Disability

New psychology research at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrates a correlation between a test-taker’s motivation and performance on an IQ test and, more important, between that performance and a person’s future success.

Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, led the research, which involved two related studies.

The first was a meta-analysis of previous research into the effect of incentives on IQ scores. For individuals who had above-average scores at baseline, motivation accounted for only about a quarter of a standard deviation, or about four points. But, for those who had below-average scores, motivation made up almost a whole standard deviation.

The second study involved an experiment in which researchers observed video footage of adolescent boys taking a standard IQ test to rate their motivation and then measured how well they fared in terms of criminal record, job status and educational attainment more than a decade later.

Coders, who were not aware of subjects’ IQ scores or the hypothesis of the study, rated each subject’s motivation based on a standard rubric of behaviors, such as refusing to answer questions or obviously rushing through the test to make it end as quickly as possible. Ratings of test motivation and IQ scores were about equally predictive of the adult outcomes of years of education, employment status and criminal record.

“What we were really interested in finding out was when you statically control for motivation, what happens to the predictive power of the IQ tests? What we found is that the predictive power goes down significantly,” Duckworth said.

Duckworth’s research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“When people use IQ tests in social science research, where thousands of kids are taking IQ tests where it doesn’t matter to them what they get, what’s the effect of motivation on those scores?” Duckworth said.

“IQ scores are absolutely predictive of long-term outcomes. But what our study questions is whether that’s entirely because smarter people do better in life than other people or whether part of the predictive power coming from test motivation” Duckworth said.

“Could it be that part of the reason doing well on this test predicts future success is because the kinds of traits that would result in you doing well – compliance with authority, self-control, attentiveness, competitiveness – are traits that also help you in life?

“This means that for people who get high IQ scores, they probably try hard and are intelligent,” she said. “But for people who get low scores, it can be an absence of either or both of those traits.”

The research was conducted by Duckworth; Patrick D. Quinn of the Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin; Donald R. Lynam of the Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University; and Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and National Institute on Aging.

Source:
Evan Lerner
University of Pennsylvania

Several years ago, Suparna Rajaram noticed a strange sort of contagion in a couple she was close to. One partner acquired dementia-and the other lost the nourishing pleasures of joint reminiscence. “When the other person cannot validate shared memories,” said Rajaram, “they are both robbed of the past.”

From this observation came a keen and enduring interest in the social nature of memory, an area of scholarship occupied mostly by philosophers, sociologists, and historians-and notably unattended to until recently by cognitive psychologists.

So Rajaram, a psychology professor at Stony Brook University, began to specialize in “collaborative memory”-or how people learn and remember in groups. People generally believe that collaboration helps memory-but does it always? “How is memory shaped by being experienced in a social context?” These are the questions Rajaram investigates in the lab-and addresses in a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Some findings in the field of collaborative memory research have been counter intuitive. For one, collaboration can hurt memory. Some studies have compared the recall of items on lists by “collaborative groups,” or those who study together, and “nominal groups,” in which individuals work alone and the results are collated. The collaborative groups remembered more items than any single person would have done alone. But they also remembered fewer than the nominal groups did by totaling the efforts of its solitary workers. In other words, the collaborators’ whole was less than the sum of its parts.

This so-called “collaborative inhibition” affects recall for all sorts of things, from word pairs to emotionally laden events; it affects strangers or spouses, children or adults. It is, in scientific lingo, “robust.”

What explains this? One dynamic is “retrieval disruption”: Each person remembers in his or her own way, and compelled to listen to others, can’t use those strategies effectively. Sometimes that effect fades. Sometimes it squashes the memories for good, causing “post collaborative forgetting.” Then there’s “social contagion” of errors, wherein a group member can implant erroneous recollections in another’s memory.

