Estimates of heart rate variability (HRV), and particularly parameters related to high frequency HRV (HF-HRV), are in-creasingly used as a proxy of cardiac parasympathetic nervous system regulation. Reduced HF-HRV is related to attention deficits, depression, various anxiety disorders, long-term work related stress or burnout, and cardiovascular diseases [1,2]. In this work, a stochastic model, known as

Locally Stationary Processes, [3], is applied to HRV data sequences from 47 test participants. The model parameters are estimated with a novel inference method and regression using a number of available covariates is used to investigate their correlation with the stochastic model parameters.

PURPOSE: Linking ready-made questionnaires to codes within the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version with the intention of using the information statistically for studying mental health problems can pose several challenges. Many of the constructs measured are latent, and therefore, difficult to describe in single codes. The aim of this study was to describe and discuss challenges encountered in this coding process.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A questionnaire from a Swedish research programme was linked to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version and the agreement was assessed.

RESULTS: Including the original aim of the questionnaire into the coding process was found to be very important for managing the coding of the latent constructs of the items. Items from the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version chapters with narrow definitions for example mental functions, were more easily translated to meaningful concepts to code, while broadly defined chapters, such as interactions and relationships, were more difficult.

CONCLUSION: This study stresses the importance of a clear, predefined coding scheme as well as the importance of not relying too heavily on common linking rules, especially in cases when it is not possible to use multiple codes for a single item. Implications for rehabilitation The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version, is a useful tool for merging assessment data from several sources when documenting adolescents' mental functioning in different life domains. Measures of mental health are often based on latent constructs, often revealed in the description of the rationale/aim of a measure. The latent construct should be the primary focus in linking information. By mapping latent constructs to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version, users of the classification can capture a broad range of areas relevant to everyday functioning in adolescents with mental health problems. The subjective experience of participation, i.e., the level of subjective involvement, is not possible to code into the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version. However, when linking mental health constructs to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Children and Youth Version codes, the two dimensions of participation (the being there, and the level of involvement) need to be separated in the linking process. This can be performed by assigning codes focusing on being there as separate from items focusing on the subjective experience of involvement while being there.

Including vulnerable groups of students such as students with learning disabilities in mainstream school research, require ethical considerations and questionnaire adaptation. These students are often excluded, due to low understanding or methodologies generating inadequate data. Students with disability need be studied as a separate group and provided accessible questionnaires. This pilot study aims at developing and evaluating student self-reported measures, rating aspects of student experiences of school-based Physical Education (PE). Instrument design, reliability and validity were examined in Swedish secondary school students (n = 47) including students, aged 13, with intellectual disability (n = 5) and without impairment and test–retested on 28 of these students. Psychometric results from the small pilot-study sample were confirmed in analyses based on replies from the first wave of data collection in the main study (n = 450). Results show adequate internal consistency, factor structure and relations between measures. In conclusion, reliability and validity were satisfactory in scales to measure self-efficacy in general, in PE, and aptitude to participate. Adapting proxy ratings for functioning into self-reports indicated problems. Adequacy of adjustments made were confirmed and a dichotomous scale for typical/atypical function is suggested for further analyses.

Introduction

A large body of studies has showed that the ability to learn new information is impaired when we are sleep deprived. Pattern separation (PS), the ability to form distinct memories for events that are highly similar and share overlapping features, has also previously been found to be impaired by sleep deprivation. In the present study, we examined if a daytime nap would increase PS performance.

Methods

108 young healthy participants came to the lab in the morning and completed the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST). This task starts with an encoding phase where participants view images of common everyday objects and are asked to classify them as indoor or outdoor objects. During a subsequent memory test, participants view three different kinds of objects; ‘old’ objects that were also present during the encoding phase, ‘new’ objects that have not been seen before, and ‘lure’ objects that are similar to, but not exactly the same as, objects viewed during encoding. The task of the participants during the re-test is to say if the objects presented are ‘old’, ‘new’ or ‘similar’. This test gives two different outcome measures: General Recognition (GR) - the ability to separate old objects from new ones, and PS - the ability to separate similar objects from old ones. After this task, participants were randomly allocated to either a sleep or a wake group. The sleep group had a two-hour nap opportunity and the wake group spent an equal amount of time resting. After this delay interval, participants completed the MST for a second time with a new set of images.

Results

Results revealed no support for sleep in increasing either GR or PS ability. Within the sleep group, there were no correlations between changes in PS ability and time spent in any sleep stage.

Conclusion

Previous studies that have found a role of sleep for PS ability has done so using larger manipulation of sleep. Based on the present study however, just a short daytime nap does not seem to have any effect on PS ability.

