Cognitive strategy has been identified as a strategy of interest in the literature on exercise. We focused on two major cognitive strategies: associative strategy and dissociative strategy. Associative strategy equates to concentration on a task (exercise), while dissociative strategy means distraction from a task (Stevinson & Biddle, 1998). In spite of many literatures concerning athletic sport, little is known about the psychological states for non-athletic exercise with cognitive strategy. This study examined the effect of non-athletic acute exercise with cognitive strategies on psychological states. Sixteen subjects were recruited and participated under two separate conditions of counter-balanced design: an association-exercise condition and a dissociation-exercise condition. Under both exercise conditions, subjects performed 10 minutes cycling exercise at moderate intensity. Subjects were rated on two exercise-specific scales: Waseda Affect Scale of Exercise and Durable Activity (WASEDA; Arai, et al., 2003b) and Feeling Scale (FS; Rejeski, 1985) at pre-exercise, warm-up, before immediately finishing exercise, and 5-minutes post exercise. Analysis of variances (ANOVAs) showed that both conditions significantly enhanced Positive Engagement, Tranquility, and Pleasantness. It was also found that association-exercise enhanced Pleasantness compared to dissociation-exercise at before immediately finishing 10 minutes exercis.

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Western researchers have emphasized the role of hostility, especially cynicism, in causing coronary heart disease. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Cynicism Questionnaire (CQ). Undergraduates (n=718) and office workers (n=102) completed the prototype CQ that included 13 items based on Barefoot's (1989) categories of cynicism. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis revealed one factor structure with six items. Reliability coefficients of these items (Cronbach's alpha) were .753 and .758 for undergraduates and office workers respectively. The CQ was moderately correlated with other hostility scales. Analysis of the relationship between the CQ, daily stressors, and mood, indicated that participants who scored high on the CQ reported a higher frequency of daily stressors and angry mood. Additionally, a study conducted after 12 weeks indicated that the test-retest reliability of the test was sufficiently high (r=0.704). These results support the validity and reliability of the CQ. Therefore, it is suggested that CQ should be considered as a useful, standardized, measure of cynicism for use in public health-related research.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of logical thinking error on symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders. We revised the Children's Cognitive Error Scale (CCES), which measures logical thinking errors in elementary school children. Also, we investigated the effect of logical thinking error on Spence Children's Anxiety Scale and Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children. First, the depressive situations in which children feel depressed were collected by using free description answers of 217 elementary school children. Among those situations, the ones matched the anxious situation of original CCES were retained. As a result, 9 anxious and depressive situations were extracted. Second, as a result of confirmatory factor analysis of data from 452 elementary school children, 17 items of CCES-R were confirmed to load on single factor. Test-retest reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were high enough (.78 for test-retest and .85 for alpha). Third, result of analysis using the data from 635 elementary school children revealed that logical thinking error predicted both anxiety and depressive symptoms. Therefore, children who have logical thinking errors showed severe symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.

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This study was conducted to examine any relationships between subjective well-being (i.e., perceived psychological health and/or fatigue) in the late period of pregnancy and maternity blues symptoms following childbirth, as well as effects of obstetric factors such as complications, age, deliver history, household form, newborn infant's condition and the abnormalities at the time of a delivery. Subjects were 79 pregnant women, aged 19 to 41, who consulted Kurume University Hospital obstetric outpatients department after 36 weeks of pregnancy. The WHO Subjective Well-being Inventory (SUBI), consisting of 12 subscales, was used to assess perceived psychological health and/or fatigue. Maternity blues consisting of 4 subscales were self-rated by Stein's maternity blues scale on the 5th day following childbirth.
According to the standardized criteria for SUBI, perceived psychological health and/or fatigue were generally well among pregnant women in this sample. Maternity blues were associated with lower levels of perceived psychological health and/or fatigue during the late period of pregnancy, as well as with obstetric factors of age, complications and newborn infant status. After controlling for perceived psychological health and/or fatigue and the obstetric factors, perceived psychological fatigue remained associated with higher levels of maternity blues symptoms on the fifth day postpartum. Maternity blues symptoms were predicted by some subscales of SUBI such as physical complaints, life satisfaction, family group support social support and a feeling of achievement. These findings suggest that perceived psychological fatigue appears to be a reliable contributing factor to the differential susceptibility to maternity blues in the early postpartum period.

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The present study was conducted to investigate the prevailing and social impact of the belief among the general population of Japan that cigarette smoking is an effective coping with stress. Data for this analysis were nationally representative and came from the National Survey of Trends of Health and Welfare by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan, conducted on June 1st, 2000. The sample consisted of all households in the National Life Basic Survey of Japan, which was done by stratified random sampling design of 300 selected areas in Japan with respondents aged 12 years and older. The total number of valid questionnaires was 32,026 (15,217 male, 16,597 female, and 212 unidentified). The results showed two important points. First, the percentage of people who cited cigarette smoking as their strategy for coping with stress were 14.6% of the total sample (22.8% for men and 7.2% for women). These figures are estimated to represent approximately 50% of male smokers and 70% of female smokers. Second, smoking has a minor position among stress coping strategies; people who used smoking as the first coping strategy were only 1.9% and people who cited smoking as their coping strategy showed poor subjective health as compared with other coping strategies, such as problem solving coping or emotion focused coping. In conclusion, in spite of the widespread belief that cigarette smoking is an effective strategy to cope with stress, smoking is less likely to play an important role as stress coping among the general population in Japan. Therefore, it is critically important to reveal an evidence to counteract the prevailing belief in smoking as a coping strategy in order to improve national mental health as well as to strengthen disease prevention.

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