Health messages to promote fruit and vegetable consumption at different stages: A match-mismatch design

Objective: To examine the effectiveness of matching health messages promoting fruit and vegetable intake to the Health Action Process Approach stages of change.

Design: In a randomised controlled trial, 205 undergraduate students (non-intenders n = 123; intenders n = 82) were exposed to one of three health messages, targeted at non-intenders, intenders and controls.

Main outcome measures: Three longitudinal assessments of stage, fruit and vegetable intake, and social-cognitive determinants were obtained.

Results: Stage-specific effects of the interventions were confirmed. For self-efficacy, a stage by health message crossover interaction emerged, with both non-intenders and intenders in the matched conditions scoring higher in self-efficacy. Furthermore, in line with predictions, non-intenders in the matched condition showed higher risk perception, outcome expectancies, intention, and stage progression immediately after message exposure, and lower levels of action planning and coping planning a week later in the mismatched condition, but for these outcomes no differences across conditions were obtained among intenders. Multiple mediation analyses confirmed the facilitating role of self-efficacy and behavioural intention among non-intenders.

Conclusions: Stages should be considered when designing health messages, although more interactive interventions for intenders and extended measurement time frames may be required.     

The role of within-category variability in category-based induction: a developmental study

The present studies tested the hypothesis that strong assumptions about within-category homogeneity impede children's recognition of the inductive value of diverse samples of evidence. In Study 1a, children (7-year-olds) and adults were randomly assigned to receive a prime emphasizing within-category variability, a prime emphasizing within-category similarities, or to not receive a prime. Only following the variability prime, children demonstrated a reliable preference for evaluating diverse over nondiverse samples to determine whether there is support for a category-wide generalization. Adults demonstrated a robust preference for diverse samples in all conditions. These effects extended beyond the specific categories included in the prime, as well as to multiple types of test questions. Study 1b demonstrated that priming variability leads children to select diverse samples only when doing so is informative for induction. Implications for conceptual development are discussed.     

Work values and the transition to work life: A longitudinal study

Research on career development has shown that work values play a key motivational role in job selection and career development. In the context of the current economic crisis, it is of particular relevance to examine the role of work values for employment in the transition from school to work. This longitudinal study examined the role of intrinsic (perceived importance of having a job that is interesting and matches one's own competences), rewards (having a good salary and high chance for promotion), and security (having a stable job) work values on subsequent employment status and person–job fit (how an individual's job matches one's own characteristics such as education and job preferences). Finnish participants reported their work values and background variables via questionnaire at ages 20 and 23 (Ns = 348 and 415 respectively). Intrinsic work values predicted a higher degree of person–job fit two years later. Rewards work values predicted lower chances of being unemployed; and security work values predicted higher chances of being unemployed later on. Family socio-economic status (SES) was not related to employment outcomes in this Finnish sample.     

The role of modality: Auditory and visual distractors in Stroop interference

As a commonly used measure of selective attention, it is important to understand the factors contributing to interference in the Stroop task. The current research examined distracting stimuli in the auditory and visual modalities to determine whether the use of auditory distractors would create additional interference, beyond what is typically observed in the print-based Stroop task. Research by Cowan and Barron supported the additive effects of auditory and visual distractors; however, there is only one empirical demonstration of this finding to date. Using different versions of the Stroop colour-naming task, behavioural analyses of reaction times (RT) were conducted, along with distributional RT analyses. The results indicated that a combination of visual and auditory distraction did not lead to a larger interference effect than visually based distraction alone. These findings suggest that methodological issues may have influenced the prior finding of additive effects of the two modalities, and are discussed in relation to the word production architecture account of Stroop effects.     

Psychometric Properties of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire for DSM-IV Among Four Racial Groups

The Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire-IV (GAD-Q-IV) is a self-report diagnostic measure of generalized anxiety disorder. Previous studies have established the psychometric properties of the GAD-Q-IV, revealing excellent diagnostic specificity and sensitivity as well as good test–retest reliability and convergent and discriminant validity (Newman et al., 2002). Recent analyses with other measures of anxiety symptoms have revealed differences across racial or national groups. Given that the GAD-Q-IV was tested primarily on Caucasians (78%), the purpose of this study was to demonstrate the psychometric properties of the GAD-Q-IV across four racial groups: African American, Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian. A student sample of 585 undergraduate psychology students completed the GAD-Q-IV as well as other measures of anxiety symptoms. A clinical replication sample included 188 participants who completed the GAD-Q-IV as part of a larger psychotherapy study. Results indicated excellent and very similar factor structures in the student sample and similar psychometric properties in both samples across the racial groups. Implications for the use of the GAD-Q-IV across racial groups are discussed.     

Do cortical midline variability and low frequency fluctuations mediate William James’ “Stream of Consciousness”? “Neurophenomenal Balance Hypothesis” of “Inner Time Consciousness”

William James famously characterized consciousness by ‘stream of consciousness’ which describes the temporal continuity and flow of the contents of consciousness in our ‘inner time consciousness’. More specifically he distinguished between “substantive parts”, the contents of consciousness, and “transitive parts”, the linkages between different contents. While much research has recently focused on the substantive parts, the neural mechanisms underlying the transitive parts and their characterization by the balance between ‘sensible continuity’ and ‘continuous change’ remain unclear. The aim of this paper is to develop so-called neuro-phenomenal hypothesis about specifically the transitive parts and their two phenomenal hallmark features, sensible continuity and continuous change in ‘inner time consciousness’. Based on recent findings, I hypothesize that the cortical midline structures and their high degree of variability and strong low frequency fluctuations play an essential role in mediating the phenomenal balance between sensible continuity and continuous change.     

Temporal processing dysfunction in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia may be associated with a fundamental disturbance in the temporal coordination of information processing in the brain, leading to classic symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder and disorganized and contextually inappropriate behavior. Despite the growing interest and centrality of time-dependent conceptualizations of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, there remains a paucity of research directly examining overt timing performance in the disorder. Accordingly, the present study investigated timing in schizophrenia using a well-established task of time perception. Twenty-three individuals with schizophrenia and 22 non-psychiatric control participants completed a temporal bisection task, which required participants to make temporal judgments about auditory and visually presented durations ranging from 300 to 600 ms. Both schizophrenia and control groups displayed greater visual compared to auditory timing variability, with no difference between groups in the visual modality. However, individuals with schizophrenia exhibited less temporal precision than controls in the perception of auditory durations. These findings correlated with parameter estimates obtained from a quantitative model of time estimation, and provide evidence of a fundamental deficit in temporal auditory precision in schizophrenia.