Studying depressed persons' interactions with strangers and spouses.

Comments on L. A. Doerfler and W. F. Chaplin's (see PA, Vol 72:25531 contention that studies of interactions between depressed persons and strangers are irrelevant to the evaluation of an interactional model of depression. It is argued that such studies of the acquaintance process make a unique contribution in that they allow for the emergence of depressive interactions in the absence of participants having had previous negative experiences together. They are also important for the interpretation of studies of the marital interactions of depressed persons. Although stimulated by the emergence of an interactional model of depression, development of interactional treatment strategies need not await the full development of the model and must ultimately be evaluated independently. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Meta-analysis of cognitive-behavioral interventions on HIV-positive persons' mental health and immune functioning.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) for improving the mental health and immune functioning of people living with HIV (PLWH). Design: Comprehensive searches of electronic databases from 1988 to 2005, hand searches of journals, reference lists of articles, and contacts with researchers. Meta-analytic approaches were used in synthesizing findings. Main Outcome Measures: Intervention effects on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger, stress, and CD4 cell counts were assessed. Results: Data from 15 controlled trials were analyzed. Significant intervention effects were observed for improving symptoms of depression (d = 0.33), anxiety (d = 0.30), anger (d = 1.00), and stress (d = 0.43). There is limited evidence suggesting intervention effects on CD4 cell counts (d = 0.08). The aggregated effect size estimates for depression and anxiety were statistically significant in trials that provided stress management skills training and had more than 10 intervention sessions. Conclusion: CBIs are efficacious in improving various psychological states of PLWH. Future research should examine the relationship among interventions, psychological states, medication adherence, and immune functions, and identify other relevant factors associated with intervention effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lay persons' sensitivity to statistical information: The case of high perceived applicability.

Six experimental studies were conducted to test the notion that lay persons are insensitive to statistical information when they are in the presence of individuating information allowing judgment by representativeness. Ss were 174 Israeli undergraduates and 259 members of the Israel Defense Forces. Two experiments examined the effects of reliability information on the regressiveness of predictions and on judgmental confidence. Two additional experiments examined the effects on confidence of informational redundancy. The final 2 studies examined Ss' capacity to reason in accordance with the notion of statistical information when its situational applicability is made apparent. On the basis of this and previous evidence, it is concluded that statistical rules seem to be used in accordance with the same rules that govern the use of nonstatistical rules, such as the "representativeness" rule and other rules of various contents. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Client–practitioner agreement in the assessment of severely psychiatrically disabled persons' functional skills.

Investigated the relationship between practitioners' ratings of 383 psychiatrically disabled patients' (mean age 46.2 yrs) functional skills and the clients' own ratings of their functional skills. Factor analysis yielded 2 distinct factors for both client self-report items and practitioner-rated global assessment items. Intercorrelations among various combinations of factor scores indicated a moderate degree of agreement between corresponding client and practitioner factors. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and depression.

The assumption that aging is associated with an increased risk of depression is a recurring theme in the gerontological literature. Yet empirical studies that have investigated the relation between aging and depression do not show consistent support for this assumption or hypothesis. Indeed, some investigators contend that the thrust of empirical evidence favors a view of elderly persons as relatively immune from depression, at least in contrast to their younger adult counterparts. The present article examines the empirical basis for these disparate claims in the context of a careful review of the growing body of research on the relation between aging and depression. The central conclusion of the review is that diverse measurement approaches, coupled with flaws in design and analysis, make it difficult to draw any definitive conclusions regarding the age-depression relation at this time. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dynamic role of eye-head angular displacements in human vehicular guidance.

Conducted 3 experiments with college students and staff members (N = 12) to study the effects of angular displacements of driver's vision, head, and combined eye-head separation on steering produced through closed-circuit TV systems. Steering errors increased with increasing magnitudes of these displacements in actual driving. Results are discussed with respect to driver-vehicle visual requirements, visual-motor coordination in steering, and design of driver training devices. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and variety seeking.

The authors examined the influence of age on variety seeking in 3 experiments. When given choices among jellybeans or music, age differences in variety seeking emerged. Younger adults selected similar levels of variety when choosing what to consume immediately and what to consume later. In contrast, older adults consistently chose less variety when making choices to be consumed at a later time than when making choices to be consumed immediately. This pattern may be related to an increased focus on regulating future emotional experience that is associated with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and source monitoring.

This experiment was designed to examine the ability of older and younger adults to remember the source of information. Three types of source monitoring tasks were investigated: discriminating between externally derived and internally generated memories, discriminating between two types of internally generated memories, and discriminating between two types of externally derived memories. Relative to younger adults, older adults had more difficulty discriminating between memories of the same class (external–external and internal–internal), but they did not have more difficulty discriminating between memories of different classes (external–internal). These findings indicate that the age-related difficulty in remembering the source of information should not be characterized as a general deficit. Factors that may account for age deficits in source monitoring are discussed drawing upon the Johnson–Raye (1981) reality monitoring framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging women and depression.

Practicing psychologists will increasingly have the opportunity to include older women with depression among their clients. Research on depression in older women is summarized, including rates of disorder, age of onset, symptom profiles, suicidal behavior, risk factors for depression such as physical health and social inequalities, and protective factors such as spirituality. The empirical literature about treatment of depression in older adults is presented, with special attention to psychotherapeutic approaches. Ways in which information can help mold effective service provision are enumerated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the bias of information estimates.

