Evaluating the efficiency and community safety goals of the Broward County Mental Health Court

Mental health courts have developed as one response to persons with mental illness who are involved with the criminal justice system. This study investigated the efficiency and safety goals of one such court in Broward County, FL. Mental health court (MHC) clients spent significantly fewer days in jail for the index arrest associated with study enrollment than a comparison group. MHC clients had similar survival time to re-arrest up to one year after study enrollment. MHC clients did not significantly differ from the comparison group in self-reported aggressive acts over an 8 month follow-up period, while they did self-report significantly fewer acts of violence than the comparison group at the 8 month follow-up. These findings suggest that some of the benefits associated with the MHC reported in prior studies were not achieved at the expense of efficiency and safety.     

Sleep, dreams, and memory consolidation: the role of the stress hormone cortisol

We discuss the relationship between sleep, dreams, and memory, proposing that the content of dreams reflects aspects of memory consolidation taking place during the different stages of sleep. Although we acknowledge the likely involvement of various neuromodulators in these phenomena, we focus on the hormone cortisol, which is known to exert influence on many of the brain systems involved in memory. The concentration of cortisol escalates over the course of the night's sleep, in ways that we propose can help explain the changing nature of dreams across the sleep cycle.     

The generality of working memory capacity: a latent-variable approach to verbal and visuospatial memory span and reasoning

A latent-variable study examined whether verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) capacity measures reflect a primarily domain-general construct by testing 236 participants in 3 span tests each of verbal WM. visuospatial WM, verbal short-term memory (STM), and visuospatial STM. as well as in tests of verbal and spatial reasoning and general fluid intelligence (Gf). Confirmatory' factor analyses and structural equation models indicated that the WM tasks largely reflected a domain-general factor, whereas STM tasks, based on the same stimuli as the WM tasks, were much more domain specific. The WM construct was a strong predictor of Gf and a weaker predictor of domain-specific reasoning, and the reverse was true for the STM construct. The findings support a domain-general view of WM capacity, in which executive-attention processes drive the broad predictive utility of WM span measures, and domain-specific storage and rehearsal processes relate more strongly to domain-specific aspects of complex cognition.     

Training-based interventions in motor rehabilitation after stroke: theoretical and clinical considerations

Basic neuroscience research on brain plasticity, motor learning and recovery has stimulated new concepts in neurological rehabilitation. Combined with the development of set methodological standards in clinical outcome research, these findings have led to a double-paradigm shift in motor rehabilitation: (a) the move towards evidence-based procedures for the assessment of clinical outcome & the employment of disablement models to anchor outcome parameters, and (b) the introduction of practice-based concepts that are derived from testable models that specify treatment mechanisms. In this context, constraint-induced movement therapy (CIT) has played a catalytic role in taking motor rehabilitation forward into the scientific arena. As a theoretically founded and hypothesis-driven intervention, CIT research focuses on two main issues. The first issue is the assessment of long-term clinical benefits in an increasing range of patient groups, and the second issue is the investigation of neuronal and behavioural treatment mechanisms and their interactive contribution to treatment success. These studies are mainly conducted in the research environment and will eventually lead to increased treatment benefits for patients in standard health care. However, gradual but presumably more immediate benefits for patients may be achieved by introducing and testing derivates of the CIT concept that are more compatible with current clinical practice. Here, we summarize the theoretical and empirical issues related to the translation of research-based CIT work into the clinical context of standard health care.     

Coping through emotional approach: a new look at emotion, coping, and health-related outcomes

Researchers studying stress and coping processes have attempted to identify which coping strategies are most adaptive in stressful encounters. A generally accepted conclusion has been that emotion-focused coping processes are associated with dysfunctional outcomes. Studies from our and other research teams challenge the "bad reputation" of emotion-focused coping by demonstrating that items measuring emotion-focused strategies in published coping questionnaires are confounded with distress and self-deprecation. We have developed and validated new instruments to assess coping though acknowledging, understanding, and expressing emotion, that is, coping through emotional approach. Longitudinal and experimental studies using these new scales have documented the adaptive potential of emotional-approach coping in the context of several types of stressors, including infertility, breast cancer, and chronic pain. However, characteristics of the environmental context, stressful experience, and individual are important moderators of the relations of emotional-approach coping and health-related outcomes. Potential mediators and moderators of coping through emotional approach, clinical relevance of the construct, and directions for research are discussed.     

