Avoidant Responses Research Articles

Dodging a Ball Approaching on a Collision Path: Effects of Eccentricity and Velocity

Animals generally seek to avoid potentially harmful collisions. To perform successful avoidance, actors must correctly perceive the approach of an object and produce an appropriate motor response. Objects can approach from any part of the visual field, but avoidance skills are particularly relevant when threatening approaches occur in peripheral vision. This type of behavior has so far received little attention. Stoffregen and Riccio (1990) found that participants are sensitive to visually simulated impending collision at 0 or 90°. However, motor behavior produced in response to a real object approaching at various angles of eccentricity and at various speeds has not been investigated. In this study, participants were asked to dodge a ball approaching at 0, 20, 40, 60, or 80° of eccentricity. The ball was travelling at a constant speed of 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 m/sec. Results showed that time to contact (TTC) at initiation of the avoidant response was similar for 0 and 20° but increased from 20 to 80°. Angle of approach had no effect on participants' movement velocity. Ball speed had an effect on both variables. TTC decreased and participants' movement velocity increased with eccentricity. No interaction was observed between ball speed and eccentricity. These results show that a successful motor response to impending physical collision is possible across a wide range of approach eccentricities. It appears that the speed of the approach was accurately perceived. The speed of avoidant responses was consistent, suggesting that intensity coupling, that is, a coupling of movement velocity with stimulus speed, was not affected by the eccentricity.

The perceived function of eating for bulimic, subclinical bulimic, and non-eating disordered women

This study investigated the perceived function of eating for women with bulimia nervosa (BN) and subclinical (SC) BN. Although previous studies suggest that, independent of eating, BNs report using food as a way of coping, research has not assessed eating as a coping response in the naturalistic setting. Two hypotheses regarding the perceived function of eating were tested, an avoidant coping and a self-nurturance hypothesis. For 1 week, 20 women with BN, 32 women with subclinical BN, and 28 non-eating disordered women completed food diaries assessing the occurrence and severity of negative events, the use of self-nurturance and avoidance coping, and positive and negative affect before and after eating. Results suggest that women with BN were more likely to report the occurrence of negative events before eating episodes compared to SCs and controls. BNs were also more likely to report the use of food as an avoidance coping mechanism compared to SCs and controls. The affect analyses suggest that eating is associated with an increase in negative emotions for BNs. Taken together, the results suggest that eating for women with BN may be viewed as an avoidant coping response. This attempt by women with BN to cope, however, appears to be maladaptive in that it perpetuates their high level of distress.

Validation of the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version in survivors of bone marrow transplantation.

Life-threatening illness now qualifies as a precipitating stessor for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We examined the validity of the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C; Weathers, Litz, Herman, Juska, & Keane, 1993), a brief 17-item inventory of PTSD-like symptoms, in a sample of 111 adults who had undergone bone marrow transplantation an average of 4.04 years previously. Exploratory factor analysis of the PCL-C identified four distinct patterns of symptom responses: Numbing-Hyperarousal, Dreams-Memories of the Cancer Treatment, General Hyperarousal, Responses to Cancer-Related Reminders and Avoidance-Numbing. Respondents meeting PTSD symptom criteria on the PCL-C had significantly lower physical, role, and social functioning, greater distress and anxiety, and significantly more intrusive and avoidant responses than individuals who did not meet PTSD symptom criteria.

Derivation of a homesickness scale.

A 33-item measure of homesickness (the Homesickness Questionnaire, HQ) was derived from features of grief modified for the circumstance of separation from home. In three samples of year 1 students (N = 264) during their first year at university, total HQ scores were highly correlated with a single-item measure of homesickness used in previous studies, and 28 items showed significant differences between subgroups divided on the basis of the single-item scores. Previous findings that homesick students show more health and psychological symptoms, and cognitive failures, were supported by further comparisons between the two groups, and a meta-analysis of four studies. Factor analysis of the HQ indicated two factors, disliking the university, and attachment to the home, which are consistent with both the separation and strain models of homesickness. Correlations with other variables, and sex differences in the factor scores, further supported the distinction between these two aspects of homesickness. Women showed higher levels of intrusive thinking about the homesickness, but this was mediated by their higher scores on the attachment factor of the HQ. There was no sex difference in avoidant responses to homesickness.

Family enhancement of cognitive style in anxious and aggressive children.

Previous research has shown that anxious adults provide more threat interpretations of ambiguous stimuli than other clinic and nonclinic persons. We were interested in investigating if the same bias occurs in anxious children and how family processes impact on these children's interpretations of ambiguity. Anxious, oppositional, and nonclinical children and their parents were asked separately to interpret and provide plans of action to ambiguous scenarios. Afterwards, each family was asked to discuss two of these situations as a family and for the child to provide a final response. The results showed that anxious and oppositional children were both more likely to interpret ambiguous scenarios in a threatening manner. However, the two clinic groups differed in that the anxious children predominantly chose avoidant solutions whereas the oppositional children chose aggressive solutions. After family discussions, both the anxious children's avoidant plans of action and the oppositional children's aggressive plans increased. Thus, this study provides the first evidence of family enhancement of avoidant and aggressive responses in children. These results support a model of anxiety that emphasizes the development of an anxious cognitive style in the context of anxiety-supporting family processes.

