Clinical research on behavioral activation as treatment for post‐traumatic stress disorder: A brief review and meta‐analysis

Behavioral activation (BA), an effective treatment for depression, has recently been receiving attention as a possible intervention for PTSD. BA interventions could be particularly useful in treating underserved populations (i.e., individuals with lower socioeconomic status). A literature search was conducted, which identified seven outcome studies that examined the effectiveness of stand‐alone BA treatment for individuals with PTSD. All studies identified for this brief review demonstrated clinically significant reductions in PTSD symptoms using BA as an intervention. A meta‐analysis of these few studies revealed a nonsignificant effect (Cohen's d = 0.713, p = .512) despite reporting an average symptom reduction of 25.8%. Other studies utilizing BA treatment for PTSD do so in tandem with other interventions and were excluded from analysis. This brief review summarizes the literature on the use of BA as a stand‐alone treatment for PTSD and suggests that future research seek to confirm the usefulness of BA as a potential treatment modality for mental health‐care providers treating individuals with PTSD.     

Understanding and taking stock of positive emotion disturbance

The prevailing view on positive emotions is that they correlate with and confer psychological health benefits for the individual, including improved social, physical and cognitive functioning. Yet an emerging wave of scientific work suggests that positive emotions are also related to a range of suboptimal psychological health outcomes, especially when the intensity, duration, or context do not optimize the individual's goals or meet current environmental demands. This paper provides an overview of the “other side” of positive emotion, by describing and reviewing evidence supporting the emerging field of positive emotion disturbance (PED). We review relevant emotion processes and key themes of PED and apply this framework to example emotional disorders, and discuss implications for psychological change and future research agendas.     

A longitudinal study of children's depressive symptoms, self-perceptions, and cognitive distortions about the self

This longitudinal study examined how depressive symptoms relate to children's self-perceptions and to estimates of children's cognitive distortions about the self in a nonclinical sample of children who were followed from 4th grade (n = 248) through 6th grade (n = 227). Report card grades measured children's academic competence, and teachers' ratings of children's level of peer acceptance at school indicated social acceptance. Self-reported depressive symptoms predicted a change in children's negative views of the self. Moreover, the self-perceptions of children who exhibited more symptoms of depression appeared to reflect an underestimation of their actual competence. Children's negative self-perceptions and underestimations about the self were not associated with a subsequent change in depressive symptoms. The implications of the findings for cognitive theories of depression and future research with this population are discussed.     

Clinical features of major depressive disorder in adolescents and their relatives: impact on familial aggregation, implications for phenotype definition, and specificity of transmission

Three questions were addressed using family study data from a community sample: (a) Which clinical features of major depressive disorder (MDD) in adolescents are associated with elevated rates of MDD in relatives? (b) Which features of MDD in relatives distinguish family members of depressed adolescents from relatives of adolescents without mood disorders (NMD)? and (c) Do depressed adolescents with particular features have higher proportions of depressed relatives with the same features? Participants included 268 MDD adolescents, 401 NMD adolescents, and their 2,202 first-degree relatives. Rates of MDD were highest among relatives of depressed adolescents with recurrent episodes and greater impairment. Depression severity best distinguished the relatives of depressed adolescents from relatives of controls. Specific clinical features did not aggregate in families.     

An examination of the response styles theory of depression in third- and seventh-grade children: a short-term longitudinal study

The goal of this study was to test the response styles theory of depression in a sample of 3rd- and 7th-grade children. In addition, we examined whether the relationship between rumination and increases in depressive symptoms is mediated by hopelessness and low self-esteem. The procedure involved an initial assessment in which depressive symptoms, response styles, hopelessness, and self-esteem were assessed. The procedure also involved a follow-up assessment, 6 weeks later, in which depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and self-esteem were reassessed. Children with a ruminative response style exhibited increases in depressive symptoms over the 6-week period. In addition, the relationship between rumination and increases in depressive symptoms was mediated by both hopelessness and low self-esteem. Last, contrary to our hypotheses, neither distraction nor problem-solving response styles predicted decreases in depressive symptoms over the course of the study.     

Bigger than a breadbox? Attention to distractors may not enhance negative priming

In several recent studies, P. A. MacDonald and colleagues (e.g., P. A. MacDonald & S. Joordens, 2000) reported unusually large negative priming effects and claimed that attention to distractors, counter to expectations, served to enhance the magnitude of the effect. In 3 experiments using their novel comparative judgment task, negative priming was assessed using both a control condition based on that of P. A. MacDonald, S. Joordens, and K. N. Seergobin (1999) and one in which control probe items exactly matched those on ignored repetition trials. In MacDonald et al.'s unmatched control condition, participants were faster than on ignored repetition trials, but this difference was reduced or absent when control items were matched. This result led to the conclusion that the apparently large negative priming effect reported by MacDonald and colleagues may be an artifact arising because judgments for a subset of their control trials were relatively easier than for ignored repetition trials.     

Wanting,having, and satisfaction: examining the role of desire discrepancies in satisfaction with income

In 3 studies, the authors tested the predictors of income satisfaction, examining whether discrepanc between the things people have and the things they desire predict satisfaction. Study 1 manipulated the desirability of items that can be purchased with participants' income, and showed that their satisfaction with that income depended on the desirability of these items. Study 2 demonstrated that whether people's income enabled them to purchase the things they desired influenced their satisfaction with income. Study 3 found that the effect of comparisons with a person's past on income satisfaction is completely mediated by one's desires; and the effect of social comparison on income satisfaction is partially mediated by desires. Thus, desires play a pivotal role in determining people's satisfaction with income.     

The irrelevant-speech effect and children: theoretical implications of developmental change

The irrelevant-speech effect refers to the finding of impaired recall performance in the presence of irrelevant auditory stimuli. Two broad classes of theories exist for the effect, both allowing automatic entry of the distracting sounds into the processing system but differing in how attention is involved. As one source of evidence in the discussion of existing theories of the irrelevant-speech effect, the performance of children and adults on a visual serial recall task with irrelevant sounds (speech and tones) was examined. The magnitude of the effects of irrelevant sounds on performance decreased with age. The developmental differences were marked in the conditions with the greatest need for attentional control (words and especially changing words). The findings were interpreted with respect to current models of memory. Theories of the irrelevant-speech effect that include a role for attentional control were better suited to handle the results than those without a specified role for attention.     

Timing variability in circle drawing and tapping: probing the relationship between event and emergent timing

R. Ivry, R. M. Spencer, H. N. Zelaznik, and J. Diedrichsen (2002) have proposed a distinction between timed movements in which a temporal representation is part of the task goal (event timing) and those in which timing properties are emergent. The issue addressed in the present experiment was how timing in conditions conducive to emergent timing becomes established. According to what the authors term the transformation hypothesis, timing initially requires an event-based representation when the temporal goal is defined externally (e.g., by a metronome), but over the first few movement cycles, control processes become established that allow timing to become emergent. Different groups of participants (N = 84) executed either 1 timed interval, 4 timed intervals, or 2 timed intervals separated by a pause. They produced the intervals by either circle drawing, a task associated with emergent timing, or tapping, a task associated with event timing. Analyses of movement variability suggested that similar timing processes were used in the 2 tasks only during the 1st interval. Those results are consistent with the transformation hypothesis and lead to the inference that the transition from event-based control to emergent timing can occur rapidly during continuous movements.