Healthcare utilization following cognitive-behavioral treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia

The aim of this study was to examine the overall changes in healthcare services utilization after providing an empirically supported cognitive-behavioral treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia. Data on healthcare utilization were collected for a total of 84 adults meeting DSM-IV criteria. Participants were completers of a cognitive-behavioral treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia. Data on utilization of healthcare services and medication were obtained from semi-structured interviews from baseline to 1-year after treatment. Results of the Friedman non-parametric analysis reveal a significant decrease in overall and mental health-related costs following treatment. This study shows a significant reduction in healthcare costs following cognitive behavior therapy for panic disorder with agoraphobia. More studies are needed to examine the potential long-term cost-offset effect of empirically supported treatments for panic disorder.     

Stability of attachment during the preschool period

Children's attachment patterns at early preschool age and 2 years later as well as factors related to stability-instability were examined in a diverse socioeconomic status French Canadian sample of 120 children. Attachment was assessed during 2 laboratory visits using separation-reunion procedures when the children were approximately 3.5 (J. Cassidy & R. S. Marvin, 1992) and 5.5 (M. Main & J. Cassidy, 1988) years old. Overall, stability of attachment, based on 4-way classification, was moderate (68%, k = .47, p = .01). Change from security to disorganization was associated with the most dramatic decline in interactive quality with mother, lowest marital satisfaction, and greatest likelihood of severe attachment-related family events, namely, loss and parental hospitalization. Families of children who changed from security to organized insecurity presented levels of caregiving and marital dissatisfaction that fell between those of stable secure children and secure children who changed toward disorganization.     

Monitoring processes and metamemory experience in patients with dysexecutive syndrome

The aim of the present study was to determine whether monitoring measures are differentially disturbed in dysexecutive patients after frontal lesions. Twelve dysexecutive patients and 12 healthy controls were administered a paired-associates learning task. Their performances on recall prediction, judgment-of-learning (JOL), and feeling-of-knowing judgment (FOK) were then compared. The results revealed that the two groups differed only on accuracy measures of the FOK paradigm. The study of the overall correlations between the three measures of metamemory revealed a significant relation between recall prediction and accuracy measures of the JOL. We failed to find any significant correlation with the accuracy measures of the FOK. Taken together, our data confirm that metamemory experience is not a unitary construct but rather a group of distinct and quite independent mechanisms.     

Factor analyses of the DIB-R in adolescents

The goal of this study was to examine the factor structure of the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R; Zanarini, Gunderson, Franckenburg, & Chauncey, 1989) in a nonpatient sample of 118 adolescents. A principal components factor analysis with a Varimax rotation extracted three factors. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that this three-factor model provided an adequate fit. The first factor, which included depression, anxiety, helplessness/hopelessness, loneliness/emptiness, and also encompassed odd thinking/unusual perceptive experiences and quasi-psychotic experiences, appeared to be centered on painful feelings and dissociative defense. The second factor, labeled "impulsivity," consisted of impulse action patterns, counterdependency, and stormy relationships. This factor seemed to be centered on defensive acting-out. The third factor, called "aggressiveness," consisted of anger, hypomania, devaluation/manipulation/sadism, and demand/entitlement, and might express manic/narcissistic defenses. These analyses suggest that there may be homogeneous components of borderline symptomatology in adolescents that may reflect affective disturbances and defensive mechanisms.     

Default-mode network functional connectivity in aphasia: Therapy-induced neuroplasticity

Previous research on participants with aphasia has mainly been based on standard functional neuroimaging analysis. Recent studies have shown that functional connectivity analysis can detect compensatory activity, not revealed by standard analysis. Little is known, however, about the default-mode network in aphasia. In the current study, we studied changes in the default-mode network in subjects with aphasia who underwent semantic feature analysis therapy. We studied nine participants with chronic aphasia and compared them to 10 control participants. For the first time, we identified the default-mode network using spatial independent component analysis, in participants with aphasia. Intensive therapy improved integration in the posterior areas of the default-mode network concurrent with language improvement. Correlations between integration and improvement did not reach significance, but the trend suggests that pre-therapy integration of the default-mode network may predict therapy outcomes. Functional connectivity allows a better understanding of the impact of semantic feature analysis in aphasia.     

Visual Imagery Processing and Knowledge of Famous Names in Alzheimer's Disease and MCI

ABSTRACT

The study of memory for famous people and visual imagery retrieval was investigated in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in the prodromal stage of AD, so-called Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Fifteen patients with AD (MMSE ≥23), 15 patients with amnestic MCI (a-MCI) and 15 normal controls (NC) performed a famous names test designed to evaluate the semantic and distinctive physical features knowledge of famous persons. Results indicated that patients with AD and a-MCI generated significantly less physical features and semantic biographical knowledge about famous persons than did normal control participants. Additionally, significant differences were observed between a-MCI and AD patients in all tasks. The present findings confirm recent studies reporting semantic memory impairment in MCI. Moreover, the current findings show that mental imagery is lowered in a-MCI and AD and is likely related to the early semantic impairment.     

University Students’ Subjective Well-being: The Role of Autonomy Support from Parents, Friends, and the Romantic Partner

This study investigated the relations between perceived autonomy support from three significant sources (parents, friends, and the romantic partner) and university students’ subjective well-being (SWB) using two approaches: a variable-centered and person-centered approach. Participants were 256 university students (191 women, 65 men) involved in a romantic relationship. Results from both approaches revealed that students’ perception that significant individuals support their autonomy predicted higher levels of SWB. Furthermore, results from a person-centered approach suggested that students reported the highest levels of SWB when all sources were perceived to be highly autonomy supportive. Together, these findings support a sensitization process of need satisfaction. Implications for SWB and self-determination theory are discussed.     

Visual discrimination of species in dogs (Canis familiaris)

In most social interactions, an animal has to determine whether the other animal belongs to its own species. This perception may be visual and may involve several cognitive processes such as discrimination and categorization. Perceptual categorization is likely to be involved in species characterized by a great phenotypic diversity. As a consequence of intensive artificial selection, domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, present the largest phenotypic diversity among domestic mammals. The goal of our study was to determine whether dogs can discriminate any type of dog from other species and can group all dogs whatever their phenotypes within the same category. Nine pet dogs were successfully trained through instrumental conditioning using a clicker and food rewards to choose a rewarded image, S+, out of two images displayed on computer screens. The generalization step consisted in the presentation of a large sample of paired images of heads of dogs from different breeds and cross-breeds with those of other mammal species, included humans. A reversal phase followed the generalization step. Each of the nine subjects was able to group all the images of dogs within the same category. Thus, the dogs have the capacity of species discrimination despite their great phenotypic variability, based only on visual images of heads.