Biomedical subjects

J Smári

Publications and source records attributed to J Smári.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Social anxiety and depression in adolescents in relation to perceived competence and situational appraisal.

The Social Anxiety and Phobia Inventory for Children (SPAI-C), the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), Harter's (1982) Perceived Competence Scale for Children (PCSC), as well as an inventory of cost and likelihood appraisal of negative social and non-social events, were filled in by 184 adolescents (14-15 years old). It was expected that social anxiety would be specifically related to low perceived competence in the social domain and threat appraisal in the same domain, whereas depression would be related to more general perceived competence deficits. The relationships of social anxiety and depression to perceived competence and appraisal were largely supported. Social anxiety was most strongly related to perceived social competence as well as to both social cost and likelihood appraisals, whereas depression was more generally related to perceived competence, and appraisal of negative events did not improve the prediction of depression any more than the prediction based on perceived competence.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Obsessive-compulsive symptoms, white noise and intrusions of self-relevant negative thoughts in a thought suppression paradigm.

Forty female students participated in an experiment where they were asked to suppress a negative self-relevant thought. Half the group suppressed in a loud white noise condition (90 decibels) whereas the other half suppressed in a noise condition of much lower intensity (50 decibels). The subjects were divided up into two groups on the basis of their scores on the Obsessive Compulsive Thoughts Checklist (Bouvard, Cottraux, Mollard, Arthus, Lachance, Guerin, Sauteraud & Yao, 1997). It was predicted that 1) Subjects scoring high on obsessive-compulsive symptoms would show more intrusive thoughts 2) Loud noise would increase intrusive thoughts, especially for subjects scoring high on obsessive-compulsive symptoms. As expected subjects who scored high on obsessive-compulsive symptoms showed more intrusive thoughts, but contrary to expectations loud noise did not increase intrusive thoughts. In fact obsessive-compulsive symptoms were related to more intrusions in the condition of noise of less intensity but not in the condition of loud noise. Implications are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity symptoms in Icelandic schoolchildren: assessment with the Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Rating Scale-IV.

Four hundred and twenty-seven normal Icelandic children, six and eight years of age, were rated by their parents and three hundred and sixteen children by their teachers with the Teacher and Parent versions of the Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Rating Scale-IV (AD/HDRS-IV). For two hundred and sixty-five of the children both parent and teacher ratings were obtained. The factor structures of the AD/HDRS-IV for parents and teachers were in line with theoretical expectations. A Hyperactivity-Impulsivity factor and an Inattention factor were thus well supported. The subscale reliabilities were high. Boys scored higher than girls on all measures and there was a decrease of symptoms with age for boys, as expected. There was evidence of convergent validity for all scales, but discriminant validity of the AD/HDRS-IV subscales is less certain. Generally the instruments seem promising for further research. Some differences are noted in comparison with earlier studies. Thus scores obtained in this study were somewhat lower than those found in American studies, especially for teachers. Also the prevalence of ADHD based on rating scales was lower than in comparable previous studies. The similarity in symptom structure between this and previous studies is emphasized, but the possible role of cultural homogeneity in explaining different results with regard to teachers' ratings of symptoms is suggested.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗

PubMed1997

Unemployment, coping and psychological distress.

This study addressed the role of coping style in anxiety and depression of unemployed people. Two-hundred thirty-three people checking in at unemployment services participated. They filled in Carver, Scheier and Weintraub's (1989) coping measure (COPE), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HAD), gave information as to age, duration of unemployment and their appraisal of their situation. Four secondary dimensions of COPE were used in data analyses. Multiple regression analyses were undertaken with anxiety/depression as dependent and the coping variables as independent variables, with background/appraisal variables entered first. Coping variables added to the prediction of anxiety and depression over and above background/appraisal variables. For women Focus on Emotion as well as Avoidance was related to higher anxiety/depression scores (p < 0.01), whereas Reappraisal was related to lower anxiety/depression (p < 0.05). For men only Avoidance was related to anxiety/depression (p < 0.01). More Avoidance co-occurred with higher levels of anxiety as well as depression. The results are discussed with respect to possible intervention.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1994

Thought suppression and obsession-compulsion.

