39th STAR Conference Stress Anxiety and Resilience

We are pleased to inform you, that Professor Albert Sesé, as the STAR President, will open our Conference with his lecture: “To try to make visible what is latent: Coming back to the foundations of psychometrics”

Most of the psychological variables used in basic and applied research are latent and a strongly consensual theoretical definition is needed in order to obtain reliable and valid evidence of the measures of such constructs. Nothing new under the sun, but the problem is that the patterns of development and use of psychometric instruments by psychological research show important shortcomings, especially related to the definition of constructs, to the quality of their operationalization, and to the application of a magical thought that believes that the theoretical weakness of a measure will be mitigated by the statistical sophistication of the validation procedures used. The main goals of this address are to present and discuss: a) the difficulties of making visible and tangible a psychological latent variable; b) the need to rethink psychometric validation designs based on the scientific method as expressed by Joseph Lee Cronbach; c) to banish magical thinking about the power of statistical-psychometric sophistication; d) to flee from automated test replications that are focused solely on reliability or latent structure; and in consequence, e) not to succumb to the uncontrolled growth of supposed constructs without sufficient theoretical foundation, both in Psychology and in other disciplines such as Medicine or Nursing, among others. In sum, this talk tries to come back to the foundations of Psychometrics, searching for the optimal ways to obtain high quality evidence, strongly related to well-founded psychological theories. In fact, to validate a test helps to validate the underlying theory, but only when the accuracy and scientific quality of the procedure used is really achieved.

Professor Albert Sesé (MD and PhD) (Spain, 1970) is a professor of the Department of Psychology of the Balearic Islands University. He held various academic management positions for 12 years; vice-dean of the Faculty of Psychology from May 2004 till November 2006, and Full Dean from November 2006 to October 2016. According to Spanish 2017 university rankings, the Faculty of Psychology of the Balearic Islands University is the best Psychology higher education center in Spain, and it has the best records in research (published papers and grants). He also regularly participates in expert panels for quality management in academic institutions of higher education. His teaching expertise area is Methodology of Behavioral and Health Sciences, and specifically Psychometrics. His teaching career started at 1995 in the University of Valencia and continued to the present in the Balearic Islands University. Prof. Sesé teaches degree, master, and doctorate level subjects such us applied and advanced statistical modeling, fundamentals of methodological designs, and of course, basic and advanced psychometrics.

Dr. Sesé obtained the First Extraordinary Award of the Bachelor of Psychology (1994), the Spanish National Award on Psychology (1995), and the Extraordinary Award of Doctorate in 2004. He also was the Early Career Award of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society in 2008, the “X Ramon Bayes Sopena Award” of the Medical Sciences Academy in 2014, and he was nominated as the best Psychologist in Spain in 2016.

His dedication to research in Psychology is well represented by a large number of impacted publications, competitive projects and grants. He has been recognized with three six-year periods of excellent research by the "Spanish Agency for Evaluation and Foresight”. He has obtained 32.50 score in Researchgate.net scientists’ database (Percentile 90%). Currently his main dedication is focused on the study of evidence-based practice in Psychology, the study of anxiety and attitudes toward statistics, adolescents drug consumption and prediction models of suicidal behavior in university students. He also is member of the PhD Psychology Program Board in the Balearic Islands University.

As major affiliations, Dr. Sesé is an individual member of the European Association of Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, the International Test Commission, the Royal Psychometric Society, and since July 2016 is the President of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society (STAR).

It is a great pleasure to inform you that this year Early Career Award was received by dr Siobhán Howard

Dr Siobhán Howard graduated with her PhD in psychology from the School of Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway) in 2009 and subsequently completed three years of post-doctoral work in the Centre for Research on Occupational and Life Stress, NUI Galway. In 2011, she took up the position of lecturer in psychology at the Department of Psychology, Mary Immaculate College, and in 2018, was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Limerick (UL), where she is an active member of the Health Research Institute, the Centre for Social Issues Research, and the SASH laboratory at UL. Her work on Type D personality and cardiovascular reactions to stress has been funded by the Irish Research Council and the Royal Irish Academy. Dr Howard served as secretary to the STAR board from 2012 to 2016.

Dr Siobhán Howard will present the lecture: Cardiovascular responses to stress: Psychological factors influencing reaction and adaptation.