On the other hand, collaborative learning helps-which is why people hold it in high esteem. Individuals recall different information or events; after time, they can get together, contribute their bits, and reeducate each others’ memories and expand the group’s recall, mitigating the costs of collaboration. People can also correct each other’s erroneous memories, a process Rajaram and her colleagues call “error pruning.” Or they can “cross-cue”-bring up recollections that jog memories others have forgotten.

Rajaram’s work involves small groups in the controlled laboratory environment. Yet, like others in her field, she believes it can inform the understanding of the wider “networks in which social memory phenomena are occurring”-classrooms, institutions, communities, subcultures, or nations.

“If a small group can reshape memories, we see how individuals come to hold certain viewpoints or perspectives,” she says. “That can serve as a model for how collective identities and histories are shaped.”

Source:

Association for Psychological Science

Anorexia nervosa is more common among people born in the spring, according to new study published in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The researchers say their study – which is the largest to date – provides “clear evidence” of a season of birth effect in anorexia.

The research team, led by Dr Lahiru Handunnetthi, of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, examined the birth dates of 1,293 patients with anorexia and compared their distribution to the general population using the Walter and Elwood seasonality test and Chi Square test. They found an excess of anorexia births between March and June, and a deficit from September to October.

Although some previous studies have suggested a link between season of birth and eating disorders, these involved much smaller numbers of patients and did not reach statistical significance.

Dr Handunnetthi said: “We meta-analysed four cohorts of anorexia nervosa patients from the UK, making this the largest ever study to assess the presence of a season of birth effect in anorexia. We found that susceptibility to anorexia nervosa is significantly influenced by a person’s season of birth, being higher in those people born in the spring and lower in those born in the autumn.

Dr Handunnetthi said: “A number of previous studies have found that mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression are more common among those born in the spring – so this finding in anorexia is perhaps not surprising. However, our study only provides evidence of an association. Now we need more research to identify which factors are putting people at particular risk.”

The researchers believe that environmental factors around the time of conception or when the baby is developing in the womb may be responsible. Dr Handunnetthi said: “Seasonal changes in temperature, sunlight exposure and vitamin D levels, maternal nutrition and exposure to infections are all possible risk factors. Identifying these risk factors is important in helping us understand and maybe even prevent illness in future.”

References:

Disanto G, Handel AE, Para AE, Ramogopalan SV and Handunnetthi L. Season of birth and anorexia nervosa. British Journal of Psychiatry 2011; 198: 404-405

Source:

Royal College of Psychiatrists

Behavioral healthcare systems are playing a major role in responding to the needs of the millions of Americans of all ages who experience psychiatric and substance use conditions each year, according to the latest annual survey from the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems (NAPHS) released today.

The new 2010 NAPHS Annual Survey provides two distinct views of behavioral healthcare delivery. One chapter provides a trend analysis that looks at changes from year to year in hospitals and residential treatment centers reporting over a two-year period. Another chapter provides national averages to give a snapshot of members’ experiences in the reporting year. This chapter also presents selected data by set-up-and-staffed bed categories to help organizations compare their own experiences to those of facilities of a similar size.

“This year’s NAPHS Annual Survey shows that NAPHS members are responding to the growing demand for the most intensive levels of behavioral services by increasing inpatient bed capacity, while continuing to offer a full range of inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services,” said NAPHS President/CEO Mark Covall. “At the same time that capacity has been expanding, admissions and occupancy continue to grow. Every day our members are responding to the ongoing needs of people of all ages-particularly those with the most severe mental and substance use disorders,” he said.

Trend analysis shows strong demand for behavioral health services. Set-up and staffed beds increased by 5.8% (from 86 beds in 2008 to 91 beds on average in 2009). Inpatient hospital admissions increased 4.8% from 2008 to 2009 (to an average of 2,724) in facilities reporting in both years. Hospital occupancy in facilities reporting both years increased 2.2% (to an average of 70.2% in 2009).

Trended residential treatment admissions in the same time frame increased 6.4% (from an average of 156 in 2008 to 166 in 2009). Trended residential treatment center occupancy increased 3.5% (to an average of 80.6%).

