The impact of communal-mastery versus self-mastery on emotional outcomes during stressful conditions: a prospective study of Native American women

Past research has examined the stress resiliency of individuals high in sense of personal-mastery. However, it has been theorized that within more collectivist cultures, a sense of shared efficacy, which we call communal-mastery, may be more central to people's resiliency in the face of challenging life circumstances. We compared the impact of sense of self-mastery (i.e., I am the key to my success) to that of communal-mastery (i.e., I am successful by virtue of my social attachments) in a prospective study among a group of rural 103 Native American women residing on Indian Reservations in Montana. We found that women high in communal-mastery experienced less increase in depressive mood and anger, especially when faced with high stress circumstances, than women who were low in communal-mastery. In addition, the beneficial impact of communal-mastery was found to be more effective than self-mastery for these women.     

What did mummy say? Dyadic interactions between young "hard to manage" children and their mothers

Thirty preschoolers rated as hard to manage on Goodman's (R. Goodman, 1997) Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and a group of matched control children were observed and recorded on audiotape at home, interacting with their mothers (Time 1). At the 18-month follow-up home visits (Time 2), the children and mothers were filmed across 4 observation settings. Mother–child interactions were rated on affect, control, responsiveness and connectedness of communication. At Time 1, mothers of the hard to manage group used more negative control and engaged in fewer connected conversations than did mothers in the control group. At Time 2, mothers of the hard to manage group displayed higher levels of negative control and lower levels of positive control. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of examining connected communication and different observation contexts when examining dyadic mother–child interactions.     

Beyond bruises and broken bones: the joint effects of stress and injuries on battered women's health

We investigated the joint mediating effects of injuries and stress on the relationship between abuse and women's health. A community sample of 397 women, half of whom had been assaulted by an intimate partner within the prior 6 months, was interviewed about their experience of intimate partner violence, injuries, stress, income, depression, and physical health problems. Structural equation modeling techniques confirmed the complex model of hypothesized indirect effects of abuse on women's physical health problems through injuries, stress, and depression. Stress accounted for 80% of the indirect effect of abuse on women's physical health. Its direct effect on physical health was somewhat larger than its indirect effect through depression, but both processes played a key role in determining the effect of abuse on women's physical health problems. Furthermore, abuse was a stronger predictor of women's stress than was poverty. Implication and future research are discussed.     

Stimulus control topographies and tests of symmetry in pigeons

Pigeons were tested for symmetry after A-B training under conditions designed to avoid problems that may prevent its emergence, namely the change of stimulus location in testing relative to training and the lack of requisite discrimination training. In Experiment 1, samples appeared in two locations during baseline training to minimize the impact of stimulus location. Experiments 2 and 3 included multiple-location training along with additional identity and symbolic matching training, respectively, to explicitly train all of the simultaneous and successive stimulus discriminations required for testing. Experiment 4 provided reinforcement for symmetrical matching relations with some stimulus sets (with multiple-location training) prior to symmetry testing with different sets. In all experiments, pigeons showed no evidence of symmetry despite the fact that baseline (A-B) matching transferred to novel locations. Additional tests for reflexivity (Experiment 2) yielded similar outcomes. These results indicate that the change in stimulus location is not the sole reason that pigeons do not show symmetry and increase the plausibility of arguments that symmetry and other indexes of stimulus equivalence may be beyond the capabilities of the pigeon.     

Chimpanzee responding during matching to sample: control by exclusion

Three chimpanzees performed a computerized matching-to-sample task in which samples were photographs of items and comparison stimuli were geometric symbols called lexigrams. In Experiment 1, samples were either defined (i.e., they represented items that were associated already with a specific lexigram label by the chimpanzees) or undefined (i.e., they did not have an already learned association with a specific lexigram). On each trial, the foil (incorrect) comparison could be either a defined or an undefined lexigram. All 3 chimpanzees selected the correct comparison for undefined samples at a level significantly better than chance only when the foil comparison was defined. In Experiment 2, three comparisons were presented on each trial, and in Experiment 3, four comparisons were presented on each trial. For Experiments 2 and 3, the foil comparisons consisted of either defined or undefined comparisons or a mixture of both. For these two experiments, when the chimpanzees were presented with an undefined sample, they typically made selections of only undefined comparisons. These data indicate that the chimpanzees responded through use of exclusion. A final experiment, however, indicated that, despite the use of exclusion to complete trials with undefined samples correctly, the chimpanzees did not learn new associations between undefined samples and comparisons.     

