Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight

The human stress response has been characterized, both physiologically and behaviorally, as "fight-or-flight." Although fight-or-flight may characterize the primary physiological responses to stress for both males and females, we propose that, behaviorally, females' responses are more marked by a pattern of "tend-and-befriend." Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process. The biobehavioral mechanism that underlies the tend-and-befriend pattern appears to draw on the attachment-caregiving system, and neuroendocrine evidence from animal and human studies suggests that oxytocin, in conjunction with female reproductive hormones and endogenous opioid peptide mechanisms, may be at its core. This previously unexplored stress regulatory system has manifold implications for the study of stress.     

“Aha” effects in the generation of pictures

An "aha" effect in memory was first reported by Auble, Franks, and Soraci (1979). They demonstrated that recall was greater for sentences that were initially incomprehensible but which were eventually comprehended, as compared with sentences that were understood from the outset. The present studies extend this "aha" effect to memory for pictorial stimuli. In Experiment 1, a recall advantage for pictures encoded by connecting the dots as compared with those encoded by tracing or visual scanning occurred only in the absence of foreknowledge of the picture (i.e., an "aha" effect). In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding and obtained evidence that conceptually based, verbal foreknowledge does not function in a similar manner as does pictorial foreknowledge in suppressing the "aha" recall advantage. These results place important constraints on previous research on generation effects for visual stimuli and attest to the cross-modal generalizability of the "aha" effect.     

Socioeconomic status and insomnia

This investigation compared the likelihood of insomnia and insomnia-related health consequences among individuals of different socioeconomic status. A random-digit dialing procedure was used to recruit at least 50 men and 50 women in each age decade from 20 to 80+ years old. Participants completed 2 weeks of sleep diaries as well as questionnaires related to fatigue, sleepiness, and psychological distress. Socioeconomic status was measured by education status assessed at 3 different levels: individual, household, and community. Results indicated that individuals of lower individual and household education were significantly more likely to experience insomnia even after researchers accounted for ethnicity, gender, and age. Additionally, individuals with fewer years of education, particularly those who had dropped out of high school, experienced greater subjective impairment because of their insomnia.     

Cognitive compensations for blindness in children: an investigation using odour naming

Historically, blindness has been associated with compensation for the loss of vision by the other senses. However, research to date has focused on perceptual compensations, largely ignoring possible cognitive compensations. We explored the notion that cognitive skills of blind children may facilitate performance in apparently perceptual tasks, by investigating the cognitive factors related to naming a familiar odour. Eighty-three children participated in olfactory and cognitive tasks (thirty-two early-blind, five late-blind, fourteen low-vision, and thirty-two sighted). In the olfactory tasks, the early-blind children performed significantly better than the sighted children on the odour-naming task but not on the odour-sensitivity task. From the cognitive tasks, scores on a nonvisualisable word-pairs task and a sound-word-pairs task were significantly higher for early-blind children and were highly correlated with odour-naming score. The early-blind children outperformed the sighted controls on a task of directed attention. The groups did not differ on memory for a story or for visualisable word pairs. The results suggest that blind children enjoy an advantage in tasks that assess nonvisual memory for paired associates and directed attention, and that superiority on these tasks facilitates performance in the odour-naming task. Other data suggest that sighted children rely on visualisation as a strategy to aid their performance on the cognitive tasks, and are disadvantaged when these strategies cannot be utilised.     

Efficacy of telephone-administered cognitive behaviour therapy for obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders: case studies

Cognitive behaviour therapy is effective for obsessive-compulsive disorder and for obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders such as trichotillomania. Unfortunately, many people with these disorders, especially those living in rural areas, have limited access to treatment. Telephone-administered cognitive behaviour therapy may help address this problem. In a recent study of telephone treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, we found that such treatment was often effective (42% in remission at post-treatment, and 47% in remission at 12-week follow-up). This article presents 2 case reports of the same treatment, applied to obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders (trichotillomania and compulsive skin picking). Treatment was associated with symptom reduction for both participants, although one subsequently relapsed. Possible reasons for relapse are discussed. The findings encourage further studies to identify the characteristics of people most likely to benefit from telephone treatment for spectrum disorders.     

Behavioral assessment: review and prospect

In this article I review the history and publication trends of the behavioral assessment (BA) section of the journal, outline future directions for the BA section and suggest avenues for future assessment research. BA began as a stand-alone journal in 1978 and was incorporated as a regular section of Behaviour Research and Therapy (BRT) in 1992. Throughout this article I will use 'BA' to refer to both the stand-alone assessment journal and the assessment section of BRT. Since its inception, the scope of BA has been broad, with behavioral assessment defined to include the assessment of motoric, cognitive, emotional and physiological responses. Several publication trends are identified, including a declining frequency in the number of submitted and published articles on behavioural assessment. This parallels the declining number of assessment articles published elsewhere. Despite these trends, assessment research continues to form a vital foundation for other types of psychological research (e.g. treatment outcome studies), and there is a continued need for assessment-related research. A number of potentially fruitful directions for assessment research are suggested.