Philip I. Chow

A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention.

The current meta-analysis investigated the extent to which personality traits changed as a result of intervention, with the primary focus on clinical interventions. We identified 207 studies that had tracked changes in measures of personality traits during interventions, including true experiments and prepost change designs. Interventions were associated with marked changes in personality trait measures over an average time of 24 weeks (e.g., d = .37). Additional analyses showed that the increases replicated across experimental and nonexperimental designs, for nonclinical interventions, and persisted in longitudinal follow-ups of samples beyond the course of intervention. Emotional stability was the primary trait domain showing changes as a result of therapy, followed by extraversion. The type of therapy employed was not strongly associated with the amount of change in personality traits. Patients presenting with anxiety disorders changed the most, and patients being treated for substance use changed the least. The relevance of the results for theory and social policy are discussed.

4-Methylumbelliferyl 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-glucopyranoside, a fluorogenic substrate for N-acetyl-α-D-glucos-aminidase

Abstract Condensation of dimeric 3,4,6-tri- O -acetyl-2-deoxy-2-nitroso-α- d -glucopyranosyl chloride with 4-methylumbelliferone gave crystalline 4-methylumbelliferyl 3,4,6-tri- O -acetyl-2-deoxy-2-oximino-α- d - arabino -hexopyranoside. Acetylation of this adduct, reduction of the resulting crude O -acetyloxime with borane in oxolane, and acetylation gave the 3,4,6-tri- O -acetyl derivative of 4-methylumbelliferyl 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α- d -glucopyranoside ( 1 ). A new sensitive assay of N -acetyl-α- d -glucos-aminidase (E C 3.2.1.50) is made possible by fluorometric measurement of 4-methyl-umbelliferone liberated by enzymic hydrolysis of glycoside 1 . Such assays are illustrated by results obtained with enzyme preparations from pig liver and human-blood serum.

Using Mobile Sensing to Test Clinical Models of Depression, Social Anxiety, State Affect, and Social Isolation Among College Students

Background Research in psychology demonstrates a strong link between state affect (moment-to-moment experiences of positive or negative emotionality) and trait affect (eg, relatively enduring depression and social anxiety symptoms), and a tendency to withdraw (eg, spending time at home). However, existing work is based almost exclusively on static, self-reported descriptions of emotions and behavior that limit generalizability. Despite adoption of increasingly sophisticated research designs and technology (eg, mobile sensing using a global positioning system [GPS]), little research has integrated these seemingly disparate forms of data to improve understanding of how emotional experiences in everyday life are associated with time spent at home, and whether this is influenced by depression or social anxiety symptoms. Objective We hypothesized that more time spent at home would be associated with more negative and less positive affect. Methods We recruited 72 undergraduate participants from a southeast university in the United States. We assessed depression and social anxiety symptoms using self-report instruments at baseline. An app (Sensus) installed on participants’ personal mobile phones repeatedly collected in situ self-reported state affect and GPS location data for up to 2 weeks. Time spent at home was a proxy for social isolation. Results We tested separate models examining the relations between state affect and time spent at home, with levels of depression and social anxiety as moderators. Models differed only in the temporal links examined. One model focused on associations between changes in affect and time spent at home within short, 4-hour time windows. The other 3 models focused on associations between mean-level affect within a day and time spent at home (1) the same day, (2) the following day, and (3) the previous day. Overall, we obtained many of the expected main effects (although there were some null effects), in which higher social anxiety was associated with more time or greater likelihood of spending time at home, and more negative or less positive affect was linked to longer homestay. Interactions indicated that, among individuals higher in social anxiety, higher negative affect and lower positive affect within a day was associated with greater likelihood of spending time at home the following day. Conclusions Results demonstrate the feasibility and utility of modeling the relationship between affect and homestay using fine-grained GPS data. Although these findings must be replicated in a larger study and with clinical samples, they suggest that integrating repeated state affect assessments in situ with continuous GPS data can increase understanding of how actual homestay is related to affect in everyday life and to symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Perceived utility of emotion: the structure and construct validity of the Perceived Affect Utility Scale in a cross-ethnic sample.

This study introduces a new measure of the perceived utility of emotion, which is the degree to which emotions are perceived to be useful in achieving goals. In this study, we administered this new measure, the Perceived Affect Utility Scale (PAUSe), to a sample of 142 European American and 156 East Asian American college students. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for a new, culturally informed parsing of emotion and for perceived utility of emotion to be distinguishable from ideal affect, a related but separate construct. Next, we explored the potential importance of perceived utility of emotion in cultural research. Through path analyses, we found that: (a) culturally relevant variables (e.g., independence) played a mediating role in the link between ethnic group and perceived utility of emotion; and (b) perceived utility of emotion played a mediating role in the link between culturally relevant variables and ideal affect. In particular, perceived utility of self-centered emotions (e.g., pride) was found to be associated with independence and ideal affect of those same emotions. In contrast, perceived utility of other-centered emotions (e.g., appreciation) was found to be associated with interdependence, dutifulness/self-discipline, and ideal affect of those same emotions. Implications for perceived utility of emotion in understanding cultural factors are discussed.

