Older gay men and lesbians may be at greater risk for depression than older sexual majority adults due to a lifetime of sexual minority stress. We hypothesize that aggression and being single are positively associated with depression. Resilience is negatively associated with depression. Aggression, being single and resilience account for a significant proportion of variance in depression. Resilience moderates the relationship between aggression and depression. Significant differences between older gay men and older lesbians' aggression, resilience and depression scores exist. For our older gay men and lesbian combined group, a moderation analysis indicated that in addition to aggression and resilience, being single significantly predicted depression accounting for approximately 57% of the variance in depression. Furthermore, resilience significantly moderated the relationship between aggression and depression in our model of older gay men and lesbians. For our older gay men-only group a moderation analysis (indicated that and resilience significantly predicted depression accounting for approximately 57% of the variance in depression. Furthermore, resilience significantly moderated the relationship between aggression and depression in our model, in our sample of older gay men. Four our lesbian-only group a moderation analysis indicated that being single and resilience significantly predicted depression accounting for approximately 54% of the …

Positive memories play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Additionally, there are potential clinical benefits of recalling positive memories on affect, cognitions, and behaviors. However, most research/clinical work has focused on the role of traumatic memories in PTSD's symptomatology and treatment. The current study examined positive memory recall difficulties and positive memory phenomenology among 185 trauma-exposed individuals with varying PTSD severity. Participants completed the Life Events Checklist for DSM-5, PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, Autobiographical Memory Test, Memory Experiences Questionnaire – Short Form, Ruminative Thought Style Questionnaire, Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale – Brief 16-Item Version, Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale – Positive Emotions, the Positive Affect subscale of the Affective Control Scale, and two items from the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index. Results showed that (1) greater PTSD severity was a marginally significant predictor of fewer recalled positive memories; (2) greater positive emotional dysregulation predicted fewer recalled positive memories controlling for PTSD severity; and (3) increasing PTSD severity predicted more negative valence, less vividness, less coherence, less accessibility, less clear time perspective, fewer sensory details, and greater distancing ratings of the recalled positive memory, controlling for sleep quantity/quality. Such findings add to the PTSD-positive …

If mania and depression are part of the same pathological processes, one would predict that episodes of one prospectively increase the odds of episodes of the other. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis. For comparison purposes, their relationship was contrasted to the relationship between mania and periods of psychosis. Exploratory analyses also tested the degree to which episodes of each occur with greater frequency over time (i.e., kindling). Participants for the present study came from the Suffolk County Mental Health Project (N = 628), a study of first-admission patients with psychosis. Of these participants, 144 met diagnostic criteria for bipolar I disorder and were analyzed for the current study. Results indicated that mania in a given month predicted depression the following month, even after controlling for other symptoms. The reverse, however, was not the case. Mania and psychosis, in contrast, were found to be robust predictors of one another from month to month. Effects were not due to treatment or demographic differences. These findings provide evidence that mania and depression are weakly related. In contrast, mania and psychosis are more closely linked. Findings are consistent with suggestions that psychiatric nosology regroup mania more closely with …

Daytime cognitive performance and sleep/wake cycles are strongly interrelated, and cognitive dysfunction has been extensively investigated in relation to insomnia. However, methods and outcomes vary widely by study, making comparison difficult without more systematic evaluation. Review of the literature reveals discrepant findings for the relationship between both subjective and objective measures of cognitive performance and insomnia. The current meta-analysis included 42 studies investigating the relationship between insomnia and cognitive performance. Results confirmed the discrepant nature of previous findings and suggest that type of cognitive performance (e.g., simple attention, procedural memory, verbal functions) is important to consider when discussing the impact of insomnia. Mixed-effect meta-analysis of aggregate effect sizes suggest impairments in working memory, complex attention, and episodic memory are significantly associated with insomnia. Analysis of the grouped subjective cognitive performance effect size revealed no significant impact of insomnia. Average age and gender makeup of the sample, study quality, and type of insomnia measure (i.e., clinical or diagnostic criteria, validated scale, or single unvalidated item) did not consistently moderate findings. These results confirm the equivocal nature of the relationship between insomnia and cognitive performance. Overall, about 44% of the studies included in the analysis failed to use DSM or ICSD criteria …

