Frequency and impact of trauma in older women: A military and nonmilitary sample

Understanding the impact of trauma on late-life functioning in older females is needed in order to provide best care. We explored the impact of trauma on late-life psychological and physical health and functioning among older women (n = 48) who served in the military, or participated in a military lifestyle. Eleven of these women were not veterans, but married to military personnel. Number of traumatic exposures and types of events experienced was associated with increased trauma symptom severity. Trauma symptom severity was associated with decreased physical functioning and increased pain. Increased numbing and avoidance was significantly associated with poorer physical functioning and increased pain. Older women in this study remained at risk of experiencing negative consequences of trauma in terms of increased quantity and severity of trauma symptoms and physical decline and pain. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

Belief in a zero-sum game and subjective well-being across 35 countries

Current Psychology - This article presents a short research report on the relationship between perceived antagonism in social relations measured using the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) scale,...     

Strategies for effective patient care: Integrating quality communication with the patient‐centered approach

Advancements in medicine and health technology have transformed the roles and dynamics of patient–provider interactions and communication in healthcare. To date, the health communication literature contains two distinct approaches to modern healthcare delivery, with earlier empirical works emphasizing features of effective communication and more recent studies endorsing patient‐centered care. Despite substantial overlap in both aims and methods, no work to date has considered these two approaches in tandem as complementary strategies for improving healthcare delivery. Thus, this study offers a novel framework, the person‐centered communication model of care, in an effort to integrate these two approaches to offer a unified and concise structure for future studies and development of innovative interventions to improve healthcare quality.     

Emotion, directed forgetting, and source memory

We investigated the role of emotion on item and source memory using the item method of directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. We predicted that emotion would produce source memory impairment because emotion would make it more difficult to distinguish between to-be-remembered (R items) and to-be-forgotten items (F items) by making memory strength of R and F items similar to each other. Participants were presented with negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral pictures. After each picture, they received an instruction to remember or forget the picture. At retrieval, participants were asked to recall both R and F items and indicate whether each item was an R or F item. Recall was higher for the negatively arousing than for the positively arousing or neutral pictures. Further, DF occurred for the positively arousing and neutral pictures, whereas DF was not significant for the negatively arousing pictures. More importantly, the negatively arousing pictures, particularly the ones with violent content, showed a higher tendency of producing misattribution errors than the other picture types, supporting the notion that negative emotion may produce source memory impairment, even though it is still not clear whether the impairment occurs at encoding or retrieval.     

Australian normative data for the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering

People who stutter often report negative impacts on their wellbeing as a result of their chronic fluency disorder. The need for a comprehensive assessment of the wellbeing and experience of stuttering should be a prime consideration when measuring treatment outcomes. One such measure designed to evaluate wellbeing and aspects of the individual's experience of his or her stuttering is the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES). Normative data for the OASES Adult version (OASES-A; and hereafter referred to simply as the OASES) has begun to be collected over the past 10 years, though none are available for an Australian population. This paper presents Australian normative data for the OASES for 200 adult males and females who stutter, aged between 18 and 85 years. Additionally, the influence of age, sex, and frequency of stuttering on the Australian OASES scores are also presented. No significant relationships between OASES scores were found for sex and age, which is in keeping with the USA original dataset. However, those participants who had more severe stuttering were more likely to have higher negative impacts for 'General Information', Communication in Daily Situations,' and for the overall OASES score. Implications for further research are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to: (i) describe the purpose of the Overall Experience of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for Adults (OASES), (ii) evaluate the relevance of the OASES to treatment planning and the evaluation of stuttering treatment outcomes in the adult population, and (iii) compare Australian normative dataset with the USA and Dutch normative datasets for the OASES.     

Coping,Reasons for Living,and Suicide in Black College Students

The authors examined the roles of reasons for living and coping in protecting against suicidal behaviors among 361 Black college students. Results of a path analysis revealed that reasons for living mediated against suicidal ideation through an inverse effect on depression. Results also indicated that greater use of emotion‐oriented coping may lead to suicidal ideation through increased depression and decreased reasons for living, whereas avoidance‐oriented coping protected against suicide. Implications for these results are further discussed.     

Intact risk-based decision making in rats with prefrontal or accumbens dopamine depletion

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the core region of the nucleus accumbens (AcbC) are key regions of a neural system that subserves risk-based decision making. Here, we examined whether dopamine (DA) signals conveyed to the mPFC and AcbC are critical for risk-based decision making. Rats with 6-hydroxydopamine or vehicle infusions into the mPFC or AcbC were examined in an instrumental task demanding probabilistic choice. In each session, probabilities of reward delivery after pressing one of two available levers were signaled in advance in forced trials followed by choice trials that assessed the animal??s preference. The probabilities of reward delivery associated with the large/risky lever declined systematically across four consecutive blocks but were kept constant within four subsequent daily sessions of a particular block. Thus, in a given session, rats need to assess the current value associated with the large/risky versus small/certain lever and adapt their lever preference accordingly. Results demonstrate that the assessment of within-session reward probabilities and probability discounting across blocks were not altered in rats with mPFC and AcbC DA depletions, relative to sham controls. These findings suggest that the capacity to evaluate the magnitude and likelihood of rewards associated with alternative courses of action seems not to rely on intact DA transmission in the mPFC or AcbC.     

Lunar Lies: The Impact of Informational Framing and Individual Differences in Shaping Conspiracist Beliefs About the Moon Landings

Two studies examined the role of informational framing and individual differences on acceptance of the moon landings conspiracy theory (CT). In Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups in which they were exposed to different forms of information about the moon landings CT. Results showed that information critical of the moon landings CT resulted in attenuated conspiracist beliefs and that information supportive of the CT resulted in stronger conspiracist beliefs. In addition, stronger belief in the moon landings CT was associated with participants' belief in other CTs and openness to experience. In Study 2, participants completed a survey measuring their belief in the moon landings CT and a range of individual difference factors. Results showed that acceptance of the moon landings CT was associated with the adoption of a conspiracist worldview and schizotypal tendencies. Possibilities for conceptualizing the functional roles played by CTs are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time-dependent adhesion of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer film to a flat indenter tip characterized using a cohesive-zone law

The work of adhesion between a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer film and a flat diamond tip was measured by instrumented indentation. The results showed that the apparent work of adhesion between the tip and the PDMS film increases with increasing dwell time and retreating velocity; on the other hand, the indentation depth has no significant effect on adhesion. The indentation experiment was analysed with viscoelastic finite element simulations with rate-dependent cohesive elements, from which the time evolution of adhesion was quantitatively implemented into a rate-dependent cohesive-zone law.