The Role of Hope in the Psychological Adjustment of Gastropareutic Patients Receiving the Gastric Pacemaker: A Longitudinal Study

Hope, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and physical quality of life (QOL) were assessed in three subgroups of patients receiving the gastric pacemaker. Patients (n = 22) completed questionnaires prior to pacemaker implantation and at 3 and 6 months post-surgery. The idiopathic subgroup reported a significantly greater degree of hope and less anxiety at 6-month follow-up, compared to the diabetes patients. The idiopathic patients also reported significantly less anxiety at 6 months than the postsurgical patients. Across all subgroups, there was an increase in hope and physical QOL, and decrease in depressive symptoms and anxiety, from baseline levels. There was a significant negative relationship between hope and both depressive symptoms and anxiety at baseline and 3- and 6-month follow-up. Presurgical hope level did not significantly predict depressive symptoms or anxiety after implantation. This study provides evidence that the pacemaker improves the physical and psychological health of gastropareutic patients; hope appears to play a role in the psychological adjustment of these patients.     

Workforce Support for Urban After‐School Programs: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities

Organized after‐school programs can mitigate risk and build resilience for youth in urban communities. Benefits rely on high‐quality developmental experiences characterized by a supportive environment, structured youth–adult interactions, and opportunities for reflective engagement. Programs in historically disenfranchised communities are underfunded; staff are transient, underpaid, and undertrained; and youth exhibit significant mental health problems which staff are variably equipped to address. Historically, after‐school research has focused on behavior management and social‐emotional learning, relying on traditional evidence‐based interventions designed for and tested in schools. However, after‐school workforce and resource limitations interfere with adoption of empirically supported strategies and youth health promotion. We have engaged in practice‐based research with urban after‐school programs in economically vulnerable communities for nearly two decades, toward building a resource‐efficient, empirically informed multitiered model of workforce support. In this paper, we offer first‐person accounts of four academic–community partnerships to illustrate common challenges, variability across programs, and recommendations that prioritize core skills underlying risk and resilience, align with individual program goals, and leverage without overextending natural routines and resources. Reframing obstacles as opportunities has revealed the application of mental health kernels to the after‐school program workforce support and inspired lessons regarding sustainability of partnerships and practice.     

Measuring lexical diversity in children who stutter: application of vocd

There is growing but equivocal evidence that the language abilities of young children who stutter (CWS) may be depressed when compared to those of their fluent peers. In particular, the lexical skills of CWS have variously been reported to be weaker or stronger than comparison children in a number of recent studies. One source for such disagreement may be the measures used to compute lexical characteristics of these children's spoken conversations. In this study, we examined the concurrent validity of two measures of lexical diversity in spontaneous language samples, Type-Token Ratio (TTR) and the newly developed utility vocd (Malvern & Richards, 1997), using a standard test of expressive vocabulary as the comparison measure. Findings indicated that vocd values ("D") correlated well with standardized measures of expressive vocabulary, while TTR values did not. In addition, both the standardized measure and vocd revealed significantly poorer expressive lexical skills of CWS, whereas TTR analyses did not evidence this difference. Results are discussed in relation to the relative strength of vocd over TTR as a method for describing lexical characteristics of the spontaneous language samples of this population. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to (1) identify several common measures of conversational vocabulary and the strengths and weaknesses of each, and (2) compare the performance of the young CWS in this study to their normally fluent peers in terms of vocabulary performance on both formal and conversational measures of vocabulary.     

Thinking of critical words during study is unnecessary for false memory in the Deese,Roediger, and McDermott procedure

Do participants in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott (DRM) procedure demonstrate false memory because they think of nonpresented critical words during study and confuse them with words that were actually presented? In two experiments, 160 participants studied eight visually presented DRM lists at a rate of 2 s or 5 s per word. Half of the participants rehearsed silently: the other half rehearsed overtly. Following study, the participants' memory for the lists was tested by recall or recognition. Typical false memory results were obtained for both memory measures. More important, two new results were observed. First, a large majority of the overt-rehearsal participants spontaneously rehearsed approximately half of the critical words during study. Second, critical-word rehearsal at study enhanced subsequent false recall, but it had no effect on false recognition or remember judgments for falsely recognized critical words. Thinking of critical words during study was unnecessary for producing false memory.     

