Browsing by discipline "Psychology"

Objectives: High social well-being is associated with health, happiness and psychological well-being, as low is associated with the risk of depression and anxiety problems. There is a lack of research examining factors connected to the experience of social well-being on the individual level. The associations of personality traits with social well-being have been studied with partly inconsistent results. In turn, social support is associated with psychological well-being and happiness, so it can also be assumed to be related to social well-being, although there is hardly any research about it. The interactions between personality traits and social support with happiness and psychological well-being have been studied only to some extent. However, there is no research concerning the interaction between social support and personality traits with social well-being. The aim of this study is to examine whether social support is associated with personality traits and social well-being and to do personality traits moderate the association between social support and social well-being. Methods: The sample consisted of 3584 men and women, who participated in the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife in the United States. Social support was assessed with five questions about the frequency of contact with family and friends and the perceived emotional support from them. Personality traits were assessed with The Midlife Development Inventory and social well-being with the short version of the Social Well-Being scale. The associations between social support and personality traits with social well-being were examined using regression analysis. Results and conclusions: Both high perceived emotional support from family and friends and high contact frequency with them were associated with high social well-being. High extraversion, agreeableness and consciousness were associated with both high perceived emotional support from family and friends and high contact frequency with them. Low neuroticism and high openness to experience were in turn associated with high contact frequency with family and friends and perceived emotional support from friends. Extraversion, neuroticism and consciousness moderated some associations between social support factors and social well-being. These results support the connection of social support with personality traits and social well-being and suggest that at least some personality traits have a moderator effect on the association between social support and social well-being. In addition, the results strengthen the conception of the significance of social support emphasizing the importance of one's social network and the emotional support perceived from it to social well-being.

Goals: The goal of this study was to find out how social support from different sources (family, friends and significant other) is connected with depressive symptoms among adolescents and young adults. It was also investigated whether the significance of different sources of support changes as the adolescents mature. Depression is one of the most common mental health disorder in the world. Its incidence rises sharply after puberty and, if left untreated, it can have serious consequences for the wellbeing, health and development of adolescents. A number of previous studies have shown that social support is inversely connected with depressive symptoms in all ages and social contexts. Most studies of social support have used assessment instruments measuring perceived social support, which is an individual's cognitive appraisals of the availability of support in times of need. Social support can enhance mental health by buffering the negative effects of stressful life events or by having direct positive effects on well-being. According to Bronfenbrenner's ecological system's theory, the development of adolescents was examined in the context of their changing social networks. Adolescents usually receive support from multiple sources. Most of them maintain good relationships with their parents across the young age. However, when adolescents become more independent from their parents, relationships with friends and significant others usually become closer and more important. Methods: The data was from the national Young Finns Study psychology part conducted in 1992 and 1997. In 1992, there were 2330 participants who were 15-30 years old. Thus, in 1997 the participants were 20-35 years old. There were 1678 participants who answered questionnaires both in 1992 and in 1997. The data was analyzed using one-way variance analysis and linear regression. Results and conclusions: The participants perceived quite a lot of social support. The youngest group (15-18 years old) received less support from friends and significant others than their older counterparts. However, the level of family support was equal in all age groups. Support from both family and friends was inversely connected with depressive symptoms: the more the participant received social support, the fewer depressive symptoms she/he had. However, support from the significant other was not connected with depressive symptoms. The connection between social support from different sources and depressive symptoms was similar across different age groups. In five years follow-up, social support was only slightly connected with depressive symptoms. The connection was stronger in women than in men, but the differences were small. In order to tackle depression, it is important for adolescents to receive enough support from their families and also have positive peer relations in addition to the family social environment

