Effects of cultural themes in psychotic symptoms on the diagnosis of schizophrenia in African Americans

Cultural themes focusing on race-related issues and religiosity were identified via content analysis in the delusions and hallucinations of a sample of 118 African American psychiatric patients. The purpose of the study was to determine whether cultural themes in psychotic symptoms influence the diagnosis from different sources (i.e., chart, SCID, and best estimate) of schizophrenia for Black patients. It was hypothesized that the best estimate diagnoses of cultural experts would diagnose schizophrenia in African Americans more frequently when they exhibit race-related themes in their psychotic symptoms. It was also hypothesized that diagnosis of the paranoid subtype would yield a stronger difference among the sources than the broader category of schizophrenia. The results did not support the hypotheses. Implications for understanding the relationship between culture and psychosis among African Americans are discussed.     

Social relevance enhances memory for impressions in older adults

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults have difficulty retrieving contextual material over items alone. Recent research suggests this deficit can be reduced by adding emotional context, allowing for the possibility that memory for social impressions may show less age-related decline than memory for other types of contextual information. Two studies investigated how orienting to social or self-relevant aspects of information contributed to the learning and retrieval of impressions in young and older adults. Participants encoded impressions of others in conditions varying in the use of self-reference (Experiment 1) and interpersonal meaningfulness (Experiment 2), and completed memory tasks requiring the retrieval of specific traits. For both experiments, age groups remembered similar numbers of impressions. In Experiment 1 using more self-relevant encoding contexts increased memory for impressions over orienting to stimuli in a non-social way, regardless of age. In Experiment 2 older adults had enhanced memory for impressions presented in an interpersonally meaningful relative to a personally irrelevant way, whereas young adults were unaffected by this manipulation. The results provide evidence that increasing social relevance ameliorates age differences in memory for impressions, and enhances older adults’ ability to successfully retrieve contextual information.     

Work Stressors,Depressive Symptoms,and Hazardous Drinking Among Navy Members Across Deployment

Few studies have attempted to examine how changes in work stressors from predeployment to postdeployment and reintegration may be associated with changes in mental health symptoms and hazardous drinking. The present study examined associations between work stressors, depressive symptoms, and hazardous drinking, and whether depressive symptoms mediated the association between work stressors and hazardous alcohol use or vice versa across deployment (predeployment, postdeployment, and 6-month reintegration). Participants were 101 U.S. Navy members (72 men; mean age = 28.34 years; SD = 5.99 years) assigned to an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer that experienced an 8-month deployment after recent wars in the Middle East. They completed measures that assessed work stressors, depressive symptoms, and alcohol use at each time point (i.e., predeployment, postdeployment, and 6-month reintegration). Using a parallel process latent growth modeling approach, we found a significant indirect effect at postdeployment such that an increase in work stressors contributed to increases in hazardous drinking via increases in depressive symptoms. Specifically, increases in work stressors significantly predicted increases in depressive symptoms, which in turn significantly predicted increases in hazardous drinking from pre- to postdeployment. Our findings garner support for affect regulation models and indicate that work stressors and changes in work stressors and depressive symptoms may be key to hazardous alcohol use among U.S. Navy members experiencing high pace of deployment. Taken together, our results help identify targets for alcohol prevention efforts among current military members.     

Similarities and differences between mind-wandering and external distraction: A latent variable analysis of lapses of attention and their relation to cognitive abilities

The current study examined the extent to which task-unrelated thoughts represent both vulnerability to mind-wandering and susceptibility to external distraction from an individual difference perspective. Participants performed multiple measures of attention control, working memory capacity, and fluid intelligence. Task-unrelated thoughts were assessed using thought probes during the attention control tasks. Using latent variable techniques, the results suggested that mind-wandering and external distraction reflect distinct, yet correlated constructs, both of which are related to working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Furthermore, the results suggest that the common variance shared by mind-wandering, external distraction, and attention control is what primarily accounts for their relation with working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. These results support the notion that lapses of attention are strongly related to cognitive abilities.     

Cognitive Indicators of Social Anxiety in Youth: A Structural Equation Analysis

Previous studies have demonstrated significant relationships among various cognitive variables such as negative cognition, self-efficacy, and social anxiety. Unfortunately, few studies focus on the role of cognition among youth, and researchers often fail to use domain-specific measures when examining cognitive variables. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to examine domain-specific cognitive variables (i.e., socially oriented negative self-referent cognition and social self-efficacy) and their relationships to social anxiety in children and adolescents using structural equation modeling techniques. A community sample of children and adolescents (n = 245; 55.9% female; 83.3% Caucasian, 9.4% African American, 2% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 2% “other,” and 1.2% not reported) completed questionnaires assessing social cognition and social anxiety symptomology. Three latent variables were created to examine the constructs of socially oriented negative self-referent cognition (as measured by the SONAS scale), social self-efficacy (as measured by the SEQSS-C), and social anxiety (as measured by the SPAI-C and the Brief SA). The resulting measurement model of latent variables fit the data well. Additionally, consistent with the study hypothesis, results indicated that social self-efficacy likely mediates the relationship between socially oriented negative self-referent cognition and social anxiety, and socially oriented negative self-referent cognition yields significant direct and indirect effects on social anxiety. These findings indicate that socially oriented negative cognitions are associated with youth's beliefs about social abilities and the experience of social anxiety. Future directions for research and study limitations, including use of cross-sectional data, are discussed.     

Caregiver preference for reinforcement‐based interventions for problem behavior maintained by positive reinforcement

Social validity of behavioral interventions typically is assessed with indirect methods or by determining preferences of the individuals who receive treatment, and direct observation of caregiver preference rarely is described. In this study, preferences of 5 caregivers were determined via a concurrent‐chains procedure. Caregivers were neurotypical, and children had been diagnosed with developmental disabilities and engaged in problem behavior maintained by positive reinforcement. Caregivers were taught to implement noncontingent reinforcement (NCR), differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), and differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO), and the caregivers selected interventions to implement during sessions with the child after they had demonstrated proficiency in implementing the interventions. Three caregivers preferred DRA, 1 caregiver preferred differential reinforcement procedures, and 1 caregiver did not exhibit a preference. Direct observation of implementation in concurrent‐chains procedures may allow the identification of interventions that are implemented with sufficient integrity and preferred by caregivers.