Longitudinally Foretelling Drug Use in the Late Twenties: Adolescent Personality and Social-Environmental Antecedents

This research focuses on the interrelation of the parent-child attachment, unconventionality, friends' drug use, and the young adult's use of drugs. Data were collected from participants at 4 points in time: early adolescence, late adolescence, early 20s, and late 20s. Data were collected from mothers at the 3 points in time that corresponded with the first 3 collections of data from their children. Both the youths and their mothers were individually interviewed. The findings indicated that the effect of parent-child mutual attachment was mediated through early adolescent personality attributes of greater responsibility, less rebelliousness, and intolerance of deviance. These non-drug-prone personality and behavioral attitudes, in turn, insulated the young adult from affiliating with drug-using peers, and these attitudes were related to less drug use in the early 20s and ultimately in the late 20s. The results suggest that interventions focused on enhancing parent-child mutual attachment should result in a reduction of the risk factors conducive to drug use during the late 20s. The fact that these findings cover a decade and a half, from early adolescence to the late 20s, underscores the significance of placing drug use in a perspective that includes familial and behavioral aspects.     

The Confusion of Fear and Surprise: A Developmental Study of the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis Using Eye Movements

The goal of the present study was to test the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis in children and adults by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions and recording eye movements. Children 3–5 and 9–11 years old as well as adults were presented pairs of expressions and required to identify a target emotion. Children 3–5 years old were less accurate than those 9–11 years old and adults. All children viewed pictures longer than adults but did not spend more time attending to the relevant cues. For all participants, accuracy for the recognition of fear was lower than for surprise when the distinctive cue was in the brow only. They also took longer and spent more time in both the mouth and brow zones than when a cue was in the mouth or both areas. Adults and children 9–11 years old made more comparisons between the expressions when fear comprised a single distinctive cue in the brow than when the distinctive cue was in the mouth only or when both cues were present. Children 3–5 years old made more comparisons for brow only than both. The results of the present study extend on the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis showing an importance of both decoder and stimuli, and an interaction between decoder and stimuli characteristics.     

What Matters in the Mirror of Time: Why Lucretius’ Symmetry Argument Fails

By appealing to the similarity between pre-vital and post-mortem nonexistence, Lucretius famously tried to show that our anxiety about death was irrational. His so-called Symmetry Argument has been attacked in various ways, but all of these strategies are themselves problematic. In this paper, I propose a new approach to undermining the argument: when Parfit’s distinction between identity and what matters is applied, not diachronically (as he uses it) but across possible worlds, the alleged symmetry can be broken. Although the pre-vital and posthumous time spans that we could have experienced are indeed analogous with respect to our identity, they are not analogous with respect to psychological continuity, which forms the basis of prudential concern. Lucretius even anticipated the Parfitian distinction. He did not, however, notice the significance that it has for his Symmetry Argument.     

Measuring Fear of Movement/(Re)injury in Chronic Low Back Pain Using Implicit Measures

Fear of movement/(re)injury is assumed to contribute to the development and maintenance of chronic low back pain (CLBP) in a subgroup of patients. Studying fear of movement/(re)injury with implicit attitude measures, without the awareness of the patient, might be a valuable addition to self‐report questionnaires. The aims of the current study were to investigate whether CLBP patients demonstrate more implicit fear of movement/(re)injury than healthy controls, and whether 2 implicit measures are related to each other, and to an explicit self‐report measure of fear of movement/(re)injury. A group of 66 CLBP patients and 30 healthy controls took part in this study. In addition to self‐report questionnaires, fear of movement/(re)injury was implicitly assessed by the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) and the Go‐No‐Go‐Association Task (GNAT) that aimed to determine the association between back‐stressing movements and the evaluation “threatening”. On both implicit tasks it was found that neither CLBP patients nor healthy controls demonstrated implicit fear of movement/(re)injury, and that CLBP patients did not differ from healthy controls in their level of implicit fear of movement/(re)injury. In general, no associations were found between the EAST and the GNAT, or between implicitly measured and self‐reported fear of movement/(re)injury. One major caveat in drawing inferences from these findings is the poor reliability of these implicit measures. Research towards the psychometric properties of these measures should first be expanded before modifying, and applying, them to more complex domains such as fear of movement/(re)injury.     

Structural Evaluation of the Contemporary Psychological Models of Chronic Pain: Does Fear of Pain Work for All?

The aim of the present study was to test Turk and Okifuji's (2002) model of chronic pain and in particular the moderating role of self-efficacy. We assessed 207 consecutive chronic pain patients (53.1% female) on a range of relevant measures and tested the model using structured equation modelling. The model was supported. These results support Turk and Okifuji's model of chronic pain and suggest that it can account for the relationships between variables in chronic pain patients. In particular, the results support the central role of fear-based avoidance and self-efficacy in chronic pain. Future research should be aimed at testing the alternative contemporary models of chronic pain at different stages of the development and maintenance of chronic pain and over time.     