Considers the problem of the calculation of the bias of the maximum likelihood information estimate H, based on independent choices among k events. The expectation EH is calculated exactly as a function of the probabilities p1, p2, . . . , pkk. The bias H - EH is approximated by using a convergent expansion for a logarithm and using the 1st 2 terms of a finite expansion for the jth moment of a random variable. The resulting approximation is more generally valid, although less concise and simple, than the classical Miller-Madow approximation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of motion adaptation and disparity in motion integration.

Two experiments, with 10 observers, examined the effects of pattern vs component adaptation on motion integration in stimuli with or without disparity. In Exp 1, Ss adapted to either downward pattern motion, downward component motion, or a grey screen and were then tested with plaids containing either crossed, uncrossed, or zero binocular disparity, moving downward. In Exp 2, the same test conditions were employed following adaptation to upward pattern motion. The total amount of time that coherence or transparent sliding was perceived was measured. Adaptation to component motion increased the amount of perceived coherent motion, whereas adaptation to pattern motion decreased it. Adaptation to the upward-moving pattern had no effect on perceived coherence. Results demonstrate the complex nature of the interaction between depth and motion mechanisms in motion integration. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the nature of work.

Conducted exploratory studies on the psychological concomitants of aging, results of which indicate the following: (a) The process of making a career choice is the 1st significant confrontation with the sense of aging, involving the knowledge or belief that such a decision is fateful because it determines how the rest of one's life will be "filled in." (b) Students are aware that while society tells them that there are numerous directions available to them, the educational system is organized increasingly to pressure the student to narrow his choices. (c) For many reasons, chiefly demographic and economic, our society will increasingly contain individuals who will go through life knowing that they never were able to enter the career of their 1st choice. (d) There has been an increase in the number of people who seek a career change, whether that change is within or between fields of work. Implications of each of these points is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the revelation effect.

Previous research by M. W. Prull, L. L. Light, M. E. Collett, and R. F. Kennison (1998) has shown that older adults are not susceptible to a memory illusion referred to as the revelation effect. The authors examined the robustness of Prull et al.'s findings by having participants solve a word fragment (Experiment 1) or an anagram (Experiment 2) prior to the recognition memory decision. In both experiments, younger and older adults showed a reliable revelation effect. These results simultaneously challenge both the conclusion that older adults are not vulnerable to the revelation effect and the conclusion that aging is associated with increasing susceptibility to memory illusions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory and Aging in Context.

Much research has indicated that aging is accompanied by decrements in memory performance across a wide variety of tasks and situations. A dominant perspective is that these age differences reflect normative changes in the integrity and efficiency of the information-processing system. Contextual perspectives of development, however, argue for consideration of a broader constellation of factors as determinants of both intraindividual change and interindividual variation in memory functioning. The validity of the contextual perspective in characterizing the relationship between aging and memory is examined through a review of studies exploring a variety of alternative mechanisms associated with age differences in performance. It is concluded that a more multidimensional approach to the study of aging and memory is warranted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and self-regulated language processing.

An adult developmental model of self-regulated language processing (SRLP) is introduced, in which the allocation policy with which a reader engages text is driven by declines in processing capacity, growth in knowledge-based processes, and age-related shifts in reading goals. Evidence is presented to show that the individual reader's allocation policy is consistent across time and across different types of text, can serve a compensatory function in relation to abilities, and is predictive of subsequent memory performance. As such, it is an important facet of language understanding and learning from text through the adult life span. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressive mood and estimates of reinforcement frequency.

To test the hypothesis that mood level is related to a tendency to underestimate the amount of positive reinforcement received, 104 undergraduates were administered a depression scale and given trials on a multiple-choice learning task with correctness of responses signaled by the experimenter saying "right" or "wrong." Estimates of number of correct response correlated significantly and positively with number of correct responses. Part correlations between the depression scale and estimates, with number of correct responses partialed out of the estimates, were negative and were significant for women alone and both sexes combined, thus confirming the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aggregation bias in estimates of perceptual agreement.

Discusses the need to demonstrate agreement among individuals' perceptions of climate prior to averaging climate scores from the perspective of aggregation. It is shown that estimates of agreement based on group mean scores have been incorrectly interpreted as perceptual agreement among individuals. Of initial importance is a study by J. A. Drexler (see record 1977-22375-001), who concluded that a considerable proportion of the variance in climate perceptions was accounted for by organizational membership. This conclusion has been employed recently by other authors to support the assumption that individuals in the same environment tend to agree with climate perceptions (e.g., J. R. Hackman and E. E. Lawler, Hackman and G. R. Oldham, and Oldham et al—see PA, Vols 46:9858, 54:2031, and 57:2102, respectively). It is demonstrated that Drexler's analysis provided inflated estimates of agreement among individuals, and the logic of the approach is extended to other studies in which inflated estimates of agreement appeared likely. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Indirect communications about perceived ability estimates.

Suggests that some apparently positive behaviors might have unforeseen and unintended negative consequences and that some apparently negative behaviors might have positive consequences. It is shown that praise, help-giving, and pity may provide a recipient with information that the other person is estimating his/her ability as low; whereas blame, relative neglect, and anger may convey the information that the recipient's ability was estimated as high. It is argued that these inferred opinions of others may influence the self-perception of ability and then determine expectations, affective reactions, and performance. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)