PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Models, Psychological”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 307 records · Page 17Linked to original sources

Towards a psychobiological model of cancer: psychological considerations.

To date, the evidence relating to the role of stress and psychological variables in cancer aetiology and promotion is contradictory. We have attempted to clarify the issues by presenting an hypothetical psychobiological model. Two components of this model are described: (1) a characteristic behaviour pattern (Type C) which may mediate stress reactions and (2) the biological concomitants of this behaviour pattern. The mechanisms of cancer initiation and promotion are described in a companion paper (Pettingale). The main hypothesis advanced by this model is that the psychological factors described may promote cancer development; the model is offered for investigation.

Emotions↗

The matrix model for clinical psychology: a contextual approach.

The four level matrix model proposed by C.R. Snyder and T.R. Elliott (this issue, PP. 1033-1054) is a bold attempt to provide a coherent philosophy and model to guide the training of clinical psychologists. Shortcomings of current training practices, such as a focus on individuals rather than community dynamics and on pathology rather than strengths, are addressed in the proposed model. Difficulties in the implementation of the model are discussed.

Community Mental Health Services↗

Modeling discoordination of cortical neuroactivity: relevance for the executive control of attention in Alzheimer's disease.

Executive deficits due to Alzheimer's disease (AD) seriously compromise patients' ability for concurrent manipulation of information. Understanding such deficits must integrate neurophysiological findings, results from dual-task experiments and successful psychological models of the matching of ascending and descending information to direct attention. We considered attention as dependent on an oscillatory matching between what is looked for and what is perceived. Hence we implemented a model of coordination between oscillatory neuroactivity of interconnected cortical units. We simulated executive deficits evident during dual-tasks as a breakdown of intercortical oscillatory coordination. We investigated the hypothesis that this breakdown is due to functional disconnection between cortical areas, by measuring the effect of interfering tasks in 'control' and 'lesioned' models. 'Control' models successfully reproduced many features of attention. Several neuropathological mechanisms in AD were found likely to cause functional disconnection. Functional disconnection resulted in much greater impairment of coordination during dual rather than single tasks. This could account for key neuropsychological data from the literature. Executive deficits in AD may thus be partly explained by oscillatory discoordination. Oscillatory coordination phenomena are likely to reflect large scale network interactions in the brain that are concerned with integrative function beyond the specific example considered in this study.

Alzheimer Disease↗

Recovery as a psychological construct.

Mental health advocates have proposed recovery as a vision for severe mental illness. The purpose of this study is to examine psychometric characteristics of a measure of the psychological construct. Thirty-five participants in a partial hospitalization program were administered the Recovery Scale and measures of quality of life, social support, self-esteem, consumer empowerment, psychiatric symptoms, needs and resources, global functioning, and verbal intelligence. Results showed the scale to have satisfactory test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Analysis of the concurrent validity of the Recovery Scale showed recovery to be positively associated with self-esteem, empowerment, social support, and quality of life. It was inversely associated with psychiatric symptoms and age. Implications of these findings for a psychological model of recovery are discussed.

Adult↗

Self-reported distress: analog or Ersatz depression?

Vredenburg, Flett, and Krames's (1993) conclusion that self-reported distress in college students is an appropriate analog for diagnosable depression is examined in light of a broader literature. Self-reported distress is conceptually and empirically distinct from depression and depressive symptoms. Distress has stronger correlates with common psychological and social factors. Distress in college students tends to be mild and transient, and most distressed college students are not depressed. Some other features of college life also make generalizations to clinical and community samples of adults problematic. Overall, ubiquitous misunderstandings in the literature have limited recognition of the pitfalls of studying distress as an analog for diagnosable depression. It is undesirable for reasons of science, social responsibility, and the credibility of psychological models of depression.

Depression↗

Attributions and behavior in marital interaction.

To examine whether spouses' attributions for events in their marriage are related to their behavior in interaction, spouses were asked to report their marital quality, to make attributions for marital difficulties, and to engage in problem-solving discussions. Study 1 demonstrated that spouses' maladaptive attributions were related to less effective problem-solving behaviors, particularly among wives. Study 2 showed that spouses' maladaptive attributions were related to higher rates of negative behavior and, for wives, to increased tendencies to reciprocate negative partner behavior. In both studies attributions and behavior tended to be more strongly related for distressed than nondistressed wives. These results support social-psychological models that posit that attributions are related to behavior and models of marriage and close relationships that assume that maladaptive attributions contribute to conflict behavior and relationship dysfunction.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Likert or Rasch? Nothing is more applicable than good theory.

