Poor Sleep as a Risk Factor for Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Adolescent Girls

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between poor sleep and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), and to test the hypothesis that poor sleep is a risk factor for the development of NSSI in young adolescents. Questionnaire data were used from a 2-wave longitudinal study of a community sample of 881 young Swedish adolescents. The results showed that 7 % of the girls reported poor sleep (never or seldom sleeping well), and 20–26 % of the girls reported repeated NSSI (at least 5 instances). Poor sleep was associated prospectively with NSSI among girls, but not among boys. Of girls who responded that they seldom or never slept well at T1, 77 % reported repeated NSSI 1 year later. Poor sleep at T1 was found to predict the incidence of new cases of repeated NSSI in girls at T2, independently of their degree of psychopathology. No similar relationship between poor sleep and NSSI was found in boys. The present results suggest that screening for poor sleep in adolescents may serve to identify a subgroup of girls at risk for developing NSSI. It is concluded that poor sleep in young girls should be taken seriously, even in the absence of other self-reported psychological problems, and that interventions targeted at sleep disturbances may be important for prevention.     

Early Termination from Couple Therapy in a Naturalistic Setting: The Role of Therapeutic Mandates and Romantic Attachment

Drawing on a series of 141 couple therapy cases, the main goal of the present study was to determine whether romantic attachment, pre-treatment relationship distress and therapeutic mandates (i.e., reduction of couple distress or ambivalence resolution) are prognostic indicators of early termination. Couples completed the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier 1976) and the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire (Brennan et al. 1998) at intake, whereas therapists filled in the Classification of Therapeutic Mandates (Poitras-Wright and St-Père 2004) after the 4th session. Results showed that an ambivalence resolution mandate, elevated couple distress and higher levels of attachment anxiety were associated with early termination. The implications of these findings to further understand early termination in couple therapy are discussed.     

Sense of Time and Executive Functioning in Children and Adults

A number of patient studies suggest that impairments in frontal lobe functions are associated with disorders in temporal information processing. One implication of these findings is that subjective experience of time should be related to executive functions regardless of etiology. In two experiments, we examined sense of time in relation to components of executive functioning in healthy children and adults. In Experiment 1, children between 8 to 12 years completed six experimental tasks that tapped three components of executive functioning: inhibition, updating, and mental shifting. Sense of time was examined in a duration judgment task in which participants reproduced stimulus durations between 4 to 32 s. In Experiment 2, adult participants completed the time reproduction task under varying concurrent task demands. Both experiments showed selective effects in that time reproduction errors were related to the inhibition and updating, but not to the shifting, components of executive functioning. However, the observed effects were modulated by task demands and age-related differences in cognitive competence. We conclude that individual differences in executive functioning are only weakly related to time reproduction performance in healthy children and adults.     

Outrage towards whom? Threats to moral group status impede striving to improve via out‐group‐directed outrage

Threats to group status can elicit different responses, ranging from those that motivate striving for improvement to those that motivate defending the threatened social identity. We examine why moral threats to group status may inhibit individuals' striving to improve. Specifically, we predicted that a threat to the group's moral status evokes a defensive emotional focus on the out‐group that impedes individuals' striving to improve. Two studies (N = 76 and N = 90) showed that moral (as opposed to nonmoral) threats elicited more outrage directed at the out‐group and, by trend, less outrage directed at the in‐group. The follow‐up study further demonstrated that moral threat impeded striving for improvement because of the relative focus of outrage on in‐group versus out‐group. Moreover, and consistent with our group‐based analysis, this pattern was most pronounced among strongly identified group members. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of framing groups' shortcomings in moral versus nonmoral terms. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Failure cue priming and impaired cognitive performance—analyses of avoidance motivation as a mediator and fear of failure as a moderator

The present research investigates whether and how learned symbols for failure reduce task performance. We tested the effect of number priming in two countries with different learning histories for numbers. Priming numbers associated with failure (6 in Germany and 1 in Switzerland) were hypothesized to reduce performance. As expected, in Switzerland, priming with the failure number 1 reduced performance (Study 1), whereas in Germany, priming with the failure number 6 impaired performance in analogy tasks (Study 2). Study 2 additionally analyzed the mechanism and showed that the relationship between failure number priming and performance was mediated by evoked avoidance motivation and that dispositional fear of failure moderated this mediation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

God is great – but not necessary? On Ara Norenzayan,Big Gods (2013)

Norenzayan provides ample evidence to support the claim that beliefs about moralizing Big Gods correlate with prosocial behavior. Atheists, for their part, are the most mistrusted minority wherever there is a widespread belief in moralizing gods. Projecting these patterns of thought and behavior on to our ancestors 10 000 years back is risky, though. It is a plausible hypothesis that prosociality in societies where people meet anonymous others on a regular basis may have coevolved with beliefs about Big Gods, but it remains historically speculative and the direction of causality is impossible to establish.     

Mother – infant group psychotherapy as an intensive treatment in early interaction among mothers with substance abuse problems

In this article we present a novel method of outpatient care: brief, dynamic mother – infant group psychotherapy with mothers who have substance use problems. In this therapy, substance abuse treatment is part of mental health and parenting interventions. The focus is on preventing disturbance in the mother – infant relationship in this high-risk group. The clinical material is taken from 16 mother – infant dyads from six psychotherapy groups, which met weekly over six months from pregnancy to post-partum. The therapy process consists of 20 – 24 three-hour sessions. The basis of the therapy is to offer mothers experience of care, which they, in turn, can give to their infants. In this paper we analyse the core therapeutic elements that may contribute to better mothering and child development. They involve: the group providing a symbolic maternal lap, and the meeting of the mothers' and the infants' needs. It is hoped that this may offer the mothers a new experience within which to reappraise their early memories. This may help prevent them from projecting traumatic past experiences onto their infants. Our analyses show that in the therapy, mothers, feeling safe within the group, gradually experienced pleasure with their infants and their peers. These effects, according to the mothers, were the most noticeable. Brief dynamic mother – infant group psychotherapy seems to be a promising form of treatment for those substance-abusing women able to commit to outpatient care and examine the causes of their drug dependence. The groups may also be used as a diagnostic tool to detect problems in early mother-baby interaction.     

Extending the Rorschach Trauma Content Index and Aggression Indexes to Dream Narratives of Children Exposed to Enduring Violence: An Exploratory Study

The relationship between a measure of interpersonal stress and report of physical symptoms was investigated. The data were obtained on 85 undergraduate students using a structured diary for a period of one week. A positive relationship was found between the diary measure of interpersonal stress and an overall tendency to report physical complaints. Positive relationships were also found between the measure of interpersonal stress and report of specific symptoms, such as dizziness and back problems. Interpersonal stress appeared higher on symptom days than non-symptom days but little evidence was found for higher stress on days immediately preceding symptoms.