We investigated the duration of suppression-induced forgetting (SIF), and the extent to which retrieval suppression differs between negative and neutral memories. We further examined if SIF was differently affected by sleep versus wake during the delay interval between retrieval suppression and re-test. Fifty participants first learned to associate neutral words with either neutral or negative images. Then, a subset of the words was shown again, and participants were asked to either recall (Think), or to suppress retrieval of (No-Think) the associated images. Finally, a memory test for all items was performed either immediately after the Think/No-Think (T/NT) phase (No Delay), or after a 3.5 h delay interval containing either sleep or wake. Results revealed a SIF effect only in the No Delay group, indicating that this forgetting effect dissipates already after a 3.5 h delay interval. Negative items were experienced as more intrusive than neutral ones during the T/NT phase.

It has been proposed that sleep readies the brain for novel learning, and previous work has shown that sleep loss impairs the ability to encode new memories. In the present study, we examined if a daytime nap would increase mnemonic discrimination (MD) performance. MD is the ability to differentiate between memories that are similar but not identical. Participants performed the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The goal of this task is to distinguish stimuli that have been seen before from novel stimuli that are similar but not identical. After the morning MST, participants were randomly allocated into either a sleep or a wake group. The sleep group had a 2-hr nap opportunity, whereas the wake group spent a similar amount of time passively resting. All participants then performed a second MST in the afternoon with a novel set of images. Results did not show any support for increased MD ability after a nap. There was, however, a correlation showing that an increase in sleepiness between sessions predicted a decrease in MD performance. Future work must systematically examine how strong sleep manipulations that are needed for sleep to have an effect on encoding ability, as well as which kind of memory tasks that are sensitive to sleep manipulations. More knowledge about the relationship between sleep and the ability to differentiate similar memories from each other is important because impaired MD ability has previously been reported in various groups in which sleep disturbances are also common.

Two recent studies have challenged the well-established belief that offending behaviors are inversely related to the personality trait of conscientiousness. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore prisoners’ levels of traits according to the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality compared to control groups, with a focus on conscientiousness. Two separate samples of inmates in Swedish high-security prisons were investigated in three studies. Inmates and non-inmates completed a Swedish-language translation of Goldberg’s (1999) International Personality Item Pool questionnaire (IPIP-NEO, Bäckström, 2007). Male inmates (n = 46) in Studies 1 and 2 scored higher on conscientiousness than non-inmates (norm data based on approximately 800 males, and a students’ sample), which conflicts with previous results. Study 3 further explored the conscientiousness differences on the facet level. Male and female inmates (n = 131) scored higher on order and self-discipline (even after an adjustment for social desirability) than students (n = 136). In conjunction with previous findings, these differences are interpreted as being either temporal or enduring adjustments to the prison environment. It is suggested that researchers and clinical teams should cautiously interpret the FFM factor of conscientiousness (and its facets) when planning the further treatment of inmates.

I denna studie undersöktes hur realismen i vittnens numeriska konfidensbedömningar av sina

minnesutsagor påverkades av om de först fick uttrycka graden av säkerhet med ord i en

verbal konfidensbedömning och sedan i siffror i en numerisk konfidensbedömning, jämfört

med om vittnen enbart fick göra en numerisk konfidensbedömningar. Deltagarna fick se en

filmsekvens och därefter besvara frågor om filmen i en enkät. Dryga hälften av deltagarna

fick göra numeriska konfidensbedömningar medan andra hälften fick besvara en likadan

enkät fast med både verbala- och numeriska konfidensbedömningar.

Vi fann inga signifikanta skillnader för de olika undersökta beroendemåtten korrekthet, konfidens, överkonfidens och

kalibrering. Dock tydde resultaten på att den verbala- och numeriska konfidensbedömningen var associerad med en något sämre korrekthet av minnesprestation, med en något högre grad av överkonfidens samt en sämre kalibrering än för den betingelse som enbart är numerisk. 

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is associated with cognitive impairment and brain network dysconnectivity. Recent efforts have explored brain circuits underlying cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia and documented altered activation of large-scale brain networks, including the task-positive network (TPN) and the task-negative default mode network (DMN) in response to cognitive demands. However, to what extent TPN and DMN dysfunction reflect overlapping mechanisms and are dependent on cognitive state remain to be determined.

METHODS: In the current study, we investigated the recruitment of TPN and DMN using independent component analysis in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (n = 29) and healthy controls (n = 21) during two different executive tasks probing planning/problem-solving and spatial working memory.

