Craig Newton

Fibromyalgia and women's pursuit of personal goals: A daily process analysis

For 30 days, 50 women with primary fibromyalgia syndrome reported daily progress and effort toward a health-fitness and a social-interpersonal goal and the extent to which their pain and fatigue hindered their accomplishment. They also carried palmtop computers to assess their sleep and their pain, fatigue, and positive and negative mood throughout the day. Analyses of the person-day data set showed that on days during which pain or fatigue increased from morning to evening, participants perceived their goal progress to be more attenuated by pain and fatigue. Unrestorative sleep the night before predicted the following days effort and progress toward accomplishing health-fitness goals, but not social-interpersonal goals. Finally, participants who reported more progress toward social-interpersonal goals on a given day were more likely to evidence improvements in positive mood across the day, regardless of any changes in pain or fatigue that day.

The development and preliminary validation of a brief measure of chronic pain impact for use in the general population

&NA; From a biopsychosocial perspective, assessing chronic pains psychological impact should involve at minimum the measurement of pain severity, functional interference, and pain‐related emotional burden. This article details the development of a brief instrument, the 15‐item Profile of Chronic Pain: Screen (PCP:S), designed to address these three key elements in a national (US) sample of over 2400 individuals recruited via random digit dialing. Retest reliability, internal consistency, and preliminary validity were excellent. The scales also demonstrated minimal social desirability response bias. A series of confirmatory factor analyses on several distinct samples revealed a stable, 3‐factor solution reflecting pain severity, interference, and emotional burden. Finally, national norms were developed by gender and three age groups. In view of its strong psychometric properties, the PCP:S has the potential to serve as a brief, cost‐effective assessment tool for identifying individuals whose chronic pain merits more detailed psychosocial evaluation.

EVALUATION OF AN ALTERNATIVE TRAFFIC LIGHT CHANGE ANTICIPATION SYSTEM

A driving simulator was used to study the efficacy of an alternative signal phasing program. The new Traffic Light Change Anticipation System (TLCAS) utilizes a flashing amber in conjunction with a solid green indication to warn drivers of the impending onset of the solid amber indication. This new program was expected to provide drivers with additional information with which to make safe stopping or crossing decisions, and reduce behaviour associated with increased accident rates at signalized intersections. Additionally, a new measure of first response variability was introduced to evaluate the effect of the new program on driver behavior. The results indicated that the new system has the ability to reduce the number of red light violations. Of the 1148 target intersections, 43 violations were recorded for the regular program compared to 9 for the TLCAS program. The severity of decelerations was also impacted. The regular program displayed average maximum decelerations of 3.1 m/sec2 compared to 2.5 m/sec2 for the TLCAS program. However, the TLCAS program showed an increased variability in first response five times larger than the regular program. This finding, in conjunction with traditional measures, indicates that the new system performs comparably to an increased amber duration by increasing the potential for conflicting decisions between successive drivers approaching an intersection. Altogether, the results suggest that this alternative signal phasing program would not improve intersection safety. The findings also suggest that further study of the longitudinal behavior after the introduction of a TLCAS program may be warranted. Specifically, future studies should examine whether subjects engage in appropriate adaptive changes when confronted with a solid amber period warning after becoming familiar with the TLCAS.

The development and preliminary validation of the Profile of Chronic Pain: Extended Assessment Battery

&NA; The aim of the present research was the development and validation of a set of instruments, collectively called the Profile of Chronic Pain: Extended Assessment Battery (PCP:EA), designed to be administered to adults (between the ages of 25 to 80) after establishing the existence of a chronic pain problem. The final 86‐item version of the PCP:EA consisted of 33 single items assessing: pain location and severity, pain characteristics (e.g. worst daily pain), medication use, health care status, the identity of the most important person in the patients life, and functional limitations in 10 areas of daily living. In addition, the PCP:EA includes 13 multi‐item subscales addressing aspects of coping (guarding, ignoring, task persistence, and positive self‐talk), catastrophizing, pain attitudes and beliefs (including disability beliefs, belief in a medical cure for pain, belief in pain control, and pain‐induced fear), and positive (tangible and emotional) and negative (insensitivity and impatience) social responses. Data were obtained from two national samples which were recruited and screened via a random‐digit dialing telephone interview procedure. Stratified sampling was employed to assure equal gender and age group representation across three age groupings (25–44; 45–64; 65–80). Two survey studies provided strong evidence for the hypothesized factor structure, internal consistency, independence from response bias, and validity of the PCP:EA. Moreover, the presence of normative data enhance the diagnostic and prescriptive utility of the instrument.