It was argued that obsession-compulsion might affect the consequences of thought suppression. A group of 35 female students who were first submitted to thought suppression and then to an expression instruction were compared with a group of 38 female students submitted twice to an expression instruction. The emotional character of a target story read by subjects was systematically varied between subjects, and obsession-compulsion was included as a third between-subjects factors. No evidence of rebound or of initial enhancement was found when reported story-related thoughts were compared across instructional conditions. There was an interaction between obsession-compulsion and initial instruction on attempts to avoid target thoughts during the first period. Contrary to expectations obsession-compulsion was related to fewer attempts at suppression in the suppression and more in the expression conditions. Similarly, there was a trend for obsession-compulsion to be related to more frequent target thoughts in the expression and less in the suppression conditions. These findings are discussed in relation to the role of perceived responsibility in obsession-compulsion for thought as a determinant of thought processes of obsessive-compulsive people.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Private self-consciousness: does it influence convergent and discriminant validity of self-reported anxiety and depression?

A continuing problem in measurement of anxiety and depression with self-report is lack of discriminant validity. It is argued that private self-consciousness might be expected to be related to both convergent and discriminant validity of self-reported anxiety and depression. Several self-report measures of anxiety and depression were administered to 157 female undergraduates, ages 20 to 36 years, but no evidence was found for a moderating influence of private self-consciousness. The possibility of lack of correspondence between private self-consciousness and self-awareness with regard to attentiveness to internal states is discussed as a possible explanation.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[A study of the psychometric properties of the Icelandic translation of Obsessive Thoughts Checklist (OTC) with confirmatory factor analysis].

The Obsessive Thoughts Checklist (OTC) differs from several other measures of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in its focus on obsessive thoughts instead of compulsive behaviour. The OTC has been used in several studies in France and abroad and support for the discriminant and convergent validity of the instrument has been gathered. The authors of the OTC recently reported 3 underlying factors in this instrument: a perfectionism/verification factor, a contamination factor and a responsibility factor. In an earlier study of the OTC a 2 factor solution was however suggested. It therefore seems important to further elucidate the factorial structure of this instrument using confirmatory factor analysis. In this study data on the Icelandic translation of the OTC from three samples of Icelandic college students were submitted first to an exploratory and then to a confirmatory factor analysis. The total number of subjects was 614 college students, 254 men and 360 women with a mean age of 24.4 (sd = 5.0). The results of the exploratory factor analysis (PCA) submitted to a varimax rotation are presented in table I. The 3 expected factors were reproduced with few cross-loadings. In the confirmatory factor analysis the fit of three models to the data were evaluated: a 1 factor model, the 2 factor model of Bouvard et al. and the 3 factor model of Bouvard et al.. An initial examination of the data led to logarithmic transformation of 18 items to reduce skewness in their distributions. The data was subsequently subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis to compare the three-factor model with the two-factor and one-factor models for the OTC. The factors for the three- and two-factor models were allowed to correlate freely. The data were analysed using the EQS procedure, and the models tested were covariance structure models. Table II presents the goodness of fit indices for all three models. The results show that none of the three models provide an overall appropriate fit for the data. However, the fit indices for the three-factor model were considerably higher than found for the two or one factor models and the RMSEA index for the three-factor model suggested an acceptable fit for that model. Although the three-factor model suggests the best fit of all three models, the fit indices were still unacceptably low. Further examination of the data revealed a pattern of standardized residuals suggesting that this might in part be attributable to three items from the responsibility factor (items 26, 19 and 15) not being well specified within the model. When the residuals for these items were allowed to correlate, the fit of the model was substantially improved (CFI = 0.85; GFI = 0.87; AGFI = 0.85; RMSEA = 0.062). This indicates that a revision of the responsibility scale might be appropriate. Table III provides the means, standard deviations and the alpha coefficients for the 3 subscales of the OTC as well as for the total scale. In one subsample of the study (sample 1, n = 169) the OTC was administered together with the Padua Inventory-Washington State Revision (PI-WSUR) measuring obsessive-compulsive symptoms, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and the Community Epidemiological Scale-Depression (CES-D) measuring depression. In order to investigate the convergent validity and divergent of the OTC its correlation with the PI-WSUR was compared with its correlations with PSWQ and CES-D. These correlations shown in table IV support the convergent and divergent validity of the OTC. In another subsample of the study (sample 2, n = 296) the OTC was administered together with the Maudsley Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (MOCI). For samples 1 and 2, zero order and partial correlations were calculated between the subscales of the OTC and the subscales of the other instruments. As shown in table V the strongest correlations between the checking/perfectionism and the contamination subscales of the OTC were with corresponding subscales of the PI-WSUR and the MOCI. It is concluded that the factorial, the convergent and the divergent validities of the Icelandic translation of the OTC are supported in a student population even though the somewhat suboptimal fit of the three-factor model may indicate that a revision of the responsibility factor might be in order. This should however be further studied in a clinical population.

Adult↗