The role of anxiety and depression in the irritable bowel syndrome

Using a reliable and valid structured diagnostic interview scale (ADIS-R), and patients with careful medical characterization, we found significantly more diagnosable psychopathology, particularly anxiety disorders, among treatment seeking patients with irritable bowel syndrome than among comparable age and sex samples of treatment seeking patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Significant differences were also found on the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression between IBS patients and the IBD patients and controls, who did not differ. Comparable levels of psychiatric disorder among parents of probands were found in all three groups. The results are consistent with Latimer's (1983) notion of IBS patients being a subclass of 'neurotics'.     

Differential effects of performance demand and distraction on sexually functional and dysfunctional males

Sexually functional and sexually dysfunctional male subjects viewed an erotic film while experiencing two different types of distraction. During a neutral distracting condition, subjects were asked to estimate the length and width of a straight line appearing on an adjacent video monitor. During the "performance demand" distraction condition, subjects viewed video feedback of their genital responses and were asked to estimate percentage of full erection. These conditions were compared to a no distraction control condition. Performance demand distraction significantly elevated the responding of functional subjects compared to the neutral distraction condition. The responding of dysfunctional subjects, on the other hand, decreased during the performance demand distraction and was significantly lower than arousal in functional subjects in this condition. Post hoc analyses examined possible cognitive and affective mediating factors of this differential response.     

A child-centred exploration of the relevance of family and friends to theory of mind development

Theory of Mind (ToM) is said to develop at around 4 years old. But some studies suggest it develops considerably earlier than this, with others suggesting it develops much later. Although several recent studies have found that social factors (like gender, family size, number of siblings, and number of friends) can impact on ToM, other studies contradict those findings. We wondered whether addressing several procedural issues and ensuring the task concerns real protagonists in real time, would bear on the above issues. Here, 114 children of 3-6 years completed four ToM tasks incorporating controls from experimental psychology, including randomly varying the order of ToM and non-ToM questions across participants. Now, children passed ToM tasks from around 5 years old, rather than 4 years or earlier. Girls did not develop ToM any earlier than boys. There was clear correlational evidence for the older-sibling effect and effects of friends but no reliable effects of nuclear or extended family. However, when these factors were set in the context of one another, the sibling effect was driven by a negative influence from younger siblings (as opposed to older siblings) and the friends effect was driven by friends at school (as opposed to friends at home). Finally, "friends" was a stronger predictor than siblings but memory (a cognitive factor) and age (a maturational factor) were the strongest predictors of all.     

The case for a dual-process theory of transitive reasoning

Ever since its popularisation by Piaget around 60 years ago, transitive reasoning (deductively-inferring A > C from premises A > B and B > C) has been of psychological interest both as a mental phenomenon and as a tool in areas of psychological discourse. However, the focus of interest in it has shifted periodically first from child development, to learning disability, to non-humans and currently to cognitive and clinical neuroscience. Crucially, such shifts have always been plagued by one core question – the question of which of two competing paradigms (extensive-training paradigm versus non-training paradigm) is valid for assessing transitive reasoning as originally conceived in Piagetian research. The continued avoidance of this question potentially undermines several important findings recently reported: Such as about exactly what is involved in deducing transitive inferences, which brain regions are critical for reaching transitive inference, and what links exist between weakened deductive transitivity and mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Here, we offer the view that both of the competing paradigms are indexing transitivity, but each one tends to tap a different aspect of it. Then, we summarise studies from child and adult cognitive psychology, disabilities research, and from cognitive neuroscience. These, together with studies of non-human reasoning, seem to afford a theory of transitive reasoning that has two major components; one deductive but the other associative. It is proposed that only a dual-process theory of transitivity (having analytic versus intuitive routes approximate to deductive versus associative processing respectively) can account both for the variety of findings and the apparently-disparate paradigms. However, fuzzy-trace theory (“Gist” processes and representations), if not already embodying such a dual-process theory, will need to be incorporated into any complete theory.     

Mechanisms of change in cognitive behavioral therapy for panic disorder: The unique effects of self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity

The present study examined temporal dependencies of change of panic symptoms and two promising mechanisms of change (self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity) during an 11-session course of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for Panic Disorder (PD). 361 individuals with a principal diagnosis of PD completed measures of self-efficacy, anxiety sensitivity, and PD symptoms at each session during treatment. Effect size analyses indicated that the greatest changes in anxiety sensitivity occurred early in treatment, whereas the greatest changes in self-efficacy occurred later in treatment. Results of parallel process latent growth curve models indicated that changes in self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity across treatment uniquely predicted changes in PD symptoms. Bivariate and multivariate latent difference score models indicated, as expected, that changes in anxiety sensitivity and self-efficacy temporally preceded changes in panic symptoms, and that intraindividual changes in anxiety sensitivity and self-efficacy independently predicted subsequent intraindividual changes in panic symptoms. These results provide strong evidence that changes in self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity during CBT influence subsequent changes in panic symptoms, and that self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity may therefore be two distinct mechanisms of change of CBT for PD that have their greatest impact at different stages of treatment.