Simulator Evaluation of Green and Flashing Amber Signal Phasing

A research study conducted to evaluate the efficacy of flashing amber signal phasing is reported. Flashing amber, which is set to overlap with the green indication a few seconds before the onset of solid amber, is a form of time reference aid used to warn drivers of an impending onset of amber. The time reference aid is a concept predicated on the principle that driver decisions will be easier and more predictable if drivers have advance information that allows them to predict the onset of amber. The evaluation of the flashing amber method showed that its implementation has the potential to reduce red-light violations, severity of maximum decelerations, and kinematically defined inappropriate stop or cross decisions. However, the data also showed that compared with the regular signal phasing, the flashing amber phasing increased the size of the indecision zone, a mechanism usually responsible for increased rear-end collisions. A measure not previously used in literature was introduced to compare the regular and the experimental signal phasing. This measure, which analyzes first-response time variability in relation to the indecision zone, predicted that increased rear-end collisions might be expected as a result of implementation of the flashing amber signal phasing. Generally, the results suggest that the implementation of a flashing amber signal phasing would not significantly increase intersection safety despite the notion that it would improve driver anticipation of the onset of solid amber.

Effects of Approach and Avoid Mindsets on Performance, Self-regulatory Cognition, and Affect in a Multi-task Environment

Despite numerous studies of approach- and avoidant mindsets, relatively little research has addressed the impact of such motivational orientations on performance and emotion in a real-time, multi-task setting. A laboratory simulation is reported that examines the influence of an induced approach-centered, an avoidance-centered, and a “neutral” motivational mindset upon multiple aspects of task performance, self-regulatory cognition, and affect. Undergraduate females randomly assigned to one of three mindset conditions performed a simulated automobile drive across one practice and two experimental trials. Dependent measures included divided attention, behavioral indicators of driving “cautiousness” in relatively safe straight roadway sections as well as during more risk-filled driving, multiple aspects of self-regulatory thinking (including self-monitoring, intended effort, and self-administered consequences), and positive and negative affect. Results revealed that the avoidant mindset produced poorer executive attention (i.e., fewer correctly detected divided attention events), more “cautious” driving behavior and reduced performance variability (i.e., greater control) when driving on presumably safe, straight roadway sections, lower self-reports of intended effort, and greater negative affect relative to the approach mindset. Results are intepreted within a self-regulation-centered motivational framework. Implications of the multi-task simulation for the study of normal and disordered adjustment are considered.

Memory search following valid and invalid abrupt-onset cues

The impact of abrupt-onset cues on memory search was investigated, where the abrupt-onset cue was a valid (Experiment 1), random (Experiment 2), or irrelevant (Experiment 3) predictor of the location containing the test probe. In Experiment 4, the abrupt-onset cue either preceded or followed the test probe. Sternberg-like functions were obtained in Experiments 1 and 2, with the effects of the abrupt-onset cue localized primarily in the intercept rather than the slope. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a spatially separated and irrelevant abrupt-onset cue increased latency even when all memory probes occurred at the fixation point. In Experiment 4, the robust impact of an abrupt-onset cue vanished, regardless of stimulus onset asynchrony, when it followed the target. We concluded that abrupt-onset cues captured attention regardless of their predictability, manifested as a delaying of search. However, once attention was captured by the target, a subsequent abrupt-onset stimulus had no effect. These results were discussed in terms of diffuse attention and contingent capture models of attention.