BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT OF INFANT SLEEP DISTURBANCE

Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design, we evaluated the effects of extinction and stimulus control on nighttime sleep disturbances exhibited by 7 infants. Results showed that frequency and duration of night wakings decreased for all subjects, with corresponding improvements reflected through changes in responses to the sleep behavior scale. Observed improvements maintained at 3 and 24 months posttreatment.     

What are the combined effects of negative emotions and illness cognitions on self-care in people with type 2 diabetes? A longitudinal structural equation model

Objective: To explore whether negative emotions mediate the effect of diabetes cognitions on diabetes self-care and conversely whether diabetes cognitions mediate the effect of negative emotions on diabetes self-care.

Design: Longitudinal observational study in adults with type 2 diabetes.

Main outcome measures: Self-reported depression and anxiety (Diabetes Wellbeing Questionnaire), cognitions (Illness Perceptions Questionnaire-Revised; Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire), and diabetes self-care (Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities Scale) were completed at baseline and six months. Analyses used structural equation modelling.

Results: Baseline medication concerns were associated with elevated symptoms of depression and anxiety at follow-up, but emotions did not mediate medication concern’s effect on diabetes self-care. Baseline depression and anxiety symptoms were associated with specific diabetes cognitions over time, but these cognition domains did not mediate emotion’s effect on diabetes self-care. Personal control remained independent of emotions and was associated with diabetes self-care over time.

Conclusions: Negative emotions did not act directly or alongside cognitions to influence diabetes self-care. The reciprocal relationship between diabetes cognitions and emotions suggests cognitive restructuring, in addition to other mood management intervention techniques would likely improve the emotional wellbeing of adults with type 2 diabetes. Likewise, personal control beliefs are likely important intervention targets for improving self-care.     

Phonological code activation during listening

Rhyme priming to visually dissimilar rhymes (e. g., eight-late) was used in a lexical decision task to investigate the access and maintenance of speech-based codes in sentence comprehension. One member of the rhyme pair was embedded in a sentence and the other was presented visually for lexical decision. Rhyme priming obtained when the prime and target were separated by four but not by seven intervening words, suggesting that the phonological code for the word was initially accessed and then rapidly decayed.The research in this paper was initially presented at the 1982 Meetings of the Midwestern Psychological Association held in Minneapolis. This research was supported by NSF grant IST 80-2439 and by NIH grant HD 1619-01.     

Consumer evaluation in practice

Users of a community child and adolescent mental health service were surveyed, 3–4 weeks after their last contact, to determine their satisfaction with the service they received. High levels of overall satisfaction were obtained by general ratings, which tended to mask more specific critical comments to open-ended questions suggesting ways in which the service could be improved. The resulting changes in service provision are identified, the general value of consumer surveys discussed and the need to include open-ended questions in satisfaction surveys emphasized.     

Book reviews

Facets of Buddhism Shotaro Iida, 1991 Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass 166 pp., Rs. 150 hb

Li Ao: Buddhist, Taoist, or Neo‐Confucian? T. H. Barrett, 1992 London Oriental Series, Vol. 39 Oxford, Oxford University Press x + 178 pp. £20

Spirituality & Emptiness Donald W. Mitchell, 1992 New York, Paulist Press, xvi + 224 pp. $12.95     

The control of movement in the preferred and non-preferred hands

The nature of the difference in skill between the preferred and non-preferred hands was investigated using a peg-board task. The first experiment examined the effects of varying movement amplitude and target tolerance on performance. The difference between hands was found to be related to tolerance rather than movement amplitude. The second study analysed a film record of well-practised subjects, confirming the hypothesis that most of the difference between hands is due to relative slowness of the non-preferred hand in the positioning phase involving small corrective movements. Analysis of the type and number of errors further suggested that this result is not due to differences in duration of movements but to their increased frequency, implying greater accuracy of aiming with the preferred hand. Thus whilst the initial gross analysis implicated feedback processing in skill differences the more detailed analysis suggests that motor output of the nonpreferred hand is simply more variable.