Psychological Hardiness and Adjustment to Life Events in Adulthood

Data were collected from 88 persons who had lost their jobs and 227 persons whose youngest child had left home to explore the impact of psychological hardiness on personal distress, adjustment, and coping strategies. Analyses controlling for numerous sociodemographic factors as well as NEO Neuroticism and Extroversion suggested that the interaction between overall hardiness and the experience of differential life events influenced the use of planful problem solving and positive reappraisal as coping mechanisms, as well as influencing levels of positive affect. In addition, a main effect for overall hardiness on several coping strategies, positive affect, and life satisfaction was obtained. Findings also suggested that job loss was a more stressful experience for adults in this study than was the empty nest. These data indicate that hardiness may mediate responses to life events that differ in terms of their predictability and anticipatory nature.     

Quantum Mechanics and "Song of Myself": Getting a Grip on Reality

Most recent writing linking science and literature has concerned itself with challenges to the epistemological status of scientific knowledge in an attempt to demonstrate its contingency, arguing in the more radical efforts that the structures of science are no more than useful fictions. This essay also includes an epistemological comparison between science and literature, but instead of making grand or meta–statements about the nature of knowing generally in the two fields, mine is a much narrower aim. My exploration entails two tasks. First, I provide a close–up look at a particular type of experiment, called the delayed–choice experiment, which clearly reveals the strangeness of the quantum world. In connection with this experiment, I discuss wave functions—mathematical expressions used by physicists to describe quantum behavior and predict the outcome of experiments involving quanta. Second, I look at Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself” focusing on the meaning of the “self” in the poem. My aim is to treat the object of study in each field as a “text” and to assert and demonstrate a parallel in the strategies of thought and response between physicists (“readers”) pondering the meaning and status of a wave function and poem readers pondering the meaning and status of the poem's self. In Whitman's “Song” we find an attempt to understand complex aspects of human experience that are said to transcend ordinary reality, an effort for which I believe there are parallels in the attempts of modern physicists to understand complex, nonintuitive aspects of the subatomic world. While not making the kind of broad claims eschewed above, I do suggest that this focused study has interesting implications since both the wave function and the poem's self force their respective sets of “readers” to confront questions of ultimacy—to consider, that is, epistemological and ontological issues of more than passing interest to students of science as well as those of metaphysics and theology.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Role of Biopsychosocial Factors in Predicting Body Change Strategies Among Adolescent Boys

In this study we examined the role of biopsychosocial factors on adolescent boys' body modification strategies over an 8-month period. Participants were 434 adolescent boys aged between 11 and 16 years. The majority of respondents were from Anglo-Australian backgrounds (83%); the others were from Asian and European non-English-speaking backgrounds. The results indicated a consistent relationship between perceived encouragement to engage in body change strategies and increases in adolescents' body modification strategies, including muscle gain, weight gain, and weight loss. In addition, poor parent relations, being younger, and higher scores on the pubertal development scale predicted increased use of food supplements. However, the stability of the body modification strategies and the examined variables over the 8-month period were low. Further studies are needed to examine the stability of adolescent self-perceptions over both longer and shorter periods. Moreover, researchers need to include other factors that may be more relevant for adolescent boys (e.g., involvement in sports).     

Neuropsychological Functioning in Danish Gulf War Veterans

Research has shown that Danish Gulf War (GW) veterans reported a significantly higher prevalence of neuropsychological symptoms than did military controls 6 years after GW deployment. To explore the possible central nervous system determinants of these complaints, neuropsychological tests were administered to stratified, random samples of the Danish cohort of 916 GW-deployed veterans and 236 non–GW-deployed participants. Multivariate analyses of covariance were used to analyze neuropsychological test outcomes among the 215 male participants (143 GW-deployed and 72 non–GW-deployed soldiers). No significant differences in neuropsychological test performances were found between the GW-deployed and non–GW-deployed groups. Troops deployed to the GW reported significantly more mood complaints (i.e., fatigue and confusion) than their nondeployed counterparts. Because they were assigned to the Gulf region during the postcombat phase, Danish GW soldiers differed from the majority of American GW-deployed troops in military assignments and possible toxicant exposures.     

Anaesthesia or psychotherapy: Eradicating thoughts or working them through

The author presents two sessions from the analysis of a depressive narcissistic doctor, which are characterised by a mixture of co-operation and pseudo-co-operation. The dialogue is in parts intellectualised, complicated, lifeless and schizoid. Points at which the patient shows surprising insights are then partly denigrated by him, on the basis that change is not to be expected. Semi-lifeless contact assists the defensive claustrophobia that he experiences in meaningful contact. It becomes very clear that he is then afraid of entering into an openly aggressive conflict that entails the existential threat of object loss. However, this has so far been avoided. The secret pleasure in an anal-narcissistic, sadomasochistic addiction to doubt persists in the partial denigration. The patient's artificially maintained self-doubt and doubt of the object reinforce a genuine confusion that consists in never knowing exactly what lies behind the helpful and needed object.     