Marijuana is the second most commonly used substance in the US. A growing literature suggests that socially anxious individuals use marijuana to manage their symptoms in social situations, which may explain why they are also more likely to experience problems. Unfortunately, the majority of the literature is based on research conducted with adult samples or the co-occurrence of diagnoses in adolescent samples. The proposed study sought to test the link between social anxiety (SA) and proxies for ‘real-time' marijuana use behaviors (i.e., use willingness) as well as use-related problems among adolescents. Participants were 69 adolescents (15-17; 55% female) recruited from the community reporting any lifetime marijuana use. Participants were randomly assigned to a novel social rejection or neutral laboratory task and completed measures of SA, marijuana use frequency, and related problems. Consistent with adult findings, main effects of SA and experimental condition on marijuana use willingness were expected to be qualified by an interaction in which the greatest marijuana use willingness would occur among high SA youth post-rejection (H1), SA would be positively related to marijuana use problems (H2), and among adolescents in the rejection condition, marijuana use willingness would be positively correlated with use problems (H3). Only H2 was …

The present study aims to examine which maladaptive and Big Five personality traits, as well as which lower order facets, are related to symptoms specific to PTSD (i.e., intrusions and avoidance). Unique effects were isolated by controlling for nonspecific general depression that occurs in the disorder but is not specific to it. 707 undergraduate students were administered a self-report online survey to assess their personality, trauma history, PTSD and mood symptoms. Additionally, data from 536 9/11 World Trade Center (WTC) responders who have been administered personality, PTSD, and mood surveys as part of a longitudinal study were analyzed. As expected, neuroticism was highly correlated with PTSD, but had fewer associations with PTSD dimensions after controlling for depression. Trust and agreeableness emerged as important, being negatively related to PTSD, while most maladaptive personality domains and facets were positively related to PTSD (perceptual dysregulation had the highest association). Other traits, such as antagonism and openness, were not significantly related to PTSD. There is growing evidence that clinical interventions can change personality traits; the present study provides new personality targets for intervention that are uniquely related to PTSD.

Alcohol consumption on college campuses is a major public health concern, particularly among emerging adults. Extant literature has identified trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress as robust risk factors for problematic alcohol use. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are less well-studied. Research indicates that bodily arousal is a fundamental feature of trauma exposure and posits that internal stimuli (e.g., heart pounding) at the time of trauma may manifest into conditioned cues that can trigger posttraumatic responding and related symptomatology, including alcohol use. However, past work supporting these assertions have used paradigms purposefully designed to evoke memories of the trauma, making it difficult to conclude whether the subsequent alcohol craving was due more to the explicit memory cue or the associated bodily arousal. The current study examined whether an implicit, trauma-relevant cue of bodily arousal (via hyperventilation) – independent of any explicit memory cue – would elicit increased desire to drink among 80 (Mage = 20.34; 63.8% female) trauma-exposed, emerging adult students. Results found no statistically significant difference in change in alcohol craving between the hyperventilation and control tasks. However, exploratory analyses indicated that trauma type (i.e., interpersonal/non-interpersonal) may moderate this relationship; more specifically, individuals reporting interpersonal trauma as their most …

This study examined the clinical utility of the recently released National Institute of Mental Health's (NIMH) research domain criteria (RDoC) by replicating and extending earlier work by using a demographically novel sample. Information retrieval and natural language processing of archival clinical records was used to achieve two main objectives: (1) estimate how well the RDoC domains match language used by clinicians by creating domain scores and (2) examine the differences between the DSM's and RDoC's ability to predict treatment outcome using these domain scores and DSM diagnoses. The social systems RDoC category was found to be the strongest predictor of treatment outcome across all diagnostic measures.

The purpose of the current study was to examine if positive family, social, and/or academic dimensions of SC weaken (i.e., moderate) the direct relationship between physical SC (i.e., a person's evaluation of their physique, adiposity, and weight) and depressive symptoms in a sample of adult men. A convenience sample of 239 college men completed self-report measures including the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale-2 (TSCS-2) and Symptom Checklist-90 Revised. Hierarchical regressions revealed that family and social SC were significant moderators of the relationship between physical SC and depressive symptoms, suggesting how men see themselves in their family and social systems affects the aforementioned relationship. Academic SC, however, was not a significant moderator; it was negatively related to depressive symptoms no matter how men felt about their physical selves. Our findings suggest that feeling positively about one's relationships may protect men with poor physical SC from experiencing symptoms of depression at the rates or intensity of their similarly body dissatisfied peers who do not report positive family or social SC. An additional simultaneous regression assessed the contribution of various dimensions of SC to the prediction of depressive symptoms, physical (7.76%), social (8.02%) and academic (6.62%) self-concept accounted for significant amount of variance in symptoms …