Naming and categorization in young children: vocal tact training

In three experiments, 2- to 4-year-old children, following pretraining with everyday objects, were presented with arbitrary stimuli of differing shapes. In Experiment 1A, 9 subjects were trained one common tact response, "zag," to three of these and a second tact, "vek," to another three. In category match-to-sample Test 1, 4 subjects sorted accurately when required only to look at the sample before selecting from five comparisons. The remaining 5 subjects succeeded in Test 2, in which they were required to tact the sample before selecting comparisons. Experiment 1B showed, for 2 of these subjects, that tact training with 12 arbitrary stimuli established two six-member classes that were still intact 6 weeks later. In Experiment 2, 3 new subjects participated in a common tact training procedure that ensured that none of the exemplars from the same class were presented together prior to the test for three-member classes. Two subjects passed category Test 1 and the third passed Test 2. Tests showed subjects' listener behavior in response to hearing /zog/ and /vek/ to be in place. These experiments indicate that common naming is effective in establishing arbitrary stimulus classes and that category match-to-sample testing provides a robust measure of categorization.     

Neurocognitive Functioning in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

This paper reviews the literature on performance on standard neuropsychological tests among individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Of 19 studies, 16 reported impairment of attention or immediate memory (or both); however, most of these studies included PTSD patients with significant psychiatric comorbidity, so that the extent to which the observed deficits are specifically attributable to PTSD remains unclear. Other potential confounds, including medical illness, substance abuse, and motivational factors, further preclude definitive conclusions at present. Results of structural and functional neuroimaging studies of PTSD are also summarized. Two studies have reported correlations between hippocampal volume and cognitive findings in PTSD patients; functional studies have indicated specific findings in limbic regions, although the relationship of these results to neuropsychological performance remains to be explored.     

Police Officer Performance Under Stress: A Pilot Study on the Effects of Visuo-Motor Behavior Rehearsal

This study examined the effectiveness ofvisuo-motor behavior rehearsal(VMBR) as a method of reducing acute stress and improving police officer performance. Fifty-four recruits were randomly assigned to a treatment and a nontreatment condition prior to undergoing a highly stressful, critical event training scenario involving live fire. A manipulation check showed that participants who received VMBR displayed significantly lower scores on the cognitive state anxiety subscale of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2; somatic state anxiety and self-confidence were unaffected by the VMBR treatment. Most importantly, participants in the VMBR training condition displayed better performance on the critical event scenario, including significantly more assailant hits. The findings are discussed with respect to the four-stage model of stress and human performance of Salas and colleagues.     

Pace of Life and Enjoyment of Life

The paper addresses the paradox that people in modern societies believe themselves to be very happy and satisfied with their lives while simultaneously are subjected to increasing time pressure and pace of life. It starts with presenting evidence for time pressure covering objective and subjective indicators. Evidence for Germany is given by comparing time-budgets in 1991/92 and in 1999. Time use among full time employed in Germany and other EU-societies in the 1990s is compared to the US and Japan by means of diary-data. As regards work life, overwork and the gap between actual and preferred working hours are examined. Survey-results on the relationship between work load, time pressure, stress and health are reported.Most of these data support the conclusion that time pressure has emerged as a major social problem. Hence citizens are beginning to consider time prosperity as a dimension of their well-being beyond their consumer wealth.However, this growing pace of life does not reduce life satisfaction and happiness. Here a paradox evolves as increasing time pressure goes hand in hand with increased subjective well-being (SWB) at country level in cross-cultural comparison as well as at individual level.In the third section some answers to this paradox are explored: A first answer is offered through the modernization theory: life satisfaction and QOL are proliferating along with economic growth and living standards. This process at the same time accelerates social life. Hence, the negative effects of time pressure are counterbalanced by various yields of the modernization process resulting in a pattern of "heavy-going" satisfaction.A second explanation is the psychological approach: time pressure fulfils positive functions for mobilizing individual resources. A variation of this argument is that the multiple-choice-society offers a wide variety of attractive options resulting in people engaging in too many activities. Here, the enjoyment of life is equated with taking advantage of every opportunity.However, this paper prefers a third approach based on Simmel's explanation of the ambivalent consequences of modernity. Even where the majority of citizens report high levels of happiness and life satisfaction – which can be explained through "arousal" or "eu-stress" – the need to ease the time-burden of disadvantaged groups and to down-speed work and social life in general is essential.