Mothers' Psychological Adjustment Following Disaster Affecting Their Children

The authors investigated the psychological adjustment of 37 British women whose adolescent children survived the cruise ship Jupiter's sinking in 1988, about 6 years previously. They compared these women with a group of widows (N = 18) and a group of women who had suffered no major negative life event (N = 15). Psychological adjustment of the 37 women was assessed with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia Lifetime Version (SADS-L; R. L. Spitzer & J. Endicott, 1975) and various standard questionnaires. The women whose children had been involved in the disaster were found to have suffered a greater number of incidents of psychological distress in the period since the disaster than the women who had suffered no major negative life events but fewer incidents of psychological distress than the widows. The significance of these findings and clinical implications are discussed.     

The Evasion of Propaganda: How Prejudiced People Respond to Anti-Prejudice Propaganda

This experiment tested the hypothesis that there would be a significant increase in powerlessness scores over a 10 year period. The sample was drawn from a population of college students originally tested in 1964. At the 10 year follow-up, all Ss had graduated from college and were either professionally employed (mostly as teachers) or engaged in child-rearing/home activities. The average age of the 1974 sample was 29 years and consisted of 70 females and 30 males. The test instrument was the adult version of Rotter's Internal-External (I-E) Locus of Control Scale which consists of 23 forced-choice items. There were no significant differences on total I-E scores over the 10 year period. However, with use of the Mirels two-factor scoring system, significant increases in social-political control were found. No significant differences in personal control were found. It was concluded that care should be taken in utilizing cross-sectional findings and that utilizing multidimensional scores suggests different results for previously published reports.     

Coping with Negative Emotions: Connections with Adolescents’ Academic Performance and Stress

The authors assessed connections among adolescents’ emotional dispositions, negative academic affect, coping strategies, academic stress, and overall grade point average (GPA). A total of 119 ninth through 12th-grade students completed assessments for (a) overall positive and negative moods, (b) GPA, and (c) academically related variables involving stress, negative emotions, and engaged and disengaged coping strategies. Greater negative academic affect and disengaged coping were related to lower GPAs, and disengaged coping mediated the connection between negative academic affect and GPA. By contrast, higher academic stress was related to students’ overall moods, negative academic affect, and disengaged coping; disengaged coping mediated the connection between academic stress and negative overall moods. Discussion focused on the especially problematic nature of disengaged academic coping.     

Dependency and Independence in Young Children

The present study investigated the hypothesis that a positive relation exists between self-concept and moral judgment in young children. In the first experiment 40 kindergarten children between the ages of 5–1 and 6–6 with mental ability scores ranging from 82 to 144 were each administered a self-concept appraisal and a series of Piagetian moral dilemmas. Product-moment correlations and a multiple-regression analysis evaluated the relationship. When the self-concept and moral-judgment scores were collapsed, all of the moral-judgment factors correlated significantly with at least one self-concept factor. A second experiment tested the implications of the first. Eighty-five children between the ages of 5–11 and 8–4 were given the self-concept and moral-judgment measures. An eight-week communications-training session for randomly selected parents of children scoring below the mean on the self-concept measure was held. Posttesting showed no improvement in self-concept for the experimental group. Implications of these experiments are discussed.     

Predictors of Self-Reported Prospective and Retrospective Memory in a Population-Based Sample of Older Adults

In this article, the authors examined predictors of self-reported everyday memory failures using the Prospective and Retrospective Questionnaire (PRMQ; Smith, Della Sala, Logie, &; Maylor, 2000 Smith, G. V., Della Sala, S., Logie, R. H. and Maylor, E. A. M. 2000. Prospective and retrospective memory in normal ageing and dementia: A questionnaire study. Memory, 8: 311–321. [Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in a population-based sample of older adults (age range = 60–90 years; N = 250). The results showed that a higher frequency of reported failures was associated with lower scores on the personality dimension of self-directedness as assessed by the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI; Cloninger, Dragan, Svrakic, &; Przybeck, 1993 Cloninger, R. C., Dragan, M. S., Svrakic, D. M. and Przybeck, T. R. 1993. A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50: 975–990. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and more depressive symptoms on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977 Radloff, L. S. 1977. The CES-D scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1: 385–401. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, PRMQ scores showed no relationships with objective memory ability, as reflected by a series of retrospective memory measures and a measure of prospective memory. Neither were the PRMQ scales associated with general cognitive functioning as assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; Folstein, Folstein, &; McHugh, 1977). Taken together, the results indicate that within the older population, self-reported memory as assessed by the PRMQ may reflect mood-state and personality factors rather than individual differences in memory and cognitive ability.     

Is there an optimal factor structure of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale in patients with first‐episode psychosis?

