Building academic partnerships in psychology: the Psychology Partnerships Project

The increased number and mobility of psychology students, the need for a more coordinated curriculum and a more diverse student population in psychology programs, and the need to prepare students for a changing marketplace pose serious challenges for psychology educators. Partnerships among psychology teachers in high schools, community colleges, 4-year colleges and universities, and graduate programs in research universities can help teachers address these challenges effectively. This article outlines how academic partnerships across educational levels can help psychology teachers address educational challenges, examines factors that facilitate the formation and maintenance of these partnerships, and presents the American Psychological Association's successful Psychology Partnerships Project: Academic Partnerships to Meet the Teaching and Learning Needs of the 21st Century, describing the organizational features that enhanced its success.     

Sleep,resilience, and psychological distress in United States military Veterans

Sleep problems are prevalent among Veterans. Left untreated, such problems may elevate psychological distress and increase risk of subsequent mental health disorders. Psychological resilience may buffer against negative psychological outcomes, yet the relationship between sleep and resilience has not been studied. This study explored poor sleep, resilience, and psychological distress using questionnaires collected as part of the Study of Post-Deployment Mental Health. Participants (N = 1,118) had served in the US military since September 11, 2001, had one or more overseas deployments, and were free from a past-month DSM-defined mental health disorder. Hierarchical linear regression was used to examine the association between poor sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index total score) and psychological distress (Global Symptom Index; Symptom Checklist-90-R), controlling for demographic and health characteristics. Moderation analyses tested for a potential buffering effect of resilience (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale). Poor sleeping Veterans had worse physical and psychological health, lower resilience, and endorsed more lifetime traumatic events. Poor sleep was associated with greater psychological distress controlling for health and demographic characteristics. Both resilience factors—adaptability and self-efficacy—had significant buffering effects on the relationship between poor sleep and psychological distress, suggesting that resilience may protect against negative outcomes in poor sleepers. Additional research is warranted to better understand the relationships between sleep, resilience, and psychological distress. Such research may inform pertinent prevention efforts, including interventions that improve sleep, enhance resilience, and protect against incident mental health diagnoses.     

Revisiting distinctive processes in memory

In three experiments, we examined the relationship between orthographic and phonological distinctiveness and incidental recall. In each experiment, participants were given a surprise free recall test after they read words aloud as quickly and accurately as possible. The pattern of results replicated those reported in Cortese, Watson, Wang, and Fugett (2004) for intentional and explicit free recall and recognition memory tasks in which items were read silently. Specifically, we found that phonological-to-orthographic neighborhood size influenced recall performance, whereas orthographic-to-phonological consistency and phonological-to-orthographic consistency did not. Also, we failed to replicate the orthographic-tophonological consistency effect reported by Hirshman and Jackson (1997), and argue that their results were due to a confounding of consistency with phonological neighborhood size. Our results suggest that the processing of words sharing both orthography and phonology with a large number of words produces interference that reduces one’s ability to remember them.