Exaggerated cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress have a negative impact on health. Research within this sphere operates within the cardiovascular reactivity hypothesis which posits that prolonged or exaggerated blood pressure and heart rate reactions to psychological stress creates a strain on the cardiovascular system that in turn, leads to the development of disease. Recently, it has become clear that it is abnormal reactions (both exaggerated and blunted) that are associated with poor health, with elevated responses associated with cardiovascular disease, and blunted reactions associated with non-cardiovascular health outcomes. This identifies the need to consider cardiovascular responses to stress on a continuum when examining the health-damaging role of physiological reactions to psychological stimuli. This presentation examines a body of work that has investigated how psychosocial factors impact cardiovascular reactions to novel stress, as well as the person’s ability to adapt to recurrent stress. Our work shows that: 1) personality factors involving the trait of neuroticism show consistent associations with blunted cardiovascular reactions to stress in healthy samples; 2) these blunted cardiovascular reactions to stress are often underpinned by increased activity in the vasculature; and 3) this vascular response pattern may be one mechanism through which psychological factors come to be associated with adverse health. Together, this body of work identifies how personality traits are an important moderating factor to consider in examining ways to prevent, and treat, cardiovascular disease.

Dear Participants of the STAR Conference it is a great honor for us to announce that this year Distinguished Spielberger Award was received by professor Erica Frydenberg.

Professor Erica Frydenberg is an educational, clinical and organizational psychologist who has practiced extensively in the Australian educational setting. She is a Principal Research Fellow and Associate Professor in psychology in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society She has authored and co-authored over 150 academic journal articles and chapters in the field of coping, developed psychological instruments to measure coping in children, adolescents and adults and authored and co-authored 22 books on topics ranging from early years through to adolescence and parenting. She has received numerous Australian Research Council and philanthropic grants, been engaged as a consultant with organizations such as National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Department of Education, Catholic Education Authority and Victorian Assessment and Curriculum Authority. She was the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award of the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group Stress and Coping in Education, the University of Melbourne Medal for Research Excellence Faculty of Education Award and the University of Melbourne Knowledge Transfer Award. In 2013 she was the recipient of the Life-time Career Award of the Stress Anxiety Research Society, an international body of researchers and practitioners. Her 2017 publications include Coping and the Challenge of Resilience published in London by Palgrave Macmillan and an edited volume with Andrew Martin and Rebecca Collie, Social and Emotional Learning in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, published by Springer Nature in Singapore. In 2018, her latest book, Adolescent Coping: Promoting Resilience and Well-being is published in London by Routledge.

During her presentation: “Then and Now - my coping journey in the STAR community over two decades: What I have learnt and what I want to learn” professor Erica Frydenberg will share with us her thoughts about coping and resilience.

Resilience is the magic bullet that everyone wants whilst coping is the process that helps to achieve resilience. In the last two decades there have been significant advances in the theory of coping and its applications to individual lives and professional practice. This presentation, honouring the late Charlie Spielberger, will outline some major developments and research insights into coping, with applications for educational and clinical practice. Measurement of diverse groups across the life span has provided insights with children adolescents and adults. In recent years there has been a growing interest in aspects of coping that are related to neuroscience, epigenetics, mindfulness and the impact of the cyber world. Young people’s anxiety, eating disorders and chronic illness all benefit from our understandings of coping. When it comes to aging, with people living longer, the paradox that people are often happier in their older years despite experiencing more adversity, is explained in some measure by the use of spiritual coping, mindfulness and positive reminiscing. Key issues that need to be addressed in future research are considered.

Among our great speakers are also prof. Bogdan Zawadzki and dr Agnieszka Popiel. They will tell us about factors of PTSD. The subject of the lecture is: Vulnerability and resilience factors of PTSD: the role of temperament.

The studies on posttraumatic stress disorder identified several vulnerability vs resilience factors operating in pre-, peri- and posttraumatic periods (e.g. personality, previous traumatization, severity of exposure, experienced dissociation and emotions, received social support). The focus of this lecture will be on temperamental traits involved in development of symptoms of PTSD. Temperamental traits were studied according to Regulative Theory of Temperament (RTT), that considers temperament as biological part of personality. The results of studies done in several groups of trauma survivors: flood, home-fire, motor vehicle accidents as well as firefighters and military operations veterans, in cross-sectional and prospective paradigm will be summarized. The analyses showed that among temperamental traits emotional reactivity is the strongest predictor of developing PTSD symptoms, and other peri and posttraumatic phenomena related to trauma like emotions, cognitions, emotion regulation/coping strategies, etc. The recent study on effectiveness of intervention aimed on PTSD prevention in firefighters resulted in data additionally supporting the previous conclusions. Emotional reactivity remains a risk factor for PTSD due to job related traumatization in a group without training, but also in a group that completed the prevention training (and demonstrated reduced risk for PTSD). The role of biological personality factors will be discussed in the context of modern conceptualization of posttraumatic stress disorder, essential for treatment and prevention planning.

