Efficacy of a Brief Relaxation Training Intervention for Pediatric Recurrent Abdominal Pain

This study is a preliminary investigation of the efficacy of a brief intervention for recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) via a multiple baseline across subjects design. The intervention consisted of a single 1-hour session including psychoeducation and coaching of breathing retraining; the length, duration, and content of the intervention were designed with a goal of maximum portability to primary-care settings. Five children with recurrent abdominal pain participated in this study, 1 of whom served as a pilot participant. Children received the intervention at 1-week intervals. Parent and child reports of each child's abdominal pain, general somatic complaints, functional disability, and anxiety were collected throughout the study. All children participated in a 3-month follow-up session. Results indicated that this brief intervention was successful in lessening abdominal pain, as demonstrated by decreased Abdominal Pain Index (API) scores in two children and decreased abdominal pain following breathing retraining practice in all children. The intervention was also successful in decreasing some children's general somatic symptoms. Functional disability and anxiety symptoms remained consistent for all children throughout the study, which may be due to low levels of these symptoms pretreatment. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Families created through surrogacy arrangements: parent-child relationships in the 1st year of life

Findings are presented of a study of families created through surrogacy arrangements. Forty-two surrogacy families were compared with 51 egg-donation families and 80 natural-conception families on standardized interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological well-being of the parents, the quality of parent-child relationships, and infant temperament. The differences that were identified between the surrogacy families and the other family types indicated greater psychological well-being and adaptation to parenthood by mothers and fathers of children born through surrogacy arrangements than by the natural-conception parents.     

Smelling lessons

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have begun to correct this ‘tunnel vision’ by considering other modalities. Nevertheless, relatively little has been written about the chemical senses—olfaction and gustation. The focus of this paper is olfaction. In this paper, I consider the question: does human olfactory experience represents objects as thus and so? If we take visual experience as the paradigm of how experience can achieve object representation, we might think that the answer to this question is no. I argue that olfactory experience does indeed represent objects—just not in a way that is easily read from the dominant visual case.     

Strengthening Connections: Functional Connectivity and Brain Plasticity

The ascendancy of functional neuroimaging has facilitated the addition of network-based approaches to the neuropsychologist’s toolbox for evaluating the sequelae of brain insult. In particular, intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) mapping of resting state fMRI (R-fMRI) data constitutes an ideal approach to measuring macro-scale networks in the human brain. Beyond the value of iFC mapping for charting how the functional topography of the brain is altered by insult and injury, iFC analyses can provide insights into experience-dependent plasticity at the macro level of large-scale functional networks. Such insights are foundational to the design of training and remediation interventions that will best facilitate recovery of function. In this review, we consider what is currently known about the origin and function of iFC in the brain, and how this knowledge is informative in neuropsychological settings. We then summarize studies that have examined experience-driven plasticity of iFC in healthy control participants, and frame these findings in terms of a schema that may aid in the interpretation of results and the generation of hypotheses for rehabilitative studies. Finally, we outline some caveats to the R-fMRI approach, as well as some current developments that are likely to bolster the utility of the iFC paradigm for neuropsychology.     

What's mom got to do with it? Contributions of maternal executive function and caregiving to the development of executive function across early childhood

Executive functions (EFs; e.g. working memory, inhibitory control) are mediated by the prefrontal cortex and associated with optimal cognitive and socio‐emotional development. This study provides the first concurrent analysis of the relative contributions of maternal EF and caregiving to child EF. A group of children and their mothers (n = 62) completed age‐appropriate interaction (10, 24, 36 months) and EF tasks (child: 24, 36, and 48 months). Regression analyses revealed that by 36 months of age, maternal EF and negative caregiving behaviors accounted for unique variance in child EF, above and beyond maternal education and child verbal ability. These findings were confirmed when using an early child EF composite‐our most reliable measure of EF – and a similar pattern was found when controlling for stability in child EF. Furthermore, there was evidence that maternal EF had significant indirect effects on changes in child EF through maternal caregiving. At 24 months, EF was associated with maternal EF, but not negative caregiving behaviors. Taken together, these findings suggest that links between negative caregiving and child EF are increasingly manifested during early childhood. Although maternal EF and negative caregiving are related, they provide unique information about the development of child EF. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPKXFbbrkps     

A Neuropsychological Model of Mentally Tough Behavior

Four studies were conducted with two primary objectives: (a) to conceptualize and measure mental toughness from a behavioral perspective and (b) to apply relevant personality theory to the examination of between‐person differences in mentally tough behavior. Studies 1 (N = 305 participants from a range of different sports) and 2 (N = 110 high‐level cricketers) focused on the development of an informant‐rated mental toughness questionnaire that assessed individual differences in ability to maintain or enhance performance under pressure from a wide range of stressors. Studies 3 (N = 214) and 4 (N = 196) examined the relationship between reinforcement sensitivities and mentally tough behavior in high‐level cricketers. The highest levels of mental toughness reported by coaches occurred when cricketers were sensitive to punishment and insensitive to reward. Study 4 suggested that such players are predisposed to identify threatening stimuli early, which gives them the best possible opportunity to prepare an effective response to the pressurized environments they encounter. The findings show that high‐level cricketers who are punishment sensitive, but not reward sensitive, detect threat early and can maintain goal‐directed behavior under pressure from a range of different stressors.