Clinical Symptoms as a Function of Client Personality in College Students: Incorporating the Five‐Factor Model of Personality

In this study, the relationship between personality characteristics and presenting clinical symptoms of individuals at a college counseling center was examined. Analysis of assessments of personality ( Costa & McCrae, 1992 ) and mental health symptoms ( Farrell & McCullough, 1989 ) suggests that the personality characteristics of individuals presenting for assistance at a college counseling center systematically vary from those of a general college population. Furthermore, differing patterns of client personality characteristics were related to various symptom categories.     

Foop is still floop: A six year follow-up of phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia

A six year follow-up of a previously documented case of developmental phonological dyslexia, is reported. Overal reading and spelling levels have risen significantly, but the qualitative nature of the performance has remained unchanged: impaired non-word reading; morphological and visuo-semantic paralexias; and function word substitutions in text. Rhyming skills also remain impaired. A higher proportion of errors are paralexias and within these a higher proportion are visuo-semantic or morphological. The error pattern of phonological dylexia is thus more pronounced than before. In spelling, only a minority of errors are phonologically plausible. There is no evidence of the mastery of the alphabetic stage of reading or the alphabetic stage of spelling. It is argued that A.H. is reading orthographically not logographically and that current reading models, which require passage through an alphabetic stage before attaining an orthographic stage, do not adequately account for individual variation in the acquisition of literacy skills.This work was supported by a research award from the Wolfson Foundation. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Christine Temple, The Neuropsychology Unit, Radcliffe Infirmary, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HE, United Kingdom.     

A systematic review of drop-out from organized soccer among children and adolescents

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development was used as a framework to systematically review factors associated with drop-out from soccer among children and adolescents. Keyword searches for the population (child or youth or adolescent), sport (soccer or football) and construct of interest (drop-out or attrition or discontinued or quit) identified scholarly peer-reviewed publications from the entire contents of seven databases to 31 December 2013. Publications with participants at any level of organized soccer were eligible for inclusion. The initial search identified 137 studies with 14 ultimately meeting the inclusion criteria, 11 from Europe and 3 from the United States, and 97% (n = 1125,001) of study participants were male. The proportion of children and adolescents who dropped out from one season to the next ranged from 18 to 36%, except for one study of high-level players where the rate of drop-out was 60%. These players felt the time demands of soccer, especially ‘travelling to compete’, were onerous. Prominent person-level factors associated with drop-out were lower perceptions of competence and the lack of fulfilment of basic psychological needs. Contextual factors associated with drop-out were poor relationships with teammates or coaches, lack of enjoyment, lack of opportunity to play, competing time demands, and later birthdate in relation to competitive year. Interactions between the individual and their environment were rarely examined. Future research on drop-out from soccer would benefit from expanding the demographics of those being studied and by concurrently examining interactions between the individual and the environment.     

Effectiveness of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids against microbial pathogens

Microorganisms provide both beneficial and harmful effects to human beings. Beneficial effects come from the symbiotic relationship that exists between humans and microbiota, but then several human illnesses have turned some friendly microbes into opportunistic pathogens, causing several microbial-related diseases. Various efforts have been made to create and utilize antimicrobial agents in the treatment and prevention of these infections, but such efforts have been hampered by the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. Despite extensive studies on drug discovery to alleviate this problem, issues with the toxicity and tolerance of certain compounds and continuous microbial evolution have forced researchers to focus on screening various phytochemical dietary compounds for antimicrobial activity. Linolenic acid and its derivatives (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid) are omega-3 fatty acids that have been studied due to their role in human health, being important for the brain, the eye, the cardiovascular system, and general human growth. However, their utilization as antimicrobial agents has not been widely appreciated, perhaps due to a lack of understanding of antimicrobial mechanisms, toxicity, and route of administration. Therefore, this review focuses on the efficacy, mechanism, and toxicity of omega-3 fatty acids as alternative therapeutic agents for treating and preventing diseases associated with pathogenic microorganisms.     

Modelling innovation and imitation sales of products with multiple technological generations

Majority of consumer durables have multiple technological generations. Each succeeding generation offers some innovative performance enhancements, feature additions etc. distinguishing itself from the past releases. Therefore the consumer's attitude towards each of them can be very different. There is a need to understand consumer psychology and have accurate measure to predict the adoption process of new technology. Mathematical models have proved to be ideal tools to explain the past purchasing-behavior and also for forecasting. This paper focuses on studying the relative changes of diffusion parameters for both first time purchasers and upgraders along with developing a more general sales model for multiple technology generation products. The proposed model explicitly identifies different groups of purchaser viz. first timers and repeaters (upgraders).