Preschoolers Use Questions as a Tool to Acquire Knowledge From Different Sources

How do children use questions as tools to acquire new knowledge? The current experiment examined preschool children's ability to direct questions to appropriate sources to acquire knowledge. Fifty preschoolers engaged in a task that entailed asking questions to discover which special key would open a box that contained a prize. Children solved simple and complex problems by questioning two puppet experts who knew about separate features of each key. Results indicate dramatic developmental differences in the efficiency and efficacy of children's questions. Although even 3-year-olds asked questions, their questions were largely ineffective and directed toward inappropriate sources. Four-year-olds directed questions toward the appropriate sources but asked approximately equal numbers of effective and ineffective questions. Only 5-year-olds both asked the appropriate sources and formulated effective questions. Implications for the development of problem-solving abilities are discussed.     

Parent‐implemented behavioral skills training of social skills

Impairment in social skills is a primary feature of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Research indicates that social skills are intimately tied to social development and negative social consequences can persist if specific social behaviors are not acquired. The present study evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on teaching four parents of children with ASDs to be social skills trainers. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across parent–child dyads was employed and direct observation was used to assess parent and child behaviors Results demonstrated substantial improvement in social skills teaching for all participants for trained and untrained skills. Ancillary measures of child performance indicated improvement in skills as well. High levels of correct teaching responses were maintained at a 1 month follow‐up. This study extends current literature on BST while also providing a helpful, low‐effort strategy to modify how parents can work with their children to improve their social skills.     

The Relations among Measurements of Informant Discrepancies within a Multisite Trial of Treatments for Childhood Social Phobia

Discrepancies between informants’ reports of children’s behavior are robustly observed in clinical child research and have important implications for interpreting the outcomes of controlled treatment trials. However, little is known about the basic psychometric properties of these discrepancies. This study examined the relation between parent-child reporting discrepancies on measures of child social phobia symptoms, administered before and after treatment for social phobia. Participants included a clinic sample of 81 children (7–16 years old [M = 11.75, SD = 2.57]; 39 girls, 42 boys) and their parents receiving treatment as part of a multisite controlled trial. Pretreatment parent-child reporting discrepancies predicted parent-child discrepancies at posttreatment, and these relations were not better accounted for by the severity of the child’s pretreatment primary diagnosis. Further, treatment responder status moderated this relation: Significant relations were identified for treatment non-responders and not for treatment responders. Overall, findings suggest that informant discrepancies can be reliably employed to measure individual differences over the course of controlled treatment trials. These data provide additional empirical support for recent work suggesting that informant discrepancies can meaningfully inform understanding of treatment response as well as variability in treatment outcomes.     

Effects of safety behaviors on fear reduction during exposure

The use of safety behaviors has been considered one of the primary maintaining mechanisms of anxiety disorders; however, evidence suggests that they are not always detrimental to treatment success (Milosevic & Radomsky, 2008). This study examined the effects of safety behaviors on behavioral, cognitive, and subjective indicators of fear during exposure for fear of spiders. A two-stage design was used to examine fear reduction and approach distance during an in vivo exposure task for participants (N = 43) assigned to either a safety behavior use (SBU) or no safety behavior use (NSB) condition. Overall, both groups reported significant and comparable reductions in self-reported anxiety and negative beliefs about spiders at posttest and 1-week follow-up. Participants in the SBU group approached the spider more quickly than did participants in the NSB condition; however, participants in the SBU condition showed a small but significant decrease in approach distance at follow-up. These results call for a reconceptualization of the impact of safety behaviors on in vivo exposure.     

Perceptual grouping boosts visual working memory capacity and reduces effort during retention

Consistent, robust boosts to visual working memory capacity are observed when colour–location arrays contain duplicate colours. The prevailing explanation suggests that duplicated colours are encoded as one perceptual group. If so, then we should observe not only higher working memory capacity overall for displays containing duplicates, but specifically an improved ability to remember unique colours from displays including duplicates compared with displays comprising all uniquely coloured items. Furthermore, less effort should be required to retain displays as colour redundancy increases. I recorded gaze position and pupil sizes during a visual change detection task including displays of 4–6 items with either all unique colours, two items with a common colour, or three items with a common colour in samples of young and healthy elderly adults. Increased redundancy was indeed associated with higher estimated working memory capacity, both for tests of duplicates and uniquely coloured items. Redundancy was also associated with decreased pupil size during retention, especially in young adults. While elderly adults also benefited from colour redundancy, spillover to unique items was less obvious with low redundancy than in young adults. This experiment confirms previous findings and presents complementary novel evidence linking perceptual grouping via colour redundancy with decreased mental effort.     

