Encouraging Occupation: A Systematic Review of the Use of Life Review and Reminiscence Therapy for the Treatment of Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults

The present systematic review investigates the efficacy of both life review and reminiscence therapy interventions in the treatment of depressive symptoms in older adults. A systematic review of the literature was conducted using three databases: Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, and PsycINFO. Six studies met the inclusion criteria, and pertinent variables were extracted for data analysis. In all six articles, the reminiscence therapy or life review intervention was found to be effective in the treatment of depressive symptoms in older adults. These interventions are appropriate for use in occupational therapy practice, as occupational therapists are well-equipped to treat the psychosocial needs of individuals.     

Motivational Influences on Cognitive Performance in Children: Focus Over Fit

Cognitive psychologists have begun to address how motivational factors influence adults' performance on cognitive tasks. However, little research has examined how different motivational factors interact with one another to affect behavior across the life span. In the current study, the authors examined how children perform on a classification task when placed in a regulatory fit or mismatch. Nine-year-old children performed a classification task in which they either gained or lost points for each response. Additionally, children were given either a global promotion focus (trying to earn a gift card) or a prevention focus (trying to avoid losing a gift card). Previous work indicates that adults in this task tend to perform better when there is a match (or fit) between the incentive to gain, or avoid losing, a global reward, and the more local task reward structure to either maximize points gained or minimize points lost on a trial-by-trial basis. Unlike adults, 9-year-olds perform better in the promotion condition than in the prevention condition regardless of task reward structure. Possible explanations for the differences between adults' and children's performance are discussed as are possible applications for academic settings.     

The Desire for Power and Perceptions of Heterosexual Romantic Relationships: The Moderating Roles of Perceived Power and Gender

Sex Roles - The purpose of the present studies was to examine whether the associations that the desire for power had with perceptions of the romantic relationship (e.g., relationship satisfaction,...     

Parent Management of Attendance and Adherence in Child and Adolescent Therapy: A Conceptual and Empirical Review

There have been impressive, recent advances in the development of efficacious treatments for child and adolescent behavior problems. However, specific methods for delivering these treatments in a way that amplifies their efficacy have not been well articulated. Although many factors may be involved, attendance and adherence to treatment are arguably the most basic necessities for effective treatment delivery. We provide a conceptual and empirical review of past research on attendance and adherence to child and adolescent therapy, with a special focus on the importance of parents/guardians in managing treatment participation. Our review demonstrates that attendance and adherence are associated with a range of significant methodological, clinical, and financial outcomes. Several pretreatment predictors of attendance and adherence have been identified; however, to date only 12 controlled, clinical trials have evaluated strategies for enhancing attendance and adherence to child therapy. We conclude with an agenda for advancing research on the prediction and enhancement of attendance and adherence to child therapy as a means of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of child treatments.     

TMS to the “occipital face area” affects recognition but not categorization of faces

The human cortical system for face perception is comprised of a network of connected regions including the middle fusiform gyrus (“fusiform face area” or FFA), the inferior occipital cortex (“occipital face area” or OFA), and the superior temporal sulcus. The traditional hierarchical feedforward model of visual processing suggests information flows from early visual cortex to the OFA for initial face feature analysis to higher order regions including the FFA for identity recognition. However, patient data suggest an alternative model. Patients with acquired prosopagnosia, an inability to visually recognize faces, have been documented with lesions to the OFA but who nevertheless show face-selective activation in the FFA. Moreover, their ability to categorize faces remains intact. This suggests that the FFA is not solely responsible for face recognition and the network is not strictly hierarchical, but may be organized in a reverse hierarchical fashion. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt processing in the OFA in neurologically-intact individuals and found participants’ ability to categorize intact versus scrambled faces was unaffected, however face identity discrimination was significantly impaired. This suggests that face categorization but not recognition can occur without the “earlier” OFA being online and indicates that “lower level” face category processing may be assumed by other intact face network regions such as the FFA. These results are consistent with the patient data and support a non-hierarchical, global-to-local model with re-entrant connections between the OFA and other face processing areas.     

