Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Older Adults: Practical Guidelines for Adapting Therapy Structure

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be an effective approach for a wide range of problems affecting older adults. While a variety of empirical and clinical papers have examined modifications to the content and delivery of CBT to enhance its efficacy with older adults, changes to the structure of therapy with this population have not been as widely discussed. Issues around optimizing the structure of CBT with older adults are presented, along with suggestions for realizing these changes within a clinical context.     

The closer we are,the more we are alike: The effect of self-other merging on depersonalized self-perception

The present study examined whether or not the extent to which people include other group members in the self, influences depersonalized self-perception (i.e., perceiving self and others as similar in terms of group characteristics). The results revealed that self-other merging positively influenced feelings of belongingness and identification with the in-group. Furthermore, a strong experience of self-other merging was shown to lead to depersonalized self-perception as measured by a self-assimilation and an in-group homogeneity index. Finally, results also revealed that feelings of belongingness and group identification mediated, at least partly, the effect of self-other merging on depersonalized self-perception. The findings are discussed in light of the literature on self-expansion.     

When does word meaning affect immediate serial recall in semantic dementia?

Patients with semantic dementia can show superior immediate recall of words that they still understand relatively well, as compared with more semantically degraded words, suggesting that conceptual knowledge makes a major contribution to phonological short-term memory. However, a number of studies have failed to show such a recall difference, challenging this view. We examined the effect of several methodological factors on the recall of known and degraded words in 4 patients with semantic dementia, in order to investigate possible reasons for this discrepancy. In general, our patients did exhibit poorer recall of the degraded words and made more phonological errors on these items. In addition, set size affected the magnitude of the recall advantage for known words. This finding suggests that semantic degradation influenced the rate of learning in the immediate recall task when the same items were presented repeatedly. The methods used to select known and degraded items also impacted on the recall difference. List length, however, did not affect the advantage for known words. The coherence of items in phonological short-term memory was affected by their semantic status, but not by the length of the material to be retained. The implications of these findings for the role of semantic and phonological representations in verbal short-term memory are discussed.     

Preferences for Online Mental Health Services Among Australian and Indian Samples: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Online mental health services provide a point-of-access to mental healthcare that may otherwise be unavailable or limited, particularly in developing countries. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research into individual differences between those who prefer online mental health services and those who prefer traditional in-person services, and whether these differences vary as a function of culture. This study investigated differences in preferences for online or in-person mental health services on e-health literacy, age, education level, and comfort using the internet in a general community sample recruited from Australia and India. A total of 487 participants (31.6% male; mean age?=?33.55, SD?=?12.20, range 18–78), 297 Australians and 190 Indians, completed an online or paper-and-pencil survey. A significant negative relationship between age and e-health literacy was found with younger ages associated with higher e-health literacy. Furthermore, e-health literacy scores were significantly higher for the Australian sample. Age, e-health literacy, country-of-residence, education level, and comfort in using the internet did not predict mental health service preference. The results suggest that preference for in-person or online mental healthcare is independent of demographic and cultural factors and indicate that online mental health services may be acceptable to Indian health service consumers.     

Spatiotemporal competition and task-relevance shape the spatial distribution of emotional interference during rapid visual processing: Evidence from gaze-contingent eye-tracking

People’s ability to perceive rapidly presented targets can be disrupted both by voluntary encoding of a preceding target and by spontaneous attention to salient distractors. Distinctions between these sources of interference can be found when people search for a target in multiple rapid streams instead of a single stream: voluntary encoding of a preceding target often elicits subsequent perceptual lapses across the visual field, whereas spontaneous attention to emotionally salient distractors appears to elicit a spatially localized lapse, giving rise to a theoretical account suggesting that emotional distractors and subsequent targets compete spatiotemporally during rapid serial visual processing. We used gaze-contingent eye-tracking to probe the roles of spatiotemporal competition and memory encoding on the spatial distribution of interference caused by emotional distractors, while also ruling out the role of eye-gaze in driving differences in spatial distribution. Spontaneous target perception impairments caused by emotional distractors were localized to the distractor location regardless of where participants fixated. But when emotional distractors were task-relevant, perceptual lapses occurred across both streams while remaining strongest at the distractor location. These results suggest that spatiotemporal competition and memory encoding reflect a dual-route impact of emotional stimuli on target perception during rapid visual processing.     

