Consistency among alternative performance measures in an applied judgement setting

The extent to which different performance measures can lead to different conclusions about human performance is investigated in a task involving the prediction of experts' ratings of the quality of corporate bonds. Results produced by the traditional correlational performance measure - with respect to both the relative performance of ‘man’ versus model and the effects of feedback on performance - are compared with results produced by five alternative measures including mean absolute error, mean squared error, and various types of ‘hit rates’. The correlational measure produces results that are moderately consistent with those produced by the other five measures in this applied prediction setting. Potential implications of using alternative performance measures in applied settings, especially the need to identify appropriate loss functions, are emphasized.     

Effectiveness of treatments for social phobia in an applied field

Social phobia is one of the most common disorders and one that requires the most attention from psychological clinics. The aim of this article was to study the effectiveness of psychological treatments in a University Psychological Clinic. Seventy-one social phobia patients requested psychological assistance. The average number of assessment sessions was 3.8 and the average number of treatment sessions was 16.1. Therapeutic success reached 64.2%, withdrawal percentage was 11.3%, and drop-out percentage was 24.5%. The effect size (Cohen's d) achieved in the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD) and Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) were 1.96 and 1.78, respectively. Comparing these results with efficacy research (particularly meta-analysis), it has been shown that the treatment effectiveness achieved is very similar. It is concluded that cognitive behavioural treatments for social phobia can be transferred from research settings to clinical practice.     

Generalization of posture training to computer workstations in an applied setting

Improving employees' posture may decrease the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. The current paper is a systematic replication and extension of Sigurdsson and Austin (2008), who found that an intervention consisting of information, real-time feedback, and self-monitoring improved participant posture at mock workstations. In the current study, participants worked in an applied setting, and posture data were collected at participants' own workstations and a mock workstation. Intervention in the mock setting was associated with consistent improvement in safe posture at the mock workstation, but generalization to the actual workstation was limited.     

Influence of familiar features on diagnosis: instantiated features in an applied setting

Medical diagnosis can be viewed as a categorization task. There are two mechanisms whereby humans make categorical judgments: "analytical reasoning," based on explicit consideration of features and "nonanalytical reasoning," an unconscious holistic process of matching against prior exemplars. However, there is evidence that prior experience can also operate at the level of individual "instantiated" features (Brooks & Hannah, 2006). The present studies examined instantiated features in medical diagnosis. Four "pseudopsychiatric" conditions, each described by four characteristic features, were taught to undergraduate psychology students. They practiced on additional cases, then were tested on new cases with features from two conditions. In Experiment 1, diagnoses associated with familiar features presented one or three times during practice were assigned a higher probability than those with novel features. Experiment 2 showed that the impact of feature frequency was dependent on its consistency with the case diagnosis. Experiment 3 showed that the effect of feature familiarity was not confined to cases with two equiprobable diagnoses. Experiment 4 showed that the effect remained after a 24 hour delay. These four studies demonstrated that features seen in practice have a greater influence on diagnosis than novel synonyms. In fact, seeing a feature once within the appropriate context (a patient case in which it is a member of the primary diagnosis) was sufficient to form a diagnostic association equivalent to instantiations seen four times in a different context. The results of these studies have implications for theories of categorization and for teaching clinical reasoning.     

Effectiveness of dialectical behaviour therapy for borderline personality disorder in an inpatient setting

This study evaluates the effectiveness of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for borderline personality disorder (BPD) in an unselected, comorbid population seeking 3-month inpatient treatment. We studied 50 consecutively admitted individuals (44 women, six men) with BPD as defined by DSM-IV at three time points (at admission, at discharge, and at the 15-month follow-up). For the clinical diagnoses, we used the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) and compared the frequencies of comorbid axis I and axis II disorders at admission and at the 15-month follow-up. Overall, participants showed a high degree of comorbidity. Psychopathology was significantly reduced at post-treatment and at follow-up. Effect sizes for outcome measures were within the range of those of previous studies. Our findings support the notion that the results of the DBT efficacy research can be generalized to an inpatient setting and to patients with BPD disorder with high comorbidity.     

Immediate and delayed punishment of human behavior by loss of reinforcement

Young adult humans pressed a key to obtain money. When responding was punished by presentation of a stimulus signifying that money was lost, response frequencies decreased and response latencies increased. Since these changes did not increase relative earnings, the aversive properties of loss of reinforcement were manifested independently or reinforcement gain. When loss punishment was delayed for either 10, 20, or 40 sec the extent of suppression was found to vary inversely with the response-punishment interval. Subsequent manipulations indicated that the effectiveness of delayed punishment was increased when the response also produced immediate conditioned punishment, i.e., a stimulus paired with the delayed loss stimulus. Instructions about the response-punishment contingency had similar effects. The findings were consistent with animal studies of delayed shock punishment, insofar as a similar delay-of-punishment gradient was observed, and with studies of delayed positive reinforcement, insofar as mediation through conditioned punishment (or instructions) increased the effectiveness of delayed punishment.     

The effects of collaboration and punishment on prospective memory performance in a group setting

Remembering to perform a delayed intention is termed prospective memory (PM). Often delayed intentions are shared by more than one person; however, there is a dearth of studies examining PM in social settings. We aimed to investigate whether the potential consequences of one's behavior across diverse group settings influence PM performance in event‐ and time‐based tasks. A total of 207 participants were randomly allocated to either an individual, collaborative, or collaborative plus penalty motivation condition and were tested in a 2‐ or 3‐person setting. For the time‐based PM task, participants responded less timely in the individual motivation condition, whereas there was no difference between the collaborative motivation conditions. No significant effects were found for motivation condition on the event‐based task or for group size on PM performance. Analyses of ongoing task performance revealed that participants' attention allocation policies change depending on how individuals prioritize the ongoing and PM tasks.     