RESULTS: We found reduced load-dependent DMN deactivation across tasks in patients compared to controls. Furthermore, we observed only moderate associations between the TPN and DMN activation across groups, implying that the two networks reflect partly independent mechanisms. Additionally, whereas TPN activation was associated with task performance in both tasks, no such associations were found for DMN.

CONCLUSION: These results support a general load-dependent DMN dysfunction in schizophrenia spectrum disorder across two demanding executive tasks that is not merely an epiphenomenon of cognitive dysfunction.

The path to an eating disorder (ED) always leads through a borderland, which, in this thesis, is referred to as disordered eating (DE) (Neumark-Sztainer, Wall, Eisenberg,Story, & Hannan, 2006; Waaddegaard, Thoning, & Petersson, 2003). In this borderland, people tend to make unhealthy eating choices, such as greatly reducing their food intake, self-inducing vomiting, or engaging in binge eating, but not to the extent that they would receive an ED diagnosis. Nevertheless, DE can have a strong negative effect on psychological health. Approximately 15%–52% of all adolescents, depending on the gender and the study’s focus, are found within the borderland between a healthy diet accompanied by psychological well-being and full-blown ED (e.g. Hautala et al., 2011; Herpertz-Dahlmann et al., 2008). While most of these individuals return to a more or less healthy diet after engaging in DE for some time, others continue to engage in DE and also tend to have trouble regulating their emotions, depression, and low self-esteem. For these reasons, DE itself, apart from being a springboard to EDs, is well worth exploring.At the outset of this thesis, an instrument assessing DE among 1265 adolescents (54.5% girls) was validated. This easily administered questionnaire, referred to by the acronym SCOFF (Morgan, Reid, & Lacey, 1999), comprises five questions assessing possible eating disturbances that are all answered using a “yes”/“no” answer format. The results showed that more girls than boys suffered from DE, and that girls also suffered from more severe DE, which is in line with previous research (e.g. Hautala et al., 2008). Additionally, this assessment of the SCOFF gave rise to the question of whether a positive answer on only certain items (instead of the stipulated cut-off of two) is necessary for indicating the possible presence of DE among adolescents, such as the item assessing whether individuals had ever vomited because they felt uncomfortably full.To further explore DE among adolescents, a person-oriented approach to identify specific patterns of DE based on the subscales of the Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (restraint, eating, weight, and shape concerns) was used. There were six different DE patterns for both boys and girls. The associations of these patterns with emotion dysregulation, depressive symptoms, and self-esteem, which all are related to DE (e.g. Shea & Pritchard, 2007; Svaldi, Griepenstroh, Tuschen- Caffier, & Ehring, 2012), were also assessed. Four of the six girl clusters and five of the six boy clusters showed scores above the cut-off for a clinical ED on at least one of the four indicators. Furthermore, although the “non-problematic” pattern was substantial, including 50% and 76% of girls and boys, respectively, a large portion of adolescents were part of clusters reporting generally high levels of DE. This might partly have to do with my use of an overly permissive cut-off, but nevertheless indicates that a considerable amount of adolescents suffer from DE. Generally, individuals in the DE patterns showed worse emotion regulation, depressive thoughts, and self- esteem than did those in the “non-problematic” patterns. However, some exceptions were found, which emphasizes the utility of analyzing different patterns of DE, not merely severity. Specifically, both girls and boys belonging to the pattern characterized by scores well above the cut-off on shape and weight concerns reported the lowest levels of self-esteem. Moreover, girls and boys in the pattern with scores above the cut-off on restraint showed good emotion regulation skills, few depressive symptoms, and high self-esteem.In Study III, the possible links between adolescents’ and parents’ possible DE and emotion dysregulation were explored, alongside the possible impact of shared family meals on DE. This study further examined whether it is possible to predict DE among adolescents according to their parents’ behaviors. Both DE and emotion dysregulation were found to be more frequent among adolescents than among parents. Furthermore, both adolescents and parents showed weak but significant associations between DE and emotion dysregulation, and showed similarities regarding specific aspects of emotion regulation, although the associations were gender specific. For example, parental emotional strategies were associated with girls’ emotional strategies, impulse control, and emotional goals, but only with boys’ emotional strategies. The only factor that was (weakly) associated with DE and emotion regulation among adolescents was the number of dinners that they shared with the family. Additionally, parental ED was the only predictor of current adolescent DE.In summary, the results of this thesis showed that many adolescents, especially girls, suffer from DE as well as poor emotional regulation, depressive thoughts, and low self-esteem. This is a problem, especially given that existing instruments for evaluating DE do not seem optimal, especially for boys. For instance, answering “yes” to the question of ever having engaged in self-induced vomiting because you have felt too full is probably best followed by a visit to the school nurse. Furthermore, the results indicated the importance of viewing DE not as a singular problem, but as a collection of different problems, even among individuals of the same gender. These differences call for different strategies aimed at helping adolescents achieve a healthier diet. Finally, while the parental influence of DE was significant, more research is required,preferably in a Swedish or Nordic context, where parental responsibility is not as heavily reliant on the mother as in other countries.

