Deleterious Effects of Stress on Time Spent Together and Parents' Relationship Satisfaction

Data from 90 German committed heterosexual couples who had a least one child were used to examine the associations between chronic minor external stress, quantity and quality of time spent together as a couple, and partners' relationship satisfaction. Using an extended version of the Actor Partner Interdependence Model, the authors found significant negative indirect effects from mothers' chronic minor external stress via quality, but not quantity, of shared time to both parents' reported relationship satisfaction. Mothers' chronic minor external stress was associated with fewer reported quality time activities, which were also associated with lower reports of relationship satisfaction for both mothers and fathers. The authors did not find indirect effects for fathers' chronic minor external stress. Overall, the frequency of quality time activities may be more important for mothers, as it explained 25% of variance in their relationship satisfaction, compared with 15% in fathers' relationship satisfaction. Implications for relationship researchers and clinicians are discussed.     

Impressions formed in response to public self-evaluation maintenance strategies

Two studies examined the impressions formed in response to public self-evaluation maintenance strategies. According to Tesser’s (1988) self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model, a person who has been outperformed by a close other perceives the field of performance as less relevant to preserve self-evaluation. Tesser and Paulhus (1983) showed that this same strategy is used for the purpose of impression management, or public self-evaluation maintenance. The present research examined the SEM model variables from the view of impression formation. In the first study, information regarding field relevance and psychological closeness was conveyed by the experimenter. In this context, field relevance had a significant impact on perception of competence. In the other study, in which the information was conveyed by the target person, relevance and closeness influenced the perception of manipulativeness and sociability. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of investigating the SEM processes from the impression formation perspective.     

‘It’s not a diet,it’s a lifestyle’: a longitudinal,data-prompted interview study of weight loss maintenance

Objective: To advance understanding of the individual and environmental factors underpinning weight loss maintenance. Design: Semi-structured, data-prompted interviews were conducted with twelve overweight adult participants (three men, nine women) who had lost over 5% of their body weight in the year before baseline. Participants gathered daily data through wireless scales, activity monitors (Fitbit?), ecological momentary assessment and experience sampling (taking photographs, writing notes). They were interviewed at 3- and 6-months post baseline. Interview stimuli included personal data of weight and activity graphs, correlations of psychological factors, and self-generated notes and photographs. Interview data were analysed using the Framework Method, applying pre-specified maintenance-relevant theoretical themes. Results: The theoretical Framework provided a good fit for the narratives, with five main themes underpinning successful weight loss maintenance: sustained motivation, effective self-regulation, plentiful resources, habit formation and a supportive environment. Additionally, participants reported an identity shift from being a dieter to accepting a new healthy lifestyle. Goal prioritising and allowing for occasional controlled lapses enhanced weight loss maintenance. Conclusions: This study successfully used the novel method of data-prompted interviews to explore weight loss maintenance experiences with new explanations emerging from the data. Future research should further develop behaviour change maintenance theory and data-prompted interview method.     

Programming for Maintenance: An Investigation of Delayed Intermittent Reinforcement and Common Stimuli to Create Indiscriminable Contingencies

Generalization across time or maintenance of behavior change is a fundamental concern for behavior analysts and educators that remains insufficiently understood. This study examined the maintenance of mathematics responding during and following delayed intermittent reinforcement when common stimuli were programmed across the treatment and maintenance phases. Two third-grade girls who were referred by their classroom teacher due to concerns in the area of mathematics participated. Students were exposed to baseline, contingent reinforcement, delayed intermittent reinforcement, and a maintenance condition. The maintenance condition followed exposure to delayed intermittent reinforcement and included common stimuli from the reinforcement condition, but did not include a contingency for correct responding. Both students exhibited substantial prolonged maintenance during this condition. Implications of these results for future research examining maintenance and applied programming for maintenance are discussed.     

Self-help and long-term behavior therapy for obesity

The Trevose Behavior Modification Program, a self-help group offering continuing care for obesity, has recently been shown to produce large long-term weight losses. The present study aimed to replicate this finding across different settings and participants, assessing the weight losses and attrition rates of 128 participants in three Trevose program satellite groups that used the same treatment procedures and manual as the central Trevose group. The satellite groups' results closely paralleled those of the Central Group. Mean intent-to-treat weight loss, or final losses recorded for all participants regardless of their treatment termination date, was 13.7 +/- 0.7% of initial body weight (1.8 +/- 0.7 kg). At two years, 43.8% of participants remained in treatment, having lost a mean of 19.0 +/- 0.8% of their body weight (16.2 +/- 1.0 kg); at five years, 23.4% remained, having lost 18.4 +/- 1.1% of body weight (15.6 +/- 1.5 kg). These results demonstrate that the Trevose model of weight control, combining self-help and continuing care, can be extended and disseminated to other settings, with potentially significant public health consequences.     