A COMPARISON OF BRIEF FUNCTIONAL ANALYSES WITH AND WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES

Variations to traditional functional analysis methodology, such as brief functional analyses (BFAs), are prevalent in the literature. In the current evaluation, two types of BFAs were each conducted with five participants. In one, potential motivating operations (MOs) were presented, and problem behavior resulted in delivery of an associated consequence. In the other, the same MOs were presented, but no consequences were delivered. Results of the two BFAs were compared with respect to the conditions in which problem behavior occurred and the degree of differentiation between test and control conditions. Results across the BFA methodologies generally matched across all five participants. However, greater differentiation was observed in the BFA that did not include consequences. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Direct and interactive effects of parent,friend and schoolmate drinking on alcohol use trajectories

Objective: This study considered the unique and interactive roles of social norms from parents, friends and schools in predicting developmental trajectories of adolescent drinking and intoxication.

Design and outcome measures: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which followed adolescents (N = 18,921) for 13 years, we used discrete mixture modelling to identify unique developmental trajectories of drinking and of intoxication. Next, multilevel multinomial regression models examined the role of alcohol-related social norms from parents, friends and schoolmates in the prediction of youths’ trajectory group membership.

Results: Results demonstrated that social norms from parents, friends and schoolmates that were favourable towards alcohol use uniquely predicted drinking and intoxication trajectory group membership. Interactions between social norms revealed that schoolmate drinking played an important moderating role, frequently augmenting social norms from parents and friends. The current findings suggest that social norms from multiple sources (parents, friends and schools) work both independently and interactively to predict longitudinal trajectories of adolescent alcohol use.

Conclusions: Results highlight the need to identify and understand social messages from multiple developmental contexts in efforts to reduce adolescent alcohol consumption and alcohol-related risk-taking.     

The development of prospective memory in young schoolchildren: The impact of ongoing task absorption,cue salience,and cue centrality

This study presents evidence that 9- and 10-year-old children outperform 6- and 7-year-old children on a measure of event-based prospective memory and that retrieval-based factors systematically influence performance and age differences. All experiments revealed significant age effects in prospective memory even after controlling for ongoing task performance. In addition, the provision of a less absorbing ongoing task (Experiment 1), higher cue salience (Experiment 2), and cues appearing in the center of attention (Experiment 3) were each associated with better performance. Of particular developmental importance was an age by cue centrality (in or outside of the center of attention) interaction that emerged in Experiment 3. Thus, age effects were restricted to prospective memory cues appearing outside of the center of attention, suggesting that the development of prospective memory across early school years may be modulated by whether a cue requires overt monitoring beyond the immediate attentional context. Because whether a cue is in or outside of the center of attention might determine the amount of executive control needed in a prospective memory task, findings suggest that developing executive control resources may drive prospective memory development across primary school age.     

‘You Could Call It Magic’: What Parents and Siblings Tell Preschoolers About Unobservable Entities

How can we explain children's understanding of the unseen world? Young children are generally able to distinguish between real unobservable entities and fantastical ones, but they attribute different characteristics to and show less confidence in their decisions about fantastical entities generally endorsed by adults, such as Santa Claus. One explanation for these conceptual differences is that the testimony children hear from others about unobservable entities varies in meaningful ways. Although this theory has some experimental support, its viability in actual conversation has yet to be investigated. Study 1 sought to examine this question in parent–child conversation and showed that parents provide similar types of content information when talking to children about both real entities and entities that they generally endorse. However, parents use different pragmatic cues when they communicate about endorsed entities than they do when talking about real ones. Study 2 showed that older siblings used discourse strategies similar to those used by parents when talking to young children about unobservable entities. These studies indicate that the types of cues children use to form their conceptions of unobservable entities are present in naturalistic conversations with others, supporting a role for testimony in children's early beliefs.