BACKGROUND: Research on the relationships between adolescent and parental disordered eating (DE) and emotion dysregulation is scarce. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore whether mothers' and fathers' own DE, as measured by SCOFF questionnaire, and emotion dysregulation, as measured by the difficulties in emotion regulation scale (DERS), were associated with their daughters' or sons' DE and emotion dysregulation. Furthermore, the importance of shared family meals and possible parent-related predictors of adolescent DE were explored.

METHOD: The total sample comprised 1,265 adolescents (M age  = 16.19, SD = 1.21; age range 13.5-19 years, 54.5% female) whose parents had received a self-report questionnaire via mail. Of these, 235 adolescents (18.6% of the total sample) whose parents completed the questionnaire were used in the analyses. Parents' responses were matched and compared with those of their child.

RESULTS: Adolescent girls showed greater levels of DE overall than did their parents. Furthermore, DE was associated with emotion dysregulation among both adolescents and parents. Adolescent and parental emotion dysregulation was associated, although there were gender differences in the specifics of this relationship. The frequency of shared dinner meals was the only variable that was associated to DE and emotion dysregulation among adolescents, while parental eating disorder was the only variable that enhanced the probability of adolescent DE.

CONCLUSION: The present study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that there are significant associations between parents and their adolescent children in terms of DE, emotion dysregulation, and shared family meals. Future studies should break down these relationships among mothers, fathers, girls, and boys to further clarify the specific associational, and possibly predictive, directions.

BACKGROUND: Using the person-oriented approach, we determined the relationships between four indicators (restraint and eating, shape, and weight concerns) of disordered eating (DE), as measured by the self-reported Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), to identify typical DE patterns. We then related these patterns to clinical EDE-Q cut-off scores and emotion dysregulation, depression, self-esteem, and two categories of DE behaviors (≥2 or ≤1 "yes" responses on the SCOFF questionnaire).

METHOD: Typical patterns of DE were identified in a community sample of 1,265 Swedish adolescents (Mage  = 16.19, SD = 1.21; age range 13.5-19 years) using a cluster analysis. Separate analyses were performed for girls (n = 689) and boys (n = 576).

RESULTS: The cluster analysis yielded a six-cluster solution for each gender. Four of the six clusters for girls and five for boys showed scores above the clinical cut-off on at least one of the four DE indicators. For girls, the two clusters that scored above the clinical cut-offs on all four DE indicators reported severe psychological problems, including high scores on emotion dysregulation and depression and low scores on self-esteem. In contrast, for boys, although two clusters reported above the clinical cut-off on all four indicators, only the cluster with exceedingly high scores on shape and weight concerns reported high emotion dysregulation and depression, and extremely low self-esteem. Furthermore, significantly more girls and boys in the most problematic DE clusters reported ≥2 "yes" responses on the SCOFF questionnaire (as opposed to ≤1 response), indicating clear signs of DE and severe psychological difficulties.

CONCLUSION: We suspect that the various problematic DE patterns will require different paths back to a healthy diet. However, more research is needed to determine the developmental trajectories of these DE patterns and ensure more precise clinical cut-off scores, especially for boys. Comprehensive understanding of DE patterns might be of use to healthcare professionals for detecting DE before it develops into an eating disorder.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: Lund, EPN (dnr: 2012/499).

The aim of this study was to examine three distinct parenting styles and their effect on children’s behavioural patterns, as perceived by the child. The parenting styles, based on Baumrind’s typologies of authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting, were measured as well as the children’s self-rated internal and external symptoms. Results indicated that there was a relationship between authoritarian parenting and all aspects of internal symptoms (depression, loneliness and self-esteem) as well as delinquency and aggression (external symptoms). Gender had an effect on depression and loneliness with females displaying higher levels. Permissive parenting was the largest contributor to drug use and an effect of age on drug use was also found. In conclusion, the results from this study shows that authoritarian parenting has a detrimental effect on a host of mental health issues and behavioural problems. However, authoritative parenting was shown to have the most positive outcome across the study. Implications for positive parenting style interventions are discussed. In addition, further studies examining parent-child relations from the child’s perspective are suggested.