One of our great Keynote speakers is professor Stevan Hobfoll (the Judd and Marjorie Weinberg Presidential Professor and Chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Rush Medical College in Chicago). During the first day of the Conference he will deliver the lecture: "Terrorism Threat: Trauma, Resilience and Political Decay". We invite you to get to know more about the scope of his lecture:

In the face of terrorism, rocket attacks and war, people react with a range of emotions from deeply experienced distress to an amazing level of resilience. At the same time, the politics of fear can be seen as producing a shift to a more right wing, militant stance, especially in those who begin with a more right wing approach to politics. The study of stress and trauma has focused on pathological responses, and seldom examined either resilience or political reactivity, despite politics being one way we cope with threat. We examine terrorist attacks and other mass casualty circumstances around the world in light of how to better define resilience, resistance, and recovery, as well as how threat and loss is impacting our political selves. In so doing the epidemiology of resilience, how it might be defined, and how it should be explored in future research is explored. This work is critical for broadening our theoretical understanding of people’s responding to trauma, key to public health intervention, and carries enormous potential for building a Psychology of Human Strength in the face of adversity that has been absent in trauma studies. Our work on the consequences of terrorism, mass conflict and war from the World Trade Center attacks, Israel and Palestine will be presented. This more complex understanding of impact, resilience, and resistance suggests important roles for individual differences in vulnerability and resiliency-related characteristics, as well as the influence of key situational differences in levels of exposure, the chronicity of exposure, and environmental contingencies.

Less than two months left to our Conference. We are really grateful that so many great lecturers and researchers come to share their knowledge and experience.

We would like to invite you to get to know with the description of lectures which will be delivered by our Keynote speakers during our Conference.

One of them will refer to the very important issue - PTSD.

The Lecture: "PTSD in cardiac illness: The state of the Art and the missing parts" will be delivered by Noa Vilchinsky, PhD (Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel).

In recent years much scientific attention has been devoted to exploring the possibility that illnesses might also be regarded as causes of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, much debate still exists in the field with regard to the distinctive ways in which PTSD of these origins might manifest itself among both patients and their caregivers. In the current lecture, I wish to suggest that cardiac–disease-induced PTSD (CDI-PTSD) is indeed a valid diagnostic entity. I will start by presenting a thorough literature review of CDI-PTSD, integrating the existing knowledge regarding CDI-PTSD’s prevalence, risk factors, and psychological and physiological consequences. Next, I will present results of qualitative and quantitative studies that have investigated CDI-PTSD among cardiac patients. Finally, I will address issues that require more scientific attention as CDI-PTSD among patients' caregivers and psychological interventions designed for this diagnosis. I hope this lecture will broaden our understanding of the unique manifestations of PTSD resulting from health crises. Ultimately, the hope is that this kind of comprehensive understanding will be translated into effective interventions for both patients and caregivers.

Dear Participants!

We warmly invite you to take part in workshops planned on the 10th of July.

Registration for the workshops is still open!

You may take part in the following events:

• An introduction to multilevel modeling, conducted by Prof. John Nezlek, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poznan

• Structural Equation Modeling with Lavaan, conducted by Prof. Romuald Polczyk, PhD Institute of Psychology Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

• Evidence based treatments for PTSD in a clinical setting. Prolonged exposure – basics and beyond., conducted by Dr Agnieszka Popiel MD, psychiatrist, psychotherapist (PTTPB, SITCC, EABCT), psychotherapy supervisor (PTTPB)

• Stress: its determinants, assessment and treatment, conducted by Prof. Shulamith Kreitler School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Information about every workshop, lecturers and fees is available on our website:

https://39star2018.wixsite.com/star2018/workshops

We are looking forward to seeing you in Lublin!

Dear Participants of the STAR Conference,

We would like to kindly remind you that you may find on our website information about different possibilities of accommodation. Please notice that to have the special offer you have to book the hotel till the dates indicated. After the deadline the hotel doesn’t guarantee the availability of the rooms.

https://39star2018.wixsite.com/star2018/accommodation

We are looking forward to meeting you in Lublin!

star2018 | Accommodation Accommodation

Dear Participants of the Conference we have great news for you!

Please notice that the deadline for early registration has been extended till May 12th. You can still enjoy early bird rate!

We are looking forward to seeing you in Lublin!

Our next workshop will be conducted by Professor Shulamith Kreitler, from School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Professor will tell us about STRESS: ITS DETERMINANTS, ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT.

The objective of the workshop is to present a new approach to the conceptualization of stress based on identifying the underlying determinants of stress. The determinants are defined in terms of the cognitive orientation theory as specific cognitions, whose endorsement may generate pressures, tensions and conflicts of different kinds. These cognitions are beliefs referring to oneself, to reality, to one's goals and to rules and norms. The contents of the beliefs represent particular themes, identified in previous research as relevant to the evocation of stress. The beliefs and themes form the basic materials for constructing the questionnaire of stress vulnerability. The scores of the questionnaires have been validated by predicting quality of life and stress evocation in different frameworks. The cognitions constituting stress vulnerability are used as basis for an intervention designed to enable the reduction or prevention of stress.
The workshop will be devoted to acquainting the participants with the new assessment method and teaching the intervention procedure that provides a method for controlling stress, reducing it or preventing it. The participants will learn to use the method and to apply it.
The workshop will be based on discussions, presentations, demonstrations, and role playing that are expected to provide insight and experiencing.

