Opposite effects of anxiety and depressive symptoms on executive function: The case of selecting among competing options

People constantly face the need to choose one option from among many, such as when selecting words to express a thought. Selecting between many options can be difficult for anyone, and can feel overwhelming for individuals with elevated anxiety. The current study demonstrates that anxiety is associated with impaired selection across three different verbal tasks, and tests the specificity of this finding to anxiety. Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur; thus, it might be assumed that they would demonstrate similar associations with selection, although they also have distinct profiles of symptoms, neuroanatomy and neurochemistry. Here, we report for the first time that anxiety and depressive symptoms counter-intuitively have opposite effects on selection among competing options. Specifically, whereas anxiety symptoms are associated with impairments in verbal selection, depressive symptoms are associated with better selection performance. Implications for understanding the mechanisms of anxiety, depression and selection are discussed.     

Disclosing Extra-Dyadic Involvement (EDI): Understanding Attitudes, Subjective Norms, and Perceived Behavioral Control

Extra-dyadic involvement (EDI) is a complex issue that affects many individuals, couples, and families. One important, relatively unexplored issue concerns the disclosure of EDI. Despite some scholarly discourse on whether disclosure should be facilitated in a therapeutic context (e.g., Butler et al. in J Marital Fam Ther 35:125–143, 2009; Butler et al. in Am J Fam Ther 36:265–283, 2008), empirical research has not studied the intrapersonal or interpersonal processes related to disclosure. In this study, we explored potential factors involved in the decision to disclose EDI by looking at the relationships among attitudes towards EDI (in terms of perceived justifications and costs), subjective norms (obligation to disclose), and perceived behavioral control (difficulty) associated with EDI disclosure. Our sample included 337 individuals enrolled in at least one university course at one of three geographically distinct universities. Findings indicate that more permissive attitudes towards EDI are not significantly associated to the perceived difficulty in disclosing EDI or the obligation associated with disclosing EDI involving sexual intercourse. However, more permissive attitudes are related to lower felt obligation to disclose EDI that does not involve direct sexual intercourse. Conversely, more restrictive attitudes towards EDI (perceived severity, degree of perceived upset, and how detrimental it is perceived to be to the relationship) predicted greater difficulty but also greater obligation in disclosing all forms of EDI. Specific implications of these findings, including potential implications for therapy, are discussed. Overall, this study provides preliminary information regarding potentially useful factors to consider in understanding the EDI disclosure process that may also be useful in developing intervention points in therapy.     

Childhood Sexual Assault,Quality of Life,and Psychiatric Comorbidity in Veterans With Military and Civilian Sexual Trauma

Veterans with military sexual trauma (MST) are at risk for a variety of psychiatric conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Survivors of MST are also likely to experience diminished quality of life (QoL). Individuals with higher lifetime incidence of sexual trauma may also be at increased risk for poorer outcomes in QoL and psychiatric symptomatology. The differences in psychological sequelae among those who have experienced sexual trauma as children, and those whose sexual trauma exposure is limited to adulthood are relatively understudied. The majority of sexual trauma literature has focused primarily on civilian trauma, and comparatively few studies have specifically examined psychosocial sequelae (e.g., QoL) in veterans with MST. This study examined how childhood sexual abuse (CSA) affects overall QoL as well as severity of PTSD and depressive symptoms. Veterans who reported CSA had significantly greater depression symptom severity than veterans who did not. No significant differences in PTSD symptom severity or QoL were found between veterans who did and did not report CSA. Results highlight the need for further examination of the relationship between CSA and depression in veterans with MST-related PTSD who also report CSA.     

Pacifism, Just War, and Self-Defense

This essay distinguishes two main forms of pacifism, personal pacifism and political pacifism. It then contrasts the views on self-defense of political pacifism and just war theory, paying special attention to notions of the state and sovereignty.     

Major memory for microblogs

Online social networking is vastly popular and permits its members to post their thoughts as microblogs, an opportunity that people exploit, on Facebook alone, over 30 million times an hour. Such trivial ephemera, one might think, should vanish quickly from memory; conversely, they may comprise the sort of information that our memories are tuned to recognize, if that which we readily generate, we also readily store. In the first two experiments, participants’ memory for Facebook posts was found to be strikingly stronger than their memory for human faces or sentences from books—a magnitude comparable to the difference in memory strength between amnesics and healthy controls. The second experiment suggested that this difference is not due to Facebook posts spontaneously generating social elaboration, because memory for posts is enhanced as much by adding social elaboration as is memory for book sentences. Our final experiment, using headlines, sentences, and reader comments from articles, suggested that the remarkable memory for microblogs is also not due to their completeness or simply their topic, but may be a more general phenomenon of their being the largely spontaneous and natural emanations of the human mind.     