We hypothesized that the formation of malevolent introjects undermines the development of self-compassion, which in turn produces greater feelings of shame. We hypothesized that these feelings of shame account for concurrent depressive symptoms in adulthood. To test these hypotheses, we proposed a multiple mediator mediation model in which our independent variable was childhood maltreatment. We modeled child maltreatment as negatively predicting our first mediator, self-compassion, which in turn positively predicted internalized shame. We modeled internalized shame as positively predicting scores on our dependent variable, adult depressive symptoms. Participants were 158 adults fluent in English who were community members and college students living in a southwestern American metroplex. The model accounted for 61.8% of the variance in depressive symptoms in adulthood. A significant indirect effect from child maltreatment passed through both our mediators and ended in depressive symptoms in adulthood. We discuss limitations and theoretical and clinical implications, and future directions.

My experiment concerned the influence of chronobiological (circadian) rhythm on fatigue, effort, and cardiovascular (CV) response. It evaluated responses of morning people (Larks) presented an easy or difficult recognition memory task at a time congruent or incongruent with their rhythm. Based on an extension of a conceptual analysis of fatigue influence, my central prediction was that circadian rhythm would combine interactionally with task difficulty to determine effort and associated CV responses. Specifically, effort and associated CV responses were expected to be (1) positively correspondent to task difficulty in the morning (stronger where difficulty is high), but (2) negatively correspondent to difficulty in the evening (stronger where difficulty is low). Preliminary results showed concerning gender effects on difficulty appraisal of the task, thus we examined women and men's data separately. CV findings for women were broadly, but not completely, consistent with predictions. Analyses revealed no group differences in CV response for Lark men.

This study evaluated a revised version of the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS-R). The SRGS-R has two major differences from the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS). It uses neutral wording of items instead of the original positively worded items, and it uses positive and negative scaling choices. This study included participants (N = 764) recruited through Amazon MTurk. There were three versions of the SRGS-R tested - the SRGS with neutral wording of items only (SRGS-R-N), the SRGS with positive and negative scaling only (SRGS-R-S), and the SRGS-R, with both changes. We randomly assigned participants to complete one of four PTG measures - the SRGS-R-N, SRGS-R-S, SRGS-R, or the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI). The PTGI elicited the largest levels of reported PTG, while the SRGS-R elicited the smallest levels. The two modified versions displayed scores between the SRGS-R and the PTGI in the small and moderate growth groups. In the current study the SRGS-R was negatively related to PTSD symptoms, depression, anxiety (negative, but not statistically significant), global distress (negative, but not statistically significant), and avoidance-focused coping (negative, but not statistically significant), and positively related to positive well-being, quality of life, problem-focused coping, and emotion-focused coping. In comparison, the PTGI was unrelated …

Agtarap, Wright, Mlynski, Hammad, and Blackledge took an initial step in providing support for the predictive validity of a new conceptual analysis concerned with behavioral restraint, defined as active resistance against a behavioral impulse or urge. The current study was designed to partially replicate and extend findings from their study, employing a common film protocol and a procedure for inducing low- and high levels of fatigue. Analyses on key data indicated that the fatigue manipulation was ineffective. On the other hand, they supported the suggestion that behavioral restraint should be proportional to the strength of an urge being resisted so long as success is perceived as possible and worthwhile. Analyses also provided evidence of gender differences for this behavioral restraint task. Women showed relatively enhanced CV responses to my manipulation of urge magnitude, performed less well, rated the behavioral restraint challenge as harder, and rated success on the more difficult behavioral restraint task as more important. A broad indication is that men and women can differ in the strength of impulses they experience in response to stimulus presentations as well as in the importance they place on resisting the impulses.

The ability to monitor client change in psychotherapy over time is vital to quality assurance in service delivery as well as the continuing improvement of psychotherapy research. Unfortunately, there is not currently a comprehensive, affordable, and easily utilized outcome measure for psychotherapy specifically normed and standardized for use in psychology training clinics. The current study took the first steps in creating such an outcome measure. Following development of an item bank, factor analysis and item-response theory analyses were applied to data gathered from a stratified sample of university (n = 101) and community (n = 261) participants. The factor structure did not support a phase model conceptualization, but did reveal a structure consistent with the theoretical framework of the research domain criteria (RDoC). Suggestions for next steps in the measure development process are provided and implications discussed.