The survey also demonstrates great diversity of levels of care and payer sources for children, adolescents, adults, and older adults experiencing mental and substance use disorders. In addition to hospital-level care, NAPHS-member facilities provide residential treatment, partial hospitalization, and outpatient care. Payer sources include Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance, state governments, and others such as juvenile justice systems.

Data drawn from other major studies is also presented in the Annual Survey to provide context on the prevalence of behavioral conditions.

The report is $400-prepaid-from the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, 900 17th Street, NW, Suite 420, Washington, DC 20006-2507. MasterCard, Visa, and American Express are accepted.

Source:
National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems (NAPHS)

A majority of Parkinson’s disease patients had insufficient levels of vitamin D in a new study from Emory University School of Medicine.

The fraction of Parkinson’s patients with vitamin D insufficiency, 55 percent, was significantly more than patients with Alzheimer’s disease (41 percent) or healthy elderly people (36 percent).

The results are published in the October issue of Archives of Neurology.

The finding adds to evidence that low vitamin D is associated with Parkinson’s, says first author Marian Evatt, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Emory.

Evatt is assistant director of the Movement Disorders Program at Wesley Woods Hospital. The senior author is endocrinologist Vin Tangpricha, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Emory and director of the Endocrine Clinical Research Unit.

Evatt says her team compared Parkinson’s patients to Alzheimer’s patients because they wanted to evaluate the possibility that neurodegenerative diseases in general lead to vitamin D insufficiency.

Most Americans get the majority of their vitamin D from exposure to sunlight or by dietary supplements; fortified foods such as milk and packaged cereals are a minor source. Only a few foods in nature contain substantial amounts of vitamin D, such as salmon and tuna.

The body’s ability to produce vitamin D using UV-B radiation from the sun decreases with age, making older individuals at increased risk of vitamin D deficiency.

“We found that vitamin D insufficiency may have a unique association with Parkinson’s, which is intriguing and warrants further investigation,” Evatt says.

The connection could come partly because patients with Parkinson’s have mobility problems and are seldom exposed to the sun, or because low vitamin D levels are in some way related to the genesis or progression of the disease.

She says her team saw their results as striking because their study group came from the Southeast, not a region with long gloomy winters, where vitamin D insufficiency is thought to be more of a problem.

In addition, the study found that the fraction of patients with the lowest levels of vitamin D, described as vitamin D deficiency, was higher (23 percent) in the Parkinson’s group than the Alzheimer’s group (16 percent) or the healthy group (10 percent).

The retrospective study examined 100 people in each group, who were recruited between 1992 and 2007. Every fifth Parkinson’s patient from Emory’s clinical neurology database was selected, then healthy controls and patients with Alzheimer’s disease were matched on age and state of residence.

Vitamin D insufficiency is frequently defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood of the 25-hydroxy form (the major storage form) of the vitamin and deficiency as less than 20 nanograms per milliliter. However, most experts agree insufficiency warrants treatment and should not be ignored.

Doctors have known for decades that vitamin D plays a role in bone formation, Evatt says. More recently, scientists have been uncovering its effects elsewhere, including producing peptides that fight microbes in the skin, regulating blood pressure and insulin levels, and maintaining the nervous system. Low vitamin D levels also appear to increase the risk of several cancers and auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and diabetes.

Parkinson’s disease affects nerve cells in several parts of the brain, particularly those that use the chemical messenger dopamine to control movement. The most common symptoms are tremor, stiffness and slowness of movement. These can be treated with oral replacement of dopamine.

Previous studies have shown that the part of the brain affected most by Parkinson’s, the substantia nigra, has high levels of the vitamin D receptor, which suggests vitamin D may be important for normal functions of these cells, Evatt says.

Emory clinicians are conducting further research to investigate whether vitamin D insufficiency is a cause or possibly a result of having Parkinson’s. In a pilot study, Parkinson’s patients are receiving either standard or larger doses of vitamin D, with an eye towards possibly reducing the severity of their condition.

