Risky Music Listening, Permanent Tinnitus and Depression, Anxiety, Thoughts about Suicide and Adverse General Health

Objective:

To estimate the extent to which exposure to music through earphones or headphones with MP3 players or at discotheques and pop/rock concerts exceeded current occupational safety standards for noise exposure, to examine the extent to which temporary and permanent hearing-related symptoms were reported, and to examine whether the experience of permanent symptoms was associated with adverse perceived general and mental health, symptoms of depression, and thoughts about suicide.

Source: PLoS ONE

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Effects of a Gamified Attention-Bias Modification Mobile Application in Trait-Anxious Adults

Abstract:

Interest in the use of mobile technology to deliver mental-health services has grown in light of the economic and practical barriers to treatment. Yet research on alternative delivery strategies that are more affordable, accessible, and engaging is in its infancy. Attention-bias modification training (ABMT) has the potential to reduce treatment barriers as a mobile intervention for stress and anxiety, but the degree to which ABMT can be embedded in a mobile gaming format and its potential for transfer of benefits is unknown. In the present study, we examined effects of a gamified ABMT mobile application in highly trait-anxious participants (N = 78). A single session of the active training relative to the placebo training reduced subjective anxiety and observed stress reactivity. Critically, the long (45 min) but not the short (25 min) active training condition reduced the core cognitive process implicated in ABMT (threat bias) as measured by an untrained, gold-standard protocol.

Source:  Clinical Psychological Science

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Psychological and Physiological Responses following Repeated Peer Death.

From the abstract:

Undergraduates at a university in the United States were exposed – directly and indirectly – to 14 peer deaths during one academic year. We examined how individual and social factors were associated with psychological (e.g., anxiety, depression, somatization) and physiological (i.e., cortisol) distress responses following this unexpected and repeated experience with loss.

 Source: PLoS One

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Do Girls Really Experience More Math Anxiety?

Via Education Week:

Considerable research suggests that girls are more anxious about math than boys, but a new study dives deeper to distinguish the general anxiety young people report about the subject from what they may be feeling in math class or at test time. It turns out the latter, “real-time” anxiety is about the same for boys and girls, the study finds.

Math anxiety among females has long been of concern because, as the new research points out, prior studies have shown that it “negatively predicts” course enrollment, career choices, and lifelong learning in math fields. This is also connected to the worrisome underrepresentation of females in STEM fields. And the higher degree of math anxiety stands in contrast to research showing that female students typically reach “similar, or only slightly lower,” levels of math achievement as boys, the study says.

Researchers from several German universities and McGill University in Montreal teamed up for the project.

Link to APS Press Release: Do Girls Really Experience More Math Anxiety?
Link to Education Week Article: Math Anxiety Gets Fresh Look, Different Twist in New Research

Trickle-Down Anxiety: Study Examines Parental Behaviors that Create Anxious Children

Parents with social anxiety disorder are more likely than parents with other forms of anxiety to engage in behaviors that put their children at high risk for developing angst of their own, according to a small study of parent-child pairs conducted at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. 

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Specifically, the Johns Hopkins researchers identified a subset of behaviors in parents with social anxiety disorder — the most prevalent type of anxiety — and in doing so clarified some of the confusion that has shrouded the trickle-down anxiety often seen in parent-child pairs.

Source: Johns Hopkins Children's Center

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