Bidirectional‐Compounding Effects of Rumination and Negative Emotion in Predicting Impulsive Behavior: Implications for Emotional Cascades

Influenced by chaos theory, the emotional cascade model proposes that rumination and negative emotion may promote each other in a self‐amplifying cycle that increases over time. Accordingly, exponential‐compounding effects may better describe the relationship between rumination and negative emotion when they occur in impulsive persons, and predict impulsive behavior. Forty‐seven community and undergraduate participants who reported frequent engagement in impulsive behaviors monitored their ruminative thoughts and negative emotion multiple times daily for two weeks using digital recording devices. Hypotheses were tested using cross‐lagged mixed model analyses. Findings indicated that rumination predicted subsequent elevations in rumination that lasted over extended periods of time. Rumination and negative emotion predicted increased levels of each other at subsequent assessments, and exponential functions for these associations were supported. Results also supported a synergistic effect between rumination and negative emotion, predicting larger elevations in subsequent rumination and negative emotion than when one variable alone was elevated. Finally, there were synergistic effects of rumination and negative emotion in predicting number of impulsive behaviors subsequently reported. These findings are consistent with the emotional cascade model in suggesting that momentary rumination and negative emotion progressively propagate and magnify each other over time in impulsive people, promoting impulsive behavior.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Timeline Followback for Exercise among College Students

OBJECTIVES: Two separate studies assessed the psychometric properties of a retrospective behavioral measure adapted for exercise called the Timeline Followback for Exercise (TLFB-E). Study one examined criterion, convergent, and predictive validity. Study two examined test-retest reliability. METHODS: Study one participants (N = 66) were college students 20.0 ± 1.4yr. Validity of frequency, intensity, time, and type (FITT) of exercise as assessed on the TLFB-E was examined using Pearson r correlations with accelerometers, weekly exercise contracts between participants and researchers, question four of the College Alumni Questionnaire, and a health-related physical fitness battery. Study two participants were a different sample (N = 40) of college students 18.63 ± 1.0yr. Pearson r correlations determined reliability of the TLFB-E for exercise frequency, intensity, and time between two interviews separated by one month. Kappa statistic determined reliability of the TLFB-E for type of exercise. RESULTS: The TLFB-E displayed evidence of criterion validity when compared to accelerometers (r = .35 to .39) and evidence of convergent validity when compared to weekly exercise contracts (r = .65 to .80) and question four of the College Alumni Questionnaire (r = .06 to .75). The TLFB-E displayed evidence of modest to adequate test-retest reliability (r = .79 to .97) for exercise frequency, intensity, and time and moderate Kappa (k = .49) for exercise type. CONCLUSIONS: The TLFB-E produces evidence of reliable and valid scores among college students and improves upon other self-report, retrospective questionnaires by enabling daily collection of exercise FITT over a specified time period.     

The twofold role of diagrams in Euclid’s plane geometry

Proposition I.1 is, by far, the most popular example used to justify the thesis that many of Euclid??s geometric arguments are diagram-based. Many scholars have recently articulated this thesis in different ways and argued for it. My purpose is to reformulate it in a quite general way, by describing what I take to be the twofold role that diagrams play in Euclid??s plane geometry (EPG). Euclid??s arguments are object-dependent. They are about geometric objects. Hence, they cannot be diagram-based unless diagrams are supposed to have an appropriate relation with these objects. I take this relation to be a quite peculiar sort of representation. Its peculiarity depends on the two following claims that I shall argue for: (i) The identity conditions of EPG objects are provided by the identity conditions of the diagrams that represent them; (ii) EPG objects inherit some properties and relations from these diagrams.