Family sessions as part of child psychological assessment: goals, techniques, clinical utility, and therapeutic value

Including a family session in a child assessment can significantly advance the assessor's and parents' understanding of the child's problems and enhance the likelihood that parents will follow through on recommendations after the assessment. A family session allows the assessor to observe the child in the family context, test systemic hypotheses, better understand the meaning of individual test results, and try out possible interventions. A family session may also help parents see systemic aspects of their child's problems, help the child feel less blamed, foster positive experiences among family members, and offer the family a glimpse of family therapy. We describe methods and techniques for structuring family sessions and offer guidance on preparing for and conducting such sessions depending on one's case conceptualization. Detailed case examples illustrate each technique and demonstrate the immediate and subsequent impact of family sessions as well as their therapeutic value. We also address common clinical and pragmatic issues.     

Empathic deficits and alexithymia in trauma-related impulsive aggression

Our long term interest is to develop a developmental model of impulsive aggression based on a confluence of social, psychological and biological features. This approach incorporates neurobiological research, which has identified language processing deficits as a unique characteristic of impulsive aggressors and extends it to include emotional deficits. As an initial test of this hypothesis, we examined whether empathy and alexithymia were associated with impulsive aggression. Regressions were performed to explore the associations among impaired empathy, alexithymia, impulsive aggression, verbal and physical general aggression. Among impulsive aggressive veterans (n = 38) recruited from a VA trauma clinic, alexithymia predicted impulsive aggression and empathic deficits predicted verbal aggression. Neither emotional awareness deficit predicted general physical aggression in this middle-aged sample. Results suggested that empathic deficits were associated with general verbal aggression, but alexithymia was uniquely associated with impulsive aggression. Consideration of alexithymia in impulsive aggression has implications for its etiology, prevention and treatment. Published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AGL StimSelect: Software for automated selection of stimuli for artificial grammar learning

Artificial grammar learning (AGL) is an experimental paradigm that has been used extensively incognitive research for many years to study implicit learning, associative learning, and generalization on the basis of either similarity or rules. Without computer assistance, it is virtually impossible to generate appropriate grammatical training stimuli along with grammatical or nongrammatical test stimuli that control relevant psychological variables. We present the first flexible, fully automated software for selecting AGL stimuli. The software allows users to specify a grammar of interest, and to manipulate characteristics of training and test sequences, and their relationship to each other. The user therefore has direct control over stimulus features that may influence learning and generalization in AGL tasks. The software, AGL StimSelect, enables researchers to develop AGL designs that would not be feasible without automatic stimulus selection. It is implemented in MATLAB.     

Long-Term Retention of Olfactory Discrimination Learning Set in Rats

The Psychological Record - Six male Sprague-Dawley rats were used to examine the long-term retention of an olfactory discrimination learning set. Rats were trained on 30 odor-unique, 5-trial...     

The association of depression and sense of belonging with suicidal ideation among older adults: applicability of resiliency models

Suicide among older people, especially men, is a significant problem. In this study the applicability of the compensatory, the risk-protective, the challenge, and the protective-protective models of resiliency for the prediction of suicidal ideation from depression (the risk factor) and sense of belonging to the community (the protective factor) was investigated. A total of 351 retired Australians (130 males and 221 females), with a mean age of 71.31 years (SD = 7.99), completed the Zung Depression Scale, the suicide subscale of the General Health Questionnaire, and the Sense of Belonging Instrument. When sense of belonging (psychological) was the protective factor, results indicated support for the risk-protective model for men and women, and for the compensatory model for women only. In contrast, when sense of belonging (antecedents) was the protective factor, support was evident for the compensatory model for men and women, and for the challenge model for women only. Results indicate that interventions should be developed to enhance sense of belonging among aging adults.     

A developmental approach to violence, hostile attributions, and paranoid thinking in adolescence

Research within the area of paranoid thinking has focused primarily on adults and has only recently looked at the effects during the critical life stage of adolescence, with even less research in the context of the juvenile justice system. This article aims to explore the relationship between antisocial behaviour in adolescence and the development of paranoid thinking, set within wider contexts that surround the juvenile justice system. The information presented is drawn from both the current research and the clinical experiences of those working in adolescent forensic psychiatry services. The relationships with other disorders such as conduct disorder, ADHD, PTSD, and depression are also explored.     

Rapid reacquisition of fear to a completely extinguished context is replaced by transient impairment with additional extinction training

A series of experiments studied reacquisition of fear reactions to a completely extinguished context. Reacquisition was rapid when reconditioning occurred as soon as the fear reactions were completely extinguished, showing that the original conditioning was intact. However, when reconditioning occurred after massive extinction training, fear reactions were depressed but then recovered across a long retention interval. This recovery was due to reconditioning and was similar to that produced by conditioning a massively preexposed context. These results show that massive extinction converts a potentially dangerous context into one that is merely familiar.     

Cognitive style and learning: performance of adaptors and innovators in a novel dynamic task

The influence of cognitive style on performance in a novel dynamic task modelled on the task of controlling air traffic was investigated. It was hypothesized that participants who preferred a more adaptive cognitive style would maintain better rule adherence and safe distances between aircraft in a low‐fidelity air traffic control task than those who preferred a more innovative style. Problems were presented to participants using computer‐based scenarios in screening, practice, and experimental trials. Performance was measured by the number of times the participant violated two types of scenario rules. Screening, practice, and experimental performance were analysed separately. Cognitive style had a significant effect on performance only during experimental trials. Performance of individuals who preferred a more adaptive style improved across experimental trials while those preferring a more innovative style did not. Results suggest that the more innovative participants, although perhaps having some initial advantage, may not be able to sustain performance in this type of task. Published in 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.