Applying a stress and coping framework to research on mutual help organizations

Few studies of mutual help have been guided by coherent conceptual frameworks. We introduce a stress and coping model that can guide research on self-help groups and contribute to conceptualizing them as normative social groupings. Our model suggests that coping responses, life stressors, and social resources influence the processes by which persons become involved in mutual help organizations and, in turn, are influenced by involvement in mutual help. To provide initial empirical support for the model, we present a longitudinal study of stress and coping and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) affiliation among 439 problem drinkers. Problem drinkers who relied more on avoidant coping responses, had fewer work and partner resources, and had more partner stressors became more intensely involved in AA. The results also suggest that AA involvement affects members' coping responses and increases their friendship resources.

Coping activities in chronic low back pain: relationship with depression

To help clarify the nature of coping activities in chronic pain, this study compared how depressed ( n = 37) and non-depressed ( n = 40) chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients attempted to cope with pain-specific and general non-pain life Stressors, relative to matched healthy control subjects ( n = 40). We hypothesized that depressed mood, rather than pain alone, would account for differences in coping activities between groups. Specifically, we expected that depressed CLBP patients would report a greater proportion of passive and avoidant coping responses and less active problem solving coping attempts than non-depressed patients and controls. Results indicated that depressed CLBP patients reported more passive-avoidant coping activities than did non-depressed CLBP patients and controls, whereas coping responses were similar for non-depressed CLBP patients and controls. Additionally, subjects across groups tended to report more passive-avoidant coping in response to the specific back pain Stressor (i.e., exacerbation of back pain during activity) than to other life Stressors. Finally, the magnitude of reported differences in coping attempts across groups varied as a function of the type of Stressor (i.e., specific back pain Stressor vs. general stressful life events), particularly with regard to a disinclination to seek social support in response to the back pain exacerbation. We conclude that: (1) chronic back pain patients may employ different coping activities when attempting to manage pain exacerbations than when confronting more general life Stressors, and (2) an increased rate of passive-avoidant coping responses (relative to matched healthy controls) is associated with the combination of CLBP and concurrent depressed mood, rather than with CLBP alone. These results suggest that although some patients may selectively employ passive-avoidant coping activities in response to pain exacerbations, an over-reliance on passive-avoidant coping activities is not characteristic of all CLBP patients but is more likely a function of depressed mood.

Pride and Mastery in Children with Autism

The goal of this study was to compare expressions of pride and mastery in samples of preschool autistic, mentally retarded and normal children. A paradigm was used in which children completed developmentally appropriate puzzles, both with and without praise. Results indicated that compared to the other children, as many autistic children smiled upon completion of the task, but many fewer looked up to share their pleasure with the parent or experimenter or drew attention to the task. Moreover, significantly more autistic children showed avoidant responses, particularly in response to praise. These findings are discussed in terms of theoretical issues regarding the development of pride and mastery in children with significant social deficiencies.

Changes in immune and psychological measures as a function of anticipation and reaction to news of HIV-1 antibody status.

We assessed changes in psychological and immunological functioning during 5-week periods preceding and following notification of serostatus among gay males taking the HIV-1 antibody test. Forty-six asymptomatic homosexual men between the ages of 18 and 40 yrs were recruited from a gay men's organization and through advertisements in a local newspaper. Measures of cell-mediated immunity (lymphocyte phenotypic markers, mitogen responsivity, and natural killer cell cytotoxicity) and psychological functioning (state anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and avoidant behaviors) were obtained at baseline, five weeks later and 72 hr before serostatus notification, and 1 week, 3 weeks and 5 weeks postnotification. Results suggested a dissociation between psychological and immunological phenomena among seropositives wherein lymphocyte proliferative responses to the mitogens phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and pokeweed mitogen (PWM) remained unchanged in the face of significant increases in state anxiety and intrusive thoughts following serostatus notification. These findings suggested that asymptomatic HIV-1 infected individuals, even at the earliest stages of infection, may be unable to mount an immune response to potent psychosocial stressors (i.e., serostatus notification), due perhaps, to the fact that the viral contribution to immune functioning overrides any influence of environmental stimuli. Among the seronegative subjects studied, blastogenic responses to PHA and PWM were depressed at baseline (relative to a group of age and gender-matched controls who were not undergoing HIV-1 antibody testing) but PHA values returned to normal values 5 weeks later. Natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity and CD4+CD45R+ inducer cell counts appeared to parallel these changes in seronegatives. Seropositives did display fluctuations in NK cell cytotoxicity that were similar to those noted for seronegatives. Correlational analyses suggested that individual differences in anxiety responses at the time of notification of seropositivity predicted subsequent (1-week lag) declines in NK cell cytotoxicity but not other functional markers. Although most seropositives displayed clinical levels of anxiety, intrusive thoughts and avoidant responses during the week of serostatus notification, these measures returned to their initial nonclinical baseline levels within 5 weeks after notification in both the seropositive and seronegative groups.