Attention Modification in Persons with Fibromyalgia: A Double Blind,Randomized Clinical Trial

Contemporary models of chronic musculoskeletal pain emphasize the critical roles of fear, anxiety, and avoidance as well as biases in attention in the development and maintenance of chronic pain disability. Evidence supports the influence of individual difference variables such as anxiety sensitivity, pain-related anxiety, and catastrophizing on the pain experience and on pain-related attentional biases. Changes in attentional biases have been associated with treatment gains in patients with clinically significant anxiety. The Attentional Modification Paradigm (AMP) is a modification of the dot-probe paradigm used to facilitate such changes in attentional biases. Given the relationship between chronic musculoskeletal pain and anxiety, AMP may be effective in reducing pain as well. Participants included persons (n = 17) with fibromyalgia and were randomly assigned to either an AMP condition or a control condition. The participants completed two 15-minute AMP sessions per week for 4 weeks. Those in the AMP condition reported statistically significant and substantial reductions on several individual difference variables relative to those in the control condition, and a greater proportion experienced clinically significant reductions in pain. These preliminary results offer a promising new avenue for treating chronic musculoskeletal pain that warrants additional research. Comprehensive results, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

儿童早期情绪性对学步期父母养育方式的影响

运用追踪设计和分层回归分析, 探究了281名儿童6个月和14个月时的受限后沮丧、恐惧和微笑大笑如何影响24个月时父母养育方式, 以及这种影响是否随儿童年龄增长而变化。研究结果显示:(1)6个月时, 仅受限后沮丧能正向预测24个月时母亲严厉的养育方式, 14个月时受限后沮丧仍能正向预测母亲的严厉, 恐惧也能正向预测母亲的保护担忧, 而微笑大笑能正向预测母亲的接受, 负向预测母亲的严厉和保护担忧;(2)6个月时, 儿童的受限后沮丧能正向预测24个月时父亲的严厉和保护担忧, 14个月儿童的受限后沮丧仍能正向预测24个月时父亲的严厉。     

Cognitive risk factors explain the relations between neuroticism and social anxiety for males and females

The hierarchical model of vulnerabilities to emotional distress contextualizes the relation between neuroticism and social anxiety as occurring indirectly through cognitive risk factors. In particular, inhibitory intolerance of uncertainty (IU; difficulty in uncertain circumstances), fear of negative evaluation (FNE; fear of being judged negatively), and anxiety sensitivity (AS) social concerns (fear of outwardly observable anxiety) are related to social anxiety. It is unclear whether these risk factors uniquely relate to social anxiety, and whether they account for the relations between neuroticism and social anxiety. The indirect relations between neuroticism and social anxiety through these and other risk factors were examined using structural equation modeling in a sample of 462 individuals (M age = 36.56, SD = 12.93; 64.3% female). Results indicated that the relations between neuroticism and social anxiety could be explained through inhibitory IU, FNE, and AS social concerns. No gender differences were found. These findings provide support for the hierarchical model of vulnerabilities to emotional distress disorders, although the cognitive risk factors accounted for variance beyond their contribution to the relation between neuroticism and social anxiety, suggesting a more complex model than that expressed in the hierarchical model of vulnerabilities.     

The role of fear in predicting sexually transmitted infection screening

Objective: This study assessed the extent to which social-cognitive factors (attitude, subjective norm and perceived control) and the fear of a positive test result predict sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening intentions and subsequent behaviour.

Design: Study 1 (N = 85) used a longitudinal design to assess the factors that predict STI screening intention and future screening behaviour measured one month later at Time 2. Study 2 (N = 102) used an experimental design to determine whether the relationship between fear and screening varied depending on whether STI or HIV screening was being assessed both before and after controlling for social-cognitive factors.

Main Outcome Measures: Across the studies the outcome measures were sexual health screening.

Results: In both studies, the fear of having an STI positively predicted STI screening intention. In Study 1, fear, but not the social-cognitive factors, also predicted subsequent STI screening behaviour. In Study 2, the fear of having HIV did not predict HIV screening intention, but attitude negatively and response efficacy positively predicted screening intention.

Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of considering the nature of the health condition when assessing the role of fear on health promotion.     

Recalcitrant Fears of Death

According to what I will refer to as judgmentalist approaches to the fear of death (JFD), the fear of death conforms to the structure implied by judgmentalist theories of emotion. JFD holds that fears of death are constituted in part by evaluative judgments or beliefs about one’s own death. Although many philosophers endorse JFD (explicitly or implicitly), there is good reason to believe that it may be problematic. For, there is a troubling (and, for the purposes of this discussion, rather interesting) objection to judgmentalist theories of emotion; if judgmentalism is false, then so too is JFD. In brief, the worry with judgmentalist theories is this: it is sometimes the case that one has an emotion, but holds a belief (or beliefs) that is in tension with the emotion. For example, I sometimes fear flying despite the fact that I believe flying is not dangerous. Emotions of this sort are often referred to as recalcitrant emotions, and they are widely thought to pose a serious challenge to judgmentalist theories. In this paper, I consider an objection to JFD based on the existence of recalcitrant bouts of the fear of death. I include in this discussion an Epicurean-inspired solution to the problem of emotional recalcitrance. Although I argue this solution may be ultimately unsuccessful, I believe it is still worth considering. For, in most discussions of the problem of emotional recalcitrance, philosophers abandon judgmentalism in favour of some other theory of emotion. The Epicurean-inspired solution I discuss in this paper, however, may allow one to retain one’s commitment to judgmentalism.