Browsing by discipline "Psykologi"

Aims. Previously psychopathy has been regarded as a homogenous and categorical personality disorder that cannot be treated. However, recent findings have suggested that psychopathy may be both a heterogenous and dimensional phenomenon. Several studies have found at least two subtypes, out of which primary and secondary psychopathy are the most prevalent. These two subtypes seem to manifest on their own, partly overlapping dimensions. The aim of this review was to evaluate the reliability of the evidence on heterogeneity of psychopathy and the model of two different subtypes, the core traits of psychopathy, and the differences in traits and etiology between the subtypes. Methods. The review is based on literature found from the Google Scholar database by searching for the term ”psychopathy” in connection with the words ”subtypes”, ”primary”, ” secondary”, ”heterogeneity”, ”variants” and ”treatment”. Conclusions. The evidence on the heterogeneity of psychopathy and the model of two different subtypes is strong. The reviewed studies suggest that callousness and lack of empathy are the core traits of psychopathy. Additional core traits of the primary subtype were low negative affect, high positive affect, few internalizing symptoms, higher control and high trait boldness and fearlessness. The distinctive traits of the secondary subtype were high negative affect, low positive affect, high impulsivity, lack of self-control, high internalizing symptoms and neuroticism. As both subtypes seem to have very distinct traits, the treatability of psychopathy may depend on the subtype which should be taken into consideration when developing and researching treatment methods. Research on psychopathy has mostly been conducted on samples of Western white men and therefore it is uncertain if psychopathy manifests in a similar way in different populations. Hence psychopathy and its subtypes require more research on differing populations.

Purpose. In today’s society we have a lot of pressure on us and have fast-paced lifestyles. In this hectic goal-oriented life, handicrafts, representing slow living, have gained popularity and attained media attention. However, handicrafts are not acknowledged in scientific fields as well as music and visual arts. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between handicrafts and well-being, as well as how handicrafts have been implemented in rehabilitation or therapy of clinical groups comprising different mental health disorders and progressive memory disorders. Methods. The data for this thesis were collected from Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed. The following keywords were used: knitting, handicrafts, handcrafts, well-being, wellbeing, psycholog*, therapy, stress and anxiety. The Finnish keywords käsityö, psyykkinen hyvinvointi and terapia were also used. Results and conclusions. Since most of the studies in the field are descriptive, we cannot talk about causality but only correlation. Nevertheless, it has been concluded that the handcrafters report handicrafts having many positive effects on their well-being. In addition to the direct mental health benefits, handicrafts seem to have indirect effects on well-being through different kind of cognitive and social phenomena. When it comes to different clinical samples, positive correlation between handicrafts and well-being has also been detected. These results support the hypothesis that handicrafts may have therapeutic effects. Based on the studies conducted so far, it seems justified to use handicrafts in therapy or as a part of therapy or self-care. However, more experimental studies are needed to be able to tell how we can use handicrafts more effectively and for whom it is most suitable.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been associated with increased criminality in both clinical and population-based studies. However, the details of and the mechanisms behind ADHD’s connection to increased criminality are not well-known yet. This is understandable considering the complex nature of the association between ADHD and criminality. In the first chapter of this paper the role of Conduct Disorder in the association between ADHD and criminality will be reviewed. Then, the connection of the two symptom dimensions of ADHD (attention-deficit and hyperactivity-impulsivity) to the association between ADHD and criminality will be discussed. In general, ADHD with comorbid Conduct Disorder has been linked to more severe and frequent delinquency compared to uncomplicated ADHD-diagnosis. Children with ADHD have an increased risk of Conduct Disorder compared to the general population. Especially hyperactivity-impulsivity has been connected to the occurrence of comorbid Conduct Disorder. ADHD’s association with Conduct Disorder has been explained with the overlap of the two disorders as well as causally with the symptoms of ADHD possibly predisposing to Conduct Disorder. Attempts to control the effects of comorbid Conduct Disorder has lead to different results regarding the independent association between ADHD and criminality. After controlling for comorbid mental disorders the symptoms of ADHD have been suggested to predispose individuals to less serious and specific types of crimes. The associations of hyperactivity-impulsivity and attentional problems with criminality have also been studied separately. In most studies hyperactivity-impulsivity has been more strongly associated with criminality than attention-deficits. Research regarding the relation of Conduct Disorder and the symptom dimensions of ADHD with the association between ADHD and criminality are partly conflicting. Researching the connection between ADHD and criminality further would be important to be able to settle these conflicts. It would also give psychologists better tools to help individuals with ADHD who could be prone to committing criminal acts.

