Dyadische Planungsintervention nach Prostatektomie

Background

Prostate cancer is one of the most prevalent forms of cancer in men. One treatment for localized prostate cancer is radical prostatectomy. Patients and partners have to deal with stressors associated with the diagnosis, the surgery and its consequences (e.g. incontinence). Dyadic planning prepares for the coping process with illness consequences in order to enhance self-regulation and reduce anxiety. Dyadic planning means generating plans together with a partner specifying when, where and how the target person wants to initiate a health behavior.

Patients and methods

In this longitudinal randomized controlled trial (RCT) 112 prostatectomy patients and their spouses were invited to participate in a dyadic planning intervention. Participants were randomly allocated to a dyadic pelvic floor exercise (pfe) planning group or one of three control groups (i.e., individual pfe planning, dyadic or individual nutrition planning). Patients and partners received questionnaires at baseline, 2 weeks and 6 months after surgery.

Results

Patients in the dyadic pfe planning group reported higher dyadic pfe planning 2 weeks after surgery than patients in the nutrition planning groups. No such differential effects were found in partners. Additionally, there were no group differences in patient reports on anxiety 6 months after surgery, whereas partners in the dyadic pfe planning group reported lower anxiety levels compared to partners in the individual pfe planning group. Self-reported pfe planning did not, however, mediate the effects of the intervention on partners?? anxiety.

Conclusion

Economical dyadic planning interventions may not only support change of health-relevant behaviour in target persons but also emotional adjustment of their partners.     

Basic number processing in children with specific learning disorders: Comorbidity of reading and mathematics disorders

As well as being the hallmark of mathematics disorders, deficits in number processing have also been reported for individuals with reading disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate separately the components of numerical processing affected in reading and mathematical disorders within the framework of the Triple Code Model. Children with reading disorders (RD), mathematics disorders (MD), comorbid deficits (RD + MD), and typically developing children (TD) were tested on verbal, visual-verbal, and nonverbal number tasks. As expected, children with MD were impaired across a broad range of numerical tasks. In contrast, children with RD were impaired in (visual-)verbal number tasks but showed age-appropriate performance in nonverbal number skills, suggesting their impairments were domain specific and related to their reading difficulties. The comorbid group showed an additive profile of the impairments of the two single-deficit groups. Performance in speeded verbal number tasks was related to rapid automatized naming, a measure of visual-verbal access in the RD but not in the MD group. The results indicate that deficits in number skills are due to different underlying cognitive deficits in children with RD compared to children with MD: a phonological deficit in RD and a deficit in processing numerosities in MD.     

The impact of mindfulness on well-being and performance in the workplace: an inclusive systematic review of the empirical literature

Work can be demanding, imposing challenges that can be detrimental to the physical and mental health of workers. Efforts are therefore underway to develop practices and initiatives that may improve occupational well-being. These include interventions based on mindfulness meditation. This paper offers a systematic review of empirical studies featuring analyses of mindfulness in occupational contexts. Databases were reviewed from the start of records to January 2016. Eligibility criteria included experimental and correlative studies of mindfulness conducted in work settings, with a variety of well-being and performance measures. A total of 153 papers met the eligibility criteria and were included in the systematic review, comprising 12,571 participants. Mindfulness was generally associated with positive outcomes in relation to most measures. However, the quality of the studies was inconsistent, so further research is needed, particularly involving high-quality randomized control trials.     

65 Jahre später

Research on the long-term emotional impact of World War II experiences is an important psychoanalytical issue and requires an interdisciplinary approach. In the project: “Witnesses of the ‘Operation Gomorrha (Hamburg Firestorm)’ (1943) and their families” long-term processing of and coping with war experiences of former children and adolescents are investigated by historians and psychoanalysts. A sample of 64 witnesses (34 women, 30 men, average age 75 years) and their families was recruited and investigated by semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed by methods of “renarrated and interpreted history of coping” and group analysis against the background of historical, psychological and cultural approaches. A total of nine prototypical cases give insight into different biographically determined representations of the “Firestorm” and the conjunction with socio-cultural processes. Analysis of coping over the life-time has to take life experiences after the war and during the time of rebuilding into account. The research project attracts much interest among the former “war”-children.     

Reciprocal support provision: personality as a moderator?

