PAR is proud to support United Way! Last week, PAR employees took part in our annual fundraising campaign. For the 19^th consecutive year, 100% of PAR staff participated in our annual United Way drive. We exceeded our fundraising goal, resulting in $105,993 being donated to help United Way continue its mission of helping others in our community.

For more information on how you can help United Way in your community, visit www.liveunited.org.

Yes or no, this or that… sometimes, having a lot of options isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While you may think that you are just making decisions based on the options in front of you, according to new research, your decision-making abilities may fluctuate throughout the day. The well-thought-out choice you thought you were making? Well, it may just be a reflection of your mental state.

According to research from social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister (link to http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/baumeister.dp.html),  there is a finite amount of energy allotted for self-control, meaning that the more decisions you make, the quicker you deplete this store. Decision-making saps willpower, making it easier and easier to give up on tasks as you go along. Think about the last time you had to make many decisions fairly quickly – after some time, most people begin to feel exhausted even though they aren’t doing much physical work.

According to a recent study by Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso, even people whose jobs are based on their decision-making abilities can fall victim to decision-making exhaustion. This group of researchers studied judicial decisions and found that legal reasoning could not sufficiently explain why judges choose what they do. By breaking a judge’s day into three decision-making sessions, punctuated by a break for food, the researchers found that the likelihood that a prisoner was granted parole was highly correlated to when they were seen by the judge. Researchers found that the percentage of favorable rulings drops from about 65 percent to nearly zero during each segment of a judge’s day. Essentially, those up for parole were most likely to be granted parole the earlier the individual was seen during each decision-making session; those who were scheduled just before a break had almost no statistical possibility of parole. Once the judge took a break, the possibility of a favorable judgment returned to about 65 percent.

It became clear that those suffering from decision-making exhaustion behave in one of two ways – they either behave recklessly (think about how many quarterbacks throw a wild pass late in the game) or they refuse to make any decisions at all, refusing to do anything risky (like releasing a prisoner on parole).

Have you ever made decisions that were affected by your mental fatigue? Knowing how your ability to make decisions wanes throughout the day, will you make any changes to your schedule?

Broader Definition of the Disease Could Help Doctors with Early Diagnosis and Intervention

In April of this year, the National Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer’s Association announced significant changes in the clinical diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease dementia. These revisions—the first in 27 years—are intended to help diagnose patients in the very early stages of the disease, allowing doctors to prescribe medication when it is most effective; that is, before a patient’s memory becomes compromised.

The new guidelines recognize two early stages of the disease: preclinical Alzheimer's, in which biochemical and physiological changes caused by the disease have begun; and mild cognitive impairment, a stage marked by memory problems severe enough to be noticed and measured, but not severe enough to compromise a person’s independence. The new guidelines also reflect the increased knowledge scientists have about Alzheimer’s, including a better understanding of the biological changes that occur and the development of new tools that allow early diagnosis.

William H. Thies, chief scientific and medical officer of the Alzheimer’s Association, explains, “If we start 10 years earlier and could push off the appearance of dementia by, say, five years … that could cut the number of demented people in the U.S. by half” (Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2011).

For more information about the updated guidelines, as well as a list of journal articles and answers to frequently asked questions for clinicians, visit the National Institute on Aging Web site at http://www.nia.nih.gov/Alzheimers/Resources/diagnosticguidelines.htm.

PAR author Thomas M. Brunner, PhD, will be presenting at the 15th Annual Conference on Critical Issues Facing Children & Adolescents. The conference is being held October 3-4, 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Dr. Brunner will be presenting the keynote address, titled “Advanced Assessment of the Pulse of Youth Anger: A Core Symptom and Vital Sign of Our Times” and a workshop titled “Advanced Anger Assessment and Treatment Using the STAXI-2 C/A to Identify Anger Profiles.”

Dr. Brunner is the coauthor of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory–2™ Child and Adolescent (STAXI-2™ C/A).

For more information about the conference, click here.