Hasida Ben-Zur

Coping with breast cancer: patient, spouse, and dyad models.

Objective The objectives of this study were 1) to assess similarities and differences between patients with breast cancer and their spouses in terms of coping strategies and adjustment (psychosocial and psychological) to cancer and 2) to investigate the pattern of relationships between the patients’ and spouses’ coping strategies and between each of these strategies and the patient’s adjustment to the illness using three types of models: patient, spousal, and dyadic coping. Methods Seventy-three patients with breast cancer and their spouses completed questionnaires that measured distress (Brief Symptom Inventory), psychosocial adjustment, and coping strategies. Results The patients’ distress was greater than their spouses’, but a similar level of psychosocial adjustment was reported. The patients used more strategies involving problem-focused coping than their spouses. The use of emotion-focused coping, which included ventilation and avoidance strategies, was highly related to distress and poor adjustment on the part of the patient. The spouses’ emotion-focused coping and distress were related to that of the patients. Dyad emotion-focused coping measures were highly associated with the patients’ distress and adjustment. Conclusions Spousal and dyad coping are important factors in a patient’s adjustment to breast cancer.

Coping, affect and aging: the roles of mastery and self-esteem

The relationships between coping, affect and aging were examined using mastery and self-esteem as mediators of the aging–coping–affect associations. The sample included 168 young and old community residents who completed the dispositional coping strategies questionnaire [COPE scale; Carver, C.S., Scheier, M., & Weintraub, J.K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: a theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267–283], as well as mastery, self-esteem and affect inventories. The results showed high levels of mastery, self-esteem and problem/accommodation meta-strategy of coping to contribute independently to positive affect, while low levels of mastery and self-esteem contributed to negative affect. Older people reported low levels of negative affect as well as lower levels of mastery than the younger ones, but no age-related differences were observed for positive affect, self-esteem, or coping strategies. Furthermore, mastery mediated the effects of aging on coping strategies. Unexpectedly, perceived health status, independently of age, was related to low levels of mastery and self-esteem while perceived economical situation or education level were not related to these variables. The study results imply that the use of efficient coping strategies in certain groups such as old people may be enhanced by elevating feelings of mastery.

Encoding information for future action: memory for to-be-performed tasks versus memory for to-be-recalled tasks.

What is the nature of the representation underlying memory for future tasks such as calling the doctor or buying milk? If this representation consists of a verbal instruction that is translated into action at the time of retrieval, then memory should be better when tested via verbatim recall of the instruction than when tested via actual performance. Three experiments rejected this possibility, indicating better memory for a perform mode of report than for a recall mode of report. This was true in Experiment 1 in which subjects saw a series of verbal instructions (e.g., “move the eraser,” “lift the cup,” “touch the ashtray”), with advance information regarding the mode of report required during testing. In Experiment 2, the advance cue was valid only in 75% of the trials. Memory depended more heavily on the expected mode of report thanon the actual mode ofreport, suggesting that the perform superiority is due to processes that occur during encoding. In Experiment 3, subjects learned 20 phrases depicting minitasks were remembered by subjects tested via performance than by subjects tested via verbatim recall. A second part of Experiment 3 also indicated superior memory when a perform test was expected, regardless of which mode of report was actually required. The results were compared with the finding that subject-performed tasks are better remembered thanare their verbal instructions, which suggeststhat the representation underlying memory for future assignments-may-take advantage of the imaginal-enactive properties ofthe envisagedacts. Other possible differences between memory for to-be-recalled tasks and memory for to-be-performed tasks are discussed.

Telling the same story twice: Output monitoring and age

Abstract When people have to remember to perform an act in the future, they must also keep a record of the act already performed so as not to repeat it. This neglected aspect of everyday memory was investigated by examining the alleged preponderance of action repetitions in old age (e.g., telling the same story over and over, taking a medicine too often, etc.). We propose that such action repetitions stem from a deficiency in the monitoring of actions performed. Although older subjects remembered fewer words from a study list than younger subjects, they were more likely to repeat them in free recall (Experiments 1 and 2). When later presented with the study words and asked to judge whether they had recalled them in a previous recall phase, older people classified more recalled words as unrecalled. In Experiment 3 subjects classified words according to (a) whether they had appeared in a study list (input monitoring) and (b) whether they had been previously classified by them on the test list (output monitoring). The older subjects were more deficient in output monitoring than in input monitoring. Their most frequent error was classifying old-output items as new-output items, the error assumed to underlie action repetition. Several interpretations of these results were proposed.