Self-conscious emotions in worry and generalized anxiety disorder

OBJECTIVES Current theories regarding worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) highlight the potential avoidance functions of worry, and it has been suggested that worry functions to avoid self-conscious emotions in particular. Therefore, the present study examined the roles of proneness and aversion to self-conscious emotions in worry and GAD. DESIGN Cross-sectional data from two samples were collected: (1) a sample of 726 undergraduates, and (2) a selected sample of 51 community members, 37.3% of whom met DSM-IV criteria for GAD. Zero-order correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to examine associations of self-conscious emotion constructs to worry and GAD. METHOD Proneness to guilt and shame (propensities for experiencing guilt and shame, respectively) were assessed via the Test of Self-Conscious Affect-3. Aversion to guilt and shame (perceptions of guilt and shame, respectively, as especially painful, undesirable emotions) were assessed using the Guilt Aversion Assessment and Shame-Aversive Reactions Questionnaire, respectively. Worry was assessed using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire, and GAD was assessed via the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders. RESULTS Correlations indicated positive associations between self-conscious emotion constructs and worry/GAD. However, in the selected community sample, regression analyses indicated that only shame aversion was positively associated with worry/GAD, over and above all other self-conscious emotion constructs and depression. CONCLUSIONS Results suggest a prominent role for an intolerance for shame in worry and GAD, which is broadly consistent with psychological models of worry. Future directions for research and clinical implications are discussed. PRACTITIONER POINTS Positive clinical implications: Evidence supporting the theorized importance of self-conscious emotions in worry and GAD. Specifically highlights the need to address intolerance for shame in treatment. Limitations: Small sample size in Study 2. Use of cross-sectional data.

Pleasurable emotions, age, and life satisfaction

The self-reported experiences of five distinct pleasurable emotions (tranquility, contentment, interest, cheerfulness, and vigor), as well as the relation between pleasurable emotions and life satisfaction, were examined in a sample of 173 pairs of younger and older adults (mean ages of 18.9 and 74.4 years, respectively). Older individuals reported significantly higher levels of cheerfulness and contentment than did younger individuals. The relation between pleasurable emotions and life satisfaction was significantly moderated by age. Specifically, life satisfaction was more strongly associated with tranquility among older individuals than among younger individuals (with a similar, albeit weaker, trend for contentment).

II. EUROPEAN AMERICANS IN CENTERVILLE: COMMUNITY AND FAMILY CONTEXTS

In this chapter we describe the community and family contexts that structured young, middle-class, predominantly European American children’s experience of death and informed their understandings. Because there has been almost no empirical inquiry into how children are socialized with respect to death at the community and family levels of context (see Chapter I), the component studies presented in this chapter were guided by several basic questions about the nature of these contexts. In our ethnographic study of the community we asked: Demographically speaking, what kind of community did the children and their families inhabit? And what kinds of beliefs did childrearing experts in the local community hold concerning how death should be handled with young children? In our questionnaire and interview study of parents we asked: What was the nature of children’s exposure to death in the family context, including family rituals and practices surrounding death? And what kinds of beliefs did the parents of the children hold concerning how death should be handled with young children? In addition, in keeping with the literature review in Chapter I, we asked a further question about the beliefs of adults, both childrearing experts and parents: Did the cultural interdiction of death and “protection” of children through avoidance identified in classic early scholarship (Ariès, 1974; Bluebond-Langner, 1978) and disavowed by clinicians as counterproductive for children (e.g., Grollman, 1995; Shapiro, 1994; Webb, 2010) have currency with adults in this Midwestern community in the early 21st century? Our perspective on adults’ beliefs has been strongly influenced by scholarship on parental folk theories or ethnotheories (Bruner, 1990; Harkness & Super, 1996), which focus attention on the commonsense beliefs that sociocultural groups hold about the nature of children, development, and childrearing. Such understandings have been shown to vary systematically within and across

Discovery of Behavioral Markers of Social Anxiety from Smartphone Sensor Data

Better understanding of an individuals smartphone use can help researchers to understand the relationship between behaviors and mental health, and ultimately improve methods for early detection, evaluation, and intervention. This relationship may be particularly significant for individuals with social anxiety, for whom stress from social interactions may arise repeatedly and unexpectedly over the course of a day. For this reason, we present an exploratory study of behavioral markers extracted from smartphone data. We examine fine-grained behaviors before and after smartphone communication events across social anxiety levels. To discover behavioral markers, we model the smartphone as a linear dynamical system with the accelerometer data as output. In a two-week study of 52 college students, we find substantially different behavioral markers prior to outgoing phone calls when comparing individuals with high and low social anxiety.

DEMONS: an integrated framework for examining associations between physiology and self-reported affect tied to depressive symptoms

Depression is a prevalent and debilitating disorder among college students. Advances in mobile technology afford the opportunity to collect heterogeneous data while people are in their natural settings. The aim of the current paper is to propose an integrated framework, DEMONS (DEpression MONitoring Study), for combining passive and active data sources using a wearable sensor and a smartphone application. The ability to combine passive and active longitudinal data with mobile devices allows for better understanding of the temporal relations between self-reported affect and physiological variables (e.g., heart rate variability) linked to depressive symptoms. Adoption of the proposed framework will provide crucial information regarding the development and maintenance of depression in college students, as well as increased opportunities for early detection and intervention.

A glucosamine O,N-disulfate O-sulfohydrolase with a probable role in mammalian catabolism of heparan sulfate

Abstract A trisaccharide of sequence: (glucosamine O,N-disulfate)-(iduronic acid O-sulfate)-(3H-anhydromannitol O-sulfate) was prepared from degradation products of heparin and was used as a substrate to demonstrate, in rat and bovine tissues, a novel O,N-disulfoglucosamine O-sulfatase. The enzyme, purified 720-fold from extracts of beef kidney, has optimal activity at pH 4.1. It is distinct from arylsulfatases A or B, N-acetylglucosamine 6-sulfate sulfatase, and urinary 3,N-disulfoglucosamine 3-O-sulfatase. Data are given on the substrate specificities of the presently described O-sulfatase, of heparin sulfamidase, and of α-L-iduronidase.