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Seasonal vertical migration of Meloidogyne chitwoodi through soil and its impact on potato production in Washington and Oregon was studied. Nematode eggs and second-stage juveniles (J2) were placed at various depths (0-180 cm) in tubes filled with soil and buried vertically or in holes dug in potato fields. Tubes were removed at intervals over a 12-month period and soil was bioassayed on tomato roots. Upward migration began in the spring after water had percolated through the tubes. Nematodes were detected in the top 5 cm of tubes within 1-2 months of burial, depending on depth of placement. Potatoes were grown in field plots for 4 or 5 months before the tubers were evaluated for infection. One hundred eggs and J2 per gram soil placed at 60 and 90 cm caused significant tuber damage at the Washington and Oregon sites, respectively. At the Washington site, inoculum placed at 90, 120, and 150 cm caused potato root infection without serious impact on tuber quality, but inoculum diluted 2-8 times and placed at 90 cm did not cause root or tuber infection. Nematode migration was dependent on soil texture; 9 days after placement at the bottoms of tubes, J2 had moved up 55 cm in sandy loam soil (Oregon) but only 15 cm in silt loam (Washington). Thus, the importance of M. chitwoodi which occur deep in a soil profile may depend on soil texture, population density, and length of the growing season.

Although various conceptual proposals have suggested that disruptions in childhood bonding processes may be linked to the origins of these cognitive structures, little research has tested these proposals. This study assessed the information processing of vulnerable individuals and its relationship to childhood bonding. Formerly depressed (vulnerable) and never depressed (nonvulnerable) individuals participated in a mood induction task followed by an attentional allocation task. Results indicated that vulnerable individuals uniquely diverted attention toward negative stimuli when they were in a negative mood. Furthermore, level of maternal caring was found to be associated with performance on this task for vulnerable individuals in this mood state. These data support the idea that cognitive variables form a pathway between troublesome parental-child/adolescent interactions and depression.

Although high-risk research suggests that children of depressed mothers are at increased risk for psychological disorders, the mechanisms of this risk are not well understood. In the current study, the information processing of children of depressed mothers was compared with that of children whose mothers were not depressed. Half of each group received a priming induction designed to activate cognitive schemas prior to assessment. All children then completed a self-referent processing task that examined the recall of negative and positive information. Results indicate that when primed, at-risk children showed a less positive self-concept and more negative information processing than did the children in the other groups. These data may offer potential clues into the mechanisms of cognitive vulnerability in at-risk children.

The relationship between affective distress and chronic illnesses is well recognized. Recent research has focused on depressive symptomatology among patients with chronic pain. The present study was conducted to (a) examine depressive information processing in osteoarthritis patients and (b) assess whether the presence of somatic items on a depression measure would affect the observed associations between information processing and affective distress in arthritis patients. A group of 40 osteoarthritis patients was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory, and a non-self-report measure of depressive self-schemas. Results suggest that observed depressive cognitive structures appear to be better differentiated by a nonsomatic measure of affective distress and that individuals selectively process information to fit the parameters of their currently active self-schema.

Several studies have suggested that depressed pain patients evidence more cognitive distortion than nondepressed pain patients and healthy controls. Although these studies have generally supported notions relating cognitive distortion to depressive functioning, other aspects of dysfunctional cognition have not been assessed in the chronic-pain population. The present study examined negative and positive automatic thoughts and attributional style in depressed pain patients, nondepressed pain patients, and healthy controls. Depressed chronic-pain patients were found to exhibit significantly more negative automatic thoughts than nondepressed pain patients and healthy controls. Conversely, nondepressed chronic-pain patients reported significantly more positive automatic thoughts than did depressed patients and healthy controls. No significant differences were found for attributional style. These results suggest that different cognitive-behavioral interventions might be considered for depressed compared to nondepressed chronic-pain patients.

Research in the area of self-awareness theory has indicated that self-focused attention consistently produces both an increase in perceived intensity of affect and enhanced accuracy of self-reports. The present studies consider these effects in relation to the technique of self-confrontation as used in psychotherapy. In the first study, members of two different clinical populations (alcoholics and general psychiatric patients) either were or were not made self-aware and then were asked to self-report on their psychiatric problems and their mood states. Results indicated that self-awareness did increase the negative mood states for the psychiatric patients, and it also apparently increased the accuracy with which both patient groups reported on their history of hospitalization. In the second study self-awareness once again exacerbated the reported negative affect of a group of depressed psychiatric patients and enhanced the accuracy with which they reported on their hospitalizations. Additional analyses indicated that although the psychiatric patients generally felt worse when self-aware, they were also more accurate in their self-reports, including descriptions of their problems. The effects of self-awareness on members of clinical population are discussed and related to self-confrontation techniques.

