Development of a Brief Adjunctive Intervention for Family Members of Veterans in Individual PTSD Treatment

Family involvement in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans has the potential to improve treatment retention and outcomes. Current protocols that incorporate family members into treatment tend to involve at least 15 sessions, and none are designed to complement Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) or Prolonged Exposure (PE), the two most widely used and heavily promoted evidence-based PTSD therapies in the Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system. The current paper describes the development and initial feasibility and acceptability of a Brief Family Intervention (the BFI) designed to be delivered as an adjunct to veterans’ individual CPT/PE. The BFI focuses on providing psychoeducation about PTSD and treatment, building family member support for treatment, and reducing family symptom accommodation. A detailed review of the treatment structure and activities is provided, and qualitative data from four dyads (veterans and their spouses/significant others) at baseline and post-intervention are presented. Veterans and partners reported positive responses to the program and were enthusiastic about its utility. Larger randomized controlled studies will be needed to determine the protocol’s efficacy and effectiveness.     

I’m still standing: A longitudinal study on the effect of a default nudge

Objective: This study assessed the effect of a default nudge to reduce sedentary behaviour at work over time.

Design and main outcome measures: A field study was conducted at a governmental organisation. In the present study, the default setting of sit–stand desks (SSDs) was changed from sitting to standing height during a two-week intervention. Stand-up working rates were calculated based on observations that were done prior to, during, two weeks after and two months after the intervention. Additionally, a pre-measure survey (n = 606) and post-measure survey (n = 354) were completed. Intention and social norms concerning stand-up working were compared for the 183 employees who completed both pre- and post-assessments (45.4% female, M_age = 44.21).

Results: Stand-up working rates raised from 1.82% in the baseline to 13.13% during the intervention. After the nudge was removed the percentage was 10.01% after two weeks and 7.78% after two months. A multilevel analysis indicated a significant increase in both intention and social norms after the nudge intervention.

Conclusions: This study shows that a default nudge can increase stand-up working rates in offices with SSDs at least until two months after the nudge intervention.     

Sociochemosensory and Emotional Functions: Behavioral Evidence for Shared Mechanisms

ABSTRACT— Olfaction and emotion are distinctively different systems. Nevertheless, there are reasons to suspect that they influence each other on the social level. Functionally, olfactory chemosensory communication is used by a wide range of animals to convey individual and group identity, as well as attraction or repulsion. Anatomically, the olfactory brain overlaps with the socioemotional brain, and is believed to have contributed to the evolution of the latter. Little is known about how the functional and anatomical links are manifested in behavior, however. Using human olfaction as a model, we demonstrate that chemosensory recognition of individuals—one of the most ubiquitous forms of social communication—is interconnected with both the cognitive and the visual processing of emotion. Our results provide the first behavioral evidence for mechanisms being shared by a sensory system and emotion.     

Chronic oral methylphenidate induces post-treatment impairment in recognition and spatial memory in adult rats

Recent pre-clinical research has indicated that chronic treatment with methylphenidate (Ritalin^®) in young animals can result in lasting and potentially detrimental alterations in brain function that can persist into adulthood. Chronic methylphenidate-induced neuronal alterations may result in behavior and cognitive deficits that include increases in behavioral responses and impairment in recognition memory. This study compared the cognitive consequences following chronic treatment with two doses (5 and 10 mg/kg) of methylphenidate on recognition and spatial memory in adult male Long-Evans rats using an established oral dosing procedure. The animals were then tested in the Object Recognition test at 14 days post treatment and the Object Placement test at 21 days post treatment. The results indicate that repeated exposure to oral methylphenidate impaired the performance of rats in these tests. The current findings add to recent research demonstrating negative consequences in rats pre-treated with methylphenidate, and extend previous findings to include deficits in spatial recognition memory.     

Can We Improve Our Physical Health by Altering Our Social Networks?

