Responses to Conflict and Cooperation in Adolescents with Anxiety and Mood Disorders

This study examined patterns of behavioral and emotional responses to conflict and cooperation in adolescents with anxiety/mood disorders and healthy peers. We compared performance on and emotional responses to the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game, an economic exchange task involving conflict and cooperation, between adolescents with anxiety/depressive disorders (A/D) (N=21) and healthy comparisons (n = 29). Participants were deceived to believe their co-player (a pre-programmed computer algorithm) was another study participant. A/D adolescents differed significantly from comparisons in patterns of play and emotional response to the game. Specifically, A/D participants responded more cooperatively to cooperative overtures from their co-players; A/D girls also reported more anger toward co-players than did comparison girls. Our findings indicate that A/D adolescents, particularly females, respond distinctively to stressful social interchanges. These findings offer a first step toward elucidating the mechanisms underlying social impairment in youth with internalizing disorders. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, NIMH.     

Decoupling Children’s Gender-based In-Group Positivity from Out-Group Negativity

In the current study we attempted to determine whether children’s gender-based intergroup biases reflect positive attitudes toward the in-group and/or negative attitudes toward the out-group. Third through fifth grade children were asked to determine whether positive and negative traits described boys, girls, both genders, or nobody. This methodology allowed for separate evaluation of in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Girls and children who perceived their gender as important viewed their in-group as having more positive than negative attributes and more positive and less negative attributes than the out-group. Boys and children who viewed gender as less important viewed both genders as having more positive than negative attributes. These results support Brewer’s (Journal of Social Issues 55:429–444, 1999) claim that in-group love and out-group hate are not reciprocally related.     

Social validity assessment of behavior data recording among human services care providers

Care providers within human services organizations have many job responsibilities and performance expectations. In the present study, we conducted social validity assessment with 78 care providers concerning their attitudes and opinions about behavior data recording with adults who had intellectual disability and lived in community group homes. Specifically, the care providers responded to a written questionnaire that inquired about the practicality, training/supervision, and value of behavior data recording in the context of service delivery. Results indicated generally high approval of behavior data recording practices, purposes, and approaches to training. We discuss implications of these findings for implementing data recording by care providers and the contribution of social validity assessment to training and performance management within human services organizations.     

Does analysis brevity result in loss of control? A consecutive case series of 26 single‐session interview‐informed synthesized contingency analyses

A believable demonstration of control over problem behavior is a necessary component of the functional analysis process. Control during a functional analysis has traditionally been defined in a binary manner: Differentiated outcomes point to an identifiable function and undifferentiated outcomes do not. However, it might be beneficial to characterize control as strong, moderate, or weak in order to evaluate the strength of evidence for experimental control during an efficient functional analysis format that requires only a single session. We analyzed the levels of control using 26 single‐session interview‐informed synthesized contingency analyses (IISCAs). Although shorter session duration (i.e., first 3 or 5 min of each session) tended to reduce the level of control, the majority of single‐session IISCAs resulted in evidence indicating strong levels of control when data from the full 10‐min session were included in the analysis.     

Integrating clients' moment‐to‐moment ratings into psychotherapy research: A novel approach

Counselling and psychotherapy researchers have considerably advanced the field's understanding of psychotherapy processes and how they relate to treatment outcomes. Despite these advances, little is known about the client's perspective of changes in psychotherapy processes that occur throughout a given session (i.e. micro‐processes). To address this gap, this article describes the novel application of methods that assess participants' moment‐to‐moment ratings to psychotherapy research. This method entails recording psychotherapy session content that clients and other potential raters (e.g. therapists, researchers) later review while simultaneously providing continuous ratings of psychotherapy processes (e.g. helpfulness, alliance). In addition, moment‐to‐moment ratings can facilitate significant events research by prompting researchers to elicit client feedback about the moments that are rated the most and least positively. However, few studies have used these methods in the context of psychotherapy research. Studies incorporating these methods may yield findings that advance psychotherapy research, training efforts and clinical practice. For example, studies may examine how the magnitude and timing of clients' moment‐to‐moment ratings of psychotherapy processes are associated with treatment outcomes, therapist ratings and physiological processes (e.g. heart rate variability). Trainee therapists and their supervisors may also use clients' moment‐to‐moment ratings to facilitate attunement to verbal and non‐verbal indicators of moments perceived more positively and negatively. Last, these methods can produce findings that are highly relevant to clinical practice, where therapists routinely navigate fluctuations in psychotherapy processes (e.g. alliance ruptures) that can be assessed using moment‐to‐moment ratings.     

Subjective Importance of Masculinity as a Factor in Understanding Risky Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors among Sexual Minority Men

Sex Roles - In the present study we evaluated relationships among internalized stigma, subjective importance of masculine gender roles, and risky sexual attitudes and behaviors among men who...     

Evaluating the boundaries of analytic efficiency and control: A consecutive controlled case series of 26 functional analyses

We conducted this study to determine if the efficiency of the functional analysis could be improved without detrimental effects on control. In Experiment 1, we reanalyzed functional analyses conducted for the problem behavior of 18 children. We analyzed rates of problem behavior during the first 5 min and first 3 min of the original 10-min sessions and evaluated if changes in the level of control over problem behavior by the programmed contingency were evident from the analyses of shorter session duration. In Experiment 2, we conducted 8 consecutive functional analyses with 3-min sessions to further evaluate the utility of brief session durations. We found that control over problem behavior was demonstrated when conducting functional analyses with sessions as brief as 3 min.     

A note on Dasgupta’s Generalism

Philosophical Studies - Dasgupta (Philos Stud Int J Philos Anal Tradit 145(1):35–67, 2009) has argued that material individuals, such as particles and laptops, are metaphysically...     

Prioritization within visual working memory reflects a flexible focus of attention

When motivated, people can keep nonrecent items in a list active during the presentation of new items, facilitating fast and accurate recall of the earlier items. It has been proposed that this occurs by flexibly orienting attention to a single prioritized list item, thus increasing the amount of attention-based maintenance directed toward this item at the expense of other items. This is manipulated experimentally by associating a single distinct feature with a higher reward value, such as a single red item in a list of black items. These findings may be more parsimoniously explained under a distinctiveness of encoding framework rather than a flexible attention allocation framework. The retrieval advantage for the prioritized list position may be because the incongruent feature stands out in the list perceptually and causes it to become better encoded. Across three visual working memory experiments, we contrast a flexible attention theory against a distinctiveness of encoding theory by manipulating the reward value associated with the incongruent feature. Findings from all three experiments show strong support in favor of the flexible attention theory and no support for the distinctiveness of encoding theory. We also evaluate and find no evidence that strategy use, motivation, or tiredness/fatigue associated with reward value can adequately explain flexible prioritization of attention. Flexible attentional prioritization effects may be best understood under the context of an online attentional refreshing mechanism.