In nursing research many concepts are measured by questionnaires. Respondents are asked to respond to a set of related statements or questions. In unidimensional scaling these statements or questions are indicants of the same concept. Scaling means to assign numbers to respondents, according to their position on the continuum underlying the concept. It is very common to use the summative Likert scaling procedure. The sumscore of the responses to the items is the estimator of the position of the patient on the continuum. The rationale behind this procedure is classical test theory. The main assumption in this theory is that all items are parallel instruments. The Rasch model offers an alternative scaling procedure. With Rasch both respondents and items are scaled on the same continuum. Whereas in Likert scaling all items have the same weight in the summating procedure, in the Rasch model items are differentiated from each other by 'difficulty'. The model holds that the probability of a positive response to an item is dependent on the difference between the difficulty of the item and the value of the person on the latent trait. The rationale behind this procedure is item response theory. In this paper both scaling procedures and their rationales are discussed.

Bias↗

The Experiential Discounting Task is sensitive to cigarette-smoking status and correlates with a measure of delay discounting.

This research compared three different measures of discounting in adult cigarette smokers (n=15; consumed >or=20 cigarettes per day) and nonsmokers (n=15; self-reported never smokers). Participants completed the Experiential Discounting Task (EDT) and question-based measures of delay and probability discounting. The Experiential Discounting Task is a new real-time choice procedure purported to assess delay discounting. The Experiential Discounting Task provides choice consequences (i.e. delays, probabilities, and monetary rewards delivered from a coin dispenser) during choice sessions, whereas the question-based measures are hypothetical (i.e. delays, probabilities, and rewards are not directly experienced). Smokers discounted more than nonsmokers on all three measures. Additionally, the Experiential Discounting Task was significantly correlated with the question-based measure of delay discounting but not probability discounting. These results suggest all three discounting procedures are sensitive to cigarette-smoking status among adult smokers and nonsmokers and that the Experiential Discounting Task may be more comparable to measures of delay discounting than probability discounting.

Adult↗

Bootstrap scree tests: a Monte Carlo simulation and applications to published data.

A non-parametric procedure for Cattell's scree test is proposed, using the bootstrap method. Bentler and Yuan developed parametric tests for the linear trend of scree eigenvalues in principal component analysis. The proposed method is for cases where parametric assumptions are not realistic. We define the break in the scree trend in several ways, based on linear slopes defined with two or three consecutive eigenvalues, or all eigenvalues after the k largest. The resulting scree test statistics are evaluated under various data conditions, among which Gorsuch and Nelson's bootstrap CNG performs best and is reasonably consistent and efficient under leptokurtic and skewed conditions. We also examine the bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap method for these statistics, and the bias correction is found to be too unstable to be useful. Using seven published data sets which Bentler and Yuan analysed, we compare the bootstrap approach to the scree test with the parametric linear trend test.

Humans↗

An SAS/IML procedure for maximum likelihood factor analysis.

Maximum likelihood factor analysis (MLFA), originally introduced by Lawley (1940), is based on a firm mathematical foundation that allows hypothesis testing when normality is assumed with large sample sizes. MLFA has gained in popularity since Jöreskog (1967) implemented an iterative algorithm to estimate parameters. This article presents a concise program using matrix language SAS/IML with the optimization subroutine NLPQN to obtain MLFA solutions. The program is pedagogically useful because it shows the step-by-step computational processes for MLFA, whereas almost all other statistical packages for MLFA are in "black boxes." It is also demonstrated that this approach can be extended to other multivariate methods requiring numerical optimizations, such as the widely used structural equation modeling. Researchers may find this program useful in conducting Monte Carlo simulation studies to investigate the properties of multivariate methods that involve numerical optimizations.

Algorithms↗

[Explanatory models on the utilization of health services: a review and analysis].

