Personality predictors of the time course for lung cancer onset

Numerous findings suggest that personality is linked to the incidence and experience of negative health outcomes. More specifically, trait negative affect is negatively related to a number of health outcomes. The current study expands our understanding of the link between personality and disease by examining the time course for lung cancer onset. In a sample of patients who had recently undergone surgical resection for lung cancer, a variety of negative affect related personality variables were assessed to determine their relationship with age at surgery. After controlling for smoking behavior, it was found that trait negative affect was associated with time course for lung cancer onset, such that those with higher (vs. lower) levels of trait negative affect manifested lung cancer earlier in their lives. Thus, trait negative affect represents an independent risk factor among those prone to lung cancer (i.e., smokers).     

Object categorisation, object naming, and viewpoint independence in visual remembering: evidence from young children's drawings of a novel object

A simple object-drawing task confirms a three-way association between object categorisation, viewpoint independence, and longer-term visual remembering. Young children (5- to 7-year-olds) drew a familiar object or a novel object, immediately after it had been hidden from view or on the following day. Both objects were shown from a full range of viewpoints or from just two viewpoints, from neither of which would either object normally be drawn after unrestricted viewing. When drawing from short-term memory after restricted viewing, both objects were most likely to be depicted from a seen viewpoint. When drawing from longer-term memory after restricted viewing, the novel object continued to be drawn from a seen viewpoint, but the mug was now most likely to be drawn from a preferred viewpoint from which it had not been seen. Naming the novel object with a novel count noun ("Look at this. This is a dax"), to signal that it belonged to an object category, resulted in it being drawn in the same way as the familiar object. The results concur with other evidence indicating that short-term and longer-term visual remembering are differentially associated with viewpoint-dependent representations of individual objects and viewpoint independent representations of object categories, respectively.     

Satisfaction with Parenting: A Comparison Between Adolescent Mothers and Fathers

In this study we compared adolescent mothers and the fathers of their infants to examine levels of and predictors of parenting satisfaction. Participants were 41 adolescent mothers who were contacted through alternative school programs and the fathers of their infants. Not all of the fathers were adolescents. The sample was racially diverse (White, Black, Native American, and Hispanic). Correlation and t test analyses were conducted and those variables that were significantly correlated with parenting satisfaction were used in regression analyses. Mothers' parenting satisfaction and paternal control scores were higher than fathers' scores. Self-esteem, age at the baby's birth, and social support satisfaction significantly predicted parenting satisfaction for fathers, whereas only self-esteem and social support satisfaction did so for mothers.     

Training with computer-supported motor imagery in post-stroke rehabilitation.

Converging lines of evidence suggest that motor imagery (the mental simulation of a motor act within working memory) is associated with subliminal activation of the motor system. This observation has led to the hypothesis that cortical activation during motor imagery may affect the acquisition of specific motor skills and help the recovery of motor function. In this paper, we describe a clinical protocol in which we use interactive tools to stimulate motor imagery in hemiplegic stroke patients, thereby helping them to recover lost motor function. The protocol consists of an inpatient and an outpatient phase, combining physical and mental practice. In the inpatient phase, patients are trained in a laboratory setting, using a custom-made interactive workbench (VR Mirror). After discharge, patients use a portable device to guide mental and physical practice in a home setting. The proposed strategy is based on the hypotheses that: (a) combined physical and mental practice can make a cost-effective contribution to the rehabilitation of stroke patients, (b) effective mental practice is not possible without some form of support, from a therapist (as in our inpatient phase) or from technology (as in the outpatient phase), (c) the inclusion of an outpatient phase will allow the patient to practice more often than would otherwise be possible, therefore increasing the speed and/or effectiveness of learning, and (d) the use of interactive technology will reduce the patient's need for skilled support, therefore improving the cost-effectiveness of training.     

The Comparative Effects of a Modified Self-Questioning Strategy and Story Mapping on the Reading Comprehension of Elementary Students with Learning Disabilities

An alternating treatments design was used to examine the effects of story mapping, a modified self-questioning strategy, and no intervention on literal and inferential reading comprehension of elementary students with learning disabilities. Immediate post-tests indicated that students attained significantly greater comprehension in the self-questioning and story mapping conditions over no intervention. Although students attained similarly high levels of overall comprehension when they used story mapping and self-questioning, students scored slightly higher on inferential comprehension questions in the self-questioning condition. Additionally, 4 out of the 5 students indicated a preference for the self-questioning strategy.     