The study of complex social networks is an inherently interdisciplinary research area with applications across many fields, including psychology. Social network models describe, illustrate and explain how people are connected to each other and can, for example, be used to study information spread and interconnectedness of people with different kinds of traits. One approach to social network modelling, originating mainly in the physics literature, is to generate targeted kinds of social networks using models with specialized mechanisms while analyzing and deriving features of the models. Surprisingly though, and despite the popularity of this approach, there is no available functionality for generating a wide variety of social networks from these models. Thus, researchers are left to implement and specify these models themselves, restricting the applicability of these models. In this article, I provide a set of Matlab functions enabling the generation of artificial social networks from 22 different network models, most of them explicitly designed to capture features of social networks. Many of these models originate in the physics literature and may therefore not be familiar to psychological researchers. I also provide an illustration of how these models can be evaluated in terms of a simulated model comparison approach and how they can be applied to psychological research. With the already existing network functionality available in Matlab and other languages, this should provide a useful extension to researchers.

Gossip almost inevitably arises in real social networks. In this article we investigate the relationship between the number of friends of a person and limits on how far gossip about that person can spread in the network. How far gossip travels in a network depends on two sets of factors: (a) factors determining gossip transmission from one person to the next and (b) factors determining network topology. For a simple model where gossip is spread among people who know the victim it is known that a standard scale-free network model produces a non-monotonic relationship between number of friends and expected relative spread of gossip, a pattern that is also observed in real networks (Lind et al., 2007). Here, we study gossip spread in two social network models (Toivonen et al., 2006; Vázquez, 2003) by exploring the parameter space of both models and fitting them to a real Facebook data set. Both models can produce the non-monotonic relationship of real networks more accurately than a standard scale-free model while also exhibiting more realistic variability in gossip spread. Of the two models, the one given in Vázquez (2003) best captures both the expected values and variability of gossip spread.

Much of cognitive psychology is premised on the distinction between automatic and intentional processes, but the distinction often remains vague in practice and alternative explanations are often not followed through. For example, Hendricks, Conway and Kellogg (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 491–1500, 2013) found that dual tasks at training versus at test dissociated performance in two different artificial grammar learning tasks. This was taken as evidence for underlying automatic and intentional processes. In this article, a different explanation is considered based on test learning and similarity, where participants are assumed to update their knowledge at test. Contrasting formal memory models of test learning are implemented, and it is concluded that the models account for the relevant dissociations without assuming a distinction between automatic and intentional processes.

Much of what we know concerning impression formation is based on experimental methods where the participant receives a list of traits or behaviors and is asked to make trait judgments or meta-cognitive judgments. The present study aimed to put some well-known effects from the impression formation literature to a test in a more dynamic computerized environment, more akin to many real world impression formation scenarios. In three studies participants were introduced to multiple target persons. They were given information about the target persons' behavior, one at a time, while making ratings of their warmth and competence, and their probability of performing related behaviors in the future. In neither of the studies the negativity effect of warmth or the positivity effect of competence were reproduced.

The instantaneous frequency (IF) of a non-stationary signal is usually estimated from a time-frequency distribution (TFD). The IF of heart rate variability (HRV) is an important parameter because the power in a frequency band around the IF can be used for the interpretation and analysis of the respiratory rate but also for a more accurate analysis of heart rate (HR) signals. In this study, we compare the performance of five states of the art kernel-based time-frequency distributions (TFDs) in terms of their ability to accurately estimate the IF of HR signals. The selected TFDs include three widely used fixed kernel methods: the modified B distribution, the S-method and the spectrogram; and two adaptive kernel methods: the adaptive optimal kernel TFD and the recently developed adaptive directional TFD. The IF of the respiratory signal, which is usually easier to estimate as the respiratory signal is a mono-component with small amplitude variations with time, is used as a reference to examine the accuracy of the HRV IF estimates. Experimental results indicate that the most reliable estimates are obtained using the adaptive directional TFD in comparison to other commonly used methods such as the adaptive optimal kernel TFD and the modified B distribution.