ABSTRACT— Persons with more types of social relationships live longer and have less cognitive decline with aging, greater resistance to infectious disease, and better prognoses when facing chronic life-threatening illnesses. We have known about the importance of social integration (engaging in diverse types of relationships) for health and longevity for 30 years. Yet, we still do not know why having a more diverse social network would have a positive influence on our health, and we have yet to design effective interventions that influence key components of the network and in turn physical health. Better understanding of the role of social integration in health will require research on how integrated social networks influence health relevant behaviors, regulate emotions and biological responses, and contribute to our expectations and worldviews.     

Warning: Hegemonic Masculinity May Not Matter as Much as You Think for Confidant Patterns among Older Men

Sex Roles - Previous scholarship shows that cisgender women are more likely to have confidants than cisgender men and that the latter are more likely to have confidants outside the family and keep...     

Societal Burden of Clinically Anxious Youth Referred for Treatment: A Cost-of-illness Study

A prevalence-based cost-of-illness study using a societal perspective was conducted to investigate the cost-of-illness in clinically anxious youth aged 8–18 in The Netherlands. Discriminant validity of the cost diary used was obtained by comparing costs of families with an anxious child (n = 118) to costs of families from the general population (n = 41). To examine the convergent validity, bottom-up acquired costs derived from cost diaries were compared to top-down acquired costs obtained from national registrations. Bottom-up acquired costs measured by means of cost diaries amounted to €2,748 per family of a clinically referred anxious child per annum. Societal costs of families with clinically anxious children were almost 21 times as high compared to families from the general population. With respect to convergent validity, total health care costs using the bottom-up approach from clinically anxious children were quite comparable to those of top-down data of anxious children, although costs within the subcategories differed considerably. Clinical anxiety disorders in childhood cost the Dutch society more than 20 million euros a year. Based on results of discriminate and convergent validity, the cost diary seems a valid method in establishing cost-of-illness in childhood anxiety disorders.     

Sleep does not enhance motor sequence learning

Improvements in motor sequence performance have been observed after a delay involving sleep. This finding has been taken as evidence for an active sleep consolidation process that enhances subsequent performance. In a review of this literature, however, the authors observed 4 aspects of data analyses and experimental design that could lead to improved performance on the test in the absence of any sleep consolidation: (a) masking of learning effects in the averaged data, (b) masking of reactive inhibition effects in the averaged training data, (c) time-of-day and time-since-sleep confounds, and (d) a gradual buildup of fatigue over the course of massed (i.e., concentrated) training. In 2 experiments the authors show that when these factors are controlled for, or when their effects are substantially reduced, the sleep enhancement effect is eliminated. Whereas sleep may play a role in protection from forgetting of motor skills, it does not result in performance enhancement.     

Flexible spatial mapping of different notations of numbers in Chinese readers

The spatial component of numerical and ordinal information has been explored in previous research. However, how such mapping emerges and how it is affected by the learning experience are issues still under debate. In the current study, we examined the orientation of the mental number line for different numerical notations (e.g., “1”, “—-”, “”) in Chinese readers. Our data demonstrated that Arabic numbers are mentally aligned horizontally with a left-to-right directionality, while Chinese number words are aligned vertically with a top-to-bottom directionality. These findings indicate that different notations of the same concept have flexible mappings within space, which is plausibly shaped by the dominant context in which the numerical notations appear.     

When experienced regret refuses to fade: Regrets of action and attempting to forget open life regrets

The emotional experience of regret often persists rather then fading over time. The present experiment with 101 student participants investigated whether recollecting life regrets of action, construing life regrets as psychologically open, or attempting to forget versus remember regret-related thoughts interfered with the fading of affect over a two-week interval. Results showed that regrets of action failed to show a fading affect pattern. In addition, disappointment failed to fade for regrets of inaction construed as open. Experienced regret failed to fade for regrets construed as open followed by attempts to forget regret-related thoughts. Intrusive and avoidant thoughts co-occurred with the latter disruptions in fading affect. Discussion concerns the causal relationship of memory and fading affect, and the different processes underlying fading of affect for discrete emotions.