Art, wellness, and innovation: Heads up Kentucky! Puts psychology's contribution to healthy living in the public eye.

The Kentucky Psychological Association (KPA) Foundation is an organization that 2 years ago had little name recognition in its community or the state. In the past year, the KPA Foundation has contributed a major public art project to the city in which it resides, enhanced its financial assets, introduced educational material on the mind-body connection to public forums across the community, been the subject of feature articles in some of the community's major publications, taken health promotion curriculum to public elementary schools, and achieved national recognition for its public education campaign. This article describes the successful "Heads Up Kentucky!" campaign and the mobilization of the membership in the state's psychological association to make the fruits of psychological science accessible to members of the public. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Questioning the Living/Nonliving Dichotomy: Evidence From a Patient With an Unusual Semantic Dissociation.

In this article the authors describe a patient (J.P.) whose category-specific naming deficit eluded the classical dichotomies between living versus nonliving items or visual versus functional attributes. At age 22, he had herpes simplex encephalitis followed by a left temporal lobectomy. J.P. was tested on measures of visual perception, category naming, fluency, and name-picture matching. He showed a severe impairment naming and identifying fruits, vegetables, and musical instruments. His performance with animals and birds was spared inconsistently, meaning that even the preserved categories were, at some point, affected. J.P.'s unusual deficit supports the hypothesis that semantic knowledge is organized in the brain on the basis of object properties, which can cut across the living-nonliving categorical distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment and treatment of sleep disorders in older adults: A review for rehabilitation psychologists.

Recent research has led to significant progress in the assessment and treatment of sleep disturbance in older adults. Similar advances have been made with sleep disorders secondary to age-related chronic illness. The assessment and treatment of sleep disorders encompasses numerous behavioral aspects. Thus, rehabilitation psychologists are ideally positioned to help apply these new advances to the growing number of older adult patients in the rehabilitation setting. The authors provide an overview of age and disease-related sleep disorders. They provide details for implementation of behavioral treatments for geriatric insomnia that is comorbid with chronic illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imaginal exposure alone and imaginal exposure with cognitive restructuring in treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder.

This study investigated the extent to which providing cognitive restructuring (CR) with prolonged imaginal exposure (IE) would lead to greater symptom reduction than providing IE alone for participants with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Fifty-eight civilian survivors of trauma with PTSD were randomly allocated to IE/CR, IE, or supportive counseling (SC). Treatment involved 8 individual weekly sessions with considerable homework. Independent assessments were conducted pretreatment, posttreatment, and at 6-month follow-up. IE/CR and IE resulted in reduced PTSD and depression compared with SC at posttreatment and follow-up. Further, IE/CR participants had greater reductions in PTSD and maladaptive cognitive styles than IE participants at follow-up. These findings suggest that providing CR in combination with IE may enhance treatment gains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociation of processes in belief: Source recollection, statement familiarity, and the illusion of truth.

Reports 4 experiments concerning the effect of repetition on rated truth (the illusory-truth effect). Statements were paired with differentially credible sources (true vs false). Old trues would be rated true on 2 bases, source recollection and statement familiarity. Old falses, however, would be rated false if sources were recollected, leaving the unintentional influence of familiarity as their only basis for being rated true. Even so, falses were rated truer than new statements unless sources were especially memorable. Estimates showed the contributions of the 2 influences to be independent; the intentional influence of recollection was reduced if control was impaired, but the unintentional influence of familiarity remained constant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exercise in the treatment of obesity: Effects of four interventions on body composition, resting energy expenditure, appetite, and mood.

This study investigated changes in body composition, resting energy expenditure (REE), appetite, and mood in 128 obese women who were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment conditions: diet alone, diet plus aerobic training, diet plus strength training, or diet combined with aerobic and strength training (i.e., combined training). All women received the same 48-week group behavioral program and were prescribed the same diet. Exercising participants were provided 3 supervised exercise sessions per week for the 1st 28 weeks and 2 sessions weekly thereafter. Participants across the 4 conditions achieved a mean weight loss of 16.5 ±6.8 kg at Week 24, which decreased to 15.1 ±8.4 kg and Week 48. There were no significant differences among conditions at any time in changes in weight or body composition. Women who received aerobic training displayed significantly smaller reductions in REE at Week 24 than did those who received strength training. There were no other significant differences among conditions at any time on this variable or in changes in appetite or mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Welfare Regimes,Social Values and Homelessness: Comparing Responses to Marginalised Groups in Six European Countries

This paper examines the exposure to homelessness of socially marginalised groups to understand better the applicability of, and limits to, welfare regime analysis. A vignette methodology is deployed in six European countries to interrogate and compare responses to marginalised groups at high risk of homelessness, including people with substance misuse problems, ex-offenders, young people excluded from the family home, migrants and women fleeing domestic violence. Evidence suggests that a range of values embedded in national political cultures—including familialism, social cohesion, individuality, personal responsibility and personal liberty, as well as egalitarianism—impact on models of intervention and outcomes for specific marginalised groups in ways which cannot be straightforwardly predicted from conventional welfare regime analysis.