Perseverative thoughts and subjective health complaints in adolescence: Mediating effects of perceived stress and negative affects.

Stable tendency to perseverative thoughts such as trait rumination and worry can influence somatic health. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between perseverative thoughts and somatic complaints, and the possible mediating effects of perceived stress, negative and positive affectivity in adolescence. Having an acute or a chronic condition was also assessed to be controlled for and to reveal their effects on symptom reporting.

How should "hot" players in basketball be defended? The use of fast-and-frugal heuristics by basketball coaches and players in response to streakiness.

Previous research has shown that changes in shot difficulty may have rendered the hot-hand effect in basketball unobservable and are potentially a result of defensive adjustments. However, it has not been directly analysed whether strategic changes indeed take place in response to streakiness and whether they are effective with respect to winning games. The current work consists of an experimental study with 18 professional coaches and 20 players based on video sequences from National Basketball Association games, where the shown player displayed a streaky performance in half of the sequences.

Examining risk and resilience factors for depression: The role of self-criticism and self-compassion.

Whereas self-criticism has been proposed as an important risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD), self-compassion has been suggested as a resilience factor that protects against the development and maintenance of depressive episodes. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that frequent self-criticism and low habitual self-compassion are related to concurrent depression and to vulnerability to depression by comparing groups of currently, remitted and never depressed individuals. As expected, both currently and remitted depressed individuals reported higher levels of self-criticism and lower self-compassion than never depressed controls.

Motor imagery: effects of age, task complexity, and task setting.

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Mental training may potentially enhance motor performance and self-efficacy in older adults. However, several studies revealed an age-related decay of motor imagery (MI), which suggests that mental training might be too challenging for older adults. Recognizing that laboratory results are often not transferable to real-life situations, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate imagery performance in the elderly with a more real-life-like approach.

Looking with different eyes: The psychological meaning of categorisation goals moderates facial reactivity to facial expressions.

In the present research we examined whether the psychological meaning of people's categorisation goals affects facial muscle activity in response to facial expressions of emotion. We had participants associate eye colour (blue, brown) with either a personality trait (extraversion) or a physical trait (light frequency) and asked them to use these associations in a speeded categorisation task of angry, disgusted, happy and neutral faces while assessing participants' response times and facial muscle activity. We predicted that participants would respond differentially to the emotional faces when the categorisation criteria allowed for inferences about a target's thoughts, feelings or behaviour (i.

The effect of perceived streakiness on the shot-taking behaviour of basketball players.

We examine behavioural changes of basketball players arising from the hot-hand belief and use data of 1216 National Basketball Association games to measure the effect of cold and hot streaks on three proxies of shot difficulty. We find that the more consecutive shots players make (miss), the more difficult (easier) shots become along the three dimensions. Furthermore, most players' performance seems to improve during hot streaks because they attempt more difficult shots while no significant decrease in shooting accuracy takes place.

What explains the intention to be physically active in cancer patients? Different determinants for active and insufficiently active patients.

In a qualitative elicitation study with 61 cancer patients, a broad range of attitudes toward physical activity could be obtained, especially negative attitudes among insufficiently active patients. Based on these results, a second quantitative study was conducted; 64 patients [40 men; 42% insufficiently active (<150 minutes/week)] completed a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) questionnaire. Regression analyses revealed that different variables of the TPB are relevant for explaining the intention to exercise for physically active (subjective norm) and insufficiently active (attitudes) cancer patients.

The loss of residual visual memories over the passage of time.

There has been extensive discussion of the causes of short-term forgetting. Some accounts suggest that time plays an important role in the loss of representations, whereas other models reject this notion and explain all forgetting through interference processes. The present experiment used the recent-probes task to investigate whether residual visual information is lost over the passage of time.

Risky single occasion drinking frequency and alcohol-related consequences: can abstinence during early adulthood lead to alcohol problems?

Questions Under Study: the main purpose of this longitudinal study was to determine the impact of risky single occasion drinking (RSOD) frequency on alcohol dependence and drinking consequences reported 15 months later.

Methods: As a baseline sample, 5,990 young men were assessed on their drinking habits including the frequency of RSOD. Of them, 5,196 were reassessed at follow-up 15 months later on RSOD frequency, alcohol dependence and alcohol related consequences in thze interceding year.

Intentional attention switching in dichotic listening: exploring the efficiency of nonspatial and spatial selection.

Using an auditory variant of task switching, we examined the ability to intentionally switch attention in a dichotic-listening task. In our study, participants responded selectively to one of two simultaneously presented auditory number words (spoken by a female and a male, one for each ear) by categorizing its numerical magnitude. The mapping of gender (female vs.

Decision-making and response strategies in interaction with alarms: the impact of alarm reliability, availability of alarm validity information and workload.

Responding to alarm systems which usually commit a number of false alarms and/or misses involves decision-making under uncertainty. Four laboratory experiments including a total of 256 participants were conducted to gain comprehensive insight into humans' dealing with this uncertainty. Specifically, it was investigated how responses to alarms/non-alarms are affected by the predictive validities of these events, and to what extent response strategies depend on whether or not the validity of alarms/non-alarms can be cross-checked against other data.

Memory of pain and affect associated with migraine and non-migraine headaches.

The main aims of this study were to assess memory of pain and pain-related affect in headache sufferers and to compare the pain memories of individuals who suffer from migraines and those who experience non-migraine headaches. A total of 313 women participated in the study, 86 of whom had a diagnosis of migraine headache. The women rated their state anxiety about having a headache, the intensity and unpleasantness of headache pain, and their emotions while actually experiencing a headache.

Treatment outcome in substance use disorder patients with and without comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review.