Adult Israeli Community Norms for the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI)

The study aim is to establish Israeli norms for the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). A nationwide representative sample of 510 community respondents (age range 35–65, 51.4% women) completed the Hebrew version of the BSI. The data showed high internal reliabilities for the 9 BSI scales, as well as for their total score, indicated by the General Severity Index (GSI). Higher levels of GSI were found for widowed, divorced, and single respondents than for married respondents. Higher GSI was also found for unemployed and retired men than the self-employed and employees, validating the GSI as a measure of distress. Most importantly, the scores of the Israeli GSI, as well as each of the 9 scales, were higher than those reported in either the U.S. or the British norms. These findings may indicate that Israeli society is experiencing relatively high distress, highlighting the need for establishing BSI norms for each culture.

Threat to Life and Risk-Taking Behaviors: A Review of Empirical Findings and Explanatory Models

This article reviews the literature focusing on the relationship between perceived threat to life and risk-taking behaviors. The review of empirical data, garnered from field studies and controlled experiments, suggests that personal threat to life results in elevated risk-taking behavior. To account for these findings, this review proposes a number of theoretical explanations. These frameworks are grounded in divergent conceptual models: coping with stress, emotion regulation, replenishing of lost resources through self-enhancement, modifications of key parameters of cognitive processing of risky outcomes, and neurocognitive mechanisms. The review concludes with a number of methodological considerations, as well as directions for future work in this promising area of research.

Bereavement of spouse caregivers of cancer patients

This study assessed bereavement aspects among 69 widowed spouses (mean age = 61.1; 36.2% men) of deceased cancer patients. They completed questionnaires related to psychological distress as measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory (L. R. Derogatis, 1975a), psychosocial adjustment as measured by the Psychosocial Adjustment to Illness Scale (L. R. Derogatis, 1975b), grief as measured by the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (T. Faschingbauer, S. Zisook, & R. Devaul, 1987), and communication with spouse (D. H. Olson, D. G. Fournier, & T. M. Druckman, 1982). The findings indicated that women, older people, and past grief were variables that contributed to levels of current distress and grief. The widowed sample as a group showed high levels of distress, suggesting marked vulnerability and the need for planned intervention.

The contextualization of input and output events in memory

SummarySeveral observations from everyday life suggest that people are deficient in monitoring their own actions, often forgetting that they have already performed a planned act, or experiencing doubt as to whether they have done so. These observations appear inconsistent with the many laboratory studies that indicate that people are quite efficient in monitoring their own actions. Towards the resolution of this discrepancy we proposed that: (a) output monitoring in real life often requires the retrieval of a specific, contextually framed episode rather than mere familiarity with an event, and (b) output events are less strongly integrated with their environmental contexts than input events are. Therefore, despite the output advantage that is frequently reported in occurrence memory, context memory should be relatively less efficient for output than for input events. This hypothesis received some support in Experiment 1, in which generated verbal responses were remembered better than read responses, but the difference was significantly smaller for context than for occurrence memory. Experiment 2 employed a task simulating a two-person interaction. While occurrence memory was superior for self-performed tasks to that for other-performed tasks, context memory was in fact inferior for the former tasks. These results were seen to suggest that self-initiated actions tend to undergo a weaker contextual integration than events that originate from a source external to the person.

Sex Differences in Anxiety, Curiosity, and Anger: A Cross-Cultural Study.

The major aim of the present study was to examine sex-group differences in anxiety, curiosity, and anger, as states and traits, among Israeli college students, and to compare the data with norms available for American students. The sample was composed of 223 female and 151 male students who were administered the Hebrew version of Spielbergers State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI/HB). Significant differences in the STPI/HB profile for males and females were observed, with greater sex-group differentiation on the trait scales than on the state scales. Specifically, Israeli females show higher levels of Trait-Anxiety and Trait-Anger than Israeli males, whereas higher levels of State-Curiosity are observed among the latter. Overall, the sex difference profiles are highly comparable for Israeli and American college students. Observed sex-group differences are discussed and explicated.

Experimental Induction and Termination of Acute Psychological Stress in Human Volunteers: Effects on Immunological, Neuroendocrine, Cardiovascular, and Psychological Parameters

The present research investigated the effects of controlled experimental manipulations of stress on biological and psychological reactions. Fifty young adult male volunteers were exposed to a 12-min period of stress induced by the threat of an unavoidable, painful electric shock. A 12-min period without this threat preceded or followed the stress period. Blood was drawn during the 4th and the 12th minute of each period. Anticipatory threat led to significant elevations in the proportions and cytotoxic activity of natural killer (NK) lymphocytes, plasma epinephrine levels, pulse rate, and reported level of tension, and to a reduction in the CD4/CD8 ratios. The no-threat period induced a return to baseline values for epinephrine, pulse rate, and tension, and lower than baseline levels for cytotoxic activity of NK lymphocytes, within a similarly short time span. The findings underline the rapidity with which physiological changes may transpire in the course of a brief and acute period of psychological stress, and the rapidity of their reversal upon relief from the stressor.