Psychological assessment relies on accurate and forthright reporting to determine valid clinical presentations. However, it has long been recognized that examinees may be motivated to present a "better picture" through Positive Impression Management (PIM). Within the PIM domain, two distinct motivations (i.e., defensiveness and social desirability) emerge that have not been clearly differentiated in empirical literature. This thesis addressed the research gap for detecting PIM distortion of personality pathology, utilizing the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5). In this investigation, 106 psychiatric inpatients were recruited from the adult Co-Occurring Disorders and Trauma Programs at University Behavioral Health. Using a mixed within- and between-subjects design, participants engaged in simulation via scenarios to be considered for a highly valued rehabilitation program (defensiveness) or employment (social desirability). As expected, inpatients showed elevated levels of problematic personality traits when reporting genuinely, but suppressed them under PIM conditions. These findings highlight that the PID-5, like all multiscale inventories, is highly vulnerable to intentional PIM distortion. Interestingly, respondents in the social desirability condition generally engaged in more total denial than those in the defensiveness condition. Empirically- and theoretically-based validity scales were developed to identify simulators and differentiate between conditions. Besides PIM, higher levels of experienced stigma were …

The current study examined the impact of resilience and self-compassion on the relationship between combat exposure and psychological outcomes, specifically post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. Service members and veterans with combat exposure (N = 143) completed an online survey, through which they were administered a Background Questionnaire, the Combat Exposure Scale, the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Self-Compassion Scale. Results of a path analysis revealed a positive direct effect of combat exposure on post-traumatic stress symptoms and post-traumatic growth and a negative direct effect of self-compassion on post-traumatic stress symptoms. Furthermore, self-compassion moderated the relationship between combat exposure and post-traumatic growth. Implications of these findings and future directions for research are discussed.

Emerging adulthood is a term coined to recognize 18 to 25 year-olds who engage in self-exploration while not yet fully identifying as adults. Many emerging adult college students experience stress, anxiety, and depression. Although many colleges provide affordable and available mental health resources for students, many students who need help appear to not utilize these services. Gaining greater understanding of underlying processes that influence psychological treatment-seeking behavior is imperative. The current study sought to explore the role experiential avoidance (EA) plays as a treatment-seeking barrier in the context of emerging adulthood. Undergraduate students completed online measures of emerging adulthood dimensions, psychological symptoms, EA, self-stigma of, perceived public stigma of, intentions to, and attitudes and beliefs towards seeking treatment, treatment seeking behavior, and a demographics questionnaire. Binomial hierarchical logistic regressions and correlational analyses examined the relationship of EA and treatment-seeking behaviors, accounting for known barriers and emerging adult characteristics. After controlling for demographic variables, results indicated that EA was significantly positively correlated with self-stigma (r = .187), p < .001), perceived public stigma (r = .178, p < .001), intentions (r - .207, p < .001), psychological symptoms (r = .713, p < .001), and attitudes and beliefs (r = .009, …

Mutations of three genes encoding amyloid precursor protein (APP), presenilin-1 (PSEN1), and presenilin-2 (PSEN2) have been shown to reliably result in familial early-onset Alzheimer's disease (FAD); a rare, but catastrophic, subtype of Alzheimer's disease (AD) marked by symptom emergence before age 65 as well as accelerated cognitive deterioration. The current study represents the first known meta-analysis on the association of APP, PSEN1 or PSEN2 on neurocognitive variables. A total of 278 FAD mutation-carriers (FAD-MC) and 284 cognitively healthy non-mutation-carriers (NC) across 10 independent investigations meeting inclusion criteria were chosen for the current meta-analysis (random effects design). Findings revealed an overarching trend of poorer performance by FAD-MC individuals compared to NC individuals across the majority of cognitive domains identified. Significant differences in effect sizes suggested FAD-MC individuals exhibited worse performance on measures of attention, explicit memory, fluency, primary memory, verbal, and visuospatial functioning. Findings indicative of differential sensitivity to cognitive domain impairments across FAD-MC and NC groups inform neuropsychological descriptions of individuals in preclinical phases of FAD.

Nearly 700,000 suspects with mental disorders are arrested and Mirandized each year. The current study systematically examined the effects of cognitive deficits and psychological symptoms on both Miranda comprehension and reasoning. The current sample was comprised of 85 adult psychiatric inpatients recruited from University Behavioral Health (UBH), a private psychiatric hospital in North Texas. Unexpectedly, most inpatients demonstrated pervasive deficits in their immediate recall of a representative Miranda warning, omitting approximately four-fifths of its content. In addition, the majority of inpatients evidenced damaging errors in their reasoning about waiver decisions. As a result, 64.7% waived and subsequently confessed after only a 3-5 minute interrogation. Interestingly, impaired verbal ability but not the severity of their symptoms predicted greater deficits in Miranda comprehension.

