The Relationship Between Treatment Acceptability and Youth Outcome in Group CBT for Youth with ASD and Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most common co-occurring diagnoses in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based treatment that has been tailored for youth with ASD and anxiety and has shown good efficacy in reducing youth anxiety immediately after treatment. One area that has not been widely studied is acceptability of CBT for anxiety in this population. Acceptability includes beliefs about the potential helpfulness and satisfaction with a given treatment and may be important in understanding treatment outcomes. This study focuses on parent, youth, and clinician acceptability of a well-researched CBT program, Facing Your Fears, for youth with ASD and anxiety. Data was collected as part of a larger multi-site study that compared three different instructional conditions for clinicians learning the intervention. Results indicated that parents rated acceptability as higher for the overall treatment compared to youth. Further, youth and parents rated exposure related sessions as more acceptable than psychoeducation, and higher exposure acceptability ratings were predictive of lower youth anxiety levels post-treatment. Clinicians who received ongoing consultation rated treatment acceptability lower than clinicians in the other training conditions. While some clinicians may be hesitant to implement exposure techniques with this population, findings suggest that it is the technique that parents and youth rated as the most acceptable. Results are discussed in terms of treatment and research implications for youth with ASD and their families.     

Meaning in the lives of humans and other animals

This paper argues that contemporary philosophical literature on meaning in life has important implications for the debate about our obligations to non-human animals. If animal lives can be meaningful, then practices including factory farming and animal research might be morally worse than ethicists have thought. We argue for two theses about meaning in life: (1) that the best account of meaningful lives must take intentional action to be necessary for meaning—an individual’s life has meaning if and only if the individual acts intentionally in ways that contribute to finally valuable states of affairs; and (2) that this first thesis does not entail that only human lives are meaningful. Because non-human animals can be intentional agents of a certain sort, our account yields the verdict that many animals’ lives can be meaningful. We conclude by considering the moral implications of these theses for common practices involving animals.     

The Effects of a PETTLEP Imagery Intervention on Learners' Coincident Anticipation Timing Performance

Little research has examined how imagery effects learners' acquisition of motor tasks requiring coincident anticipation timing (CAT). CAT is a fundamental component of hitting, passing, and receiving required in several sports. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of a PETTLEP imagery intervention on learners' CAT performance using a Bassin Anticipation Timer. Fifty-six participants (M = 20.61 years, SD = 2.48) were randomly assigned into one of four training groups: physical practice (PP), imagery practice (IP), imagery practice + physical practice (IP +PP), or a control (CON) group. The study consisted of three phases: pretest, intervention, and a posttest. Results revealed that the PP and IP+PP groups had significantly lower absolute timing error compared to the CON group on the posttest. The IP+PP group was the only group to have lower variable error compared to the CON group on the posttest. Results extend prior research by demonstrating that imagery combined with physical practice can benefit the learning of a CAT task and that imagery alone may not assist learners in acquiring tasks requiring CAT. Results are congruent with prior research demonstrating that imagery is most effective when combined with physical practice.     

What It's Like To Have a Cognitive Home

Many people believe that the mind is an epistemic refuge of sorts. The idea is that when it comes to certain core mental states, one's being in such a state automatically puts one in a position to know that one is in that state. This idea has come under attack in recent years. One particularly influential attack comes from Timothy Williamson (2000), who argues that there is no central core of states or conditions—mental or otherwise—to which we are guaranteed epistemic access. In Williamson's words, we are cognitively homeless. In this paper I will argue that Williamson's argument for the conclusion that we are cognitively homeless fails. Then I will show that there is a class of phenomenal states that constitutes a substantial cognitive refuge. When all is said and done, I will have both defended and shed light on our cognitive home.     

Individual Personality and Emotional Readiness Characteristics Associated with Marriage Preparation Outcomes of Perceived Helpfulness and Change

Little is known about the characteristics of individual participants for whom particular marriage preparation interventions are most helpful and change producing. Data collected from 1,655 intervention participants via the online RELATionship Evaluation Questionnaire (RELATE) were used to analyze the association of eight individual personality characteristics with perceived helpfulness and positive change resulting from participation in four marriage preparation interventions (classes, community workshops, premarital counseling, self-directed) and whether this association would also be related to gender, age, and education of the participants. General linear modeling (GLM) analysis revealed different patterns of prediction for each type of intervention. Kindness was identified most often, predicting perceived change in individual, couple, and context areas among community workshop participants, perceived couple-level change, and helpfulness among self-directed participants, and perceived individual-level change among class participants. No factors significantly predicted perceived helpfulness and change among premarital counseling participants. Implications for premarital interventions are discussed.     

The Development of a Short Form of an Irrational/Rational Beliefs Scale

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - This study developed a short form of the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale-2 (ABS-2), a measure of Ellis’s irrational and rational...     

Psychometric Meta‐Analysis of the English Version of the Beck Anxiety Inventory

This meta‐analysis reviewed 192 scholarly works from 1993 to 2013 using the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck & Steer, 1993 ). Aggregated internal consistency (coefficient alpha) was .91 (k = 117), and test–retest reliability was .65 (k = 18). Convergent comparisons were robust across 33 different anxiety instruments and the Beck Depression Inventory–II (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996 ). Structural validity primarily supported the original 2‐factor solution proposed by Beck and Steer ( 1993 ), and diagnostic accuracy varied according to the sample size and criterion cutoff score.