Psycholinguistic, Stroop, and self-report measurements of death anxiety: A study of convergent validity.

Death anxiety is commonly assessed using self-report surveys, but practitioners and researchers have recently established the need for implicit measures. However, many implicit measures lack sufficient evidence to support their construct validity. We examined two innovative implicit death anxiety measures (linguistic analysis and a Stroop paradigm) alongside a traditional self-report death anxiety survey battery. The linguistic analysis of death-related writing was supported by concurrent validity among death anxiety measures. We conclude that linguistic analyses of death-related writing may be a valid, viable, implicit measure of death anxiety which may be useful to both researchers and clinicians.

Advance care planning: End-of-life hopes and fears among community dwelling adults.

End-of-life (EOL) medical care in the United States often does not align with patients' goals and preferences. This study explored EOL hopes and fears among 86 community-dwelling adults and examined medical and psychological predictors of death anxiety. Common EOL hopes included absence of suffering, closure, and personal fulfillment. Common EOL fears included suffering, lack of competence, and specific types of death. Fear of the dying process was greater than fear of death itself. Health predicted death anxiety; age alone, did not. Advance care planning and clinical decision making should include these psychological insights and explicitly address EOL hopes and fears.

Mindfulness, anxiety, and perceived stress in university students: Comparing a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) against active and traditional control conditions.

ObjectivesUniversity students experience heightened levels of stress and are seeking mental health services with increasing frequency. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) may be an effective resource for managing stress. The present study examined the effectiveness of an MBI in reducing stress, anxiety, and rumination compared to active and traditional control conditions.MethodsUndergraduate students at a southeastern university participated in either a 4-week MBI, active control, or traditional control condition. Measures were collected pre- and post-intervention. Results: Overall the MBI had a significant impact on perceived stress over and above both traditional and active control conditions. The MBI also had a significant impact on trait mindfulness and anxiety compared to the traditional control condition. No significant differences were observed for rumination. Conclusions: The MBI significantly impacted trait mindfulness, perceived stress, and state anxiety. MBIs may be a useful approach to successfully alleviating stress in a highly stressed population.

Adapting Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have received increased clinical attention in recent years. While some MBI research has focused on healthy older adults, research with more emotionally and physically vulnerable populations, such as residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs), is lacking. The current paper presents quantitative and qualitative results from a pilot study of an individual MBI designed for residents of LTCFs. Participants included 8 residents from two skilled nursing facilities in the southeastern United States. Data were collected between October 2016 through June 2017. A modified MBI is proposed with specific adaptations for LTCF residents. Recommended adaptations for LTCFs include a shift from a group to an individual format, individual weekly instructor-participant meetings, removal of the yoga and full-day silent retreat and shortening the duration of the formal practices. The current study found that these adaptations result in an individual MBI that is accessible to most LTCF residents while still providing the associated benefits of traditional group MBIs.

Barriers to mother-adolescent communication about sex, maternal monitoring and sexual behaviour among adolescents in Mexico.

Mexican mothers have an important role in adolescent sexuality; however, they report multiple barriers to parent-child sex communication, which may impact adolescent sexual behaviour. This cross-sectional study examines whether adolescent perceptions of maternal barriers to communication are associated with adolescent sexual behaviour frequency indirectly through its association with maternal monitoring, and whether these associations differ by age and gender. Mexican adolescents (N = 1433), ages 12-19 (53% girls), completed a survey on normative sexual behaviours, adolescent perceptions of maternal barriers to sex communication, and maternal monitoring. Structural equation modelling analyses revealed that more barriers to communication (adolescent perceptions) were associated with more sexual behaviour frequency (i.e., oral and vaginal sex) among Mexican adolescents indirectly through its association with maternal monitoring. Findings were stronger for adolescents in 8th grades, but no differences were found by gender. This model expands our understanding of the parenting factors that impact Mexican adolescent sexuality.

Possible Selves and Self-Regulatory Beliefs: Exploring the Relationship Between Health Selves, Health Efficacy, and Psychological Well-Being.

The present study identified middle-aged (ages 40-64) and older individuals (ages 65-90) who reported a highly important possible self related to health. The relationship between age, physical health, health efficacy, and psychological well-being were examined among these individuals. We tested a model in which health efficacy predicted both positive and negative psychological well-being. For both age groups, self-reported health predicted health self-efficacy; however, the direct effects of health efficacy on both positive and negative psychological well-being were also significant. Higher levels of health efficacy were associated with higher levels of positive psychological well-being and lower levels of negative well-being, as predicted. Physical health indirectly predicted well-being through its impact on health self-efficacy for middle-aged and older individuals who valued their health highly. Overall, these results support the notion that health efficacy related to a most important health self is a predictor of psychological well-being in mid and late life.

Health hopes and fears for the future in relation to health behavior and current health status.

We examined the relationships among age, health, beliefs, and possible-selves. Using a new approach based on health-related possible-selves, young-old and older individuals were separated into specific health types: (1) improvement or maintenance health hopes and (2) preventable or unpreventable health fears. The young-old perceived greater capability to achieve health hopes and reported more health activities than older individuals; the older group reported more maintenance than improvement. More unpreventable fears were related to experiencing higher pain and worse physical functioning. Health types provide useful information about individual differences in health behavior and beliefs and are sensitive to current health status.

Goals-feedback conditions and episodic memory: Mechanisms for memory gains in older and younger adults.

Research has established that challenging memory goals always lead to score increases for younger adults, and can increase older adults' scores under supportive conditions. This study examined beliefs and on-task effort as potential mechanisms for these self-regulatory gains, in particular to learn whether episodic memory gains across multiple trials of shopping list recall are controlled by the same factors for young and old people. Goals with feedback led to higher recall and strategic categorisation than a control condition. Strategy usage was the strongest predictor of gains over trials for both age groups. Age, goal condition, and effort also predicted scores across the entire sample. Older adults' gains, but not younger adults' gains, were affected significantly by the interaction of self-efficacy beliefs and goal condition, and condition interacted with locus of control to predict younger adult gains. These results emphasise the importance of self-regulatory effort and positive beliefs for facilitating goal-related memory gains.

Self-efficacy and memory aging: the impact of a memory intervention based on self-efficacy.

A multifactorial training program was developed for older adults, to improve self-efficacy and memory performance. Elements designed to raise self-efficacy were integrated into class discussions, homework readings, and practice exercises, including an emphasis on memory potential at any age, self-set goals, and opportunities for mastery. Strategy training focused on association, organization, attention, imagery, and PQRST. Significant improvements for the training group, as compared to a wait-list control group, were observed for memory self-efficacy, locus of control, name recall and story recall. Trained participants were using effective strategies more so than the control group. Final test scores were predicted by self-efficacy, condition assignment, and baseline ability (with some variation across the three tasks). These findings suggest that an integrated and comprehensive training program that incorporates principles of self-efficacy theory has great potential for improving older adults' memory ability.

Memory and goal setting: the response of older and younger adults to positive and objective feedback.

Earlier research suggested that goal setting for memory does not have the same advantages for older adults as for younger adults. Using ideal goal-setting conditions with individualized goals, the authors compared goals plus positive feedback, goals plus objective feedback, and control. Performance increased over trials and was higher for both goal conditions than for control. The positive feedback condition showed the highest goal commitment and motivation. Older adults showed strong performance gains and more motivation and goal commitment than the young. The results showed that older adults can benefit from goal setting under optimal learning and feedback conditions.