Australian normative data for the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering

People who stutter often report negative impacts on their wellbeing as a result of their chronic fluency disorder. The need for a comprehensive assessment of the wellbeing and experience of stuttering should be a prime consideration when measuring treatment outcomes. One such measure designed to evaluate wellbeing and aspects of the individual's experience of his or her stuttering is the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES). Normative data for the OASES Adult version (OASES-A; and hereafter referred to simply as the OASES) has begun to be collected over the past 10 years, though none are available for an Australian population. This paper presents Australian normative data for the OASES for 200 adult males and females who stutter, aged between 18 and 85 years. Additionally, the influence of age, sex, and frequency of stuttering on the Australian OASES scores are also presented. No significant relationships between OASES scores were found for sex and age, which is in keeping with the USA original dataset. However, those participants who had more severe stuttering were more likely to have higher negative impacts for 'General Information', Communication in Daily Situations,' and for the overall OASES score. Implications for further research are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to: (i) describe the purpose of the Overall Experience of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for Adults (OASES), (ii) evaluate the relevance of the OASES to treatment planning and the evaluation of stuttering treatment outcomes in the adult population, and (iii) compare Australian normative dataset with the USA and Dutch normative datasets for the OASES.     

Trial-based psychotherapy and the efficacy of trial-based thought record in changing unhelpful core beliefs and reducing self-criticism

IntroductionThe best prevention against relapse results when patients are taught to restructure negative core beliefs (CBs). Efficacy of the trial-based thought record (TBTR) in decreasing the credit given by patients to negative CBs and corresponding emotions was evaluated.MethodPatients (n = 166) were submitted to a simulation of a legal trial to assess their adherence to negative CBs and corresponding emotions after each cognitive therapy technique incorporated by TBTR. RESULTS: Significant reductions existed in percent values after the first and second defense attorney pleas, as well as after jury's verdict and initial preparation for the appeal (p < 0.001), relative to the investigation phase. Significant differences also emerged between the defense attorney's first and second pleas and between the defense attorney's second plea and jury's verdict, as well as preparation for the appeal (p < 0.001). There was no significant difference between percentages presented by patients submitted to TBTR used in the empty chair format relative to the conventional format. Similarly, there was no difference between outcomes, regardless of therapists' level of exposure to TBTR.ConclusionTBTR may help patients reduce attachment to negative CBs and corresponding emotions. Outcomes were significantly favorable regardless of the format use and therapists' level of exposure to TBTR.     

Illness representations in patients with multimorbid long-term conditions: Qualitative study

Most research on illness representations explores how patients view single conditions, but many patients report more than one long-term condition (known as multimorbidity). It is not known how multimorbidity impacts on patient illness representations. This exploratory qualitative study examined patients’ representations of multimorbid long-term conditions and sought to assess how models of illness representation might need modification in the presence of multimorbidity. We explored two major issues: (1) the impact of multimorbidity on patient representations of their individual conditions and (2) the representation of multimorbidity itself. Twenty eight adults with at least two long-term conditions (mean of 4) were interviewed. The presence of multimorbidity impacted on patient illness representations in relation to the dimensions of identity, perceived cause, coherence and consequences. Representations of multimorbidity itself concerned representations of the burden of medication and perceived priorities among conditions and synergies and antagonisms between conditions and their management. The results have implications for the measurement of multimorbidity (through scales such as the Illness Perception Questionnaire) and the use of illness representations in the design and delivery of interventions to improve health behaviour and outcomes of patients with multiple long-term conditions.     

Cognitive structure of emotion terms in Indonesia and The Netherlands

The rapid detection of facial expressions of anger or threat has obvious adaptive value. In this study, we examined the efficiency of facial processing by means of a visual search task. Participants searched displays of schematic faces and were required to determine whether the faces displayed were all the same or whether one was different. Four main results were found: (1) When displays contained the faces, people were slower in detecting the absence of a discrepant face when the faces displayed angry (or sad/angry) rather than happy expressions. (2) When displays contained a discrepant face people were faster in detecting this when the discrepant face displayed an angry rather than a happy expression. (3) Neither of these patterns for same and different displays was apparent when face displays were inverted, or when just the mouth was presented in isolation. (4) The search slopes for angry targets were significantly lower than for happy targets. These results suggest that detection of angry facial expressions is fast and efficient, although does not “pop-out” in the traditional sense.     

Sex differences in scanning faces: Does attention to the eyes explain female superiority in facial expression recognition?