Implicit self-esteem and social anxiety: differential self-favouring effects in high and low anxious individuals

This study was designed to investigate the role of negative self-image in social phobia. Participants were 19 high and 19 low socially anxious women. Because self-report measures of self-esteem are sensitive to self-presentation and impression management strategies, an implicit association test (IAT) was used to assess participants' self-esteem as well as their general evaluation of others ('other-esteem'). Socially anxious women displayed relatively low levels of self-esteem on self-report measures. However, at the implicit level, low and high anxious women were characterised by a similar, highly positive self-image. Both groups displayed a relatively low 'other-esteem'. Yet, this self-favouring effect was considerably weaker in high than in low anxious participants. The results provide no unequivocal support for the idea that low self-esteem plays an important role in social anxiety. Yet, rather than by low self-esteem per se, socially anxious people are characterised by a small discrepancy between esteem of self and others, and it may be this reduced tendency to self-favouring that is pivotal to social anxiety.     

Nine Months of Multicomponent Behavioral Treatment for ADHD and Effectiveness of MTA Fading Procedures

We examined 9-month data from the 14-month NIMH Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (the MTA) as a further check on the relative effect of medication (MedMgt) and behavioral treatment (Beh) for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) while Beh was still being delivered at greater intensity than at 14-month endpoint, and conversely as a check on the efficacy of the MTA behavioral generalization/maintenance procedures. Intention-to-treat analysis at 9 months showed essentially the same results as at 14 months, after Beh had been completely faded; MedMgt and the combination (Comb) of medication and Beh were significantly superior to Beh and community care (CC) for ADHD and oppositional-defiant (ODD) symptoms, with mixed results for social skills and internalizing symptoms. All treatment-group differences examined as changes in slopes from 9 to 14 months were nonsignificant (we found general improvement for all groups). Slopes from baseline to 9 months correlated highly (r > .74, p < .0001) with slopes from baseline to 14 months for all groups. The time function from baseline to 14 months showed a significant linear, but not quadratic, trend for the main outcome measure (a composite of parent- and teacher-rated ADHD and ODD symptoms) for all groups. Findings suggest that in contrast to the hypothesized deterioration in the relative benefit of Beh between 9 and 14 months (after completion of fading), the MTA Beh generalization and maintenance procedures implemented through 9 months apparently yielded continuing improvement through 14 months, with preservation of the relative position of Beh compared to other treatment strategies.     

The generation and maintenance of visual mental images: evidence from image type and aging

Imagery is a multi-componential process involving different mental operations. This paper addresses whether separate processes underlie the generation, maintenance and transformation of mental images or whether these cognitive processes rely on the same mental functions. We also examine the influence of age on these mental operations for independence of components. In Experiment 1, younger (22 years) and older (69 years) adults generated and maintained general, specific, contextual and autobiographical visual mental images evoked in response to concrete nouns. The older adults had longer generation times, but there was no difference between the two groups on maintenance. Both groups had shortest generation and maintenance times for general images, whereas only the older adults took longest in generating autobiographical images. In Experiment 2, the total maintenance time and number of transformations for each type of image were compared in another group of younger and older adults. General images were less transformed and more subject to decay for both groups. The older people maintained the autobiographical mental images for longest compared to other image types. In conclusion, image generation, maintenance and transformation seem to be differently affected by type of image and aging, supporting a model of their cognitive segregation.     

Non-treatment-related sudden gains in depression: the role of self-evaluation

A number of studies have demonstrated that recovery from depression is often marked by precipitous improvements during the course of treatment. The present research examined sudden gains occurring outside of the context of treatment in a sample of college students with current major depressive disorder (n=60), and tested whether variables pertaining to cognitive style, hope, self-evaluation, and life events would be associated with these gains. Results indicated that 60% of the sample experienced sudden gains, with over half of those sudden gains reversing before the end of the 9-week observation period. Sudden gainers were significantly less depressed at the end of the observation period but were no more likely to have achieved remission compared to non-sudden gainers. Although changes in cognitive style did not precede sudden gains, individuals with sudden gains had significantly higher self-esteem at baseline compared to non-sudden gainers. Furthermore, decreases in the frequency of social comparison occurred in the week prior to sudden gains. These results suggest that sudden gains do occur outside of the context of treatment and that self-evaluation processes may play an important role in recovery from depression.