Objectives. Bilingualism influences brain development, causing both functional and structural changes in the brain. It has been suggested recently that learning and speaking a second language might also cause changes in terms of structural connectivity, i.e., in how distant brain regions are connected to each other via structural white matter tracts. These changes have been found between monolinguals and bilinguals, but it has been unclear how these changes develop as a function of age of acquisition of a second language. Learning two languages simultaneously from birth (early bilinguals) has been proposed to have a different impact on brain development than learning a new language sequentially, for example, at school (late bilinguals). Although structural changes between early and late bilinguals have been studied to some extent, studies on structural connectivity between early and late bilinguals are lacking. Therefore the aim of this thesis was to examine whether early and late bilinguals differ in structural connectivity of the brain. Methods. 15 early bilinguals (Finnish-Swedish) and 15 late bilinguals (Finnish-English) participated in the study. Structural connectivity differences between groups were investigated using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) based structural connectivity analysis. Four connectivity matrices were used: the density weight, tract volume, number of tracts, and fractional anisotropy. Analysis was performed in both directions (early bilingual > late bilinguals and early bilinguals < late bilinguals) to identify possible brain networks showing a statistically significant between-group difference in structural connectivity. Results and conclusions. A single subnetwork was identified with significantly increased connectivity strength in the early bilingual group compared to the late bilinguals. The network comprised of 4 connections between 5 regions in the right hemisphere. This subnetwork is parallel with the right inferior occipitofrontal fasciculus (IFOF) tract, which has been associated with semantic processing. The results are in line with previous findings and support more bilateral language processing in early bilinguals. Overall the results emphasize the importance of the age of acquisition of a second language.

Objectives: Personnel assessments have been shown to have predictive validity when used in recruitment. However, the results of these studies vary and personnel assessment businesses have faced criticism, some of which concerns the methods they use. It is highly important for companies in this field of business, like Psycon Oy, to show that they can predict work performance. The aim of this study was to investigate, how well Psycon Oy predicted the work performance of candidates recruited by Metsä Group. This study also looked at the psychological employee characteristics associated with better work performance at Metsä Group. Methods: This study is a part of a follow-up survey in which Psycon Oy and Metsä Group investigated the work performance, job satisfaction etc. of employees recruited in 2015 and 2016. Data was collected from the employees and their supervisors and the study also included the personnel assessment results of the employees. Those who had been employed for less than six month were left outside from this study. The predictive validity of personnel assessments was examined by comparing the personnel assessment results to work performance evaluated by supervisors. Contrasts in psychological employee characteristics, measured in personnel assessment, were also investigated between those employees whose work performance was strongest and those employees whose performance was weakest. Results and conclusions: The results showed that personnel assessments by Psycon Oy did have predictive validity in work performance evaluated by supervisors and that the stronger work performance was linked to better mathematical reasoning, stronger resilience to stress and more ambitious personality. These results support earlier research by showing that personnel assessments can predict work performance and therefore generate real value for the businesses using personnel assessment in their recruitments. What was not expected, were the employee characteristics associated with better work performance. This result emphasizes the importance of thorough job analysis and consideration of contextuality in personnel assessment.

Goals Intelligence and temperament are two essential concepts in the study of interpersonal psychological variation. The connections between these two domains of variation have, however, been the subject of only limited research. With the exception of a well-replicated association between intelligence and effortful control, a trait comprising attention, focus, restraint, and goal-oriented behavior, results have been highly varied. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between intelligence and temperament at ages 8 to 12 and whether temperament is associated with cognitive development during the years in question. Methods This study utilizes data collected as part of the Glaku longitudinal research project, on 468 child-parent pairs. The parents filled in questionnaires concerning their child's temperament at ages 8 and 12, and the children were concurrently administered four subtests of the WISC-III, two of which represented verbal and two nonverbal cognitive ability. At each age, three higher-order temperament traits and their constituent lower-order dimensions were estimated from the questionnaire data. The associations between these intelligence and temperament measures were subjected to a series of linear regression analyses. Results and Conclusions As predicted from prior research, effortful control is strongly associated with intelligence at ages 8 and 12. In addition, higher effortful control at age 8 is associated with greater improvement in vocabulary from age 8 to age 12. Of the other temperament traits assessed, shyness is associated with poorer verbal performance at age 12, and a tendency to negative emotionality is associated with better cognitive performance at age 12. The latter result is surprising in the light of prior research.

