The goal dependent automaticity of drinking habits

In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualised as a form of goal-directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal-action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualisation in the context of students’ drinking (alcohol consumption) habits. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where either a goal related to drinking behaviour (socialising) was activated, or an unrelated goal was activated. In addition, participants’ drinking habits were measured. The dependent variable in Experiments 1 and 2 was readiness to drink, operationalised by speed of responding to the action concept “drinking” in a verb verification task. Experiment 3 used uptake of a voucher to measure drinking behaviour. Findings supported the view that when habits are established, simply activating a goal related to the focal behaviour automatically elicits that behaviour. These findings are consistent with a goal-dependent conception of habit. Possibilities for interventions designed to attenuate undesirable habitual behaviours are considered

Mum's the word: A phenomenological exploration of early motherhood

Having a baby and becoming a mother signifies a major transition in a woman’s life.This thesis investigates and gives voice to women’s experiences of early motherhood.van Manen’s phenomenological approach was used as the theoretical framework forthis research. The study aimed to explicate the lived experience of early motherhoodfor a cohort of 13 women having an essentially normal pregnancy.The study was located in a rural municipality in Victoria, Australia. A purposive sampleof adult women was selected as they were experiencing a healthy pregnancy withtheir first child and willing to discuss their experience of early motherhood. Data werecollected from participants using individual sequential audiotaped in-depth interviewsand from personal journals kept by four of the participants. Interviews were held atthree key stages of early motherhood: late pregnancy, and approximately two weeksand eight weeks after giving birth. Most interviews were about an hour in duration andall occurred in participants’ own homes or the homes of extended family. Interviewdata were transcribed verbatim and analysed using van Manen’s phenomenologicalapproach.The findings of the study are presented chronologically around the pregnancy, labourand birth and postnatal periods. For these first time mothers pregnancy resulted in araft of changes to their lives, Women shared rich descriptions of their physical andemotional experience of pregnancy and the themes revealed about women’sexperience of their relationships at this time focussed on their relationships with theirpartners, their unborn baby and their mother. ‘Waiting’ and ‘wondering’ were alsodominant themes in women’s experience of pregnancy. Key themes that emergedfrom women’s descriptions of their labour and birth were the experience of labour,managing labour pain, support to get through labour and birth, and the concertedeffort of second stage. Other themes uncovered included women’s surprise at theamount of blood at delivery and birthing in a technological age. In the postnatal period,the findings concerning women’s experience of early motherhood were groupedaround the themes of living the physical experience of early motherhood, learning tofeed, learning to mother and relationship changes.The findings from this research study contribute new insights into the phenomenon ofearly motherhood and have implications for midwifery and MCH nursing practice.Recommendations from the study are presented in the form of a model that integratesclinical practice, education and research. The overarching recommendation is thatmidwives and MCH nurses develop a framework for care that fosters a supportive,nurturing, ‘holding’ environment for women across pregnancy, the perinatal and earlymotherhood periods. Steps to operationalise these recommendations are detailed

'They've invited me into their world': a focus group with clinicians delivering a behaviour change intervention in a UK contraceptive service.

Although teenage conceptions rates in the United Kingdom (UK) have seen a downward trend recently, it remains imperative that contraceptive services for young people continue to improve. To ensure that evidence-based interventions are sustained in clinical practice, it is useful to assess the experiences of those delivering them. This study explores the experiences of sexual health clinicians who were trained to deliver a one-to-one behaviour change intervention aiming to improve contraceptive use in young women. The intervention was set in a UK NHS contraceptive and sexual health service and involved clinicians' facilitating (within one-to-one consultations) the formation of implementation intentions (or 'if-then' plans) that specified when, where and how young women would use contraception. A focus group was conducted with seven clinicians who had delivered the intervention. A thematic analysis of the focus group revealed three overall themes: (1) How the intervention worked in practice; (2) barriers and benefits to delivering the intervention; and (3) positive changes to individual consultation style and wider 'best practice' within the clinic. Our findings show that, with support, clinical staff would be in favour of incorporating if-then planning as a strategy to help promote contraceptive adherence in young women

Attitudes and preferences towards self-help treatments for depression in comparison to psychotherapy and antidepressant medication