The virtual version of the Trier Social Stress Test (V-TSST) is an effective and standardized tool for social stress induction. This study aimed to examine gut permeability and physiological and inflammatory markers of reactivity to acute psychosocial stress. Forty young men were classified as high-stressed (HIGHS) or low-stressed (LOWS) according to the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Questionnaire. Cardiovascular reactivity and gut dysfunction were studied along with cortisol, zonulin and cytokines. Gut permeability was shown to be affected within one hour after the psychosocial stress induction, and shown to be dependent on age. Interleukin-6 increased with time, most pronounced at the end of the one-hour recovery after V-TSST, and was positively correlated to age. HIGHS experienced more abdominal dysfunction compared to LOWS. In conclusion, this study is the first to show fluctuations in gut permeability after psychosocial stress induction. This was partly associated with changes in inflammatory markers.

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) sees the law as a social force with the underlying idea that legal procedures should promote the psychological well-being (PWB) of individuals involved in juridical actions; for example, individual police interviewers could act as therapeutic agents. Investigative interviewing is guided by a truth-seeking and ethical framework; in this view, rapport is an important component for gaining trust and effective communication. Previous research shows that rapport-orientated and non-rapport orientated interview styles result in differences in interviewees’ memory performance and PWB. In the present thesis, a humanitarian rapport-orientated and a dominant non-rapport orientated approach were operationalised based on previous explorative findings of authentic crime victims’ and offenders’ perception of their interviewers as acting in either a humanitarian or dominant manner (Holmberg, 2004; Holmberg & Christianson, 2002). The studies in the present thesis were based on an experimental data collection that consisted of three phases: exposure, interview I (N = 146) and interview II (N = 127; one week and six-month retention period, respectively). Participants were randomly assigned to be interviewed in either a humanitarian rapport-orientated or a non-rapport orientated approach. Basically, it was hypothesised that a humanitarian rapport-oriented approach would increase interviewees’ recall and PWB, and that a dominant non-rapport oriented approach would decrease interviewees’ recall and PWB. Study I assessed the effects of an empirically based model of rapport and a dominant non-rapport orientated approach on adults’ memory performance in an (mock) investigative interview context. Adopting a TJ perspective, Study II described, defined, and measured interviewees’ PWB (Sense of coherence; STAI-S), while Study III investigated the impact of interviewees’ personality (Five-factor model; STAI-T) on their memory performance and PWB. Study IV explored previous findings (Studies I and III) for potential indirect effects of the interview approach on interviewees’ recall, and potential interaction effects between the interview approach and interviewees’ recall as moderated by their personality. Main results showed that a humanitarian rapport-orientated approach, in all essential parts, facilitated interviewees’ recall as well as their psychological well-being, whereas a non-rapport orientated approach, also in all essential parts, hampered interviewees’ recall and contributed to their decreased psychological well-being.

Research on preventive effects of authoritative parenting against externalizing problems (Steinberg, 2001) has been criticized for invalid measurements of parental control (Stattin & Kerr, 2000), and that findings might reflect parental reactions rather than parental influences (Glatz et al., 2012; Kerr et al., 2012). However, few studies have assessed bidirectional effects between parenting and externalizing problems, and even less have attempted to explore how the parent-adolescent relationship might mediate these effects from a systems perspective.

Using two annual data collections (N = 1,281/1,274/824 at T1/T2/overlap, resp.) in a representative Swedish community sample of adolescents originally in grades 7-10 (M_age = 15.2, SD = 1.2), bi-directional effects between perceived parenting (warmth, psychological control, behavior control, overcontrol), adolescent relationship satisfaction, goals (establishing autonomy, submission under parental authority), and strategies (disclosure, secrecy), and externalizing problem behaviors (drug/alcohol use, delinquency, aggression) were explored, controlling for the respective dependent variable at T1, gender, and school grade. Parental attitudes (e.g., perceived child depression, satisfaction, and feelings of giving up) were assessed at T2 in a sub-sample (N = 290), allowing for the prediction of these attitudes by T1 externalizing. Missing data were multiply imputed. Still, those analyses involving parent attitudes are tentative due to the lack of T1 measures and the large number of missing data.

Cross-sectionally, all three externalizing behaviors were modestly associated with parenting and relationships in expected directions. However, despite large correlations between the three externalizing behaviors, longitudinal predictions differed. Aggression was not predicted and did not predict parenting and parent-adolescent relationships across time, suggesting that aggression develops at younger age.

Both delinquency and drug/alcohol use predicted parents’ feelings of low satisfaction, poor trust, and of giving up, but none of the adolescent-reported parenting behaviors. Unexpected predictions of high submission under parental authority and of low secrecy by drug/alcohol use could be explained by a statistical suppressor effect. Thus, although parents felt bad about their externalizing children, this did not result in deteriorated parenting as observed by the adolescents, in contrast to previous research (Kerr & Stattin, 2003), and unlike parents’ reactions to internalizing problems in this study.