We would like to invite you to the next workshop: EVIDENCE BASED TREATMENTS FOR PTSD IN A CLINICAL SETTING. PROLONGED EXPOSURE – BASICS AND BEYOND. It will be conducted by Agnieszka Popiel MD, PhD.

Agnieszka Popiel MD, PhD, psychiatrist, psychotherapist (PTTPB, SITCC, EABCT), psychotherapy supervisor (PTTPB),
has been involved with cognitive-behavioral therapy in clinical and research practice, organizational work and teaching for many years.
Clinical and research area: treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder – efficacy, effectiveness and predictors of
outcome. Co-chair of a clinical programs TRAKT - studies on efficacy of treatments for PTSD in car accident victims. Clinical supervisor at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotraumatology at the Military Institute of Medicine, Warsaw, Poland.
Organizational work: Member of Working Group of Training Standards of the European Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (EABCT). Initiator and past president of the Polish Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy (1999-2005, 2007-2009), National Representative at EABCT since 2000, member of the: scientific committees of the EABCT congresses in Prague (2003) and Marrakech (2013), International Scientific Support Group for the World Congress of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapis in Berlin 2019.
Teaching: Chair of 4-year postgraduate studies in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Invited workshops, trainings and clinical supervisions in Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania.
Author of over 60 congress presentations, 30 published articles, 13 book chapters. Co-author of the handbook Cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. Theory and practice (2008), co-editor of the handbook Supervision in CBT (2013).

Workshop description

Prolonged exposure (PE) is an evidence based PTSD treatment developed by Foa, Hembree and Rothbaum (2007) consisting of several components: psychoeducation, breathing retraining, in vivo exposure and imaginal exposure with processing. A presentation of prolonged exposure will be illustrated by clinical vignettes and video recordings of specific interventions applied to patients who developed PTSD after car accident.
Three problem areas:
1) Regardless its proven efficacy the dissemination studies show limited use of PE by clinicians (Foa et al., 2013); 2) PTSD treatment – psycho, or pharmacotherapy, or maybe both?;
3) Patients who dropped-out or remained symptomatic after 12 weeks of PE- will search for predictors of treatment outcome help to develop personalized treatment­?
will be discussed in the context of empirical findings and everyday clinical practice.

Recommended readings:
Foa, E. B., Hembree, E. A., & Rothbaum, B. (2007). Prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD: Emotional processing of traumatic experiences: Therapist guide. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Foa, E.B., Gillihan, S.J., Bryant, R.A.(2013). Challenges and successes in dissemination of evidence-based treatments for posttraumatic stress: Lessons learned from prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Supplement, 14 (2) , pp. 65-111.
Popiel A., Zawadzki B., Pragłowska E., Teichman Y. (2015) A randomized controlled trial of prolonged exposure, paroxetine and combined treatment for PTSD following a motor vehicle accident – The “TRAKT” Study. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 48, 17–26 ) for PTSD in a group of motor vehicle accident survivors. Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 1, 43-50
Popiel A., Zawadzki B. (2013). Temperamental traits as predictors of effectiveness of psychotherapy (prolonged exposure) for PTSD in a group of motor vehicle accident survivors. Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 1, 43-50

Our next workshop, about Structural Equation Modeling with lavaan, will be conducted by Romuald Polczyk, PhD, from Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.

Lavaan (Rosseel, 2012) is a free open-source software package running under R Environment (R Core Team, 2016), designed for Structural Equation Modeling. It is free, but has commercial quality. The aim of the workshop is provide the participants with skills necessary to conduct at least basic analyses within the framework of SEM, including:
· path analysis with observed variables
· confirmatory factor analysis
· path analysis with latent unobserved variables
· measurement invariance.

The workshop is intended as actual work with lavaan. The participants will be working at computers and will be doing activities, allowing them to gather knowledge and skills necessary to conduct the basic analyses with lavaan. The workshop should also allow the participants to further study lavaan and learn the more advanced features of it by themselves.

It is assumed that the participants have already a background in statistics, especially in multiple regression analysis, as well as the basics of Structural Equation Modeling. Basic concepts of SEM and measurement invariance analysis will be provided, but obviously there will be no time for covering this issues in detail.


References
Rosseel, Y. (2012). lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1-36. http://www.jstatsoft.org/v48/i02/

R Core Team (2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org.