Objectives: The present study tests the hypothesis of the association of an asphyxic insult, as defined by a low perinatal Apgar score to cognitive performance on adulthood, which has not been the objective in previous studies. The study questions are whether the low Apgar score without other symptoms predisposes one to a lower educational attainment, lower speech production capabilities and other cognitive impairments in adulthood. Based on previous studies conducted on younger individuals, the hypotheses were that individuals with a low Apgar score 1) have lower educational attainment and 2) perform worse on tasks that stress speech production than controls. Additionally, it was analyzed whether the individuals with a low Apgar score have lower 3) general intelligence, 4) verbal intelligence, 5) perceptual organization, 6) attentional skills and executive functions and 7) memory functions than controls. Methods: The participants were selected from a birth cohort of 22359 deliveries during 1971–1974 that had been followed-up until the latest measurements in 2014–2016, when the participants were aged 40–45 years of age. Asphyxia group consisted of participants with an Apgar score below 7 at least two times at 1, 5, and 15 minutes after delivery without other perinatal risk conditions (N = 80). Control group consisted of participants without any perinatal risk conditions (N = 83). It was analyzed whether the asphyxia group had an increased risk for attaining maximally a secondary level education. Measures of cognition were conducted with standardized neuropsychological tests. Childhood maladaptive living environment was included in the analyses as a covariate. Logistic regression was used in the analyses of educational attainment. In the neuropsychological tests, t-tests were conducted for the unadjusted analyses and analyses of covariance for the adjusted analyses with the covariate. Results and conclusions: The individuals who had suffered asphyxia had higher likelihood to remain in the secondary level education. They performed worse on reading speed, semantic verbal fluency, semantic abstract reasoning and on a task of processing and psychomotor speed. After adjustment for the childhood living environment, their general intelligence was also lower than controls. It was confirmed that the consequences of perinatal asphyxia extend to adulthood. Based on the results, it was assumed that the temporal cortex and basal ganglia are especially sensitive to asphyxic insults. It is suggested that the individuals, who have suffered from perinatal asphyxia, will be followed-up at the onset of their studies and provided with environmental support to avoid academic underachievement.

Executive functioning is a general concept covering a multitude of different cognitive functions, e.g. direction and upkeep of attention, working memory, self-observation and -inhibition, emotional control and goal-directed behavior. Specific aspects of executive functioning such as switching between schemas, inhibition and task management can be defined as flexible cognition, and they have been studied extensively with so called task switching tasks. Switching between schemas or task-sets can be seen in task switching tasks as a task switching cost. This study focuses on measuring the performance and event-related potentials (ERP) of subjects of working age during task switching situations. Of special interest were the effects of musical training on the quality of flexible cognition, the training presumably lowering the cost of switching between tasks. Previous research shows that musical training can facilitate positive physiologically based development of cognition and alleviate age-related natural deficits in cognition. However, there is not much research on this subject concerning the working age-group. The data consists of 28 healthy, working subjects of 40–66 years. Out of the 28 subjects, adequate ERP-data was collected from 20 subjects. The subjects were recruited from different groups of hobby and leisure and were divided into musical or control group according to their experience in musical training. The design of the task switching task experiment followed the example of Leinikka et al. (2014). Reaction times and ERPs were measured from the subjects during a short, 15-minutes task switching task. Both the behavioral and ERP-data were analyzed statistically using a repeated measures variance analysis. A clear task switching cost was observed in behavioral data and a rise in amplitude in ERP-data reflecting the behavioral task switching cost. No differences between the musical and control groups were observed. However, a small but statistically significant difference in task switching cost was observed between sexes in the behavioral data. The task switching cost is clearly a robust phenomenon that can be observed both in behavioral and in brain-based measures. According to this data, it seems that the performance in task switching task is not influenced by musical training. These results can be due to the limitations of the influence of musical training on flexible cognition, the nature of the current experimental design, or the demographics of the current sample. As for the differences in performance between sexes, no clear interpretation is available.