Previous meta-analyses support a female advantage in decoding non-verbal emotion (Hall, 1978, 1984), yet the mechanisms underlying this advantage are not understood. The present study examined whether the female advantage is related to greater female attention to the eyes. Eye-tracking techniques were used to measure attention to the eyes in 19 males and 20 females during a facial expression recognition task. Women were faster and more accurate in their expression recognition compared with men, and women looked more at the eyes than men. Positive relationships were observed between dwell time and number of fixations to the eyes and both accuracy of facial expression recognition and speed of facial expression recognition. These results support the hypothesis that the female advantage in facial expression recognition is related to greater female attention to the eyes.     

Dual n-back training increases the capacity of the focus of attention

Working memory (WM) training has been reported to benefit abilities as diverse as fluid intelligence (Jaeggi et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105:6829–6833, 2008) and reading comprehension (Chein & Morrison, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17:193–199, 2010), but transfer is not always observed (for reviews, see Morrison & Chein, Psychonomics Bulletin & Review, 18:46–60, 2011; Shipstead et al., Psychological Bulletin, 138:628–654, 2012). In contrast, recent WM training studies have consistently reported improvement on the trained tasks. The basis for these training benefits has received little attention, however, and it is not known which WM components and/or processes are being improved. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to investigate five possible mechanisms underlying the effects of adaptive dual n-back training on working memory (i.e., improvements in executive attention, updating, and focus switching, as well as increases in the capacity of the focus of attention and short-term memory). In addition to a no-contact control group, the present study also included an active control group whose members received nonadaptive training on the same task. All three groups showed significant improvements on the n-back task from pretest to posttest, but adaptive training produced larger improvements than did nonadaptive training, which in turn produced larger improvements than simply retesting. Adaptive, but not nonadaptive, training also resulted in improvements on an untrained running span task that measured the capacity of the focus of attention. No other differential improvements were observed, suggesting that increases in the capacity of the focus of attention underlie the benefits of adaptive dual n-back training.     

Positive Psychology: What Impact has it had on Sex Research Publication Trends?

Throughout history, Americans have been bitterly divided as to whether passionate love and sexual desire are positive experiences (that give meaning to life), whether they constitute a political, social, and spiritual danger, or whether sex in itself is not inherently bad, but certain sexual behaviors are wrong or dangerous. As previously noted by H. L. Horowitz, R. L. Rapson, and L. Stone, political and religious authorities—preaching the virtues of social control, chastity, and circumspection—have prevailed over reformers advocating “free love,” gender equality, birth control, the elimination of the double standard, sex education, and the like. In this paper we ask: Do we see any bias in the publication of modern-day sexuality research—specifically, do published studies tend to focus primarily on the positive or the negative aspects of sexuality? We attempted to answer this question by conducting a content analysis of articles appearing in four prestigious journals: The Journal of Sex Research, Archives of Sexual Behavior, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, from 1960 to the present. As expected, only a slim minority of articles investigated the delights of love, sex, and intimacy; the vast majority focused on the problems associated with sexual behavior. The positive psychology movement does not appear to have altered this time-tested bias.     

The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.     

Longitudinal Multi-Trait-State-Method Model Using Ordinal Data

Multi-trait multi-method (MTMM) models provide a way to assess convergent and discriminant validity when multiple traits are measured by multiple methods. In recent years, longitudinal extensions of MTMM models have been proposed in the structural equation modeling framework to evaluate whether and how the trait as well as method factors change over time. We propose a novel longitudinal ordinal MTMM model that can be used to effectively distinguish volatile “state” processes from “trait” processes that tend to remain stable and invariant over time. The proposed model, termed a longitudinal multi-trait-state-method (LM-TSM) model, combines 3 key modeling components: (a) a measurement model for ordinal data, (b) a vector autoregressive moving average model at the latent level to examine changes in the state as well as the method factors over time, and (c) a second-order factor-analytic model to capture time-invariant traits as shared variances among the state factors across all measurement occasions. Data from the Affective Dynamics and Individual Differences (ADID; Emotions and Dynamic Systems Laboratory, 2010 Emotions and Dynamic Systems Laboratory. (2010). The Affective Dynamics and Individual Differences (ADID) study: Developing non-stationary and network-based methods for modeling the perception and physiology of emotions. . Unpublished manual, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [Google Scholar]) study was used to illustrate the proposed longitudinal LM-TSM model. Methodological issues associated with fitting the LM-TSM model are discussed.