The Effect of Food on Test Anxiety

Proceeding from the literature on eating behavior and anxiety reduction, this study introduces food offering as a mode of intervention aimed at reducing anxiety. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) in an anxiety evoking test situation students will tend to consume more food than in a nonanxiety inducing situation such as a regular lecture; (2) eating food (i.e., peanut butter sandwiches) will result in a reduction of subjects' initial levels of test anxiety. Both hypotheses were confirmed. It also became apparent that the mere offering of food is conducive to some anxiety reduction, presumably due to the effect on the classroom atmosphere.     

Mangelnde Eignung bei angehenden Psychotherapeuten

Background

Psychotherapy research has shown that some therapists have systematically more negative outcomes than their colleagues. Many attempts have been made to answer the question of whether these unsuccessful therapists have specific features but as yet no consensus has been reached. Particularly in the field of psychotherapy training this issue has rarely been discussed.

Aims

This study focused on the following questions: how many trainees are incompetent, what characteristics do they have and how to deal with them? How are trainees selected?

Material and methods

In a research expertise on psychotherapy training for the German Ministry of Health, directors of training institutions were interviewed and 129 responses were analyzed using, for example content analysis.

Results

A total of 4–5?% of trainees were judged as being not sufficiently competent to become a psychotherapist. Relevant criteria were mainly the lack of personal and interpersonal competencies.

Conclusions

Future psychotherapy training should focus more and earlier on recognizing and intervening regarding incompetence in the given areas.     

Dealing with Possible Baseline Inequalities Between Experimental Groups – The Case of Motor Learning

Abstract

One important concept of experimental design is the random assignment of participants to experimental groups. This randomization process is used to prevent selection bias, as well as to provide a strong basis for a cause-and-effect relationship between the independent variable/s and the dependent variable/s. In small sample sizes, simple randomization may not provide equal groups at baseline for one or more of the variables, and therefore more restricted types of randomization, such as the stratified permuted-block randomization, can be used. A code was written to calculate the probability that simple randomization will not lead to equality between groups at baseline, and then an example of stratified permuted-block randomization was examined. The findings suggest that for certain variables that are commonly measured in experiments in motor learning, there is a relatively high probability that groups will not be equal at baseline after simple randomization. This observation reflects the small sample sizes usually found in the literature on motor learning. However, stratified permuted-block randomization does lead to greater equality among groups. Implications for researchers are discussed, and a flowchart is proposed that will allow researchers to decide whether to use simple or stratified randomization.     

Extraversion is accurately perceived after a 50-ms exposure to a face

Twenty-four perceivers saw portraits of unacquainted persons for either 150 ms, 100 ms, or 50 ms, and rated their personality on adjective scales. Moreover, stimulus persons described themselves on these scales and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Consensus among perceivers and self-other agreement were not systematically related to exposure time, but self-other agreement differed strongly between traits, being highest for extraversion. Even ratings of extraversion by single perceivers were related to the stimulus persons’ self-reports. Particularly strong were correlations between perceived extraversion and self-reports on items measuring the extraversion facets excitement seeking and positive emotions. Self-other agreement for extraversion was mostly mediated by cheerfulness of facial expressions that was related to self-reports of extraversion but not of the other personality traits.     

The relation between emotion regulation choice and posttraumatic growth

ABSTRACT

Previous research has examined emotion regulation (ER) and trauma in the context of psychopathology, yet little research has examined ER in posttraumatic growth (PTG), the experience of positive psychological change following a traumatic event. ER typically involves decreasing negative affect by engaging (e.g. reappraisal) or disengaging (e.g. distraction) with emotional content. To investigate how ER may support PTG, participants who experienced a traumatic event in the past 6 months completed a PTG questionnaire and an ER choice task in which they down regulated their negative emotion in response to negative pictures of varying intensity by choosing to distract or reappraise. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that an increase in reappraisal choice from low to high subjective stimulus intensity predicted higher PTG, suggesting that individuals who chose reappraisal more as intensity increased reported higher PTG. Findings suggest that reappraisal of negative stimuli following a traumatic event may be a key component of PTG.     