Objective: According to previous studies mood can affect several higher cognitive skills. Positive mood helps performing in several cognitive processes. However, implicit mechanisms of learning have not yet been studied. The current study examined effects of positive and negative mood on neural mechanisms of auditory learning. Event-related potentials (ERPs), especially mismatch negativity (MMN), were recorded in both mood states. MMNs were expected to be more negative in positive mood state which would reflect better learning of auditory similarities in positive mood state. Methods: Positive and negative mood was induced in a counterbalances order to all subjects with self-chosen music and congruent Velten-sentences. Induced mood was measured using POMS-A-questionnaire. Subjects were instructed to direct their attention to a silent movie while musical stream was played through earphones. Responses on deviants appearing on the musical stream were recorded. Subjects were divided into two groups. One group started with positive mood induction followed by negative mood induction and the other group did vice versa. Induced mood was mild and only lasted for a short period of time. Experiment ended up with positive mood induction for both groups. Differences in ERPs between positive and negative mood was analyzed with repeated-measures ANOVA. Results and conclusions: There was a significant difference in ERPs between positive and negative mood. Especially the ERPs for deviants were more negative in the negative mood than in the positive mood in the posterior medial parts of the scalp. Hence, mood affected processing of deviant tones. This refers to effect of mood on learning of similarities in auditory sequencies.

Objectives An unbeliever is someone who doesn’t believe in God or gods. There are a lot of unbelievers in the World, especially in Europe. However, the scientific understanding of unbelief is limited. There is little research on different kinds of unbelievers. This study began to explore ritual atheists. Ritual atheists are unbelievers who find some religious rituals meaningful in their lives. The study explored conservative and liberal attitudes of unbelievers, ritual atheists and religious people. It was hypothesized that unbelievers are more liberal than ritual atheists and ritual atheists are more liberal than religious people. Methods The participants were from the 2008 EVS (European Values Study) data, which was collected from 45 different European countries. New variables were computed from the original items, and they represented attitudes concerning morals, family life, tolerance, immigrants and requirements of national identity. Most of the variables were computed by arithmetic means or by using factor analysis. The data was analyzed by multivariate and univariate analysis of variance, by t tests and by discriminant analysis. Results and conclusions With most of the attitudes, unbelievers were more liberal than ritual atheists who, for their part, were more liberal than religious people. This study provided entirely new information about the attitudes of ritual atheists. The results support the assumption that ritual atheism is a unique form of unbelief: a ritual atheist adopts some of the religious influences of the culture, without being religious.

Object. Stalking can cause many psychological symptoms and social disadvantage. Abroad the criminal justice response to stalking varies from fine to a prison sentence. Besides the law, also perceptions of stalking can affect sentencing. Stalking was criminalized in Finland in the beginning of 2014, but there have only been a few studies regarding the case law of stalking and the factors affecting compensation. The aims of this study were to clarify the factors affecting the psychological consequences and the compensations of stalking, to examine the differences in convictions and sentencing in relation to demographic features of the defendant and to predict stalking convictions. Methods. Altogether we collected 246 verdicts of stalking cases from district courts in Finland. We analyzed demographic features of and the relationship between the defendant and the complainant, the psychological consequences of stalking and taken countermeasures, the longitude and ways of stalking and the convictions and compensations. The comparisons in compensations, convictions and sentencing were analyzed using t-test and chi square test. Logistic regression was used to examine the factors affecting psychological consequences and the sentencing of stalking. Results and conclusions. In Finland, the sentencing of stalking is based on the features of stalking, and the extra-legal factors did not affect the sentencing nor the convictions. The psychological symptoms caused by stalking affected the compensations, but the countermeasures did not. In the future it would be important to study the perceptions of stalking in policemen and prosecutors because the perceptional biases may affect whether the cases proceed to court. Also, by increasing the knowledge about stalking and its’ consequences one could ensure the sensitive encountering of the victim and the advising of the right kind to stop the stalking and documenting it for criminal investigation and for court.