Perceptions of virtual reality among therapists who do not apply this technology in clinical practice

Research has documented the usefulness of virtual reality (VR) in treating a number of psychopathologies. Despite its recognized clinical utility, VR remains underutilized in clinical practice. For the purpose of this study, 262 therapists who reported that they did not currently use VR in psychotherapy were surveyed about their perceptions of the use of this technology in clinical practice. Results suggest that reluctance in using this technology stems from beliefs about the required training, equipment, and financial costs and from unfamiliarity with the various benefits and applications of VR. The significance of promoting greater use of this new technology is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Free viewing perceptual asymmetries for judgment of brightness and quantity: dependence on stimulus orientation

Previous research has indicated that normals exhibit strong leftward biases during free-viewing perceptual judgments of brightness and quantity. When participants view two symmetrical objects and they are forced to choose which object appears darker or more numerous, participants usually select the stimulus with the relevant feature on the left side. The present study investigated the possibility that these perceptual asymmetries are dependent on scanning a stimulus horizontally across the midline by administering a task with two rectangular reversed stimuli presented either horizontally or vertically. When the stimuli were presented horizontally (crossing the midline), participants exhibited leftward biases, but these biases disappeared when the stimuli were presented vertically. This result supports the position that free-viewing perceptual asymmetries are dependent on scanning the stimuli across the midline.     

Developmental Continuity in Teleo-Functional Explanation: Reasoning about Nature Among Romanian Romani Adults

Teleo-functional explanations account for objects in terms of purpose, helping us understand objects such as pencils (for writing) and body parts such as ears (for hearing). Western-educated adults restrict teleo-functional attributions to artifact, biological, and behavioral phenomena, considering such explanations less appropriate for nonliving natural entities. In contrast, children extend explanations of purpose to the nonliving natural domain. This cross-cultural study explores whether apparent restrictions in“promiscuous teleology” occur as a function of age and development, generally, or scientific literacy, more specifically. Using methodology from Kelemen (1999b Kelemen , D. ( 1999b ). Why are rocks pointy? Children's preference for teleo-functional explanations of the natural world . Developmental Psychology , 35 , 1440 – 1453 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), two groups of adult Romanian Roma from the same community selected explanations for properties of biological and nonbiological natural entities; one group had little or no science training, the other was formally schooled. Compared to their schooled peers and to Western-educated American adults, nonschooled Romani adults were more likely to endorse purpose-based explanations of nonbiological natural entities. Findings challenge assumptions of fundamental conceptual discontinuities between children and adults.     

Reports from the Front: The Effects of Hurricane Katrina on Mental Health Professionals in New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented mental health crisis in New Orleans. Once they could return to work, local mental health professionals attempted to treat survivors of the storm while dealing with the storm's impact on themselves. Those working in public settings were offered in-service training and supervision. But clinicians in private practice often found themselves bearing the brunt of posttraumatic uncertainty alone. The current paper includes four experiential reports from area clinicians describing their early struggles to maintain a sense of continuity in their ongoing clinical work, only to realize how much of the personal is also professional in the aftermath of a disaster of this magnitude, and how personal and professional inevitably inform one another when clinicians and patients survived similar dangers and losses. The introduction locates these four papers in the larger context of post-Katrina New Orleans and a program that was specifically tailored to meet the needs of local clinicians. This program demonstrated the ways in which psychoanalytic ideas can be used to give meaning to a traumatized mental health community's profound disorientation.     

Maternal Empathy and Changes in Mothers’ Permissiveness as Predictors of Toddlers’ Early Social Competence with Peers: A Parenting Intervention Study

The goal of the current study was to examine how changes in parenting due to a parenting intervention designed to decrease permissive parenting affected the quality of children’s peer interactions. Forty-nine mothers of toddlers aged 2–3 years participated in a 12-week intervention in which half got hands-on training and practice using positive guidance in a toddler classroom setting, while the other half learned positive guidance solely via a seminar format. To observe children’s peer interactions, toddlers were divided into 8 groups of 5–7 children mixed across condition. Observers coded mothers’ empathy, permissiveness, and positive guidance parenting strategies. Children’s peer interactions were coded for antisocial behaviors, verbal aggression, physical aggression, prosocial behaviors, positive social bids, and empathy. Prior analysis of this intervention indicated that mothers in both conditions showed reductions in permissiveness over the course of the intervention. Results from the present study indicated that reductions in permissiveness predicted decreases in toddlers’ verbal aggression. Maternal empathy was a moderator such that mothers low in empathy who got hands-on training in positive guidance had children who demonstrated the greatest reductions in antisocial behaviors.     

