Rick E Ingram | PubMed Health

PubMed2005

Cognitive reactivity and vulnerability: empirical evaluation of construct activation and cognitive diatheses in unipolar depression.

Cognitive vulnerability is a central concept in cognitive theories of unipolar depression. This idea suggests that negative cognitive factors emerge during stressful situations, and that this cognitive reactivity is critical for the onset, relapse, and recurrence of depression. The number of empirical investigations that model the diathesis-stress nature of cognitive reactivity has substantially increased within the last decade. This review examines this literature, with a focus on priming and longitudinal designs. Extant research supports the concept of cognitive vulnerability to depression among adults, and support is accruing for the validity of this concept among children. Research that examines direct links between cognitive vulnerability and depression onset, relapse, and recurrence and the attachment origins of cognitive vulnerability is also accruing, although at a slower pace.

Cognition Disorders↗

PubMed2005

Clinical training for the next millennium.

Several issues regarding the matrix model (C.R. Snyder & T.R. Elliott, this issue, pp. 1033-1054) are addressed. First is the role that positive psychology can play in therapy and prevention training. Next, assumptions of the medical model are discussed concerning training students to be competent therapists in an era of managed care. Finally, questions are raised about the response of training programs to the integration of psychology with biobehavioral approaches to human behavior.

Behavior Therapy↗

PubMed2002

The Parent Threat Inventory: development, reliability, and validity.

OBJECTIVE: The goal was to develop a retrospective inventory of parental threatening behavior to facilitate a better understanding of such behavior's role in the etiology of psychological distress. METHOD: Inventory items were developed based on theory and 135 students' responses to a question eliciting examples of threatening parental behavior. Following item development, two additional student samples (n = 200 and n = 603) completed batteries of self-report measures. Responses were used to eliminate unstable or redundant items from the inventory and to examine the inventory's psychometric properties. RESULTS: Factor analysis of the inventory revealed three factors, accounting for 66.2% of variance; this factor structure is compatible with theory, and consistent across maternal behavior scores, paternal behavior scores, and combined maternal and paternal scores. Cronbach's coefficient alphas indicated acceptable internal consistency; Pearson correlation coefficients indicated acceptable 4-week test-retest reliability. Moderate intercorrelations with two retrospective measures of childhood experiences suggested construct validity. Regression analyses demonstrated the ability of the inventory to predict both anxious and depressive symptomatology and lifetime symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorder. Normative data on combined parent scores, maternal scores, and paternal scores are also presented. CONCLUSIONS: Initial psychometric testing of the Parent Threat Inventory (PTI) suggests it is a reliable and valid tool for investigating the developmental antecedents of adult psychological distress. Further research should focus on addressing two limitations: (1) lack of normative and psychometric data on men and women suffering from clinical disorders, and (2) lack of validation by parental reporting.

Adolescent↗