父母教育卷入与小学儿童数学焦虑的纵向联系:数学态度的中介作用

为探讨父母教育卷入与学龄期儿童数学焦虑之间的纵向联系及内在作用机制,从山东省聊城市两所普通小学选取1734名三、四年级学生,对其进行为期一年的追踪研究。结果发现：（1）T1父母教育卷入能够显著负向预测T2儿童数学焦虑,但T1儿童数学焦虑对T2父母教育卷入的预测不显著;（2）在同一时间点上,儿童数学态度在父母教育卷入与儿童数学焦虑之间发挥显著中介作用;（3）在不同时间点上,儿童数学态度的中介作用仍然成立,表明儿童数学态度的中介作用具有跨时间的稳定性。该结果强调了父母教育卷入对学龄期儿童数学焦虑变化的重要作用,亦为从父母教育卷入和数学态度角度降低儿童的数学焦虑水平提供了初步有力证据。     

Psychometric Evaluation of a Controlled Social Affiliation Paradigm: Findings From Anxiety,Depressive Disorder,and Healthy Samples

Social impairments are common across many psychiatric conditions. Standardized dyadic assessments intended to elicit social affiliation between unacquainted partners are used to elucidate mechanisms that disrupt relationship formation and inform possible treatment targets; however, the psychometric properties of such paradigms remain poorly understood. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of a controlled social affiliation paradigm intended to induce connectedness between a target participant and trained confederate. Individuals with an anxiety or depressive disorder diagnosis (clinical group; n = 132) and those without (control group; n = 35) interacted face-to-face with a trained confederate; partners took turns answering a series of increasingly intimate questions about themselves. Social connectedness, affect, and affiliative behavior measures were collected during the interaction. Participant symptom and social functioning measures were collected to examine validity. The paradigm elicited escalating social connectedness throughout the task for both participants and confederates. Parallel forms (i.e., different question sets) elicited similar affiliation outcomes. Self-reported (but not behavioral) affiliation differed across some demographic variables (e.g., participant gender, Hispanic ethnicity). Within-task affiliation measures were associated with one another and with global social connectedness and social anxiety symptom measures, but not with somatic anxiety measures. Clinical participants reported lower social affiliation and positive affect reactivity and higher negative affect reactivity than healthy participants. These findings provide initial psychometric support for a standardized and controlled dyadic affiliation paradigm that could be used to reliably probe social disconnection mechanisms across psychopathology.     

Homework Compliance and Quality in Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Homework assignments are an integral part of cognitive behavioral therapy, providing patients with opportunities to practice skills between sessions. Generally, greater homework compliance is associated with better treatment outcomes. However, fewer studies have examined the effect of homework quality on treatment outcomes. This study examined homework compliance and quality as predictors of outcome and attrition across five CBT protocols. A sample of 179 individuals with principal diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder were randomized to receive a transdiagnostic CBT protocol (the Unified Protocol) or a single-diagnosis CBT protocol corresponding to their principal diagnosis. The Unified Protocol had a lower homework burden than the majority of the single-diagnosis protocols, which varied in degree of assigned homework. Despite this, there were no differences in average homework compliance or quality across principal diagnosis, treatment condition, or their interaction. Homework quality was significantly related to all symptom outcomes (self-reported and clinician-rated anxiety and depressive symptoms, clinician-rated clinical severity). Homework compliance was significantly related to clinician-rated anxiety symptom outcomes. Additionally, greater homework quality and compliance were both significantly associated with increased odds of completing treatment, suggesting homework variables can be useful and easily obtainable predictors of treatment retention.     

Constructing We‐ness: A Communal Coping Intervention for Couples Facing Chronic Illness

Communal coping occurs when relationship partners view a stressful health problem as “ours,” rather than yours or mine, and take collaborative action to deal with it. Although research employing linguistic (we‐talk) and other measures of communal coping demonstrates relevance to a variety of chronic illnesses, the literature offers little about how clinicians can actively promote we‐ness and teamwork to help patients and their partners achieve the health benefits this appears to confer. This paper highlights clinical and supporting scientific features of a narrative intervention designed to foster communal coping by couples in which one partner has a chronic illness. The illustrative illness is diabetes, but with modification the protocol is suitable for other chronic conditions as well. Grounded in systemic and narrative models of problem maintenance and change, the communal coping intervention represents a distillation of research and clinical experience with family consultation over several decades. In contrast to more directive and educational approaches, the intervention consists entirely of questions, with no direct suggestions or instruction about how patients, partners, or couples should change. These questions comprise 8 sequential modules (Coping Challenges, Trajectory and Focus, Illness as External Invader, You as a Couple, Past Teamwork in Overcoming Adversity, Present and Future Teamwork, Obstacles to Teamwork, and Wrap‐Up), described here in manual‐like detail.     

