Reduction of anxiety symptoms during systemic family therapy results in a concurrent improvement of cognitive performance: a study on people with high anxiety.

Difficulties in various cognitive functions are common observations in people experiencing anxiety. However, limited research has investigated the effects of psychotherapy on abnormal cognitive functioning. This study assessed whether psychotherapy-related reductions of anxiety result in improvements of cognitive functioning as well. Fifty-four participants with high self-reported anxiety, divided into two experimental groups (N = 28 and N = 26), and 27 non-anxious control participants (N = 27) completed a battery of memory tasks and anxiety questionnaires in three consecutive time points. In experimental group 1, participants started systemic family therapy immediately after the first time point, while, in experimental group 2, participants begun the same type of therapy three months later at the second time point. The results showed that, compared to control participants, at the beginning of the experiment, participants in the experimental groups had significantly lower memory performance, along with higher anxiety. Psychotherapy had a beneficial effect on anxiety symptoms and cognitive performance, with significant changes occurring only after intervals of treatments. These results show that psychotherapy is effective not only in reducing anxiety symptoms but on cognitive functioning as well. This improvement might be linked to the release of cognitive resources previously absorbed by worrisome thoughts, facilitated by a heightened protection from interference.

Exploring Attitudes Toward "Sugar Relationships" Across 87 Countries: A Global Perspective on Exchanges of Resources for Sex and Companionship.

The current study investigates attitudes toward one form of sex for resources: the so-called sugar relationships, which often involve exchanges of resources for sex and/or companionship. The present study examined associations among attitudes toward sugar relationships and relevant variables (e.g., sex, sociosexuality, gender inequality, parasitic exposure) in 69,924 participants across 87 countries. Two self-report measures of Acceptance of Sugar Relationships (ASR) developed for younger companion providers (ASR-YWMS) and older resource providers (ASR-OMWS) were translated into 37 languages. We tested cross-sex and cross-linguistic construct equivalence, cross-cultural invariance in sex differences, and the importance of the hypothetical predictors of ASR. Both measures showed adequate psychometric properties in all languages (except the Persian version of ASR-YWMS). Results partially supported our hypotheses and were consistent with previous theoretical considerations and empirical evidence on human mating. For example, at the individual level, sociosexual orientation, traditional gender roles, and pathogen prevalence were significant predictors of both ASR-YWMS and ASR-OMWS. At the country level, gender inequality and parasite stress positively predicted the ASR-YWMS. However, being a woman negatively predicted the ASR-OMWS, but positively predicted the ASR-YWMS. At country-level, ingroup favoritism and parasite stress positively predicted the ASR-OMWS. Furthermore, significant cross-subregional differences were found in the openness to sugar relationships (both ASR-YWMS and ASR-OMWS scores) across subregions. Finally, significant differences were found between ASR-YWMS and ASR-OMWS when compared in each subregion. The ASR-YWMS was significantly higher than the ASR-OMWS in all subregions, except for Northern Africa and Western Asia.

Working memory impairment in relation to the severity of anxiety symptoms.

A working memory (WM) deficit is a reliable observation in people experiencing anxiety. Whether the level of anxiety is related to the severity of WM difficulties is still an open question. In the present experiment, we investigated this aspect by testing the WM performance of people with different levels of anxiety symptoms. Participants were grouped according to self-report anxiety into a control group with low anxiety scores and an experimental group with clinically relevant anxiety. The experimental group was then divided into a high anxiety group and a severe anxiety group. Participants performed a battery of WM tasks tagging different WM processes. The results showed that, compared to participants with low anxiety, participants with clinically relevant anxiety scores had reduced accuracy in all the WM tasks. Interestingly, participants with high and severe anxiety did not present any significant difference. Anxious participants showed difficulties also in cognitive domains other than WM. Hence, these results supply reliable evidence that people with clinically relevant anxiety scores present WM difficulties, irrespective of symptoms severity. The observation that anxiety compromises performance also in cognitive domains other than WM suggests that the deficit might affect fluid cognition.

Working memory span tasks: Group administration and omitting accuracy criterion do not change metric characteristics.

The study examined the psychometric characteristics of three automated working memory span tasks: operational, reading, and symmetry span task, administered in groups of participants. For each task, the metric characteristics of six scoring procedures were evaluated: partial, absolute, partial non-weighted, absolute non-weighted, partial weighted, and absolute weighted scoring. Metric characteristics of all measures were compared across two parallel analyses: with and without application of a typical 85% accuracy criterion on the processing component of the tasks. The study demonstrates that the group administration of span tasks does not compromise their psychometric characteristics. All the tasks had an adequate internal consistency with Cronbach's αs equal to or above .70; the exception being all types of the symmetry span task absolute scores with α values close to .60. Furthermore, all tasks have satisfactory convergent construct validity as well as criterion validity estimated in relation to measures of fluid intelligence. Omitting the 85% accuracy criterion on the processing component of the span tasks did not impair their psychometric properties. Thus, it is recommended that researchers discard this accuracy criterion as a criterion for filtering the results for further statistical analyses.