Research has independently shown that both gender and self-focused attention are linked to depression. In this article, we report a series of studies investigating the relation between these variables. Using a standard self-focusing manipulation, Study 1 suggested that women evidence a greater propensity to self-focus than men. We replicated these findings in Study 2. In Study 3, we conducted an experiment to determine if sex role in conjunction with experimentally increased self-focused attention would lead to more emotional distress after a negative event had occurred. Results suggested that feminine individuals who received a self-focusing manipulation responded with greater levels of self-focused attention and negative affect than did any other group. We interpreted findings in terms of a tendency to self-focus that might prime feminine people to experience depression, or alternately, as a lack of self-focusing that may insulate masculine individuals from the experience of depression.

We tested the hypothesis that socially anxious or shy individuals use their anxiety symptoms as a strategy to control attributions made about their performances in social-evaluative settings (i.e., self-handicapping strategies). Specifically, we predicted that trait-socially anxious or shy persons would report more symptoms of social anxiety in an evaluative setting in which anxiety or shyness could serve as an excuse for poor performance than would individuals in (a) an evaluative setting in which shyness was precluded as an excuse or (b) a nonevaluative setting. Furthermore, we predicted that this self-protective pattern of symptom reporting would not occur for individuals who were not trait-socially anxious because these persons would not commonly use such symptoms as a self-handicapping strategy. Results supported these predictions for male subjects, but not for female subjects. Sex differences in the strategic use of shyness are discussed in relation to other research on sex differences in the etiology and correlates of social anxiety.

Theoretical and empirical efforts concerning cognitive processes associated with anxiety have typically emphasized either cognitive deficits (i.e., reduced learning, memory, and task performance) or cognitive excesses (i.e., increased self-focused, ruminative thought). To date, evidence of these two types of cognitive processes has primarily been based on different types of sources (i.e., performance measures vs. self-reports), which precludes direct comparisons of the extent to which cognitive deficits and/or excesses characterize anxiety states. The present study attempted to directly compare the cognitive excesses and deficits associated with social anxiety by operationalizing both types of cognitive phenomena with similar performance measures. A modified self-referent depth-of-processing paradigm was employed. The results indicated that socially anxious individuals in a socially evaluative situation evidenced a specific type of cognitive excess (i.e., concern over evaluations by others) but not cognitive deficits. The results are discussed in the context of person-by-situation models of anxiety and in the context of the nature and treatment of social anxiety.

Based on an attribution theory analysis, it was predicted that normal individuals (people who do not evidence a particular target problem) would be least motivated to seek help for a psychological problem when they believe that the problem is actuarially common (i.e., high consensus). Based on an analysis of how target problem people evaluate their psychological problem, however, it was predicted that such individuals (unlike normal individuals) should be maximally motivated to seek help when they believe that the problem is common. To test these predictions, target problem and normal individuals (high vs. average test anxious females) were given feedback that they possessed a problem (test anxiety). Individuals were then told that their problem was either common, uncommon, or given no consensus information. As predicted, the higher consensus information led to the least help-seeking behavior for the normal individuals and to the most help-seeking behavior for the target problem individuals.

Cognitive approaches to emotional distress posit that specific cognitive factors are critically linked to the etiology, course, or treatment of dysfunction. Although a number of empirical studies have assessed cognitive factors in emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety, research has yet to assess these variables simultaneously and with identical cognitive measures. Using depression and test anxiety as models of dysfunctional affective states, we examined cognitive specificity on measures of information processing, attributions, automatic thinking, and cognitive interference. Results indicated a pattern of specificity showing several differences and similarities in depression and anxiety. Specifically, "purely" depressed individuals showed evidence of selectively processing depressive information, making dysfunctional attributions, and engaging in more negative automatic thinking. "Purely" anxious individuals, on the other hand, showed evidence of selective anxious information processing and increased cognitive interference. Results are discussed in terms of a taxonomy for classifying depressive and anxious cognition.

Disagreement presently exists over whether depressed or nondepressed persons exercise more cognitive distortion on material about the self. A negative correlation between the Self-Deception Questionnaire (SDQ, SackeimGur, 1978, 1979) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI, Beck, 1967) has been cited as evidence that it is the nondepressed individuals who exercise more distortion (Sackeim, 1983). This negative correlation was replicated, and the SDQ was factor analyzed to determine which factors might account for the correlation with depression. The three largest factors, identified by content themes of relationships with parents, emotionality, and denial of tabooed activities, correlated reliably with the BDI. Discussion focused on whether these correlations reflect differences in self-deception that are associated with depression or differences in veridical responding between depressed and nondepressed subjects on those items in the SDQ. Suggestions for future research and possible therapeutic implications are also discussed.