Supporting parenting effects, low levels of delinquency were predicted by parental overcontrol and tentatively by parental control. Low drug/alcohol use was predicted by parental support, adolescents’ goals rather not to become autonomous but to submit under parental authority, disclosure of information, and low secrecy towards parents. Mediation analyses revealed that adolescents react to parental support by intentions to submit under parental authority and becoming less secretive, which both predicted decreased drug/alcohol use over time. The preventive effect of parental (over-)control against delinquency was found using scales developed by the Stattin/Kerr group rather than the questioned “monitoring” scale. Albeit no direct effect of control on low drug/alcohol use was revealed, a preventive effect of parental support was explained by adolescents’ willingness to accept parental authority and not to keep secrets from them. These findings support a parent-effects theory of authoritative parenting (Steinberg, 2001) and help understand how adolescents’ goals and behaviors mediate parental behaviors.

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia have a negative impact on psychosocial functioning and disease outcome. It is therefore important to investigate the pathophysiology underlying negative symptoms as this may aid the development of better treatment. In the current article, examples from studies investigating neural correlates of negative symptoms in schizophrenia are given. Investigations using both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging are presented at different levels of symptomatology descriptions, from the more heterogenous construct of negative symptoms to more single discrete symptoms. Some methods to improve imaging studies of negative symptoms in schizophrenia are also suggested.

Physical activity (PA) is an important health-promoting behavior from which adolescents with long-term illnesses or disabilities (LTID) can benefit. It is important to monitor differences across countries in adherence with PA recommendations for health. The aim of this study was to compare PA levels among 15 European countries after disaggregating data by disability. Data from pupils (mean age = 13.6 years, SD = 1.64) participating in the 2013/2014 Health Behavior in School-aged Children study were analyzed to compare adolescents without LTID, with LTID, and with LTID that affects their participation (affected LTID). Logistic regression models adjusted for age and family affluence, stratified by gender and country group with PA recommendations for health as the outcome variable. With the data pooled, 15% (n = 9,372) of adolescents reported having LTID and 4% (n = 2,566) having affected LTID. Overall, fewer boys with LTID met PA recommendations for health than boys without LTID, although it was not statistically significant either at the national levels or for girls.

Background: The need for instruments that can assist in detecting the prodromal stages of stress-related exhaustion has been acknowledged. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether the Lund University Checklist for Incipient Exhaustion (LUCIE) could accurately and prospectively detect the onset of incipient exhaustion and to what extent work stressor exposure and private burdens were associated with increasing LUCIE scores. Methods: Using surveys, 1355 employees were followed for 11 quarters. Participants with prospectively elevated LUCIE scores were targeted by three algorithms entailing 4 quarters: (1) abrupt onset to a sustained Stress Warning (n = 18), (2) gradual onset to a sustained Stress Warning (n = 42), and (3) sustained Exhaustion Warning (n = 36). The targeted participants' survey reports on changes in work situation and private life during the fulfillment of any algorithm criteria were analyzed, together with the interview data. Participants untargeted by the algorithms constituted a control group (n = 745). Results: Eighty-seven percent of participants fulfilling any LUCIE algorithm criteria (LUCIE indication cases) rated a negative change in their work situation during the 4 quarters, compared to 48 % of controls. Ratings of negative changes in private life were also more common in the LUCIE indication groups than among controls (58 % vs. 29 %), but free-text commentaries revealed that almost half of the ratings in the LUCIE indication groups were due to work-to-family conflicts and health problems caused by excessive workload, assigned more properly to work-related negative changes. When excluding the themes related to work-stress-related private life compromises, negative private life changes in the LUCIE indication groups dropped from 58 to 32 %, while only a negligible drop from 29 to 26 % was observed among controls. In retrospective interviews, 79 % of the LUCIE indication participants confirmed exclusively/predominantly work stressors, while 6 % described a predominance of private life stressors. Conclusions: Negative changes in the work situation were the most prominent change related to a sustained increase in LUCIE scores. The findings seem to confirm that LUCIE is a potentially useful tool for clinical screening of incipient work-related exhaustion.

AIMS: To examine the relationships of two screening instruments recently developed for assessment of exhaustion disorder (ED) with some other well-known inventories intended to assess ED-related concepts and self-reports of job demands, job control, job support, private life stressors, and personality factors.

METHODS: A cross-sectional population sample ( n = 1355) completed: the Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale (KEDS), Self-reported Exhaustion Disorder Scale (s-ED), Shirom-Melamed Burnout Questionnaire (SMBQ), Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9), Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ), Big Five Inventory (BFI), and items concerning family-to-work interference and stress in private life.