Psychosomatic symptoms cause psychological and physiological distress for many individuals. They weaken person’s ability to take part in social interactions and act as a part of their society. Usually somatic symptom disorders are treated by primary care physician, but there is no specific cure for them. Trustworthy and stable relationship between doctor and patient is an important factor of the treatment. People who suffer from psychosomatic symptoms pay great attention to their bodily messages, and this often cause them feelings of distress. The aim of this thesis was to study, what kind of effects has been found in using body oriented interventions in treatment of somatic symptom disorders. Included interventions were mindfullness-, yoga-, and relaxation based interventions, and body awareness psychotherapy. According to the research data available, it seems that body oriented interventions could reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, and improve the overall quality of life, for those who suffer from somatic symptom disorders. However, more studies are needed, before certain conclusions can be made.

The purpose of this review was to examine the association between language skills and emotion regulation in preschool children. The association has been shown with several different methods, three of which were reviewed here. First, studies have shown that difficulties and delays in language development often co-occur with emotional difficulties and conduct disorders. Second, inner speech can be used in guiding one's thoughts and actions and third, conversation-based interventions can affect emotional competence including regulation skills. In addition, it was examined which aspects of language are most significant in regard to emotion regulation and it was also considered what might be the mediating mechanisms between language and emotion regulation in light of current research. Children with specific language impairment were twice as likely to have emotional difficulties relative to typically developed children and difficulties were more frequently clinical or disorder level. Children with better language skills used more internalized private speech. Using more internalized private speech was associated with less anger expression and made it possible for those children to use better regulation strategies. Conversation-based interventions had an effect to children's emotional competence including regulation skills and prosocial behaviour. Studies showed that vocabulary size was a significant predictor of regulation skills.

Pain is a common symptom among cancer patients, and its occurrence may result from cancer itself, cancer treatment and/or other non-cancer health problems. Cancer pain is usually treated medically. After the development of the biopsychosocial model of pain it was understood that psychological factors affect the pain experience. Nonpharmacologic interventions are generally the basis of pain management, and psychological interventions significantly contributes to the management of cancer pain. This review examines evidence for psychological interventions that can be used to reveal adults’ cancer pain. The literature search was conducted in one database, PubMed, and the search was limited to years 2010-2019. The search was made using two keyword combinations: 1) psycholog* and oncological pain, and 2) psychological intervention and oncological pain. Articles were chosen by reviewing titles and abstracts. In addition, reference lists of the chosen articles were reviewed to identify additional relevant articles. Articles addressing examination or operation related pain were excluded as well as studies that included children or adolescents. Psychological interventions used in cancer pain management can be divided into skill based and education-based interventions. In skill-based interventions the patient learns concrete coping strategies. In addition, they aim at changing the way the patient interprets pain. In education based interventions the patient acquires information about the disease, analgesic medications, and effective communication regarding pain with health care providers. According to meta-analyses psychological interventions were effective in managing cancer pain. They affected both pain severity and inconvenience. Studies focusing only one intervention type showed partially similar results. Mindfulness-based programs were the most promising of the skill-based interventions. The evidence for hypnosis and yoga was weak, so more research is needed before any clear conclusions can be made. All education-based interventions were effective in managing cancer pain. Thus, pain education seems to be beneficial regardless the way it is implemented.

Chronic pain is a disabling condition with remarkable economic costs and great resistance to treatment. Therefore, it is important to find new methods to recognize patients with high risk of developing chronic pain and to prevent the transition to chronicity. The purpose of this review is to present and evaluate the evidence of cognitive–behavioral interventions as preventive care for chronic pain. The fear–avoidance model of pain suggests that a minority of people with acute pain develop a persistent disability through avoidance behavior thriven by cognitive factors such as pain catastrophizing, fear of movement and false fear–avoidance beliefs. Indeed, psychological factors have been shown to predict the development of chronic pain even better than biomedical factors. Cognitive–behavioral interventions targeting these risk factors appear to be useful in preventing chronic pain and especially in pain-related work absenteeism. It is however unclear whether the positive effects of cognitive–behavioral interventions are mediated through the change in psychological risk factors or rather some other factors, such as therapeutic rapport or peer support that positively affect commitment to treatment. It is important to develop standardized treatment protocols in the future. The effect of intervention timing and the level of psychological risk on the preventive efficacy of cognitive–behavioral interventions should also be further studied. Developing more accurate screening tools to recognize patients with elevated risk of chronic pain in primary care is also crucial for efficient preventive care of pain conditions. In addition to work absenteeism, more attention should be paid to the effects of these early interventions on pain symptoms and patients’ quality of life.