###

The research was funded by the National Center for Research Resources, the National Institute of Aging and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, and by an anonymous donor.

Reference:

Evatt M.L et al Prevalence of Vitamin D Insufficiency in Patients with Parkinson Disease and Alzheimer Disease. Arch. Neurol. Vol 65, p. 1348-1352 Oct 2008.

Source: Jennifer Johnson

Emory University

This paper, which explores the link between the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) and an auto-immune disease (systemic lupus erythematosus, SLE), failed to find any statistical significant associations. One possible explanation to this finding relies on the fact that alexithymia could prompt physical or somatic symptoms, but not in a direct causal relation. SLE patients present high psychological distress and need for a stable doctor-patient relationship, as well as psychological intervention/psychotherapy, in addition to medical and psychopharmacological interventions.

A report by a group of Portuguese investigators headed by Antonio Barbosa in the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics is exploring a potential link between the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) and an auto-immune disease (systemic lupus erythematosus, SLE). SLE is a complex and severe rheumatic disease with exceedingly diverse clinical manifestations. Its clinical course is unpredictable and is characterized by exacerbations and periods of remission.

Patients’ physical and psychological functioning is compromised by disease unpredictability and manifestation variability. Some studies have considered some psychological variables in SLE patients such as personality dimensions, life events, lower self-esteem, and social support. These patients seem to have also difficulties in identifying, processing, managing and expressing emotions, which may reflect the presence of alexithymia. The aim of the present study was to reveal the relationship between clinical variables and alexithymia, searching for the impact of psychological variables in SLE patients.

The study subjects were patients with SLE (n = 53) who attended an outpatient autoimmune disease consultation in a university hospital. A healthy volunteer control group (n = 31) was collected in the Portuguese population. The investigators also included a clinical control group of patients with chronic urticaria (CU), a disabling chronic disease, even though there was no homogeneity of sample between the CU and SLE groups in three sociodemographic variables (age, residence and education). Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and a short clinical interview was performed to assess clinical information concerning present and past psychiatric and medical conditions.

Afterwards subjects filled out four standardized self reported questionnaires that assessed alexithymia (TAS-20), personality dimensions (NEO-FFI), psychopathological symptoms (BSI) and quality of life variables (SF-36). At the same time, patients were evaluated clinically by an internal medicine doctor, who diagnosed them using criteria adopted internationally.

Investigators did not find statistically significant differences between SLE and CU patients in TAS-20 total score (t = 0.470, p = 0.639). However, they found that the SLE group scored significantly higher on TAS total score, compared with the healthy control group (t = 6.360, p< 0.000). No significant correlations were found between clinical variables and alexithymia. However, significant statistical correlations were found between alexithymia and psychopathological symptoms, such as depression (p< 0.000), anxiety (p

People in Alabama are experiencing a real tragedy in the aftermath of yesterday’s deadly storms. It’s important to realize just how severely the many losses are being felt, and while emergency responders are helping those with physical injuries, it’s important to care for those with psychological wounds as well, says Joshua C. Klapow, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and associate professor in the UAB School of Public Health.

Klapow is available for interviews about the psychological impact of these tornadoes, specifically, and crises in general, including how to discuss tragedy with children.

“We should not underestimate how traumatic this is,” Klapow says. “People are dazed, they are confused, and although that is very normal, it can also be dangerous. When we witness or experience these kinds of things, we have a hard time concentrating and processing information. There are a lot of safety instructions right now that people have to comply with, and that can be hard when you can’t get your head straight because your world’s been turned upside down.”

There are very basic things that need to be attended to psychologically, not just physically, he says. It’s psychological first aid, just like physical first aid.

To care for yourself and others, Klapow says:

– Ensure that you, your family and those around you have their basic physical needs met food, clothing and shelter. It calms stress, he says.