Neighborhood Deprivation during Early Childhood and Conduct Problems in Middle Childhood: Mediation by Aggressive Response Generation

The tremendous negative impact of conduct problems to the individual and society has provided the impetus for identifying risk factors, particularly in early childhood. Exposure to neighborhood deprivation in early childhood is a robust predictor of conduct problems in middle childhood. Efforts to identify and test mediating mechanisms by which neighborhood deprivation confers increased risk for behavioral problems have predominantly focused on peer relationships and community-level social processes. Less attention has been dedicated to potential cognitive mediators of this relationship, such as aggressive response generation, which refers to the tendency to generate aggressive solutions to ambiguous social stimuli with negative outcomes. In this study, we examined aggressive response generation, a salient component of social information processing, as a mediating process linking neighborhood deprivation to later conduct problems at age 10.5. Participants (N = 731; 50.5 % male) were drawn from a multisite randomized prevention trial that includes an ethnically diverse and low-income sample of male and female children and their primary caregivers followed prospectively from toddlerhood to middle childhood. Results indicated that aggressive response generation partially mediated the relationship between neighborhood deprivation and parent- and teacher-report of conduct problems, but not youth-report. Results suggest that the detrimental effects of neighborhood deprivation on youth adjustment may occur by altering the manner in which children process social information.     

Self-initiated spatial working memory in young and older adults

The age-related decline in working memory (WM) has been studied extensively. Yet, research has focused mainly on one aspect of memory, in which older adults memorised information provided to them, neglecting the frequent everyday behaviour in which memory is self-initiated (SI), meaning that individuals memorise information they selected themselves. The present study used a modified spatial span task in which young and older adults memorised spatial sequences they constructed themselves, or random sequences provided to them. The results revealed that young and older adults carefully planned and constructed structured spatial sequences, by minimising distances between successive locations, and by selecting sequences with fewer path crossings and with more linear shapes. Older adults constructed sequences that were even more structured in some aspects. Young and older adults benefited from self-initiation to the same extent, showing similar age-related declines in SI and provided spatial WM. Overall, the study shows that older adults have access to metacognitive knowledge on the structure of efficient WM representations that benefit accuracy, and shows that older adults can use strategic encoding processes efficiently when encoding is SI. More generally, SI WM explores an important aspect of behaviour, demonstrating how older adults shape their environment to facilitate cognitive functioning.     

Athletes' perceptions of multilevel changes related to competing at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

ObjectivesTaking into account the need for applied research on the most effective ways to prepare Olympians psychologically, the first purpose of this study was to gain more insight into the changes perceived by four athletes in view of their participation in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The second purpose of this study was to illustrate how using a holistic and dynamic approach to the identification of the perceptions of these athletes' Olympic experiences can provide information relevant for the provision of individual ASP support to these athletes.DesignUsing a prospective design athletes' perceptions of changes were gathered prior, during as well as after the Olympic Games.MethodsA combination of interview (pre and post Olympic Games) and self-reporting (during Olympic Games) was used to describe athletes' perceptions of changes occurring at athletic, psychological, psychosocial, academic/vocational level.ResultsResults confirmed in first instance athletes' perceptions of the multifaceted nature of their Olympic experience. In second instance, the use of a dynamic and holistic perspective allowed to identify that participants perceived (a) during the phase prior to the Olympic Games 14 changes at all four levels, (b) during the Olympic Games eight changes at three levels, and (c) during the phase after returning from the Olympic Games 11 changes having occurred at four levels.ConclusionsThis study showed the usefulness of using a dynamic and holistic perspective not only in order to identify athletes' perceptions of their Olympic experiences, but also to enhance ASP practitioners' knowledge on the needs for a holistic and dynamic ASP-support provision. In this way, the effectiveness and efficiency of ASP practitioners working with athletes preparing for, or competing at the Olympic Games could be enhanced.