Democratic Norms,Empirical Realities and Approaches to Improving Voter Turnout

Though falling turnout in recent decades has been recognised as a problem for democracy, the solutions that have been proposed have mostly been drawn from the realms of the marketplace and society, rather than that of democracy. The inadequate empirical theory that subtends many policy initiatives designed to improve turnout accounts for why these initiatives have largely failed to achieve their stated aims. I argue that electoral participation should be seen through the conceptual lens of collective action, and that this approach suggests mandatory electoral participation as an equitable and effective coordination device. I further argue that compulsory turnout offers a good fit with democratic norms of equality, rights and political obligation.     

Depressive Symptoms and Tobacco Use: Does Religious Orientation Play a Protective Role?

Many studies have established an association between depression and smoking. The main objective of this study was to determine whether religious orientation moderates the relationship between depressive symptoms and tobacco use. This study utilized a cross-sectional data collection strategy to examine the relationship among depressive symptoms, religious orientation, and tobacco use among undergraduate students (N = 349) at a midsize southeastern university. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the Extrinsic/Intrinsic Religious Orientation Scale-Revised and the Drinking and Drug Habits Questionnaire. Analyses using hierarchical linear regression indicate a significant interaction effect (depressive symptoms × extrinsic religious orientation) on tobacco use. Additional moderation analyses reveal a significant interaction effect between depressive symptoms and the extrinsic-personal religious orientation on tobacco use. Results suggest that having an extrinsic religious orientation, and specifically, the extrinsic-personal subtype, can protect against the effects of depressive symptoms. In this regard, individuals who turn to religion for solace or comfort may be less likely to engage in tobacco use when experiencing depressive symptoms. Limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed.     

Tuning the engine of cognition: a focus on NMDA/D1 receptor interactions in prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex of the primate frontal lobes provides the capacity for judgment which can constantly adapt behavior in order to optimize its outcome. Adjudicating between long-term memory programs and prepotent responses, this capacity reviews all incoming information and provides an interpretation dependent on the events that have just occurred, the events that are predicted to happen, and the alternative response strategies that are available in the given situation. It has been theorized that this function requires two essential integrated components, a central executive which guides selective attention based on mechanisms of associative memory, as well as the second component, working memory buffers, in which information is held online, abstracted, and translated on a mental sketchpad of work in progress. In this review, we critically outline the evidence that the integration of these processes and, in particular, the induction and maintenance of persistent activity in prefrontal cortex and related networks, is dependent upon the interaction of dopamine D1 and glutamate NMDA receptor signaling at critical nodes within local circuits and distributed networks. We argue that this interaction is not only essential for representational memory, but also core to mechanisms of neuroadaptation and learning. Understanding its functional significance promises to reveal major new insights into prefrontal dysfunction in schizophrenia and, hence, to target a new generation of drugs designed to ameliorate the debilitating working memory deficits in this disorder.     

The effects of reinforcer pairing and fading on preschoolers' snack selections

The effects of reinforcement pairing and fading on preschoolers' snack selections were evaluated in a multiple baseline design. Baseline preferences for snack options were assessed via repeated paired-item preference assessments. Edible, social, and activity-based reinforcers were then exclusively paired with a less preferred snack option. Once the snack paired with reinforcement was selected most frequently, the three types of reinforcement were systematically faded. Frequent selections of the previously less preferred snack option were produced with paired reinforcement, but were disrupted for all children as the paired reinforcement was reduced to low levels. These data showed that paired reinforcement was initially effective in increasing preference for the originally less preferred snack options, but more permanent changes in the value of the snack options were not achieved. Conditions for producing persistent changes in children's snack choices are discussed.     

Use of a high‐probability instructional sequence to increase compliance to feeding demands in the absence of escape extinction

We evaluated the effects of a high‐probability (high‐p) instructional sequence on the feeding‐related compliance (food acceptance) of a young boy diagnosed with a feeding disorder. The high‐p sequence consisted of three presentations of an empty spoon; the low‐probability (low‐p) instruction was the presentation of a spoon with food. Results showed that acceptance of food increased in the presence and not the absence of the high‐p sequence. Data are discussed in terms of the role of high‐p instructional sequences in the treatment of feeding problems. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.