– Let people talk about it. “Lots of victims want to just kind of state over and over again what they’ve been through, and that helps them stay focused and reduce stress.”

– Help people stay connected to each other, which can be challenging but important when normal routines have been disrupted. “Get that social network together, connect people with family friends, community. It will help reduce their stress so they can pay attention to the safety instructions,” he says.

– Keep calm and cool when caring for children during crisis. “It’s important that you appear to be in control of the situation. Listen to the child and be willing to explain what has happened again and again, as children often need more time to process catastrophic events. Let them know that feeling fear is OK, and then reassure them that they are safe,” he says. Most children will bounce back to normal in a very short time. Check with your pediatrician if that isn’t the case.

– Live each moment as it comes. Take a break to care for yourself, and use deep breathing, prayer or meditation to keep the body and mind calm, he says. “Take one day at a time, set small, realistic goals and take action, lean on family, friends and community and attend to basic physical needs,” Klapow says. “A healthy body and mind is much better equipped to deal with strong emotions and extreme circumstances.”

– To be resilient in a crisis, pay attention to stress symptoms. Those include stomachaches, headache, trouble sleeping and problems concentrating. For those in need right now, Klapow says the Red Cross is the best resource. Now is not the time to soldier on, but to reach out. “If you are suffering, let a first responder know,” says Klapow.

Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham

Our own social status influences the way our brains respond to others of higher or lower rank, according to a new study reported online on April 28 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. People of higher subjective socioeconomic status show greater brain activity in response to other high-ranked individuals, while those with lower status have a greater response to other low-status individuals.

These differences register in a key component of the brain’s value system, a region known as the ventral striatum.

“The way we interact with and behave around other people is often determined by their social status relative to our own, and therefore information regarding social status is very valuable to us,” said Caroline Zink of the National Institute of Mental Health. “Interestingly, the value we assign to information about someone’s particular status seems to depend on our own status.”

The findings in humans are largely consistent with earlier observations in monkeys. Researchers had shown that monkeys direct their attention to others of higher or lower status depending on their own position in the troop.

Zink’s team wanted to know whether this principle holds in humans. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure brain activity in the ventral striatum while research participants of varying social status were shown information about someone of relatively higher status and information about someone of relatively lower status. Those studies showed that the brain’s response to status cues varied depending on an individual’s own subjective status.

“The value that we place on particular status-related information – evident by the extent our brain’s value centers are activated – is not the same for everyone and is influenced, at least in part, by our own subjective socioeconomic status,” Zink said.

The findings surely have important implications for our social behavior and social lives, she added. After all, humans, like all social animals, determine appropriate actions toward others based on an assessment of their social status.

Zink said that socioeconomic status isn’t based solely on money but can also include factors such as accomplishments and habits. Socioeconomic status is also just one hierarchical system among many that humans belong to and that can influence our everyday interactions.

And of course, our socioeconomic status isn’t fixed; it shifts over time, for better or for worse. Exactly how the brain will respond to such changes is an intriguing question for future study.

“As humans, we have the capacity to assess our surroundings and context to determine appropriate feelings and behavior,” Zink said. “We, and our brain’s activity, are not static and can adjust depending on the circumstances. As one’s status changes, I would expect that the value we place on status-related information from others and corresponding brain activity in the ventral striatum would also change.”

Source:
Elisabeth Lyons
Cell Press

Thanks in part to studies that follow subjects for a long time, psychologists are learning more about differences between people. In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the author describes how psychologists can use their data to learn about the different ways that people’s minds work.

Most psychology research is done by asking a big group of people the same questions at the same time. “So we might get a bunch of Psych 101 undergrads, administer a survey, ask about how much they use alcohol and what their mood is, and just look and see, is there a relationship between those two variables,” says Daniel J. Bauer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the author of the article.

But a one-time survey of a bunch of college students can only get you so far. For example, it might find that sad people drink more, but it can’t tell us whether people drink more at times when they are unhappy, whether the consequences of drinking instead result in a depressed mood, or whether the relationship between mood and alcohol use is stronger for some people than others.