In some cases, support provision can be predicted by the history of prior social exchange. Receiving may encourage providing. Moreover, personality dispositions may moderate the degree to which persons reciprocate support. Co‐student dyads (N = 43) facing an exam repeatedly reported their levels of received and provided support. Data revealed both direct and moderated reciprocal support provision. Actors' receipt of emotional support predicted the subsequent change in actors' provision of emotional support, indicating reciprocity. Also, more reciprocal emotional support provision was found in introverted and open individuals, whereas more reciprocal instrumental support provision was observed in introverts and less open individuals. Findings were partially validated when partner‐provided support instead of actor‐received support served as the predictor of later support provision. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An ERP investigation on the temporal dynamics of emotional prosody and emotional semantics in pseudo- and lexical-sentence context

Previous evidence supports differential event-related brain potential (ERP) responses for emotional prosodic processing and integrative emotional prosodic/semantic processing. While latter process elicits a negativity similar to the well-known N400 component, transitions in emotional prosodic processing elicit a positivity. To further substantiate this evidence, the current investigation utilized lexical-sentences and sentences without lexical content (pseudo-sentences) spoken in six basic emotions by a female and a male speaker. Results indicate that emotional prosodic expectancy violations elicit a right-lateralized positive-going ERP component independent of basic emotional prosodies and speaker voice. In addition, expectancy violations of integrative emotional prosody/semantics elicit a negativity with a whole-head distribution. The current results nicely complement previous evidence, and extend the results by showing the respective effects for a wider range of emotional prosodies independent of lexical content and speaker voice.     

Rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus in depressed patients

Rumination has been proposed as a cognitive risk factor for the onset and maintenance of depression. In parallel, mindfulness interventions have shown to reduce the risk for recurrence of depressive episodes. This study aimed to investigate effects of short periods of induced rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus on sad mood in depressed patients and to assess possible moderator effects of habitual variables on respective mood changes. Seventy-six depressed patients 3.5 years after discharge from inpatient treatment were subjected to negative mood induction and subsequently randomly assigned to a rumination, distraction, or mindful self-focus induction. Habitual aspects of rumination, distraction, and mindfulness were assessed by questionnaires. Compared to rumination, the induction of a mindful self-focus and of distraction showed clear beneficial effects on the course of negative mood. While habitual distraction predicted better mood outcomes across all conditions, patients high in habitual mindfulness tended to show stronger negative mood reduction specifically after the induction of a mindful self-focus. This study indicates that - similar to distraction - an experimentally induced mindful self-focus is able to reduce negative mood in depressed patients. Implications regarding possible subgroups of patients who might particularly benefit from mindfulness-based interventions are discussed.     

Die Bindungstheorie und ihre Relevanz für die Psychotherapie

Zusammenfassung W?hrend im ersten Teil der übersicht über die Relevanz der Bindungstheorie Grundlagen und Methoden der Bindungsforschung skizziert wurden, werden nun die m?glichen Implikationen der Theorie für die Psychotherapie und Psychosomatik er?rtert. überlegungen zur allgemeinen klinischen Relevanz und zum Verh?ltnis der Bindungstheorie zur Psychoanalyse bilden die Basis für die Darstellung konkreter Anwendungen von Ergebnissen der Bindungsforschung in der therapeutischen Praxis. Es folgen zusammenfassende Darstellungen von Untersuchungen, die sich mit der Bedeutung von Bindungscharakteristika für die Entwicklung psychosomatischer St?rungen und die Krankheits- bzw. Stre?verarbeitung befassen sowie von Studien, in denen Bindungscharakteristika psychischen St?rungen zugeordnet wurden. Schlie?lich wird die Bedeutung der Theorie für die Psychotherapie und die Psychotherapieforschung dargestellt.      

Shedding light on words and sentences: near-infrared spectroscopy in language research

Investigating the neuronal network underlying language processing may contribute to a better understanding of how the brain masters this complex cognitive function with surprising ease and how language is acquired at a fast pace in infancy. Modern neuroimaging methods permit to visualize the evolvement and the function of the language network. The present paper focuses on a specific methodology, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), providing an overview over studies on auditory language processing and acquisition. The methodology detects oxygenation changes elicited by functional activation of the cerebral cortex. The main advantages for research on auditory language processing and its development during infancy are an undemanding application, the lack of instrumental noise, and its potential to simultaneously register electrophysiological responses. Also it constitutes an innovative approach for studying developmental issues in infants and children. The review will focus on studies on word and sentence processing including research in infants and adults.