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) is the most widely used scale to assess a variety of symptoms in patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses. The factor structure of the PANSS has been examined with confirmatory factor analyses in several studies, but not in a well‐defined first‐episode psychosis sample. The aim of this paper is to examine the statistical fit of five different PANSS models in a first‐episode, non‐affective psychosis sample. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed on PANSS data (n = 588). A main criterion for best fit was defined as the Expected Cross Validation Index (ECVI). No tested model revealed an optimally satisfactory model fit index. The Wallwork/Fortgang five‐factor model demonstrated the most optimal psychometric properties. The corresponding subscales of all evaluated five‐factor models were strongly intercorrelated. The Wallwork/Fortgang five‐factor model was found to be statistically and clinically ideal among patients with first‐episode psychosis. Therefore, we recommend this model in forthcoming studies among patients with first‐episode psychosis. However, to prevent the loss of clinically valuable information on an item level, we do not recommend removing any items from the original form. Our study also implies that the specific choice of model will not have a substantial effect on outcome results in studies on the course and outcome in first‐episode psychosis.     

The influence of maternal optimality and infant temperament on parenting stress at 12 months among mothers with substance abuse and psychiatric problems

The present prospective longitudinal study aimed to investigate the long‐term impact of maternal optimality assessed during pregnancy on parenting stress at infant age 12 months. In this study the concept of optimality was utilized to investigate maternal variations regarding resources during pregnancy in relation to later parenting stress, among three different groups of mothers that were recruited from substance abuse treatment, psychiatric outpatient treatment and well‐baby clinics respectively. The influence of infant temperament on parenting stress was also examined. All mothers were interviewed during pregnancy. At 12 months, infant temperament (Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory; Rowe & Plomin, 1977) and stress in the parent and child domain (Parenting Stress Index; Abidin, 1955) were assessed. Results demonstrated higher levels of parenting stress among mothers in the clinical groups, compared to the non‐clinical group. Furthermore, it was the maternal psychiatric optimality index in combination with child temperament characteristics (child emotionality) that contributed uniquely to stress in the parent domain, while stress in the child domain was significantly associated only with child temperament characteristics (both child emotionality and soothability). The association between maternal psychiatric optimality assessed in pregnancy, infant temperament and parenting stress when the infants were 12 months old, points to the importance of simultaneously addressing the mothers' own psychological distress, and to support positive mother–infant interactions. Each woman's individual optimality profile may be used to display needs of follow‐up in order to prevent enduring effects of non‐optimality on parenting stress.     

Altered sleep in Borderline Personality Disorder in relation to the core dimensions of psychopathology

The aim of the study was to review the literature regarding sleep disturbances in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and to relate the reported sleep alterations to the underlying core dimensions of BPD pathology. We present a qualitative and theoretical review regarding the empirical studies that investigated objective and subjective sleep quality in BPD and in different psychiatric conditions showing high co‐morbidity with this disorder. We show that disturbed sleep including sleep fragmentation, alterations in Slow Wave Sleep and REM sleep, and dysphoric dreaming are prevalent symptoms in BPD. We provide a framework relating the specific sleep alterations to the core dimensions of BPD pathology in order to clarify the inconsistencies of the different findings. The specific sleep disturbances in BPD seem to be related to different dimensions of psychopathological functioning and may have detrimental consequences on waking affect and cognition. Investigating disturbed sleep in BPD in relation to waking symptoms and underlying neural functioning would shed more light on the nature of this complex disorder. Moreover, a stronger emphasis on sleep disturbances would enrich the treatment protocols of BPD.     

Silence and survival: Working with strategies of denial in families of traumatized pre-school children

Silence and denial about previous traumatic experiences are common features in families exposed to organized violence. Mutual protection between family members, and especially between parents and children, is seen as the fundament for the silencing of traumatic experiences. This strategy is suggested to have adaptive advantages in dangerous situations in general, where it serves the function of saving the child's internal representations of his/her parents as secure bases. If, however, the dangerous situation escalates and a psychic trauma cannot be avoided, the strategy of mutual silence concerning the event(s) becomes an obstacle for giving traumatized children parental support and professional treatment. It is argued that clinicians need to take seriously the strong reasons families have for upholding their strategy of denial, if they want to help traumatized families to a better functioning. A case presentation is made to illustrate how it is possible to use refugee children's re-enacting play as a source of information about past traumatic events in order to change destructive post-traumatic family dynamics and improve parental support to the child.     

Dimensions of temperament and depressive symptoms: Replicating a three-way interaction

High negative emotionality (NE), low positive emotionality (PE), and low self-regulatory capacity (i.e., effortful control or EC) are related to depressive symptoms and furthermore, may moderate one another’s relations to such symptoms. Indeed, preliminary evidence suggests they may operate in a three-way interaction (Dinovo & Vasey, 2011), but the replicability of that finding remains unknown. Therefore, we tested this NE × PE × EC interaction in association with depressive symptoms in 5 independent samples. This interaction was significant in 4 of the 5 samples and a combined sample and approached significance in the fifth sample. In contrast, the NE × PE × EC interaction was unrelated to general anxious symptoms and thus may be specific to symptoms of depression. Implications, directions for future research, and limitations are discussed.