Abstract Objective. Cognitive flexibility is defined as the ability to properly adjust one’s behaviour to changing environmental demands. Research shows that in many psychiatric illnesses this ability is impaired compared to healthy controls. It is also known that the psychopathology of eating disorders includes rigid ways of functioning that resemble obsessive-compulsive behaviours. Furthermore, eating disorders have proved difficult to treat with traditional psychotherapy, which is thought to reflect the incapability to change one’s behaviour according to feedback. It has been proposed that eating disorder patients have poor cognitive flexibility, and this manifests in the symptoms and makes these mental illnesses difficult to treat. The purpose of this review is to examine the incidence of problems in cognitive flexibility tasks in eating disorder patients. Other research questions include the neural correlates of these problems, the direction of the causal relationship between cognitive rigidity and eating disorders, and the effectiveness of cognitive remediation therapy in eating disorder treatment. Methods. A search using the term ”eating disorders” in connection with the words ”cognitive flexibility”, ”set shifting”, ”neuropsychology”, ”neural correlates”, ”executive function” and ”cognitive remediation” was made using electronic databases. The databases used were Google Scholar, PubMed, Helka, Cochrane Library and PsychInfo. Results and conclusions. A considerable amount of evidence showed that eating disorder patients have difficulties in cognitive flexibility compared to healthy controls. This has been proposed as an explanation for the poor outcomes of eating disorder treatments. The neural functions of eating disorder patients also differed from those of healthy controls while performing cognitive flexibility tasks, which is thought to reflect the problem in cognitive processing and explain the lower than average scores. There are different theories regarding the direction of the causation between cognitive rigidity and the development of eating disorder pathology: some researchers think that problems in cognitive flexibility cause eating disorders, while others argue that the malnutrition associated with eating disorders precedes the cognitive deficit. Both theories had empirical support, and it seems that the process might be two-directional. There have been efforts to include cognitive remediation in the treatment of eating disorders in order to ameliorate both the cognitive deficit and the eating disorder symptoms. Research on the topic is still quite limited, but the initial results about combining traditional therapy with cognitive treatment seemed promising.

There are two types of assumed brain related reserves. Brain reserve is associated with structural qualities and cognitive reserve (CR) is associated with brain functioning. Both reserves prevent deterioration of cognitive abilities when brain suffer structural damage due to, for example, memory disorders. CR is defined by brain functioning that differs from what would be predicted from brain structure. This bachelor’s thesis is about measuring CR. Measurement of CR was studied in publications that were published in 2012 and after that. Studies were selected on basis of describing different methods of measuring CR and that had gained lot of attention. CR or brain pathology that CR is related to is not possible to measure directly. Research on CR is still young and measuring methods develop rapidly. In early days of CR research single measurement items that were thought to be best predictors of CR were used and they were called proxies. By the year 2006 most widely used CR proxies were education, profession, mental activities and premorbid intelligence. CR can also be measured with several indicators. Using several indicators has become more common in recent years. There are several ways to use more than one indicator. The right way cannot be defined empirically because they are statistically identical. Recent research have found bilingualism to be proxy of CR. This indicates that bilingualism has effect on CR, which indicates that CR can be modified with interventions for example. It means that studies should use formative measurement model that has CR as latent variable that is estimated with proxies using factor analysis or principal component analysis. It seems that it’s possible to modify CR and larger CR protects against cognitive impairment caused by Alzheimer’s disease. This will probably be incentive to create interventions to risk groups. Most studies about CR have not controlled brain structure, for example brain size which has effect on CR but cannot be modified with interventions. More research where brain reserve is controlled is needed for being able to predict the effect of possible preventions that are being developed.

In this overview answers are looked for three questions: how well do cognitive ability tests predict work performance and do the results generalise to different countries, is there differences in the pre-dictive validity of cognitive ability tests between different jobs, and which is better predictor for work performance, general mental ability or specific cognitive ability tests. Both general mental ability and specific cognitive abilities are good predictors for work performance and results generalise to different countries. There were moderators for the association between gen-eral mental ability and work performance. Job complexity and publishing year of the research were moderators. Publishing year was moderator also for the association between specific cognitive abil-ity tests and work performance. There were no differences in the predictive validity of specific cog-nitive ability tests between different jobs. General mental ability was a better predictor for work per-formance than specific cognitive ability tests. The predictive validity of ability tests has been studied only in western countries so in the future it would be important to study do the result generalise also to different cultures. In addition it would be important to also study more the moderating effect of the year of publication. Is there really such an effect and if there is then it would be important to study why.