The common sense of counseling psychology: introducing the Common-Sense Model of self-regulation

Abstract

The goal of therapy is typically to improve clients’ self-management of their problems, not only during the course of therapy but also after therapy ends. Although it seems obvious that therapists are interested in improving clients’ self-management, the psychotherapy literature has little to say on the topic. This article introduces Leventhal’s Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation, a theoretical model of the self-management of health, and applies the model to the therapeutic process. The Common-Sense Model proposes that people develop illness representations of health threats and these illness representations guide self-management. The model has primarily been used to understand how people self-manage physical health problems, we suggest it may also be useful to understand self-management of mental health problems. The Common-Sense Model’s strengths-based perspective is a natural fit for the work of counseling psychologists. The model has important practical implications for addressing how clients understand mental health problems over the course of treatment and self-manage these problems during and after treatment.     

On the advantage of autobiographical memory pliability: implantation of positive self-defining memories reduces trait anxiety

This paper is devoted to the mechanism of the positive construction of autobiographical memory. Positive construction consists of the spontaneous transformation of memories in the direction of the subjective enhancement of self-competence in past activities to anticipate improvement over time. We speculated that trait anxiety may indicate a failure to exhibit this mechanism that results in a deficit of affirmative self-esteem. We hypothesised that the implantation of positive self-defining memories in anxiety-evoking domains would decrease trait anxiety. One hundred twenty adults recollected three negative self-defining memories. Then, half of the participants imagined episodes of desired behaviour that differed from the originally recollected ones either in discussion or in hypnosis. Thirty participants experienced a hypnotic state without any references to memories, and the rest formed the control group. Subjects from the “Memory Implantation in Hypnosis” group became unable to distinguish the originally reported memories from the imagined ones, exhibited decreased trait anxiety scores after a 4-month delay, and reported enhanced self-esteem. In contrast, the participants from the “Hypnosis with no reference to the past” group exhibited decreased scores at a short delay but later returned to their original scores. These findings highlight the power of cured episodic-like autobiographical memory for updating the self.     

Biases in attention and interpretation in adolescents with varying levels of anxiety and depression

ABSTRACT

This is the first study to investigate multiple cognitive biases in adolescence simultaneously, to examine whether anxiety and depression are associated with biases in attention and interpretation, and whether these biases are able to predict unique variance in self-reported levels of anxiety and depression. A total of 681 adolescents performed a Dot Probe Task (DPT), an Emotional Visual Search Task (EVST), and an Interpretation Recognition Task. Attention and interpretation biases were significantly correlated with anxiety. Mixed results were reported with regard to depression: evidence was found for an interpretation bias, and for an attention bias as measured with the EVST but not with the DPT. Furthermore, interpretation and attention biases predicted unique variance in anxiety and depression scores. These results indicate that attention and interpretation biases are unique processes in anxiety and depression. They also suggest that anxiety and depression are partly based on similar underlying cognitive mechanisms.     

Prospective Associations Between Sleep Disturbance and Repetitive Negative Thinking: The Mediating Roles of Focusing and Shifting Attentional Control

Although considerable evidence has linked sleep disturbance to symptoms of psychopathology, including repetitive negative thinking, few studies have examined how sleep disturbance may predict repetitive negative thinking over time. Further, no study to date has examined specific mechanisms that may account for this relationship. The present study sought to address these gaps in the literature by testing focusing and shifting attentional control as two potential mediators of the relationship between sleep disturbance and repetitive negative thinking over a 6-month period. A final sample of 445 unselected community participants completed measures of sleep disturbance and repetitive negative thinking at Time 1, measures of focusing and shifting attentional control 3 months later, and measures of repetitive negative thinking again 6 months later. Results revealed that focusing, but not shifting, attentional control mediated the relationship between sleep disturbance and repetitive negative thinking, specifically, worry, rumination, and obsessions. These findings provide preliminary evidence for focusing attentional control as a candidate mechanism that may explain the causal role of sleep disturbance in the development of repetitive negative thinking observed in various disorders.