Adolescent Neurodevelopment and Psychopathology

Adolescence is a high-risk period for the onset of psychopathology. The occurrence of depression increases markedly in the years following the onset of puberty, and most individuals who are eventually diagnosed with a psychotic disorder show a marked rise in adjustment problems during adolescence. It is well established that puberty involves increases in the secretion of gonadal hormones. More recently, research has shown that stress hormones show a similar normative rise following puberty. Accumulating findings indicate that the postpubescent period is also characterized by significant neurodevelopment; there are changes in brain structure and function that are partially a consequence of hormonal factors. Researchers are now challenged to elucidate the neural mechanisms relating postpubertal neurodevelopment with the elevations in risk for psychopathology that characterize adolescence. One plausible mechanism is the effect of hormones on gene expression. The normal neuromaturational processes observed in adolescence partially reflect the effect of gonadal hormones on the expression of genes that control brain development. Hormone surges following puberty may also trigger the expression of genes that code for brain abnormalities that give rise to mental disorders.     

Conflicts of interest: The implications of roadside advertising for driver attention

There is growing concern that roadside advertising presents a real risk to driving safety, with conservative estimates putting external distractors responsible for up to 10% of all road traffic accidents. In this report, we present a simulator study quantifying the effects of billboards on driver attention, mental workload and performance in Urban, Motorway and Rural environments. The results demonstrate that roadside advertising has clear adverse effects on lateral control and driver attention, in terms of mental workload. Whilst the methodological limitations of the study are acknowledged, the overriding conclusion is that prudence should be exercised when authorising or placing roadside advertising. The findings are discussed with respect to governmental policy and guidelines.     

‘Seeing beyond the battled body’ – An insight into selfhood and identity from women's accounts who self‐harm with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder

Background: Self‐harm (self poisoning and self‐injury) is broadly characterised as any act intended to harm one's own body, without a conscious intent to die. Research indicates that when practitioners encounter self‐harm they often remain anxious, fearful, frustrated, and challenged about such individuals, principally because they are constrained to understand and respond to self‐harm almost exclusively within a problematised discourse (Walker, 2006). That is, a problem that must be diagnosed and contained. Women who self‐harm with a diagnosis of BPD are often portrayed as being risky, chaotic and their identity can be unstable. The aim of this study was to examine and explore the subjective experiences of women who self‐harm with a diagnosis of BPD. Participants: Four women who had a history of self‐harming behaviour with the diagnosis of BPD volunteered for the study. Method: Face‐to‐face, in‐depth narrative interviews were undertaken and were analysed within a framework which drew upon aspects of the ‘performance’ (Langellier, 1989; 2001) and ‘narrative thematic’ approaches (Reissman, 1993). Findings: Two of the participant's accounts illustrate how their self‐harming appeared to have affected their selfhood and sense of agency. They discuss how the external signs of self‐harm may take over their identity and how others communicate and interact with them. Despite the problematic nature of self‐harm implications for practice are highlighted which practitioners may draw upon in their work around self‐harm.     

A Comparison of Behavioral Parent Training Programs for Fathers of Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Few behavioral parent training (BPT) treatment studies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have included and measured outcomes with fathers. In this study, fathers were randomly assigned to attend a standard BPT program or the Coaching Our Acting-Out Children: Heightening Essential Skills (COACHES) program. The COACHES program included BPT plus sports skills training for the children and parent-child interactions in the context of a soccer game. Groups did not differ at baseline, and father ratings of treatment outcome indicated improvement at posttreatment for both groups on measures of child behavior. There was no significant difference between groups on ADHD-related measures of child outcome. However, at posttreatment, fathers who participated in the COACHES program rated children as more improved, and they were significantly more engaged in the treatment process (e.g., greater attendance and arrival on time at sessions, more homework completion, greater consumer satisfaction). The implications for these findings and father-related treatment efforts are discussed.     

Coherent psychometric modelling with Bayesian nonparametrics

In this paper we argue that model selection, as commonly practised in psychometrics, violates certain principles of coherence. On the other hand, we show that Bayesian nonparametrics provides a coherent basis for model selection, through the use of a ‘nonparametric’ prior distribution that has a large support on the space of sampling distributions. We illustrate model selection under the Bayesian nonparametric approach, through the analysis of real questionnaire data. Also, we present ways to use the Bayesian nonparametric framework to define very flexible psychometric models, through the specification of a nonparametric prior distribution that supports all distribution functions for the inverse link, including the standard logistic distribution functions. The Bayesian nonparametric approach provides a coherent method for model selection that can be applied to any statistical model, including psychometric models. Moreover, under a ‘non‐informative’ choice of nonparametric prior, the Bayesian nonparametric approach is easy to apply, and selects the model that maximizes the log likelihood. Thus, under this choice of prior, the approach can be extended to non‐Bayesian settings where the parameters of the competing models are estimated by likelihood maximization, and it can be used with any psychometric software package that routinely reports the model log likelihood.