In the current study, the relation of the frequency of sport participation and gender to CRF, muscular strength and flexibility, body composition, physical activity self-efficacy, and physical self-concept in a sample of 629 sixth graders were examined. Because both physical activity and sport participation have been related to similar outcomes, activity through physical education was controlled by including only 6th graders who were part of a required school class. MANCOVA analyses demonstrated that sport involvement was significantly related to improvements in physical fitness (i.e., CRF and muscular strength), physical activity self-efficacy, and physical self-concept (CRF and muscular strength). The interaction between sport involvement and gender was not significant, suggesting these relationships existed equally for the boys and girls.

The present investigation evaluated whether dispositional use of emotional approach coping partially accounts for the association between parental response to emotional expression and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in a sample of 252 trauma-exposed individuals drawn from a pool of college students and college-age members of the community at-large. An online survey assessed parental reactions to participants' negative emotions during childhood (i.e., offspring retrospective report), as well as participant trauma history, PTSS, and use of emotional approach coping. Findings complement literature illustrating the long-lasting implications of the parent-child relationship, such that both supportive and unsupportive parenting were related to PTSS. Supportive parental reactions also were related to emotional expression, but not emotional processing, and unsupportive reactions did not significantly relate to either aspect of emotional approach coping. Notably, emotional approach coping strategies were unrelated to PTSS in the full sample, and thus the indirect effects models were not supported. Post hoc analyses indicated preliminary support for the indirect effect of emotional expression on the relation between supportive parenting and PTSS in the local college student sample (n = 117). Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

Elevated social anxiety (SA) is linked to issues with emotional distress, substance use, and social anxiety disorder (SAD). Notwithstanding concerns of how sexuality has been defined in the extant literature, emerging evidence suggests that the prevalence of SA and related challenges may be disproportionately present among sexual minorities, including lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGBs). This trend may be especially relevant within the developmental context of emerging adulthood, an important period for development of sexual identity, and a time when individuals are already predisposed to heightened feelings of SA. The present study examined the relationship between sexual orientation (measured using sexual identity, sexual attraction, and past romantic and sexual behavior) and social anxiety (related to social interaction and social performance) among emerging adults. minority sexual identities [Welch's F(5,48.08) = 5.56, p = .002, ηp2 = .02.], same-sex attraction [Welch's F(4,108.06) = 11.27, p < .001, ηp2 = .04], and same-sex romantic [Welch's F(5,85.91) = 6.88, p < .001, ηp2 = .03] and sexual experiences[F(5,61.95) = 8.88, p < .001, ηp2 = .04], particularly among those who indicated attraction to multiple sexes. Findings support research that indicates that sexual minority adults experience higher levels of SA than majority (i.e., heterosexual, opposite-sex …

The purpose of the present study was to assess if combining the two frameworks would account for more variance in PTSS than could be accounted for using the frameworks separately. An online community sample from Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (N = 437), who reported experiencing a prior traumatic event, completed measures that reflected the constructs of narrative centrality, negative affectivity, and death concerns, along with a measure of PTSS. PTSS was regressed on the latent variables of death concerns, narrative centrality, and negative affectivity, along with the latent variable interactions between narrative centrality*death concerns and narrative centrality*negative affectivity. Death concerns was not be predictive of PTSS, whereas narrative centrality and negative affectivity were found to uniquely and interactively account for 77% of the variance in PTSS. Death concerns was found to be a separate construct from negative affectivity. The implications of these findings for the two frameworks are discussed along with future directions. By considering aspects of narrative centrality and negative affectivity, substantial portions of PTSS can be accounted for.

Grit and achievement motivation have been predictors of behavior in academia and military settings (Duckworth, Matthews, Peterson, & Kelly, 2007), but to date, research on their effects on sport performance has been limited. Given grit's predictive role in other performance domains, grit may be influential in athletes' long-term goal attainment, interacting with their achievement motives and leading to better performances. Athletes' trait levels of grit may influence how they understand and respond to messages received within motivational climates from key personnel such as from coaches and teammates. We examined potential moderating effects of grit on the relationship between motivational feedback and high school soccer players (N = 71, Mage = 15.81) performance on a soccer task, their desire to persist in the task, and their choices of task difficulty. We used hierarchical multiple regression to test the main effects of feedback and grit and to determine if grit moderated the effects of feedback on performance. Grit was a significant moderator of the feedback-shooting performance relationship, accounting for 3.9% of variance. Simple slopes analysis revealed a significant effect for low (B = 13.32, SEb = 4.44, p = .004, t = 2.99), but not high, (B = 2.11, SEb = 4.31, …