Cognitive biases and alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood: The moderating role of gender,attentional control and inhibitory control

The present study investigated the cross-sectional associations between cognitive biases (i.e., attentional bias and approach bias) and alcohol use and investigated the moderating role of gender, attentional control and inhibitory control. The sample consisted of 94 adolescents and young adults (52.1% boys) between 15.3 and 20.8 years old (M_age = 18.0, SD = 1.1) who reported drinking alcohol in the past three months. A stronger approach bias was related to higher alcohol use, albeit only among boys. Furthermore, the association between attentional bias and alcohol use was moderated by attentional control; the lowest alcohol use was found in adolescents with low attentional bias and high attentional control, suggesting protective effects of both variables. The present study replicates and extends the results of studies on cognitive biases and addiction in adolescence and young adulthood.     

Problem gambling,gaming and Internet use in adolescents: Relationships with emotional intelligence in clinical and special needs samples

The study examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and several addiction-related behaviours (gambling problems, Internet abuse, and computer gaming misuse) in two adolescent samples: 270 clinical outpatients (180 males and 90 females) and 256 special needs students (160 males and 96 females). Gambling problems, Internet abuse, and computer gaming misuse were positively inter-correlated in both samples; approximately half of the variability in these addiction-related behaviours could be accounted for by a common dysfunctional preoccupation latent variable. Latent variable path analysis found emotional intelligence to be a moderate predictor of dysfunctional preoccupation in both adolescent samples.     

Addictive states of mind

This paper explores the meaning of the pregnancy of the therapist as a challenge to the maintenance of the setting for therapy. The patient I shall describe was born ‘black’ in a ‘white’ family and was thus a challenge to her father's sense of paternity and her parents as a couple. She was the visual evidence of an infidelity. The problem had been denied in various ways, going as far as the attempt to deny her very existence. The therapist's pregnancy signified a betrayal of the ideal of a stable setting which was compounded by an earlier absence through illness. This ‘breaking of rules or promises' was then the setting for a re-working of the patient's story.

Setting, it is argued, can helpfully be seen as the mental space created by the partnership within the therapist between maternal and paternal relating to the ‘baby’ of the therapy. This enables a sense of negotiation and relationship in the creation of setting, which can include disruptions and other babies. At the same time the therapy had to work with a fundamental issue of illegitimacy or lack of belonging and the therapist's response to this. The ‘rules' of setting are a means to ensure a place to belong or attach to, but this work emphasized ‘setting’ and belonging as issues of relationship supported and enabled by our rules of engagement, but not reducible to them.     

COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION IN A READING CLINIC: COMPARISON OF CLINIC AND CLASSROOM PRACTICES

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine middle school students’ (grades 4 to 8) metacognitive knowledge about science reading, science text, and science reading strategies. The 52 subjects were selected from 532 students who completed a survey instrument designed to determine students’ knowledge about science reading, science text, and science reading strategies. The stratified randomly sampled students were interviewed using five structured protocols. The protocol items were based on 21 strategic characteristics of successful readers of science text and three domains of metacognitive knowledge: declarative, procedural, and conditional. Quantitative analyses reveal surface level metacognitive knowledge about 20 of 21 strategies explored and similar levels of knowledge across the three metacognitive domains. A qualitative analysis indicates that average middle school students’ metacognitive knowledge of science reading, science text, and science reading strategies is similar to that of younger and poorer readers of narrative text.     

Performance in Autobiographical Memory of Older Adults with Depression Symptoms

The aim of this study was to compare the performance in the Autobiographical Memory Test in older adults with high scores on depression symptoms (HDS) compared with a matched group with low scores on depression symptoms (LDS) according to the clinical cut‐off of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Participants were asked to generate specific autobiographical memories in response to a series of positive and negative cue words. Latencies of responses for each item were also scored. LDS participants showed a higher proportion of specific memories than HDS participants. Latencies of responses to positive and negative cues were greater for HDS than LDS. Specific autobiographical memory was positively associated with Life Satisfaction. Cognitive emotional changes in the function of memory with age are suggested as a possible explanation for the findings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship Between Trajectories of Family/Cultural Stressors and Depression and Suicidal Ideation Among Substance Using Mexican-American Adults

We used an intersectional minority stress perspective to examine the association between family/cultural stress and mental health among substance-using Mexican-Americans. Employing a unique longitudinal sample of 239 socioeconomically disadvantaged, non-injecting heroin-using Mexican-Americans from San Antonio, Texas, we examined how culturally relevant stressors are related to depression and suicidal ideation. First, we identified depression and suicidal ideation prevalence rates for this disadvantaged sample. Second, we determined how cultural stress is experienced over time using stress trajectories. Third, we evaluated how family/cultural stressors and stress trajectories are related to depression and suicidal ideation outcomes. Results showed high rates of baseline depression (24 %) and suicidal ideation (30 %). We used latent class growth analysis to identify three primary stress trajectories (stable, high but decreasing, and increasing) over three time points during 1 year. We found that the increasing stressors trajectory was associated with higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation, and that stress trajectories had unique relationships with mental illness. We also showed that baseline stressors, sum stressors, and high but decreasing stressors maintained positive associations with mental illness after controlling for baseline depression. Our results highlight the importance of focusing on within-group, culturally specific stressors and addressing both operant and cumulative stressors in the study of mental health for marginalized populations and suggest the importance of early intervention in minimizing stressors.     

Learning time-varying categories

Many kinds of objects and events in our world have a strongly time-dependent quality. However, most theories about concepts and categories either are insensitive to variation over time or treat it as a nuisance factor that produces irrational order effects during learning. In this article, we present two category learning experiments in which we explored peoples’ ability to learn categories whose structure is strongly time-dependent. We suggest that order effects in categorization may in part reflect a sensitivity to changing environments, and that understanding dynamically changing concepts is an important part of developing a full account of human categorization.