We investigated the role of comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (CO-PTSD) in substance use disorder (DSM-IV/ICD-10 substance abuse or dependence, SUD) treatment. We conducted a systematic review of treatment outcome studies in SUD patients with and without CO-PTSD from 2000 to 2011. The N = 22 studies found differed clearly with regard to methodology and the sufficiency of provided study information, limiting their comparability.

Summarizing the fifteen scales of the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire by five aggregate scales with two underlying dimensions: a literature review and an empirical study.

The intercorrelations among the 15 scales of the 30-item Core version of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire suggest that one may combine (1) the physical functioning and role functioning scales, (2) the emotional functioning and cognitive functioning scales, and (3) the nine symptom scales. Together with the global health/quality of life scale and the social functioning scale, five measures remain. Principal component analysis of those five measures, using data from Japanese and Dutch breast and lung cancer patients, yielded two dimensions: (1) generalized health related quality of life and (2) health-independent psychological well-being.

Irrelevant speech does not interfere with serial recall in early blind listeners.

Phonological working memory is known be (a) inversely related to the duration of the items to be learned (word-length effect), and (b) impaired by the presence of irrelevant speech-like sounds (irrelevant-speech effect). As it is discussed controversially whether these memory disruptions are subject to attentional control, both effects were studied in sighted participants and in a sample of early blind individuals who are expected to be superior in selectively attending to auditory stimuli. Results show that, while performance depended on word length in both groups, irrelevant speech interfered with recall only in the sighted group, but not in blind participants.

Anxiety and psychological stress before prenatal screening in first-time mothers who conceived through IVF/ICSI or spontaneously.

Mothers' general anxiety, anxiety about the well-being of the child and psychological stress before prenatal testing was studied by comparing women who conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) with women who conceived naturally. Before the first trimester screening test for Down's syndrome, a group of 51 women who conceived through IVF/ICSI and a group of 54 women who conceived spontaneously completed the State Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (S-Anxiety; Spielberger, 1983), the Fear of Bearing a Physically or Mentally Handicapped Child Subscale of the Pregnancy-related Anxiety Questionnaire (PRAQ-R; Huizink et al., 2004), the Psychological Stress Measure (PSM; Lemyre & Tessier, 1988), and the Prenatal Psychosocial Profile (PPP; Curry, Campbell, & Christian, 1994).

Foster children's attachment security and behavior problems in the first six months of placement: associations with foster parents' stress and sensitivity.

Both traumatic experiences in their birth families and multiple placement histories lead to increased mental health problems in foster children. The formation of secure attachments to new caregivers could be a protective factor for foster children. The current study focused on the associations between foster parents' sensitivity, parenting stress and foster children's attachment behavior as well as behavior problems.

Age affects the adjustment of cognitive control after a conflict: evidence from the bivalency effect.

Age affects cognitive control. When facing a conflict, older adults are less able to activate goal-relevant information and inhibit irrelevant information. However, cognitive control also affects the events after a conflict.

Personal values that support and counteract utilization of a screening test for prostate cancer.

The main aim of the current research was to discover the personal values that may support men's prostate cancer screening decisions in the future. We asked for participants' past behavior and future behavioral intentions, and also considered their real-life behavior. The sample consisted of 371 men, of which 93 were first-time patients at the Andrology Unit.

Eye contact during live social interaction modulates infants' oscillatory brain activity.

We examined infants' oscillatory brain activity during a live interaction with an adult who showed them novel objects. Activation in the alpha frequency range was assessed. Nine-month-old infants responded with desynchronization of alpha-band activity when looking at an object together with an adult during a social interaction involving eye contact.

Post scriptum to the biography of Monsieur Leborgne.

In 1861, Paul Broca presented a case of a patient who had almost completely lost the ability of speech production. This patient is known as "Monsieur Leborgne" alias "Tan." In describing the history of his disease, Broca reported that Leborgne had spent a total of 21 years in hospitals.

The 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, early and recent life stress, and cognitive endophenotypes of depression.

Studies associating interactions of 5-HTTLPR and life adversities with depression have yielded equivocal results. Studying endophenotypes may constitute a more powerful approach. In the current study, it was assessed whether interactions of 5-HTTLPR with childhood emotional abuse (CEA) and recent negative life events (RNLE) affect possible cognitive endophenotypes of depression, namely, attention-allocation bias and the ability to recognise others' mind states in 215 young adults of North-West European descent.

Positive affect and self-control: attention to self-control demands mediates the influence of positive affect on consecutive self-control.

Positive affect (PA) can either improve or impair self-control performance, depending on whether two tasks are dissimilar, and thus require flexible releasing and switching, or similar, which requires stable maintenance. The present study suggests that this effect is mediated by attentional shifts. The authors found that participants under PA, who performed on two dissimilar tasks and had to switch to a new response dimension, were less attentive to distracting information compared to neutral affect (NE), leading to better performance.

Sleep disorder in childhood impairs declarative but not nondeclarative forms of learning.

A large amount of studies have investigated the association between sleep and memory systems. However, remarkably little is known of the effect of sleep disorders on declarative and nondeclarative memory for children. In the present study we examined the effects of sleep disorders on different aspects of memory functions by testing children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), which is characterized by disrupted sleep patterns.

Indirect scaling methods for testing quantitative emotion theories.

Two studies investigated the utility of indirect scaling methods, based on graded pair comparisons, for the testing of quantitative emotion theories. In Study 1, we measured the intensity of relief and disappointment caused by lottery outcomes, and in Study 2, the intensity of disgust evoked by pictures, using both direct intensity ratings and graded pair comparisons. The stimuli were systematically constructed to reflect variables expected to influence the intensity of the emotions according to theoretical models of relief/disappointment and disgust, respectively.