Physician Identification and Management of Psychosocial Problems in Primary Care

Often the burden of identifying children with behavioral or developmental problems is left up to the primary care physician (PCP). However, previous literature shows that PCPs consistently underidentify children with developmental/behavioral problems in pediatric primary care. For the current study, questionnaires containing three vignettes followed by questions addressing common psychosocial problems, general questions about their practice and training, and the Physician Belief Scale were distributed to physicians. Results indicated that physicians were better at identifying severe problems, had more difficulty identifying psychosocial problems with mild symptomatology, and tended to refer to a medical specialist or mental health professional more often for severe problems, depression or a developmental problem. Physicians tended to view treating psychosocial problems favorably.     

Features enhance the encoding of geometry

Successful navigation within an environment requires that the traveler establish the correct heading—a process referred to as orienting. Many studies have now shown that humans and non-human animals can use the geometric properties of an enclosure to orient. In the present study, two groups of Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) were trained, in a reference memory task, to find food hidden in one of four containers arranged to form a rectangular array. One group had unique objects placed next to each of the containers, whereas the second group had identical objects placed next to each of the containers. Here, I show for the first time that for the Clark’s nutcracker, the distinctive properties of these objects enhanced the encoding of the array’s geometry compared to the learning of geometric properties from an array of identical objects, which remained at chance after substantial amounts of training. Subsequent transformation tests showed that an object not associated with reward, but sharing the same geometric properties as the correct object, may have had inhibitory qualities. Furthermore, by systematically removing objects from the array, I show that although nutcrackers encoded the geometry of the array, they did not encode a complete featural representation of the objects within the array.     

Understanding ‘sensorimotor understanding’

Sensorimotor theories understand perception to be a process of active, exploratory engagement with the environment, mediated by the possession and exercise of a certain body of knowledge concerning sensorimotor dependencies. This paper aims to characterise that exercise, and to show that it places constraints upon the content of sensorimotor knowledge itself. Sensorimotor mastery is exercised when it is put to use in the service of intentional action-planning and selection, and this rules out certain standard readings of sensorimotor contingency knowledge. Rather than holding between movements and sensory inputs or appearances, sensorimotor contingencies concern the suite of ways in which an object can be revealed through exploration. Sensorimotor knowledge is thus directed through experience to the world itself.     

Effects of the build-up and resetting of auditory stream segregation on temporal discrimination

The tendency to hear a tone sequence as 2 or more streams (segregated) builds up, but a sudden change in properties can reset the percept to 1 stream (integrated). This effect has not hitherto been explored using an objective measure of streaming. Stimuli comprised a 2.0-s fixed-frequency inducer followed by a 0.6-s test sequence of alternating pure tones (3 low [L]-high [H] cycles). Listeners compared intervals for which the test sequence was either isochronous or the H tones were slightly delayed. Resetting of segregation should make identifying the anisochronous interval easier. The HL frequency separation was varied (0-12 semitones), and properties of the inducer and test sequence were set to the same or different values. Inducer properties manipulated were frequency, number of onsets (several short bursts vs. one continuous tone), tone:silence ratio (short vs. extended bursts), level, and lateralization. All differences between the inducer and the L tones reduced temporal discrimination thresholds toward those for the no-inducer case, including properties shown previously not to affect segregation greatly. Overall, it is concluded that abrupt changes in a sequence cause resetting and improve subsequent temporal discrimination.     

Learning about environmental geometry: a flaw in Miller and Shettleworth's (2007) operant model

Many studies have examined how humans and other animals reestablish a sense of direction following disorientation in enclosed environments. Results showing that geometric shape of an enclosure is typically encoded, sometimes to the exclusion of featural cues, have led to suggestions that geometry might be encoded in a dedicated geometric module. Recently, Miller and Shettleworth (2007) proposed that the reorientation task be viewed as an operant task and they presented an associative operant model that appears to account for many empirical findings from reorientation studies. In this paper we show that, although Miller and Shettleworth's insights into the operant nature of the reorientation task may be sound, their mathematical model has a serious flaw. We present simulations to illustrate the implications of the flaw. We also propose that the output of a simple neural network, the perceptron, can be used to conduct operant learning within the reorientation task and can solve the problem in Miller and Shettleworth's model.     

