Daily depression and cognitions about stress: evidence for a traitlike depressogenic cognitive style and the prediction of depressive symptoms in a prospective daily diary study

The authors examined the stability and dynamic structure of negative cognitions made to naturalistic stressors and the prediction of depressive symptoms in a daily diary study. Young adults reported on dispositional depression vulnerabilities at baseline, including a depressogenic cognitive style, dysfunctional attitudes, rumination, neuroticism, and initial depression, and then completed short diaries recording the inferences they made to the most negative event of the day along with their experience of depressive symptoms every day for 35 consecutive days. Daily cognitions about stressors exhibited moderate stability across time. A traitlike model, rather than a contextual one, explained this pattern of stability best. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that individuals' dispositional depressogenic cognitive style, neuroticism, and their daily negative cognitions about stressors predicted fluctuations in daily depressive symptoms. Dispositional neuroticism and negative cognitive style interacted with daily negative cognitions in different ways to predict daily depressive symptoms.     

The structure of goal contents across 15 cultures

The authors investigated the structure of goal contents in a group of 1,854 undergraduates from 15 cultures around the world. Results suggested that the 11 types of goals the authors assessed were consistently organized in a circumplex fashion across the 15 cultures. The circumplex was well described by positioning 2 primary dimensions underlying the goals: intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation) versus extrinsic (e.g., financial success, image) and self-transcendent (e.g., spirituality) versus physical (e.g., hedonism). The circumplex model of goal contents was also quite similar in both wealthier and poorer nations, although there were some slight cross-cultural variations. The relevance of these results for several theories of motivation and personality are discussed.     

Perceived corporate ethical values and individual cynicism of working students

This study explored a proposed relationship between the corporate ethical values and cynicism of 195 working students. Analysis indicated students' perceived ethical values were negatively related to individual cynicism after accounting for several variables.     

Death anxiety and death depression in Spanish nurses

This study examined the dimensional structure of Tomás-Sábado and Gómez-Benito's Death Anxiety Inventory and Templer, et al.'s Death Depression Scale-Revised. The responses of 244 Spanish nurses to the Spanish forms of both scales were evaluated by means of a principal axis factor analysis with direct Oblimin rotation. Five significant factors were identified: Internally Generated Death Anxiety, Death Depression, Externally Generated Death Anxiety, Death Threat, and Death Sadness, accounting for 51.6% of the variance. The distribution of the factor loadings for the items of both scales on the five factors supported the discriminant validity of the constructs specific to each of the scales and justified their use in evaluating death anxiety and death depression independently.     

Alan: An Action Language For Modelling Non-Markovian Domains

In this paper we present the syntax and semantics of a temporal action language named Alan, which was designed to model interactive multimedia presentations where the Markov property does not always hold. In general, Alan allows the specification of systems where the future state of the world depends not only on the current state, but also on the past states of the world. To the best of our knowledge, Alan is the first action language which incorporates causality with temporal formulas. In the process of defining the effect of actions we define the closure with respect to a path rather than to a state, and show that the non-Markovian model is an extension of the traditional Markovian model. Finally, we establish relationship between theories of Alan and logic programs.     

Evaluation of a High School Peer Group Intervention for At-Risk Youth

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of Reconnecting Youth, a prevention program for at-risk high school youth. Data are from a large, independently evaluated effectiveness trial in two diverse urban school districts. A total of 1,218 students participated; 50% were male; average age was 15. We tested whether positive efficacy trial effects could be replicated, and whether any negative behavioral effects occur when clustering high-risk youth. Although mixed program effects were observed at immediate post-intervention, only negative effects were found at 6-month follow-up. These effects included less optimal scores on measures of GPA, Anger, School Connectedness, Conventional Peer Bonding, and Peer High-Risk Behaviors. Overall, we found little support for the use of this social-influence—model intervention aimed at increasing school connectedness for high-risk youth. Further, this study provides evidence that clustering high-risk youth in preventive interventions has the potential for iatrogenic effects.     

The perception of second language sounds in early bilinguals: new evidence from an implicit measure

Previous studies have suggested that nonnative (L2) linguistic sounds are accommodated to native language (L1) phonemic categories. However, this conclusion may be compromised by the use of explicit discrimination tests. The present study provides an implicit measure of L2 phoneme discrimination in early bilinguals (Catalan and Spanish). Participants classified the 1st syllable of disyllabic stimuli embedded in lists where the 2nd, task-irrelevant, syllable could contain a Catalan contrastive variation (/epsilon/-/e/) or no variation. Catalan dominants responded more slowly in lists where the 2nd syllable could vary from trial to trial, suggesting an indirect effect of the /epsilon/-/e/ discrimination. Spanish dominants did not suffer this interference, performing indistinguishably from Spanish monolinguals. The present findings provide implicit evidence that even proficient bilinguals categorize L2 sounds according to their L1 representations.     

Is Workplace Harassment Hazardous to Your Health?

We examined cross-sectional and lagged effects of sexual harassment (SH) and generalized workplace harassment (GWH) on incidence of self-reported illness, injury, or assault in a sample of over 1,500 university employees. SH and GWH, but not other job stressors, were related to increased odds of illness, injury, or assault. This was true when SH, GWH, and illness, injury, or assault were measured at the same time point, as well as when SH and GWH were measured in year prior to illness, injury, or assault.The data presented here are part of an ongoing longitudinal study of workplace harassment conducted at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Illinois at Chicago. This research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grants AA09989 and AA13332). Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, April 2004, Chicago, Illinois. The data were collected by the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.