Executive functions predict conceptual learning of science

We examined the relationship between executive functions and both factual and conceptual learning of science, specifically chemistry, in early adolescence. Sixty‐three pupils in their second year of secondary school (aged 12–13 years) participated. Pupils completed tasks of working memory (Spatial Working Memory), inhibition (Stop‐Signal), attention set‐shifting (ID/ED), and planning (Stockings of Cambridge), from the CANTAB. They also participated in a chemistry teaching session, practical, and assessment on the topic of acids and alkalis designed specifically for this study. Executive function data were related to (1) the chemistry assessment which included aspects of factual and conceptual learning and (2) a recent school science exam. Correlational analyses between executive functions and both the chemistry assessment and science grades revealed that science achievements were significantly correlated with working memory. Linear regression analysis revealed that visuospatial working memory ability was predictive of chemistry performance. Interestingly, this relationship was observed solely in relation to the conceptual learning condition of the assessment highlighting the role of executive functions in understanding and applying knowledge about what is learned within science teaching.     

Family Environments and Children's Executive Function: The Mediating Role of Children's Affective State and Stress

There is increasing evidence that inadequate family environments (family material environment and family psychosocial environment) are not only social problems but also factors contributing to adverse neurocognitive outcomes. In the present study, the authors investigated the relationship among family environments, children's naturalistic affective state, self-reported stress, and executive functions in a sample of 157 Chinese families. These findings revealed that in inadequate family material environments, reduced children's cognitive flexibility is associated with increased naturalistic negative affectivity and self-reported stress. In addition, naturalistic negative affectivity mediated the association between family expressiveness and children's cognitive flexibility. The authors used a structural equation model to examine the mediation model hypothesis, and the results confirmed the mediating roles of naturalistic negative affectivity and self-reported stress between family environments and the cognitive flexibility of Chinese children. These findings indicate the importance of reducing stress and negative emotional state for improving cognitive functions in children of low socioeconomic status.     

Assessment and treatment of problem behavior maintained by mand compliance

We modified functional analysis procedures to include a condition in which we reinforced problem behavior by complying with a child's mands. After identifying compliance with mands as a reinforcer, we evaluated the efficacy of a token system with a response‐cost contingency and incorporated discriminative stimuli to signal when mands would be reinforced. The token system with response cost effectively reduced problem behavior. Similar procedures may be beneficial when continuous adult compliance is not possible, when adults want to control when they will comply with the child's mands, or to build a child's tolerance for adult‐directed situations.     

Does Religious Belief Matter for Grief and Death Anxiety? Experimental Philosophy Meets Psychology of Religion

It is commonly reasoned that religious belief moderates death anxiety and aids in coping with loss. However, a philosophical perspective known as meta‐atheism includes the claim that avowed religious believers grieve deaths and experience death anxiety as intensely as avowed atheists. Thus, we report a study comparing religious believers and nonbelievers on measures of death anxiety and grief. We further investigated the relationships between certain religious beliefs (views of God, afterlife belief, religious orientation) and death anxiety, as well as both painful grief reactions and grief‐related growth. We surveyed 101 participants across the United States, ranging in age (19 to 57), education, and ethnicity. Participants avowing some form of religious belief, in comparison to those not, did not demonstrate lower levels of death anxiety. They did, however, display higher levels of a certain type of death acceptance. Additionally, those professing belief reported less grief and greater growth in response to loss. Greater afterlife belief was not associated with less grief; however, it was associated with both greater grief‐related growth and lower death anxiety.     

Self-determination and motivation for bariatric surgery: a qualitative study

This study examined how obese individuals acquire their motivation to undergo weight loss surgery and characterized the motivations within the framework of the self-determination theory (SDT). Participants expecting to have bariatric surgery were recruited and participated in semi-structured interviews. Interview accounts characterized different types of motivation for individuals seeking surgical weight loss treatments on the SDT continuum of relative autonomy. This study demonstrated that the more one’s motivation was internally regulated, related to one’s personal life and supported for competency, the more personal and hopeful were the anecdotes participants mentioned in accounts, thus the more positive the surgical outcomes were anticipated. Study limitations and future research were discussed as was the need for a systematic scheme to categorize types of motivation within the SDT, a longitudinal approach to measure actual weight loss outcomes based on the patient’s pre-surgical motivation, and a further investigation with a larger sample size and balanced gender ratio. Practical implications of the study findings were also discussed as a novel strategy to internalize bariatric patients’ motivation, further helping to improve their long-term quality of life post-surgery.