Is Character Fate,or Is There Hope to Change My Personality Yet?

Different perspectives on personality development propose a range of possible degrees to which traits are free to change, from hardly at all to very much. This essay reviews the empirical evidence on just how consistent and changeable personality traits are across the life course. To gain a thorough perspective on personality trait development, we review developmental studies that focus on three different types of change: rank‐order consistency, mean level change, and individual level change. Starting in late childhood, personality traits exhibit modest levels of rank‐order consistency that increase with age. In addition personality traits show mean level changes, especially in young adulthood, that are consistent with the idea of increasing maturity. Finally, despite these general trends in personality continuity and change, there is evidence that individuals may change in ways that contradict general trends and that these individual differences in change are related to life experiences.     

Impulsivity and emotion dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder

This study examined the association of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and negative emotional states with impulsivity in the laboratory. Undergraduate participants who were high in BPD features (high-BPD; n = 39) and controls who were low in BPD features (low-BPD; n = 56) completed measures of negative emotional state before a laboratory measure of impulsivity--a passive avoidance learning task. Controlling for psychopathology, high-BPD participants committed a greater number of impulsive responses than did low-BPD participants. Negative emotional state moderated the effect of BPD on impulsive responses. High-BPD participants who were in a negative emotional state committed fewer impulsive responses than high-BPD participants who were low in negative emotional state. Fear, nervousness, and shame negatively correlated with impulsivity among high-BPD participants but not among low-BPD participants. In addition, high-BPD participants reported greater emotion dysregulation in a variety of domains, compared with low-BPD participants.     

Demonstrating Support for the Formative and Summative Assessment Paradigm in a School-Based Intensive Mental Health Program

We illustrate the use of formative and summative assessment in evaluating a therapeutic classroom program for children with serious emotional disturbances. Information was analyzed based on data gathered for clinical decision-making during treatment (formative assessment) and measurement of outcomes at discharge (summative assessment) from a school-based Intensive Mental Health Program. Results indicated that overall ratings of daily indicators of behavior across all environments (therapeutic classroom, neighborhood school, and home) were predictive of functioning at discharge. An ecological approach during the formative assessment period of evaluation is important as compared to only examining individual environments. Formative assessment techniques can predict scores on a summative assessment measure. Thus, we found supportive evidence for the formative and summative procedures used in the Intensive Mental Health Program for therapeutic interventions, clinical decision-making, and outcomes assessment.     

Lessons Learned from the Intensive Mental Health Program: A School-based,Community Oriented Program for Children with Serious Emotional Disturbances

The Intensive Mental Health Program meets the needs for services in school systems for children with serious emotional disturbances and for training graduate students in clinical applications with a difficult-to-serve population. We address the range of challenges and rewards experienced in the development of the comprehensive intervention program, the continued maintenance of program elements, and the program evaluation.     

Sensory interactions in bilateral kinesthesia

Three experiments are reported that examine the masking effect on the detection of kinesthetic targets from noise presented simultaneously on the same hand or on a different hand as the target. Performance was facilitated when noise on the two hands was correlated versus uncorrelated or when it occurred on just one hand. The data are consistent with correlated input on the two hands being compared and used to reduce noise effects. Moreover, participants ignored uncorrelated noise from nontarget hands when they knew in which hand the targets would occur. There was no effect of shifts from uncorrelated to correlated noise 200 msec prior to targets, suggesting that such bottom-up changes were insufficient to induce comparison across the hands. In contrast, shifts from correlated to uncorrelated noise 200 msec prior to the target had performance at the same level as that with uncorrelated noise throughout the trial. This result indicates that the loss of correlation was detected within this interval and thatwhen the target's location was known, participants were then able to switch attention to the target hand. The interactions between attentional filtering and the correlation on the processing of bilateral kinesthetic inputs are discussed.