Delay and déjà vu: Timing and repetition increase the power of false evidence

False images and videos can induce people to believe in and remember events that never happened. Using a novel method, we examined whether the timing of false evidence would influence its effect (Experiment 1) and determined the relationship between timing and repetition (Experiment 2). Subjects completed a hazard perception driving test and were falsely accused of cheating. Some subjects were shown a fake video or photograph of the cheating either after a 9-min delay (Experiment 1) or more than once with or without a delay (Experiment 2). Subjects were more likely to falsely believe that they had cheated and to provide details about how the cheating happened when the false evidence was delayed or repeated—especially when repeated over time—relative to controls. The results show that even a strikingly short delay between an event and when false evidence is disclosed can distort people’s beliefs and that repeating false evidence over a brief delay fosters false beliefs more so than without a delay. These findings have theoretical implications for metacognitive models of autobiographical memory and practical implications for police interrogations.     

The effects of marital adjustment and spouse involvement on the behavioral treatment of agoraphobia: A meta-analytic review

Abstract

In a meta-analysis of 12 recently published therapy outcome studies, the effects of marital distress and spouse-involved therapy on the outcome of exposure-based treatments for agoraphobiawere evaluated. Analyses indicated that the better the pre-treatment marital functioning of the patient, the greater the reduction in agoraphobic symptomatology up to one year following treatment. The effectiveness of spouse-involved exposure treatment, at least as currently practiced, was not found to be significantly different from the effectiveness of the more commonly used spouse-noninvolved exposure treatments. Specific research suggestions which may assist in providing a better understanding of the relations among agoraphobia, marital functioning, treatment modality, and treatment outcome are offered. In addition, we present guidelines for the conduct and reporting of future agoraphobia treatment research.     

Speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses reflect familial and cognitive influences

Cortical function and related cognitive, language, and communication skills are genetically influenced. The auditory brainstem response to speech is linked to language skill, reading ability, cognitive skills, and speech‐in‐noise perception; however, the impact of shared genetic and environmental factors on the response has not been investigated. We assessed auditory brainstem responses to speech presented in quiet and background noise from (1) 23 pairs of same sex, same learning diagnosis siblings (Siblings), (2) 23 unrelated children matched on age, sex, IQ, and reading ability to one of the siblings (Reading‐Matched), and (3) 22 pairs of unrelated children matched on age and sex but not on reading ability to the same sibling (Age/Sex‐Matched). By quantifying response similarity as the intersubject response‐to‐response correlation for sibling pairs, reading‐matched pairs, and age‐ and sex‐matched pairs, we found that siblings had more similar responses than age‐ and sex‐matched pairs and reading‐matched pairs. Similarity of responses between siblings was as high as the similarity of responses collected from an individual over the course of the recording session. Responses from unrelated children matched on reading were more similar than responses from unrelated children matched only on age and sex, supporting previous data linking variations in auditory brainstem activity with variations in reading ability. These results suggest that auditory brainstem function can be influenced by siblingship and auditory‐based communication skills such as reading, motivating the use of speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses for assessing risk of reading and communication impairments in family members.     

Religious orientation and its association with personality,schizotypal traits and manic-depressive experiences

A total of 180 respondents completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Claridge's STQ, Thalbourne's Manic-Depression scales and the Batson and Ventis Religious Life Inventory (RLI). The RLI was used to yield scores for external, internal and quest dimensions of religiosity. Principal Component Analysis showed the quest dimension to be separate from external and internal religion, which loaded together on one factor. It was found that when the personality and schizotypal trait measures were entered together to predict scores on religiosity, psychoticism emerged as the only predictor of external and internal religiosity, where as schizotypal traits emerged as the only predictor of religious quest.     

Attachment's Links With Adolescents' Social Emotions: The Roles of Negative Emotionality and Emotion Regulation

Recent research has attempted to explain the mechanisms through which parental attachment affects social and emotional outcomes (e.g., Burnette, Taylor, Worthington, &; Forsyth, 2007 Burnette, J.L., Taylor, K.W., Worthington, E.L., &; Forsyth, D.R. (2007). Attachment and trait forgivingness: The mediating role of angry rumination. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 1585–1596. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2006.10.033[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Panfile &; Laible, 2012 Panfile, T.M., &; Laible, D.J. (2012). Attachment security and child's empathy: The mediating role of emotion regulation. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 58, 1–21. doi:10.1353/mpq.2012.0003[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The authors’ goal was to examine negative emotionality and emotion regulation as mediators of the associations that attachment has with empathy, forgiveness, guilt, and jealousy. One hundred forty-eight adolescents reported their parental attachment security, general levels of negative emotionality and abilities to regulate emotional responses, and tendencies to feel empathy, forgiveness, guilt, and jealousy. Results revealed that attachment security was associated with higher levels of empathy, forgiveness, and guilt, but lower levels of jealousy. In addition, emotion regulation mediated the links attachment shared with both empathy and guilt, such that higher levels of attachment security were linked with greater levels of emotion regulation, which led to greater levels of empathy and guilt. Alternatively, negative emotionality mediated the links attachment shared with both forgiveness and jealousy, such that higher levels of attachment security were associated with lower levels of negative emotionality, which in turn was linked to lower levels of forgiveness and higher levels of jealousy. This study provides a general picture of how attachment security may play a role in shaping an individual's levels of social emotions.