Neural response to prosocial scenes relates to subsequent giving behavior in adolescents: A pilot study

Adolescence is characterized by extensive neural development and sensitivity to social context, both of which contribute to engaging in prosocial behaviors. Although it is established that prosocial behaviors are linked to positive outcomes in adulthood, little is known about the neural correlates of adolescents’ prosociality. Identifying whether the brain is differentially responsive to varying types of social input may be important for fostering prosocial behavior. We report pilot results using new stimuli and an ecologically valid donation paradigm indicating (1) brain regions typically recruited during socioemotional processing evinced differential activation when adolescents evaluated prosocial compared with social or noninteractive scenes (N = 20, ages 13–17 years, M_Age = 15.30 years), and (2) individual differences in temporoparietal junction recruitment when viewing others’ prosocial behaviors were related to adolescents’ own charitable giving. These novel findings have significant implications for understanding how the adolescent brain processes prosocial acts and for informing ways to support adolescents to engage in prosocial behaviors in their daily lives.     

Time-varying decision boundaries: insights from optimality analysis

The most widely used account of decision-making proposes that people choose between alternatives by accumulating evidence in favor of each alternative until this evidence reaches a decision boundary. It is frequently assumed that this decision boundary stays constant during a decision, depending on the evidence collected but not on time. Recent experimental and theoretical work has challenged this assumption, showing that constant decision boundaries are, in some circumstances, sub-optimal. We introduce a theoretical model that facilitates identification of the optimal decision boundaries under a wide range of conditions. Time-varying optimal decision boundaries for our model are a result only of uncertainty over the difficulty of each trial and do not require decision deadlines or costs associated with collecting evidence, as assumed by previous authors. Furthermore, the shape of optimal decision boundaries depends on the difficulties of different decisions. When some trials are very difficult, optimal boundaries decrease with time, but for tasks that only include a mixture of easy and medium difficulty trials, the optimal boundaries increase or stay constant. We also show how this simple model can be extended to more complex decision-making tasks such as when people have unequal priors or when they can choose to opt out of decisions. The theoretical model presented here provides an important framework to understand how, why, and whether decision boundaries should change over time in experiments on decision-making.     

Characterizing belief bias in syllogistic reasoning: A hierarchical Bayesian meta-analysis of ROC data

The belief-bias effect is one of the most-studied biases in reasoning. A recent study of the phenomenon using the signal detection theory (SDT) model called into question all theoretical accounts of belief bias by demonstrating that belief-based differences in the ability to discriminate between valid and invalid syllogisms may be an artifact stemming from the use of inappropriate linear measurement models such as analysis of variance (Dube et al., Psychological Review, 117(3), 831–863, 2010). The discrepancy between Dube et al.’s, Psychological Review, 117(3), 831–863 (2010) results and the previous three decades of work, together with former’s methodological criticisms suggests the need to revisit earlier results, this time collecting confidence-rating responses. Using a hierarchical Bayesian meta-analysis, we reanalyzed a corpus of 22 confidence-rating studies (N =?993). The results indicated that extensive replications using confidence-rating data are unnecessary as the observed receiver operating characteristic functions are not systematically asymmetric. These results were subsequently corroborated by a novel experimental design based on SDT’s generalized area theorem. Although the meta-analysis confirms that believability does not influence discriminability unconditionally, it also confirmed previous results that factors such as individual differences mediate the effect. The main point is that data from previous and future studies can be safely analyzed using appropriate hierarchical methods that do not require confidence ratings. More generally, our results set a new standard for analyzing data and evaluating theories in reasoning. Important methodological and theoretical considerations for future work on belief bias and related domains are discussed.     

Seventh-day Adventist Clergy: Understanding Stressors and Coping Mechanisms

This article examines the extent and types of clergy stress, the strategies used in coping with stressors, and the relationship between stressors and coping mechanisms in a sample of 261 Seventh-day Adventist pastors in North America. The results indicate that the most commonly reported stressors in order are: (1) lack of social support, (2) financial stress, and (3) time and workload stress. In terms of coping strategies, pastors sought relief most often through: (1) reflective growth/internal change; (2) social/emotional coping; (3) passive coping; and lastly (4) action-oriented coping. Significant correlational relationships existed between passive coping and financial stress, relocating stress, and congregational stress. In addition, we found significant inverse correlations between coping through reflective growth or internal change and relocating stress and congregational stress. There were no significant relationships with action coping or social/emotional coping and any stressor. Multi-regression analysis reveals that passive coping strategies were significantly related to financial stress. Thus, the greater the financial stress, the more likely pastors were to engage in passive coping strategies. Other coping strategies showed no significant relationships when included in multi-regression analysis. We conclude with recommendations for Church administrators to address structures and practices in place for pastors including an expansion of coping mechanisms to help pastors address their stress.