Death anxiety and death obsession in Spanish students

This study examined the dimensional structure of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and Abdel-Khalek's Death Obsession Scale. The responses of 289 Spanish students to the Spanish forms of both scales were evaluated by means of a principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Three significant factors were identified: Death Obsession, Cognitive-Affective, and Death Anxiety. The distribution of the factor loadings for the items of both scales on Factors 1 and 3 supported the discriminant validity of the constructs specific to each of the scales, while Factor 2 showed a common component in both scales characterized by cognitive and affective aspects in relation to the idea of death.     

Can we really do without self-esteem? Comment on Crocker and Park (2004)

Because self-esteem plays a central role in managing anxiety and provides a superordinate goal that organizes much human behavior, the authors conclude that it would be extremely difficult and probably impossible for people to stop pursuing self-esteem. Although they agree that investment in others' welfare may circumvent some of the negative consequences of self-esteem pursuit, the authors argue that the self-esteem implications of other-oriented behavior will inevitably be a powerful motivating force. Finally, the authors propose that self-esteem derived from self-determined standards of value may reduce defensiveness, closed-mindedness, and indifference to others, as well as promote personal growth, but they acknowledge the daunting barriers to the attainment of such self-determined bases of self-worth.     

Anxiety buffer disruption theory: a terror management account of posttraumatic stress disorder

We present anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) and provide a review of current evidence regarding the theory. ABDT is an application of terror management theory to explain diverse reactions to traumatic events and the onset and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It posits that PTSD results from a disruption in one's anxiety-buffering mechanisms, which normally provide protection against anxiety in general and death anxiety in particular. The disruption of these mechanisms leaves the individual defenseless in the face of overwhelming anxiety, which leads to the major symptom clusters of PTSD: re-experiencing, hyper-arousal, and avoidance. According to ABDT, because of the disruption in their anxiety-buffering mechanisms, individuals with PTSD symptoms do not respond to mortality reminders in the defensive ways that psychologically healthier individuals do. We review four sets of studies conducted in four different cultures and with people who have experienced different types of trauma, which reveal this atypical response pattern and lend support to ABDT.     

Anxiety, depression and coping: CDI, MASC and CRI-Y for screening purposes in schools

This study used depression (CDI - Kovacs, 1981), anxiety (MASC - March, 1997) and coping strategy (CRI-Y - Moos, 1993) scales and studied the fitness and discriminant validity of reduced versions. The sample consisted of 916 Portuguese pupils, 54.3% feminine, aged 10 to 21 years old. The participants were selected from a set of public schools nation-wide. Two classes were chosen from the 5th to the 12th grades. A set of principal component analyses was carried out in a randomly chosen sample (n = 394) and all the three reduced measures were found to be strongly correlated with the previous. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) using the other part of the sample (n = 522) revealed adjustment indexes suggesting a good fit for both the whole model and gender and age groups separately. All scales revealed a good internal consistency. Globally, girls were more anxious and developed more coping strategies than boys. Older students tended to be less depressed, while younger adolescents present higher scores in depression and anxiety and less coping strategies. Reduced scales are sensitive to gender and age differences and can be used in school settings in order to establish a baseline and roadmaps for both universal and selective mental health school based programs.     

Working and long-term memory deficits in schizophrenia: is there a common prefrontal mechanism?

This study tested the hypothesis that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex deficits contribute to both working memory and long-term memory disturbances in schizophrenia. It also examined whether such deficits were more severe for verbal than nonverbal stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical activation during performance of verbal and nonverbal versions of a working memory task and both encoding and recognition tasks in 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 48 healthy controls. Performance of both working memory and long-term memory tasks revealed disturbed dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation in schizophrenia, although medial temporal deficits were also present. Some evidence was found for more severe cognitive and functional deficits with verbal than nonverbal stimuli, although these results were mixed.     

The effects of a public address system on the off-task behavior of elementary physical education students

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of teacher feedback delivered via a public address system on the off-task behavior of elementary-school physical education students. A multiple baseline design across three classes was used in this investigation. Results indicated a consistent decline in off-task behavior when the public address feedback system was used.