Background: Self-help is an effective treatment for depression. Less is known, however, about how acceptable people find different self-help treatments for depression. Aims: To investigate preferences and attitudes toward different self-help treatments for depression in comparison to psychotherapy and antidepressants. Method:N = 536 people who were not actively seeking treatment for depression were randomly assigned to read about one of five treatment options (bibliotherapy, Internet-based self-help, guided self-help, antidepressants, or psychotherapy) before rating how acceptable they found the treatment. Participants also ranked the treatments in order of preference. Results: Psychotherapy and guided self-help were found to be the most acceptable and preferred treatment options. Antidepressants and bibliotherapy were found to be the least acceptable treatments, with antidepressants rated as the most likely to have side effects. Preference data reflected the above findings – psychotherapy and guided self-help were the most preferred treatment options. Conclusions: The findings highlight differences in attitudes and preferences between guided and unguided self-help interventions; and between self-help interventions and psychotherapy. Future research should focus on understanding why unguided self-help interventions are deemed to be less acceptable than guided self-help interventions for treating depression

Inertial measurement units for clinical movement analysis: reliability and concurrent validity

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and concurrent validity of a commercially available inertial-sensor-based motion capture system, Xsens MVN BIOMECH, during clinically relevant functional activities. A clinician with no prior experience of motion capture technologies and an experienced clinical movement scientist each assessed 26 healthy participants within each of two sessions using a camera-based motion capture system and the MVN BIOMECH system. Participants performed overground walking, squatting, and jumping. Sessions were separated by 4 ± 3 days. Reliability was evaluated using intraclass correlation coefficient and standard error of measurement, and validity was evaluated using the coefficient of multiple correlation and the linear fit method. Day-to-day reliability was generally fair-to-excellent in all three planes for hip, knee, and ankle joint angles in all three tasks. Within-day (between-rater) reliability was fair-to-excellent in all three planes during walking and squatting, and poor-to-high during jumping. Validity was excellent in the sagittal plane for hip, knee, and ankle joint angles in all three tasks and acceptable in frontal and transverse planes in squat and jump activity across joints. Our results suggest that the MVN BIOMECH system can be used by a clinician to quantify lower-limb joint angles in clinically relevant movements

Does self-control improve with practice? Evidence from a 6-week training program

Can self-control be improved through practice? Several studies have found that repeated practice of tasks involving self-control improves performance on other tasks relevant to self-control. However, in many of these studies, improvements after training could be attributable to methodological factors (e.g., passive control conditions). Moreover, the extent to which the effects of training transfer to real-life settings is not yet clear. In the present research, participants (N = 174) completed a 6-week training program of either cognitive or behavioral self-control tasks. We then tested the effects of practice on a range of measures of self-control, including lab-based and real-world tasks. Training was compared to both active and no-contact control conditions. Despite high levels of adherence to the training tasks, there was no effect of training on any measure of self-control. Trained participants did not, for example, show reduced ego depletion effects, become better at overcoming their habits, or report exerting more self-control in everyday life. Moderation analyses found no evidence that training was effective only among particular groups of participants. Bayesian analyses suggested that the data was more consistent with a null effect of training on self-control than with previous estimates of the effect of practice. The implication is that training self-control through repeated practice does not result in generalized improvements in self-control

The neural correlates of emotion regulation by implementation intentions

Several studies have investigated the neural basis of effortful emotion regulation (ER) but the neural basis of automatic ER has been less comprehensively explored. The present study investigated the neural basis of automatic ER supported by ‘implementation intentions’. 40 healthy participants underwent fMRI while viewing emotion-eliciting images and used either a previously-taught effortful ER strategy, in the form of a goal intention (e.g., try to take a detached perspective), or a more automatic ER strategy, in the form of an implementation intention (e.g., “If I see something disgusting, then I will think these are just pixels on the screen!”), to regulate their emotional response. Whereas goal intention ER strategies were associated with activation of brain areas previously reported to be involved in effortful ER (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), ER strategies based on an implementation intention strategy were associated with activation of right inferior frontal gyrus and ventro-parietal cortex, which may reflect the attentional control processes automatically captured by the cue for action contained within the implementation intention. Goal intentions were also associated with less effective modulation of left amygdala, supporting the increased efficacy of ER under implementation intention instructions, which showed coupling of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. The findings support previous behavioural studies in suggesting that forming an implementation intention enables people to enact goal-directed responses with less effort and more efficiency