RESULTS: Compared to participants without any indication of ED, participants classified as having ED on KEDS or s-ED had higher scores on all four SMBQ subscales, lower scores on the UWES-9 subscales vigor and dedication, higher JCQ job demands scores, lower JCQ job support scores, higher degrees of family-to-work interference and stress in private life, and higher BFI neuroticism and openness scores. In addition, participants classified as having ED on KEDS had lower scores on the UWES-9 absorption subscale, the JCQ job control scale, and lower BFI extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness scores, compared to the subgroup not classified as having ED.

CONCLUSIONS: As expected, we observed an overall pattern of associations between the ED screening inventories KEDS and s-ED and measures of burnout, work engagement, job demands-control-support, stress in private life, family-to-work interference, and personality factors. The results suggest that instruments designed to assess burnout, work engagement, and ED share common ground, despite their conceptual differences.

Berries contain bioactive compounds that may affect children’s cognitive function positively, while hunger and thirst during lessons before lunch affect academic performance negatively. This pilot study addresses methodological challenges in studying if a berry smoothie, offered to schoolchildren as a mid-morning beverage, affects academic performance.

The objective was to investigate if a cross-over design can be used to study these effects in a school setting.

Therefore, in order to investigate assay sensitivity, 236 Swedish children aged 10–12 years were administered either a berry smoothie (active) or a fruit-based control beverage after their mid-morning break. Both beverages provided 5% of child daily energy intake. In total, 91% of participants completed the study. Academic performance was assessed using the d2 test of attention. Statistical analyses were performed using the Wilcoxon signed rank test in StatXact v 10.3.

The results showed that the children consumed less of the active berry smoothie than the control (154 g vs. 246 g). Both beverages increased attention span and concentration significantly (p = 0.000). However, as there was no significant difference (p = 0.938) in the magnitude of this effect between the active and control beverages, the assay sensitivity of the study design was not proven. The effect of the beverages on academic performance was attributed the supplementation of water and energy.

Despite careful design, the active smoothie was less accepted than the control. This could be explained by un-familiar sensory characteristics and peer influence, stressing the importance of sensory similarity and challenges to perform a study in school settings. The employed cross-over design did not reveal any effects of bioactive compound consumption on academic performance. In future studies, the experimental set up should be modified or replaced by e.g. the parallel study design, in order to provide conclusive results.

Th result of recognition tests on 4- and 6-year-olds resulted in a forgetting curve for 6-year olds over 48 h, but not for 4-year-olds, who kept the same level of correct recognition.

A tentative exmplanation is that the older children were more mentally active during the longer retention intervals, causing more false trails than the youger children. The older children, may be more active over time in processing  the material to a much greater degree, for instance in categorizing the animals. Thereby, the 6-year-olds may loose some of the specificity of the perceptual traces over time, making presented and distraction animals less distinct from one another. Thememories of the  4-year olds are then thought to remain more stabe, as they do not get re-processed in the same manner.

Little is known on whether the effects of marriage education programs such as the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) hold across genders or are moderated by risk factors (participants’ parents’ relationship instability, participants’ low level of education, being unmarried, previous relationship counseling, who initiated program participation, having many children). This trial of 889 participants revealed medium to large improvements in relationship satisfaction and communication from baseline to posttest. Only a few tentative moderating factors were identified. Women who were at risk, as indicated by previous relationship counseling, even caught up with others without such risk at the outset. However, men with little higher education did not improve on all measures. Thus, overall, PREP appears applicable for the prevention of intimate relationship problems in a broad range of circumstances. One of the strengths of this study includes the examination of PREP effects in a real-life application across an entire Scandinavian country.

The intestine and the brain are connected via the brain-gut axis and the intestinal microbiota influences the immune activation and signaling molecules that are involved in the stress response. The aim of the study was to investigate if intake of the probiotic strain Lactobacillus plantarum HEAL9 (LPHEAL9) for four weeks could counteract elevated cortisol and inflammation levels in subjects with chronic stress that are exposed to an acute stress test (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST). Seventy participants were included, and 63 participants completed the study (LPHEAL9, n=32; placebo, n=31). Cardiovascular reactivity and cortisol levels were affected by the TSST, but no differences between the groups were observed. Intake of LPHEAL9 did, however, result in significantly decreased plasma levels of two inflammatory markers (soluble fractalkine and CD163) compared to placebo. In conclusion, intake of LPHEAL9 for four weeks may reduce inflammatory markers coupled to acute stress in chronically stressed individuals.