One way psychologists have used to learn more about people is collecting data from people over a longer time period. For example, they might give each subject an electronic device to record blood pressure and stress several times a day, or ask them to log on to a website every night to answer a survey. In one case, Bauer’s colleague, Andrea Hussong, asked adolescents to complete daily diaries with ratings of their mood and alcohol use over 21 days. The data showed that the relationship between mood and alcohol use is not the same for everyone. Adolescents with behavioral problems drink more in general, irrespective of mood, but only adolescents without behavioral problems drink more often when feeling depressed.

Analyzing this kind of data requires tougher math than the simple survey data, which is where quantitative psychologists like Bauer come in. “I think even though a lot of researchers are starting to collect this data, I don’t think they’ve taken full advantage of it,” he says. In the new paper, Bauer points to other methods that can do a better job of showing how variables relate differently for different people.

The point of all of this is to help people, Bauer says. For example, if psychologists discover that certain kinds of people are more likely to drink when depressed, it would be possible to help those people early. “Ultimately, the idea would be to identify people who might be more at risk and try to help them,” he says.

Source:

Association for Psychological Science

A year after the BP explosion and oil spill, those trying to find someone to blame are misguided, says psychological scientist E. Scott Geller, Alumni Distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, and author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Geller has spent much of his 42-year career developing interventions to keep people safe, particularly helping companies develop a culture that promotes occupational safety.

There’s almost never one person to blame for an injury; instead, companies need to develop a culture where individual workers feel empowered to point out problems and raise concerns about each other’s safety. Media reports have suggested workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were discouraged from reporting hazards, minor injuries, and other close calls. “The disaster would have been prevented if people were willing to speak up and report the hazards,” Geller says. Many companies have policies that reward a supervisor for having a low number of injuries per work hour. But that discourages the reporting of injuries, and provides no incentive for analyzing close calls.

Indeed, Geller objects to the idea the disaster, or any crash, collision, or explosion, has a root cause. “Root cause? No. There are contributing factors,” Geller says. For example, take someone who falls and breaks a bone at work because he climbed on a chair to reach something. In that case, you should listen to what excuses are given. “He might say, ‘I didn’t use the right ladder because it wasn’t available, or I didn’t go and get the right ladder because my supervisor is pushing me to get the job done fast,” Geller says. Listening to workers can lead to a safer workplace-keeping the ladder closer to where it’s needed, or emphasizing that safety is more important than speed.

Having a culture of safety also means using positive reinforcement rather than threats. “Psychologists know threats have only a temporary effect, if any,” Geller says. And threats have undesirable side effects. People don’t want to be around a supervisor who threatens them. Threats of enforcement influence some people to try and beat the system in order to assert individual freedom.

But the reflexive response to something dangerous is to make a law or policy against the related behavior. A few years ago, Geller and his students tried two ways of getting people to fasten their vehicle safety belts. They stood near the exit to parking lots at the university, and when they saw someone driving without a safety belt, they held up a sign: either one with the popular slogan “Click It or Ticket” or one that read “Please Buckle Up-I Care.” The positive sign got significantly more drivers to buckle up. “Click It or Ticket” provoked some rude gestures.

The main message is that people should take safety personally, Geller says. Countless drivers have sent a text message while at the wheel and survived. But a video circulating on the internet tells the story of real people who were killed because of a texting driver. That makes the danger seem real. “We know from experience that emotions are motivating,” Geller says. Making safety a personal issue makes people care more; seeing that video may make them think twice and realize the text message can wait.

In fact, Geller says, caring about safety means actively caring for the people around you. It’s caring enough to speak up when your coworker has forgotten his or her hard hat, or starting a serious conversation about safety on the assembly line. “The BP disaster got many people suddenly taking safety personally, but we’ve got to take it personally before the disaster,” he says.

Source:

Association for Psychological Science