Change in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: do clinicians and patients agree?

This study assessed the longitudinal association between clinician and patient ratings of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms over the course of 2 different randomized clinical trials of veterans with chronic PTSD. One trial, the Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study 420 (CSP 420; N = 360) compared trauma-focused and present-centered group therapies, and the 2nd trial compared cognitive processing theory and a waitlist control condition (N = 60). Linear mixed effects modeling revealed significant associations between clinician ratings (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale; CAPS; D. D. Blake et al., 1990) and patient ratings (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist; PCL; F. W. Weathers, B. T. Litz, J. A. Herman, J. A. Huska, & T. M. Keane, 1993) in total and symptom clusters of PTSD. Contrary to hypothesis, the amount of change on the CAPS ranged from .75 to .82 standard deviations for every 1 standard deviation change on the PCL. The CAPS and PCL were more closely associated in the trauma-focused vs. present-centered treatment condition in CSP 420, and especially regarding hyperarousal symptoms. When comparing categorization of clinically significant change on the CAPS and PCL, the authors found no differences in the percentages of agreement between clinicians and patients in improvement and exacerbation. The value of multimodal assessment of PTSD treatment outcomes is discussed.     

The basolateral amygdala modulates specific sensory memory representations in the cerebral cortex

Stress hormones released by an experience can modulate memory strength via the basolateral amygdala, which in turn acts on sites of memory storage such as the cerebral cortex [McGaugh, J. L. (2004). The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 1–28]. Stimuli that acquire behavioral importance gain increased representation in the cortex. For example, learning shifts the tuning of neurons in the primary auditory cortex (A1) to the frequency of a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the greater the level of CS importance, the larger the area of representational gain [Weinberger, N. M. (2007). Associative representational plasticity in the auditory cortex: A synthesis of two disciplines. Learning & Memory, 14(1–2), 1–16]. The two lines of research suggest that BLA strengthening of memory might be accomplished in part by increasing the representation of an environmental stimulus. The present study investigated whether stimulation of the BLA can affect cortical memory representations. In male Sprague–Dawley rats studied under urethane general anesthesia, frequency receptive fields were obtained from A1 before and up to 75 min after the pairing of a tone with BLA stimulation (BLAstm: 100 trials, 400 ms, 100 Hz, 400 μA [±16.54]). Tone started before and continued after BLAstm. Group BLA/1.0 (n = 16) had a 1 s CS–BLAstm interval while Group BLA/1.6 (n = 5) has a 1.6 s interval. The BLA/1.0 group did develop specific tuning shifts toward and to the CS, which could change frequency tuning by as much as two octaves. Moreover, its shifts increased over time and were enduring, lasting 75 min. However, group BLA/1.6 did not develop tuning shifts, indicating that precise CS–BLAstm timing is important in the anesthetized animal. Further, training in the BLA/1.0 paradigm but stimulating outside of the BLA did not produce tuning shifts. These findings demonstrate that the BLA is capable of exerting highly specific, enduring, learning-related modifications of stimulus representation in the cerebral cortex. These findings suggest that the ability of the BLA to alter specific cortical representations may underlie, at least in part, the modulatory influence of BLA activity on strengthening long-term memory.     

Efficacy of dialectical behaviour therapy for adolescents

The current review provides a qualitative assessment of the efficacy of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) as adapted for adolescents. The aim was to assess the efficacy of DBT compared to usual methods in the treatment of adolescent mental health symptoms, inclusive of suicidal ideation and self‐harm. Computerised databases including Medline and PsycINFO were accessed and knowledgeable informants in the area of DBT were contacted. Inclusion criteria required the studies to be clinical trials on DBT provided to adolescents. Due to the requirements on research design only three studies were appropriate for review. The review focused on quality assessment of the current data, including investigation into the effects of selection bias, confounding variables, outcome measures and measurement errors. The data suggest that there is some evidence for DBT being effective in reducing symptoms of mental health, especially those consistent with borderline personality disorder. The resultant data, however, are of very poor quality, and as such the review addresses ways to improve the quality of research and offers suggestions for future research.