help-seeking behavior and barriers to mental health care facilities. CONCLUSIONS: Findings confirm the existence of migrant-specific mechanisms in health care consumption. Mental health care professionals should be aware of these. However, ignoring common ground for interventions unnecessarily creates distance between migrant groups and between migrant and indigenous Dutch groups.     

The intervening role of social worldviews in the relationship between the five‐factor model of personality and social attitudes

The present research investigates in a student (N = 183) and a voter sample (N = 276) whether the relationships between the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) personality dimensions and social attitudes (i.e. Right‐Wing Authoritarianism [RWA] and Social Dominance Orientation [SDO]) are mediated by social worldviews (i.e. dangerous and jungle worldviews). Two important results were obtained. First, the perception of the world as inherently dangerous and chaotic partially mediated the relationships of the personality dimensions Openness and Neuroticism and the social attitude RWA. Second, the jungle worldview completely mediated the relationships between Agreeableness and SDO, but considerable item overlap between the jungle worldview and SDO was also noted. It was further revealed that acquiescence response set and item overlap had an impact on social worldviews and attitudes, but that their relationships were hardly affected by these biases. The discussion focuses on the status of social worldviews to explain social attitudes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhanced perceived responsibility decreases metamemory but not memory accuracy in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Mixed findings have been obtained in prior research with respect to the presence and severity of memory and metamemory deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We tested the hypothesis that experimentally induced increments of subjective responsibility would lead to a disproportionately strong decline of memory confidence and enhanced response latencies in OCD while leaving memory accuracy unaffected. Twenty-eight OCD patients and 28 healthy controls were presented a computerized memory test framed with two different scenarios. In the neutral scenario, the participant was requested to imagine purchasing 15 items from a do-it-yourself store. In the recognition phase, the 15 needed items were presented along with 15 distractor items. The participant was asked to decide whether items were on his or her shopping list or not, graded by subjective confidence. In the responsibility scenario, the general experimental setup was analogous except that the participant now had to envision that he or she was a helper in a region recently struck by an earthquake, dispatched to provide 15 urgently needed goods from a nearby town. In line with prior work by our group, samples did not differ in either condition on memory accuracy in a subsequent recognition task. As hypothesized, OCD participants were less certain in their responses for the high responsibility condition than controls. Whereas patients and controls did not differ in their subjective estimates for memorized items, patients expressed stronger doubt that their earthquake mission was successful. The findings indicate that low memory confidence in OCD may only be elicited in situations where perceived responsibility is high and that patients may share higher performance standards ("good is not good enough") than controls when perceived responsibility is inflated.     

A taxometric study of the Adult Attachment Interview

This study is the first to examine the latent structure of individual differences reflected in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985), a commonly used and well-validated measure designed to assess an adult's current state of mind regarding childhood experiences with caregivers. P. E. Meehl's (1995) taxometric methods (i.e., MAXCOV-HITMAX) were applied to data from 504 AAIs. Analyses revealed that the variation underlying secure versus dismissing states of mind was more consistent with a dimensional than a taxonic model. (Taxometric analyses of preoccupation were indeterminate.) In addition, variation in secure adults' (n=278) reports about their early experiences revealed little evidence for qualitative groups of earned- and continuous-secures. Rather, the inferred life experiences of secure adults appeared to be distributed continuously. Findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications regarding the phenomenon of earned-security specifically and variation underlying secure and insecure states of mind more generally. The consequences of these analyses for AAI reliability training and coding are also explored.     

It's the way that you, er, say it: hesitations in speech affect language comprehension

Everyday speech is littered with disfluency, often correlated with the production of less predictable words (e.g., Beattie & Butterworth [Beattie, G., & Butterworth, B. (1979). Contextual probability and word frequency as determinants of pauses in spontaneous speech. Language and Speech, 22, 201-211.]). But what are the effects of disfluency on listeners? In an ERP experiment which compared fluent to disfluent utterances, we established an N400 effect for unpredictable compared to predictable words. This effect, reflecting the difference in ease of integrating words into their contexts, was reduced in cases where the target words were preceded by a hesitation marked by the word er. Moreover, a subsequent recognition memory test showed that words preceded by disfluency were more likely to be remembered. The study demonstrates that hesitation affects the way in which listeners process spoken language, and that these changes are associated with longer-term consequences for the representation of the message.     

Shifting attention into and out of objects: evaluating the processes underlying the object advantage

Visual cuing studies have been widely used to demonstrate and explore contributions from both object- and location-based attention systems. A common finding has been a response advantage for shifts of attention occurring within an object, relative to shifts of an equal distance between objects. The present study examined this advantage for within-object shifts in terms of engage and disengage operations within the object- and location-based attention systems. The rationale was that shifts of attention between objects require object-based attention to disengage from one object before shifting to another, something that is not required for shifts of attention within an object or away from a location. One- and two-object displays were used to assess object-based contributions related to disengaging and engaging attention within, between, into, and out of objects. The results suggest that the "object advantage" commonly found in visual cuing experiments in which shifts of attention are required is primarily due to disengage operations associated with object-based attention.     

Effort-reward imbalance, overcommitment, and psychological distress in Canadian police officers

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship among Effort, Reward, and Overcommitment dimensions of Siegrist's Effort-Reward Imbalance Model and Psychological Distress in a sample of 78 Canadian police officers. Ages of respondents ranged between 24 and 56 years (M=36.1, SD=8.0). 30% of respondents had been in policing for 16 years or more, 24% between 6 and 15 years, and 44% for 5 years or less. Ordinary least-squares regression was used to evaluate the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. After adjusting for age, sex, education, and marital status, higher levels of Effort-Reward Imbalance and Overcommitment were associated with greater Psychological Distress. Present findings support the utility of the model in this particular occupational group and add to the increasing literature suggesting association of Effort-Reward Imbalance, Overcommitment, and reduced mental health.     

Resistance to Interference of Olfactory Perceptual Learning

The Psychological Record - Olfactory memory is especially persistent. The current study explored whether this applies to a form of perceptual learning, in which experience of an odor mixture...     

Examination of the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales in a Sample of Bariatric Surgery Candidates

The current study examined the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales (Tellegen et al., MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales: Development, validation, and interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) in a sample of 1,091 bariatric surgery candidates. The RC scales were developed to address concerns about limited discriminant validity of the Clinical scales. Internal consistency and external validity analyses were conducted to evaluate the RC scales in this setting. Results indicated that the RC scales are generally more internally consistent than the Clinical scales and display significantly better convergent and discriminant validity in predicting a variety of behavioral, psychological, and developmental variables relevant to preoperative bariatric psychological evaluations. Implications of the results and recommendations for future research with the RC scales in medical settings are discussed.     

Modeling the word recognition data of Vitevitch and Luce (1998): Is it ARTful?

Vitevitch and Luce (1998) showed that the probability with which phonemes co-occur in the language (phonotactic probability) affects the speed with which words and nonwords are named. Words with high phonotactic probabilities between phonemes were named more slowly than words with low probabilities, whereas with nonwords, just the opposite was found. To reproduce this reversal in performance, a model would seem to require not merely sublexical representations, but sublexical representations that are relatively independent of lexical representations. ARTphone (Grossberg, Boardman, & Cohen, 1997) is designed to meet these requirements. In this study, we used a technique called parameter space partitioning to analyze ARTphone’s behavior and to learn if it can mimic human behavior and, if so, to understand how. To perform best, differences in sublexical node probabilities must be amplified relative to lexical node probabilities to offset the additional source of inhibition (from top-down masking) that is found at the sublexical level.