The time course of temporal preparation in an applied setting: A study of gaming behavior

We examined the time course of temporal preparation in the practice of computer gaming. Participants held an infrared rifle to shoot animated figures (“terrorists”) that appeared from an elevator that opened briefly after the sound of a bell. The sound was either loud or soft and the interval between the sound and the opening of the elevator varied between 100 and 600 ms. We found that shooting latency decreased exponentially as a function of interval, reflecting growing temporal preparation towards an optimum. When the sound was soft, this function was shifted to the right as compared to when the sound was loud. These findings are consistent with a model assuming that preparation starts upon the detection of a warning (i.e., later for the soft than for the loud sound) and continues until the detection of a target (i.e., longer as the interval increases). These results signify a successful application of a theoretical model in an applied setting.     

Effectiveness of child psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a clinical outpatient setting

The objective of this study was to evaluate the outcome of child psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a clinical outpatient setting in a city in southern Brazil. Three psychological tests (Rorschach, Bender and WISC III) were administered to 23 children, aged 6–11 years old, and the Child Behaviour Check List (CBCL) was completed by the parents. All testing was completed before the beginning of the individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The same measures were repeated after 12 months of intervention. The 23 children who received individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy were compared with a control group who did not receive any kind of intervention. In the clinical group, the results indicated a statistically significant reduction of anxiety symptoms (0.002) and school problems (0.031), improvement in interpersonal relationships (0.022), and positive change in the following CBCL scales: withdrawn (0.010), thought problems (0.022), anxiety and depression (0.017), internalising (0.008) and total (0.003). An effect size of 0.696 was calculated based on the CBCL total scale before and after the intervention. The results revealed that child psychoanalytical psychotherapy is mostly effective in the treatment of female children who present internalising disorders.     

Effectiveness and cost offset analysis of group CBT for hypochondriasis delivered in a psychiatric setting: an open trial

Hypochondriasis is highly prevalent in medical settings, has detrimental effects for affected individuals, and is associated with high societal costs. Although cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of hypochondriasis, it is not widely available because of a lack of properly trained therapists. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate therapy forms that require less therapist time. The authors investigated the effect and economic impact of group CBT delivered in a psychiatric setting among 24 people with hypochondriasis. A within-group design with prolonged baseline was used, and all participants received 10 weeks of group-based treatment. The primary outcome measures were the Health Anxiety Inventory and the Illness Attitude Scales. Results indicate significant improvement on both measures at posttreatment and 6-month follow-up (Cohen's d = 1.03-1.72). Medical and nonmedical costs were substantially lowered. The authors conclude that group-based CBT delivered in a psychiatric setting is an effective and potentially highly cost-effective treatment for hypochondriasis.     

Gossip as an effective and low-cost form of punishment

The spreading of reputational information about group members through gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment. Research shows that negative arousal states motivate individuals to gossip about the transgressions of group members. By sharing information in this way groups are better able to promote cooperation and maintain social control and order.     

Multimodal therapy in an inpatient setting

Inpatient Multimodal Therapy (imt) is a residential treatment program, lasting a maximum of 36 weeks, for patients with severe neurotic symptoms. A group of 44 chronic obsessive-compulsive patients and a group of 40 chronic phobic patients were treated in order to assess the outcome and the process of treatment and to identify prognostic factors associated with the effect. At follow-up—on average, eight months after discharge—it was found that 60% had improved, 32% had remained the same, and 8% had deteriorated, indicating that, in general, the treatment was beneficial. That these effects were long-lasting is supported by the fact that, at follow-up, 78% of all patients were no longer receiving treatment, 18% were receiving outpatient or day treatment, and 4% were receiving inpatient treatment. Phobic patients appear to have gained more from the multimodal approach than did obsessive-compulsive patients, as indicated by the fact that the severity of symptoms decreased as they improved in rational thinking, assertiveness, and arousal. By contrast, obsessive-compulsive patients relapsed more than phobic patients did. This was attributed to the fact that the former gained less from the rational-emotive training, denied problems with assertiveness, and did not practice the acquired relaxation skills. It further appeared that a favorable outcome could be induced in patients who (1) expressed relatively mild symptoms in this otherwise severe group, (2) reported relatively few additional complaints, (3) could clearly indicate interpersonal problems, and (4) did not use psychotropic drugs. These prognostic factors are so widespread that not much weight can be ascribed to them. Yet they are useful for indication ofimt until better predictors are found.     

Wrapping services in an urban setting

Efforts to reform services for children and their families in Baltimore City have included providing Wraparound services to youth returned or diverted from out-of-state residential treatment. We briefly present the history and evolution of the system reform efforts in Baltimore City that were necessary to support the implementation of a Wraparound model of service delivery. The characteristics of the Wraparound service model is presented along with the referral pathway of the youth into the service system, the components of the service delivery system and an overview of step-down services and linkages utilized to transition the youth. Data are presented that demonstrate the level of community adjustment of a subset of the 121 youth served through the Wraparound model in contrast to the level of community adjustment achieved by nonequivalent comparison groups. We discuss the use of report card type of outcome measures, its user-friendly features, limitations, and the developmental steps needed to refine it further.