Cancer Recurrence as a Traumatic Event

The authors hypothesized that cancer recurrence can be understood and therefore treated as a traumatic event that places patients at risk for stress response symptoms. To test this, they gave 40 patients with recurrent malignancies of mixed sites the Impact of Event Scale (a measure of response to specific stressors), the Psychosocial Adjustment to Illness Scale-Self-Report version (a measure of general adjustment to illness), and a semi-structured interview in which the patients were asked about their reactions to and experiences surrounding the recurrence, compared with those surrounding their initial diagnosis. In self-report measures and in the interview, patients clearly perceived that adjustment to recurrence is more problematic than adjustment to initial diagnosis. The findings were consistent with an expectation derived from the stress-disorder literature: patients who reported having been completely surprised by the recurrence and those undergoing their first recurrence showed significantly more intrusive and avoidant stress response symptoms. Given the heterogeneity of the patient population and the relatively limited sample size, further study is needed to assess the contribution of other important mediating factors in the development of stress disorders. Because the predictors in this study (extent of surprise and number of previous recurrences) can be identified before or immediately following a recurrence, primary and secondary interventions might help prevent stress disorders in patients who may have had unrealistic expectations.

Stress and coping in relatives of burn patients: a longitudinal study.

Standardized psychological assessment of 48 close relatives of patients hospitalized for burns revealed that the relatives experienced high levels of distress during the acute phase of the patient's hospitalization. At six-month follow-up, the relatives' general psychological symptomatology had receded to within the normal range, but 25 percent continued to show specific stress syndromes characterized by intrusive and avoidant responses to the past burn trauma. Intrusive-avoidant stress responses could not be predicted by demographic information, severity of the burn, facial disfigurement, or actual responsibility for the burn, but blaming oneself for the injury to the patient was a significant predictor. Evaluating stress responses of close relatives after burn trauma can lead to more successful intervention for those who remain stressed and may enhance patient and family compliance with the treatment and rehabilitation regime.

Problem-solving skills of rural battered women.

Recent research suggests that battered women may have a problem-solving skill deficit, thereby limiting their ability to prevent and/or effectively deal with future battering incidents. Situations encountered by battered women were analyzed by gathering data of 30 women receiving outpatient mental health treatment and of women who used a domestic violence emergency shelter. These situations were administered in an open-ended questionnaire format to 14 battered and 20 nonbattered women. These subjects were asked to develop as many alternatives as they could for each situation. Nonbattered women generated significantly more total alternatives and effective alternatives than did battered women. Battered subjects were more likely to produce avoidant and dependent responses.

Young Children's Compliance and Noncompliance to Parental Discipline in a Natural Setting

In order to determine the effects of different parental disciplinary techniques on young children's compliance and noncompliance, mothers were trained to observe emotional incidents involving their own toddler-aged children. Reports of disciplinary encounters were analyzed in terms of the types of discipline used (reasoning, verbal prohibition, physical coercion, love withdrawal, and combinations thereof) and children's responses to that discipline (compliance/noncompliance and avoidance). The relation between compliance/noncompliance and type of misdeed (harm to persons, harm to property, and lapses of self-control) was also analyzed. Results indicated that love withdrawal combined with other techniques was most effective in securing children's compliance and that its effectiveness was not a function of the type of technique with which it was combined. Avoidant responses and affective reunification with the parent were more likely to follow love withdrawal than any other technique. Physical coercion was somewhat less effective than love withdrawal, while reasoning and verbal prohibition were not at all effective except when both were combined with physical coercion.

Amobarbital Effects on Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery of Active Avoidance

Rats highly trained to avoid shock in a shuttle box showed immediate extinction of avoidance responses following injection of 20 mg/kg amobarbital. Reduction in spontaneous recovery of the CAR was also a function of 20 mg/kg amobarbital treatment. Failure to perform the CAR in extinction and spontaneous recovery under 20 mg/kg amobarbital occurred with a strong competing freezing behavior which made the avoidant response impossible. Such effects were not amenable to explanation by the depressant or fear-reducing effects of 20 mg/kg amobarbital. Rather, it seemed more likely that amobarbital disrupted the CS-CAR connection, and that blocking of the CAR resulted in a very strong competing CER.