A Comparison of Distractors for Controlling Distress in Young Children During Medical Procedures

Distraction is a strategy that has been shown to be effective and safe in the control of pain and distress. We assessed the utility of two simple distraction procedures for reducing children's pain and distress. Three conditions, control, brief film, and short story, were delivered during repeated medical procedures in a randomized sequence to eight young children with cancer. Scores on the Observational Scale of Behavioral Distress (OSBD-R) as well as observer ratings of overall behavioral distress showed that the short story procedure was more effective than either the control condition or the cartoon film. These results argue for the utility of simple parent–child interactive distraction tasks to ameliorate children's procedural distress.     

Extending Psychometric Norms for Pre-Cardiac Transplantation Evaluations: The Florida Cohort, 1990–1996

Multidisciplinary pre-cardiac transplantation evaluations determine an individual's ability to benefit from potential transplantation. Psychologists are routinely consulted to perform psychological evaluations and testing to examine the candidate's current functioning and to forecast future functioning in the event of transplantation. The establishment of appropriate norms for psychological tests is an ethical imperative to provide high quality psychological consultations that maximize the utility of information gathered. The purpose of this paper is to present pre-cardiac transplant norms for a battery of psychological tests in a large population of consecutive transplant candidates. Together with other recently published norms on alternative test batteries, these norms allow the transplant psychologist to select from a range of psychological tests that span multiple domains of critical importance including the affective, behavioral, coping, cognitive, and health related quality of life domains. These norms appear to set a standard of practice for the use of psychological tests by a consulting transplantation psychologist.     

Coping and the Job Demands-Control-Support Model: An Exploratory Study

The job demands-control-support model indicates job control and social support enhance coping with job demands. This proposition was tested, using a heterogeneous sample of 272 full-time workers. The results indicated a series of complex interactions among demands, control, support, and coping on psychological well-being. Overall, control and support appeared to increase the effectiveness of problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping up to a threshold depending on job demands. The results indicate that beyond this threshold, these forms of coping become less effective. Control appeared to enhance moderate levels of appraisal and cognitive escape-focused coping, but not high levels of appraisal or cognitive escape-focused coping. Social support appeared to enhance high levels of appraisal-focused coping. The results indicate that including coping in empirical tests of the job demands-control-support model enhances its explanatory and predictive power.     

Parents of Special Needs Children Mastering the Job of Parenting

The purpose of this investigation was to learn how parents master the job of parenting children with special needs. Through collaborative interviews using qualitative research methods, this study taps into the stories of five veteran families who reflect on the many challenges they faced from difficult beginnings to years of day-to-day struggles, and how they managed these challenges. Guidelines for family practitioners, based on the results, are discussed.     

The influence of gender, hypertension risk, and aerobic fitness on cardiovascular responses to laboratory-induced stress

The study sought to evaluate the influence of gender, hypertension risk, and aerobic fitness on cardiovascular responses to laboratory-induced stress. Sixty nonsymptomatic subjects (30 males, 30 females) participated in the experiment. Half of the subjects had at least one biological parent with hypertension, while half had no parental history of hypertension and served as comparison subjects. Subjects completed a laboratory procedure measuring cardiovascular responses (i.e., pulse rate and blood pressure) while performing stressful laboratory tasks (i.e., the Stroop Color Naming Test and a sham IQ test). Aerobic fitness (i.e., VO_2max using the Bruce protocol) was also determined using a submaximal treadmill test in the laboratory. Results suggest that males with a family history of hypertension were more stress responsive based on systolic blood pressure, while females were more stress-responsive according to pulse rate activity. Fitness levels were significantly associated with diastolic blood pressure throughout the stress and recovery periods but were unrelated to pulse rate and systolic blood pressure.     

