Attention modification in persons with fibromyalgia: a double blind, randomized clinical trial

Contemporary models of chronic musculoskeletal pain emphasize the critical roles of fear, anxiety, and avoidance as well as biases in attention in the development and maintenance of chronic pain disability. Evidence supports the influence of individual difference variables such as anxiety sensitivity, pain-related anxiety, and catastrophizing on the pain experience and on pain-related attentional biases. Changes in attentional biases have been associated with treatment gains in patients with clinically significant anxiety. The Attentional Modification Paradigm (AMP) is a modification of the dot-probe paradigm used to facilitate such changes in attentional biases. Given the relationship between chronic musculoskeletal pain and anxiety, AMP may be effective in reducing pain as well. Participants included persons (n = 17) with fibromyalgia and were randomly assigned to either an AMP condition or a control condition. The participants completed two 15-minute AMP sessions per week for 4 weeks. Those in the AMP condition reported statistically significant and substantial reductions on several individual difference variables relative to those in the control condition, and a greater proportion experienced clinically significant reductions in pain. These preliminary results offer a promising new avenue for treating chronic musculoskeletal pain that warrants additional research. Comprehensive results, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Blindness enhances tactile acuity and haptic 3-D shape discrimination

This study compared the sensory and perceptual abilities of the blind and sighted. The 32 participants were required to perform two tasks: tactile grating orientation discrimination (to determine tactile acuity) and haptic three-dimensional (3-D) shape discrimination. The results indicated that the blind outperformed their sighted counterparts (individually matched for both age and sex) on both tactile tasks. The improvements in tactile acuity that accompanied blindness occurred for all blind groups (congenital, early, and late). However, the improvements in haptic 3-D shape discrimination only occurred for the early-onset and late-onset blindness groups; the performance of the congenitally blind was no better than that of the sighted controls. The results of the present study demonstrate that blindness does lead to an enhancement of tactile abilities, but they also suggest that early visual experience may play a role in facilitating haptic 3-D shape discrimination.     

Transfer of associative grouping to novel perceptual contexts in infancy

Learning can be highly adaptive if associations learned in one context are generalized to novel contexts. We examined the development of such generalization in infancy in the context of grouping. In Experiment 1, 3- to 4-month-olds and 6- to 7-month-olds were habituated to shapes grouped via the organizational principle of common region and were tested with familiar and novel pairs as determined by the principle of proximity. Older infants generalized from common region to proximity, but younger infants did not. Younger infants failed to generalize when the task was easier (Experiment 2), and their failure was not due to inability to group via proximity (Experiment 3). However, in Experiment 4, even younger infants generalized grouping on the basis of connectedness to proximity. Thus, the ability to transfer learned associations of shapes to novel contexts is evident early in life, although it continues to undergo quantitative change during infancy. Moreover, the operation of this generalization mechanism may be induced by means of bootstrapping onto functional organizational principles, which is consistent with a developmental framework in which core processes scaffold learning.     

Disentangling the prospective relations between maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms

In a four-wave, cohort-longitudinal design with a community sample of 515 children and adolescents (grades 2 through 9), this study examined the longitudinal structure of and prospective interrelations between maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms. Multigroup structural equation modeling generated four major findings. First, the longitudinal structures of maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms consist of a single time-invariant factor and a series of time-varying factors. Second, evidence supported a model in which depressive symptoms predicted negative cognitions but not the reverse. Third, the time-invariant components of cognition and depression were highly correlated. Fourth, the strength of the depression-to-cognition relation increased with age. Implications regarding the mechanisms underlying clinical interventions with depressed children are discussed.     

Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership

Although psychopathic personality (psychopathy) is marked largely by maladaptive traits (e.g., poor impulse control, lack of guilt), some authors have conjectured that some features of this condition (e.g., fearlessness, interpersonal dominance) are adaptive in certain occupations, including leadership positions. We tested this hypothesis in the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush using (a) psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential leadership, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Fearless Dominance, which reflects the boldness associated with psychopathy, was associated with better rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations, and allied variables; it was also associated with several largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance, such as initiating new projects and being viewed as a world figure. Most of these associations survived statistical control for covariates, including intellectual brilliance, five factor model personality traits, and need for power. In contrast, Impulsive Antisociality and related traits of psychopathy were generally unassociated with rated presidential performance, although they were linked to some largely or entirely objective indicators of negative job performance, including Congressional impeachment resolutions, tolerating unethical behavior in subordinates, and negative character. These findings indicate that the boldness associated with psychopathy is an important but heretofore neglected predictor of presidential performance, and suggest that certain features of psychopathy are tied to successful interpersonal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The accumulating effects of shared expectations

This research examined whether self‐fulfilling prophecies and perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across people. Trios of same‐sex participants, each consisting of two interviewers and one target, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions that served to manipulate interviewers' expectations (i.e., non‐hostile vs. hostile) and the similarity of their expectations (i.e., similar vs. dissimilar) for targets. Each trio participated in an interaction in which interviewers asked targets questions. Targets' hostility during the interaction and interviewers' impressions of targets' hostility following the interaction served as the primary dependent variables. Results indicated that perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across interviewers. Even though targets' behavior during the interaction did not differ across conditions, interviewers nonetheless judged targets as more hostile when both interviewers expected targets to be hostile than when only one did. The authors discuss these findings in terms of the potential implications for those who have multiple inaccurate and unfavorable expectations held about them. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring outcomes through narrative: the long-term impacts of Better Beginnings, Better Futures on the turning point stories of youth at ages 18-19

This study examined the long-term effects of the Better Beginnings, Better Futures project, a community-based early childhood development program, on 18–19 year-old youths’ narratives about turning points in their lives. The sample consisted of youth who participated in Better Beginnings from ages 4–8 (n = 62) and youth from a comparison community who did not participate in Better Beginnings (n = 34). Controlling for covariates, significant differences favoring youth from the Better Beginnings sites were found on several dimensions of the turning point stories: ending resolution, personal growth, meaning-making, coherence, and affect transformation. Effect sizes ranged from .45 to .76 for these outcome dimensions, indicating moderate to large effects. Also, turning point story dimensions were found to be significantly correlated with two standardized measures of well-being: youths’ self-esteem and community involvement. Youths’ self-esteem was directly related to story ending resolution, personal growth, and meaning making, and youths’ community involvement was directly related to story specificity, meaning making, and coherence. Family functioning was also examined in relation to these narrative dimensions but was not found to be significantly related to them. The findings suggest the utility of a narrative approach for the evaluation of the long-term outcomes of early childhood development programs.     

Impairments of speech fluency in Lewy body spectrum disorder

Few studies have examined connected speech in demented and non-demented patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). We assessed the speech production of 35 patients with Lewy body spectrum disorder (LBSD), including non-demented PD patients, patients with PD dementia (PDD), and patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), in a semi-structured narrative speech sample in order to characterize impairments of speech fluency and to determine the factors contributing to reduced speech fluency in these patients. Both demented and non-demented PD patients exhibited reduced speech fluency, characterized by reduced overall speech rate and long pauses between sentences. Reduced speech rate in LBSD correlated with measures of between-utterance pauses, executive functioning, and grammatical comprehension. Regression analyses related non-fluent speech, grammatical difficulty, and executive difficulty to atrophy in frontal brain regions. These findings indicate that multiple factors contribute to slowed speech in LBSD, and this is mediated in part by disease in frontal brain regions.