The present article begins with a conceptual review of the models which have been developed for the analysis of health services utilization. The models are: epidemiological, psychosocial, sociological and economic. The stages and/or determining factors in the procedure of health services use, are described and a cross study is made with each model by means of a contingency matrix. The starting point for the search of a model that enables (in a complete and unisolated way) the identification of the determinant factors in health service use is the cross analysis of the models under investigation. This cross analysis is also taken as a conceptual framework of reference in the unfolding investigation.

Health Services↗

Quality of life in dementia: more than just cognition. An analysis of associations with quality of life in dementia.

OBJECTIVES: To explore the extent to which commonly used measures of specific outcomes in dementia are an appropriate proxy for quality of life in dementia. METHODS: This was a cross sectional study set in communities in London and Nottingham, comprising 101 people with dementia and their 99 main family caregivers. The main outcome measures were health related quality of life in dementia (measured by the DEMQOL-Proxy), cognition (Mini Mental State Examination), functional impairment (Barthel Index), behavioural and psychological symptoms in dementia (Neuropsychiatric Inventory; NPI), and carer mental health (General Health Questionnaire). RESULTS: On univariate analysis, decreased quality of life was statistically significantly correlated with higher levels of behavioural and psychological disturbance (NPI total score and its agitation, depression, anxiety, disinhibition, and irritability subscales); younger age of the person with dementia; and poorer mental health of the carer. Quality of life was not statistically significantly associated with cognition or carer age. In a multivariate model, psychological and behavioural disturbance and patient age remained statistically significantly associated with quality of life. Carer mental health was no longer statistically significantly associated, and cognition and functional limitation remained statistically insignificant. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that quality of life in dementia is complex, and that simple proxy substitutions of discrete measures such as cognition or function are likely to miss important factors.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Discourse comprehension.

The field of discourse processing has dissected many of the levels of representation that are constructed when individuals read or listen to connected discourse. These levels include the surface code, the propositional textbase, the referential situation model, the communication context, and the discourse genre. Discourse psychologists have developed models that specify how these levels are mentally represented and how they are dynamically built during comprehension. This chapter focuses on the meaning representations that are constructed when adults read written text, such as literary stories, technical expository text, and experimenter-generated "textoids." Recent psychological models have attempted to account for the identification of referents of referring expressions (e.g. which person in the text does she refer to), the connection of explicit text segments, the establishment of local and global coherence, and the encoding of knowledge-based inferences.

Journal Article↗

Using connectionist models to guide assessment of psychological disorder.

Connectionist models are introduced as promising tools for understanding the nature of psychological disorders and guiding their assessment. Specifically, ways in which connectionist models can guide the following aspects of the assessment process are described: understanding what constructs are relevant to assess, designing approaches to assessing these constructs, and understanding individual differences in data from assessments. Two extended examples are given based on the authors' research on cognitive aspects of depression and Alzheimer's disease.

Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted↗

Modeling the relations of attributional style, expectancies, and depression.

Structural modeling techniques were used to assess relations of attributional style, expectancies, and depression. According to an initial theoretical model, attributions are directly related to expectancies, and expectancies are directly related to depression, but attributions are only indirectly related to depression by means of their relation to expectancies. The results of Study 1 indicated that this model was flawed in 2 respects: (a) Attributions for positive and negative events did not form a single latent variable, and (b) attributions for negative events both were indirectly related to depression by means of expectancies and were directly related to depression. Attributions for positive events only were indirectly related to depression by means of expectancies. The model derived in Study 1 was replicated in Study 2. Discussion centers on the interpretation of this modified model and on issues in the measurement of attributional style.

Adult↗

Psychosocial correlates of heterosexual condom use: a meta-analysis.

Despite increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS, there has been no systematic review of correlates of condom use among heterosexual samples. To rectify this, the present study used meta-analysis to quantify the relationship between psychosocial variables and self-reported condom use. Six hundred sixty correlations distributed across 44 variables were derived from 121 empirical studies. Variables were organized in terms of the labeling, commitment, and enactment stages of the AIDS Risk Reduction Model (Catania, Kegeles, & Coates, 1990). Findings showed that demographic, personality, and labeling stage variables had small average correlations with condom use. Commitment and enactment stage variables fared better, with attitudes toward condoms, behavioral intentions, and communication about condoms being the most important predictors. Overall, findings support a social psychological model of condom use highlighting the importance of behavior-specific cognitions, social interaction, and preparatory behaviors rather than knowledge and beliefs about the threat of infection.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