The Perceived Stress Scale: Factor structure and relation to depression symptoms in a psychiatric sample

The present study sought to examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) when administered to psychiatric patients. We also examined predictive validity of the PSS by assessing the association between the Perceived Stress Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory. A heterogeneous sample of 96 psychiatric patients (48 men, 48 women) completed the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Beck Depression Inventory. Factor analysis of the PSS established that the scale consisted of two factors. The first factor was comprised primarily of items reflecting adaptational symptoms. In contrast, the second factor consisted of items reflecting coping ability. Both factors had an adequate degree of internal consistency. Finally, a series of regression analyses predicting depression found that both factors accounted for unique variance in depression scores in women, but only the first factor accounted for unique variance in men. It is concluded that the PSS is a multidimensional and internally consistent measure of perceived stress.This research was supported by Grant 410-91-1690 from the social sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as by grants from the Research and Program Evaluation Committee Brockville Psychiatric Hospital.     

The contexts of adolescents' chronic life stressors

Proposed and tested a model of the determinants of adolescents' chronic life stressors, consisting of sociodemographic, personal, and contextual stress and coping factors, using baseline and 1-year follow-up data from 259 adolescents who varied in their psychological and physical health. Concurrent regression analyses at Time 1 and at Time 2, and longitudinal regressions that controlled for the levels of chronic stressors 1 year earlier, showed that sociodemographic, personal, and contextual factors each made a significant contribution to predicting adolescents' ongoing stressors with their mother, father, siblings friends and classmates and teachers at school. Personal factors of an emotional temperament and low perceived self-worth, and contextual factors of more negative life events and fewer social resources, were related to more chronic stressors. Suggestions for further development of the model are discussed. This research was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, NIAAA Grants AA02863 and AA06699, and Department of Veterans Affairs Medical and Health Services Research and Development Services research funds. We thank Bernice Moos for setting up the data files.     

Three versions of the additive theories of behavioral contrast

The additive theories of behavioral contrast state that contrast will occur only when two types of responses interact during multiple schedules. Three more specific versions of the theories may be defined according to how they distinguish these two types of responses. A strong version physically distinguishes them. A second version distinguishes them according to the theoretical processes which control them. A weak version distinguishes them on the basis of the environmental relations which control them. Only the weak version of the theories is currently testable. The weak theory should be tested by establishing each of the two environmental relations independently and then combining them to assess their effect on behavior. Because this test is not usually performed, many of the results which have been taken to support or contradict the additive theories are actually ambiguous.     

Enhancement of conditioned autonomic responses in monkey when preshock signals occasion operant suppression.

Classical pairings of a sound stilulus with shock elicited larger magnitude and more rapidly conditioned autonomic responses when subjects were responding on variable-interval schedules for food than when they were eating freely available food. The difference was not attributable to changes in control values of heart rate and blood pressure, or to alterations in motor activity, but appeared related to operant suppression.     

Effects of barbiturates and other sedative hypnotics in pigeons trained to discriminate phencyclidine from saline.

Pigeons were trained to peck the center key (lighted white) of three response keys to turn off the center keylight and to light one of the side keys with a red keylight and the other side key with a green keylight. Five responses (fixed-ratio component) on either side key relighted the center key. Food was delivered following 10 fixed-ratio components on the red key if 1.5 mg/kg phencyclidine had been given before the session. The position of the red and green keylights on the side keys varied randomly each time they were lighted by a peck on the center key. Subsequently, increasing doses of phencyclidine, barbital, amobarbital, phenobarbital, methaqualone, methyprylon, diazepam, oxazepam, and d-amphetamine were substituted for the training dose of phencyclidine, using a cumulative dosing procedure. At low doses of the sedative hypnotics, birds pecked the keylight color associated with saline. At higher doses, birds pecked both key colors. At the highest doses of pentobarbital and amobarbital, some birds responded almost exclusively On he color associated with phencyclidine. When responding on keys of both colors occurred following administration of phencyclidine or other sedative hypnotics, this responding was controlled by key position rather than by key color.