Associations between cortical thickness and general intelligence in children,adolescents and young adults

Neuroimaging research indicates that human intellectual ability is related to brain structure including the thickness of the cerebral cortex. Most studies indicate that general intelligence is positively associated with cortical thickness in areas of association cortex distributed throughout both brain hemispheres. In this study, we performed a cortical thickness mapping analysis on data from 182 healthy typically developing males and females ages 9 to 24 years to identify correlates of general intelligence (g) scores. To determine if these correlates also mediate associations of specific cognitive abilities with cortical thickness, we regressed specific cognitive test scores on g scores and analyzed the residuals with respect to cortical thickness. The effect of age on the association between cortical thickness and intelligence was examined. We found a widely distributed pattern of positive associations between cortical thickness and g scores, as derived from the first unrotated principal factor of a factor analysis of Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) subtest scores. After WASI specific cognitive subtest scores were regressed on g factor scores, the residual score variances did not correlate significantly with cortical thickness in the full sample with age covaried. When participants were grouped at the age median, significant positive associations of cortical thickness were obtained in the older group for g-residualized scores on Block Design (a measure of visual-motor integrative processing) while significant negative associations of cortical thickness were observed in the younger group for g-residualized Vocabulary scores. These results regarding correlates of general intelligence are concordant with the existing literature, while the findings from younger versus older subgroups have implications for future research on brain structural correlates of specific cognitive abilities, as well as the cognitive domain specificity of behavioral performance correlates of normative gray matter thinning during adolescence.     

The Effects of Need for Cognition and Need for Affect on Partisan Evaluations

The voting behavior literature has advanced two prominent theoretical models of partisanship: the social psychological and rational models. Implicit to both stylized models is the assumption that all partisans process information similarly. Yet, growing research in psychology suggests that individuals possess different motivations when evaluating information. We propose that the applicability of the stylized models of partisanship is conditioned on individuals' need for cognition (NFC) and need for affect (NFA), with the social psychological model being most applicable to individuals who have a high NFA and the rational model most applicable to those with a high NFC. To test this proposition, we fielded a survey in which respondents who identified with the two major political parties in the United States (Democrat or Republican) were randomly assigned factual information that depicted either their party or their opposing party in a negative light. Respondents were then asked to assess the actions of that party and subsequently evaluate both political parties. We find evidence that is generally consistent with the proposition that the stylized models of partisanship are conditionally dependent on the extent to which individuals possess a need to engage in effortful thinking or a need to seek out emotions.     

Physical activity levels in young adult Hispanics and Whites: Social cognitive theory determinants

The psychosocial determinants of health-impairing physical inactivity among Hispanic populations have not been well explored nor have systematic comparisons been made with White populations using Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) measures. Three exercise-relevant efficacy measures (task, scheduling, and response efficacy), three exercise-relevant expectancy measures (physical health, psychological health, and self-evaluative), and self reports of activity levels were obtained from 20-year-old male and female Hispanics (n?=?94) and Whites (n?=?94). Activity levels for the two groups were analyzed in separate regression analyses that included the six SCT measures and gender as predictors. The set of seven predictors accounted for 51% of the variance in self-reported activity levels in each analysis. For young adult Hispanics, task efficacy, response efficacy, mental-health expectancies, and self-evaluative expectancies predicted activity level. For young adult Whites, scheduling efficacy and self-evaluative expectancies predicted activity level. Gender was not a significant predictor of activity level for either group. A multivariate analysis of variance indicated that the only SCT predictor on which Hispanics and Whites significantly differed was mental-health expectancies. The results of this study indicate that the psychosocial determinants of exercise are qualitatively different for the two groups and that the determinants of physical activity levels for young adult Hispanics may not be as effective as those of young adult Whites in sustaining lifelong exercise habits. Thus the present study offers a promising strategy for detecting inactivity-related physical- and mental-health risks at an age when lifelong habits of physical activity are still being formed.     

Do sedentary motives adversely affect physical activity? Adding cross-behavioural cognitions to the theory of planned behaviour

The purpose of this study was to explore whether sedentary behavior cognitions explain physical activity (PA) intention and behavior when integrated within the theory of planned behavior framework (TPB). A random community sample of 206 adults and a sample of 174 undergraduate students completed measures of the TPB pertaining to PA and four popular leisure-time behaviors (TV viewing, computer use, sedentary hobbies, and sedentary socializing) and an adapted Godin Leisure-Time Exercize Questionnaire (community sample = cross-sectional, undergraduate sample = 2-week prospective). Results using ordinary least squares regression provided evidence that TV viewing intention explains additional variance in PA behavior, and affective attitude (community sample) and perceived behavioral control (undergraduate sample) towards TV viewing explains additional variance in PA intention even after controlling for PA-related TPB constructs. These results underscore the potential value of adding sedentary control interventions in concert with PA promotion.