Relative contributions of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-handicapping in predicting student procrastination

The relative contributions of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-handicapping student procrastination were explored. College undergraduate participants (N = 138; 40 men, 97 women, one not reporting sex) filled out the Procrastination Scale, the Self-Handicapping Scale-Short Form, and the Self-regulation and Self-handicapping scales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. A hierarchical regression of the above measures indicated that self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-handicapping all predicted scores on the Procrastination Scale, but self-regulation fully accounted for the predictive power of self-efficacy. The results suggested self-regulation and self-handicapping predict procrastination independently. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on the concept of "self-efficacy for self-regulation" and its use in the field of procrastination research.     

Symptom perception in childhood asthma: the role of anxiety and asthma severity.

This study tested the relationship of anxiety and asthma severity to symptom perception. Eighty-six children diagnosed with mild or moderate asthma had symptom perception and pulmonary function measured throughout methacholine challenge (to induce bronchoconstriction). Higher trait anxiety was associated with heightened symptom perception (controlling for pulmonary function) at baseline. Greater asthma severity was associated with blunted symptom perception (controlling for pulmonary function) at the end of methacholine challenge and with a slower rate of increase in symptom perception across methacholine challenge. These results suggest that anxiety plays a role when children's symptoms are mild, whereas medical variables such as severity play a role in perception of changes in asthma symptomatology as bronchoconstriction worsens.     

The process of change in cognitive therapy for depression: Predictors of early inter-session symptom gains

Although cognitive therapy for depression is an efficacious treatment, questions about the aspects of the therapy that are most critical to successful implementation remain. In a sample of 60 cognitive therapy patients with moderate to severe depression, we examined three aspects of therapists’ adherence to cognitive therapy techniques, the patients’ facilitation or inhibition of these techniques, and the therapeutic alliance as predictors of session-to-session symptom improvement across the first five therapy sessions. Two elements of therapist adherence (viz., cognitive methods and negotiating content/structuring sessions) emerged as the strongest predictors of symptom improvement. Patient facilitation or inhibition of therapist adherence also predicted subsequent symptom change. Neither adherence to behavioral methods/homework nor the therapeutic alliance was a significant predictor in parallel analyses. Although alliance scores did not predict subsequent symptom change, they were significantly predicted by prior symptom change. These findings support the model of change that motivates cognitive therapy for depression, and they highlight the potential role of patient facilitation of therapists’ adherence in treatment response.     

Dynamische Komplexität in der Therapeut-Klient-Interaktion

The importance of client-therapist-relationship in psychotherapy has often been stressed. On the one hand, the quality of this relationship has proved to be an important predictor of therapy outcome, on the other hand the relationship itself is realized as a complex dynamic pattern of interpersonal interaction. It seems appropriate to investigate this dynamics by a microprocess analysis with high resolution. Interactive plans (idiographic self-presentation unities) of client and therapist were coded by a sampling frequency of 10 seconds. The coding system of plan activation follows the idea of synchronous musical score notation of different orchestra instruments. It allows for the representation of contextualized interactive behaviors. The context is introduced by the consideration of synchronous and diachronous plan-activation patterns of the interaction partners. The observed dynamic patterns are fulfilling the prerequisites of usual definitions of “chaos”: irregularity of the process, restricted prediction horizon, and still some global order of the dynamic process. Based on nominal data (on-off-patterns), a method for the identification of order within irregular patterns of plan activations is presented. The frequency distributions of plans realize the shape of 1/f^α-noise, indicating features of self-organized criticality within the dynamic system of client-therapist-interaction.