Perceptual judgements of others' tasting experiences: are they enjoying their food?

Motivated by previous work suggesting that infants make stereotypic facial reactions to different tastes, we assessed communicative signals that might enable an adult to interpret the strength, taste, and hedonic value of a liquid flavour another adult is consuming. Four subjects (tasters) were overtly videoed consuming drinks that varied in strength (low, medium, and high concentrations), taste (sweet, sour, bitter, and salty), and hedonic value (taster-rated enjoyment). 26 observers assessed the strength, taste, and taster's enjoyment of the drink from video clips of the tasters. Observers perceived the hedonic value of the drinks to the taster and the drinks' strength based on the tasters' reactions but were generally poor at assessing the specific taste of the drink. For all tastes except the bitter ones, observers might have based their judgements of taste on how much the taster appeared to enjoy the drink. These findings are discussed in terms of communication of food's value.     

Modeling language acquisition in atypical phenotypes

An increasing number of connectionist models have been proposed to explain behavioral deficits in developmental disorders. These simulations motivate serious consideration of the theoretical implications of the claim that a developmental disorder fits within the parameter space of a particular computational model of normal development. The authors examine these issues in depth with respect to a series of new simulations investigating past-tense formation in Williams syndrome. This syndrome and the past-tense domain are highly relevant because both have been used to make strong theoretical claims about the processes underlying normal language acquisition. The authors conclude that computational models have great potential to advance psychologists' understanding of developmental deficits because they focus on the developmental process itself as a pivotal causal factor in producing atypical phenotypic outcomes.     

Word associations in deep dyslexia

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder resulting in the production of semantic errors during oral reading and an inability to read aloud nonwords. Several researchers have postulated that patients with deep dyslexia have both phonological and semantic access impairments but the data supporting these claims are not convincing. In fact, the hallmark feature of deep dyslexia--the semantic errors--strongly implies that these patients can access semantic information from printed words. We test the integrity of the semantic system in two such patients through auditory and visual word association tasks. The data support the notion that semantics remains intact and that the disorder and associated errors arise through a selection impairment related to failure of inhibitory connections in the phonological lexicon.     

Unique transitions between stimuli and responses in SRT tasks: Evidence for the primacy of response predictions

The present experiments aimed at separating the impact stimulus and response predictions have on serial learning and performance in SRT tasks. In Experiment 1, a unique transition between two of four responses in an otherwise random response sequence was triggered by ambiguous stimulus transitions, allowing local response predictions but no stimulus predictions. The data indicated explicit transition knowledge and strong performance benefits. In Experiments 2 and 3, unique transitions between two of four stimuli in otherwise random stimulus sequences allowed local stimulus predictions under conditions of ambiguous response transitions. The data indicated fragmentary explicit transition knowledge but no performance effects. Experiments 4a and 4b reveal that the inefficacy of the unique stimulus transitions in Experiments 2 and 3 was presumably due to the fact that the stimuli differed with respect to conjunctions of response relevant and response irrelevant features which participants did not have to attend. However, although in Experiments 4a and 4b unique transitions between response relevant stimuli were applied, substantial explicit transition knowledge but only marginal performance effects resulted. It is argued i) that in SRT tasks learning mechanisms are addressed that primarily strive for reliable predictions of forthcoming responses and ii) that for these mechanisms to work the predictors have to be attended. Response transitions are easily learned and used because both criteria are fulfilled. In contrast, pure stimulus transitions are learned only if the predictive stimuli are attended, and learned stimulus transitions become effective only to the extent that the predicted stimuli specify the required responses.