A survey of psychologists' attitudes towards and utilization of exposure therapy for PTSD

Although research supports the efficacy of exposure therapy for PTSD, some evidence suggests that exposure is under-utilized in general clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to assess licensed psychologists' use of imaginal exposure for PTSD and to investigate perceived barriers to its implementation. A total of 852 psychologists from three states were randomly selected and surveyed. An additional 50 members of a trauma special interest group of a national behavior therapy organization were also surveyed. The main survey results indicate that a large majority of licensed doctoral level psychologists do not report use of exposure therapy to treat patients with PTSD. Although approximately half of the main study sample reported that they were at least somewhat familiar with exposure for PTSD, only a small minority used it to treat PTSD in their clinical practice. Even among psychologists with strong interest and training in behavioral treatment for PTSD, exposure therapy is not completely accepted or widely used. Clinicians also appear to perceive a significant number of barriers to implementing exposure.     

Neural correlates of the effects of morphological family frequency and family size: an MEG study

Schreuder and Baayen (Schreuder. R., & Baayen, R. H. (1997). How complex simplex words can be. Journal of Memory and Language 37, 118-139) report that lexical decision times to nouns are not sensitive to the cumulative frequency of the noun's morphological derivatives in its "morphological family", even though such a cumulative frequency effect is obtained in the domain of inflection. Under a decomposition view of derivational morphology, this constitutes a puzzling exception to the robust finding that lexical frequency is one of the major determinants of behavioral response latencies. If morphologically complex words are decomposed, each occurrence of a member of a noun's morphological family should add to its root-frequency. We investigated the effects of morphological family frequency on the magnetoencephalographic response component M350, which shows sensitivity to factors affecting early stages of lexical processing, including lexical frequency. We hypothesized that high morphological family frequency should have a facilitory effect on the M350, even though no such effect can be seen in response time, presumably due to competition among possible root-affix combinations. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found that high family frequency elicits an M350 inhibition, suggesting that competition among morphological family members occurs at the M350. The result is significant, since there is evidence that competition among phonologically similar words occurs after, not at, the M350. Thus, our results suggest that competition within a morphological family precedes competition within a phonological similarity neighborhood.     

What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events

Four studies examined the intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of seeking out others when good things happen (i.e., capitalization). Two studies showed that communicating personal positive events with others was associated with increased daily positive affect and well-being, above and beyond the impact of the positive event itself and other daily events. Moreover, when others were perceived to respond actively and constructively (and not passively or destructively) to capitalization attempts, the benefits were further enhanced. Two studies found that close relationships in which one's partner typically responds to capitalization attempts enthusiastically were associated with higher relationship well-being (e.g., intimacy, daily marital satisfaction). The results are discussed in terms of the theoretical and empirical importance of understanding how people "cope" with positive events, cultivate positive emotions, and enhance social bonds.     

Investigating retrospective influences on induction in rats' responding for 1% sucrose when food-pellet reinforcement is upcoming

When rats lever press for 1% sucrose reinforcement in the first half of a 50-min session, response rates are higher when food-pellet reinforcement will be available in the second half than when 1% sucrose will be available. Results of past research have suggested that, under some conditions, this induction effect is prospective in nature (i.e., controlled by the conditions of reinforcement in the present session). However, that research did not rule out the possibility that, under other conditions, retrospective factors (i.e., the conditions of reinforcement in the previous session[s]) could contribute. In the present study, rats responded in two types of session, one in which 1% sucrose reinforcement was available in both halves of the session and one in which 1% sucrose and food-pellet reinforcement were available in the first and second halves, respectively. Which type of session was in effect unsignaled and session type alternated every session (Experiment 1), every second session (Experiment 2), or after at least 20 consecutive sessions of one type (Experiment 3). Across experiments, the results indicated that it takes several sessions of one type for observable retrospective effects to occur, but those effects are short lived. These results allow the authors to identify the mechanisms that must underlie induction. The authors also discuss induction as an animal model of anticipation.     

Is induction produced by upcoming food-pellet reinforcement the outcome of an increase in overall activity or in operant responding?

Researchers have demonstrated that rats reliably increase their rates of pressing a lever for 1% liquid-sucrose reinforcement if they will soon have the opportunity to press a lever for food-pellet reinforcement. In the present experiments, the authors investigated if this increase in response rates occurred because the upcoming food pellets produced an increase in all behaviors (i.e., general arousal) or an increase in only the specific operant response (i.e., lever pressing). The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the appearance of induction in rats' lever pressing for 1% sucrose reinforcement when food-pellet reinforcement was upcoming did not coincide with increases in the frequency of running in a wheel or making a nonreinforced nose-poke response. On the other hand, in Experiment 3, the authors found the appearance of induction coincided with increase nonreinforced lever presses on an adjacent lever. These results shed doubt on the idea that induction is a result of a general increase in all activity, and suggest instead that the increase in responding that occurs during induction is limited to the operant response.     

Optimism in close relationships: How seeing things in a positive light makes them so

Does expecting positive outcomes--especially in important life domains such as relationships--make these positive outcomes more likely? In a longitudinal study of dating couples, the authors tested whether optimists (who have a cognitive disposition to expect positive outcomes) and their romantic partners are more satisfied in their relationships, and if so, whether this is due to optimists perceiving greater support from their partners. In cross-sectional analyses, both optimists and their partners indicated greater relationship satisfaction, an effect that was mediated by optimists' greater perceived support. When the couples engaged in a conflict conversation, optimists and their partners saw each other as engaging more constructively during the conflict, which in turn led both partners to feel that the conflict was better resolved 1 week later. In a 1-year follow-up, men's optimism predicted relationship status. Effects of optimism were mediated by the optimists' perceived support, which appears to promote a variety of beneficial processes in romantic relationships.     

Everyday magical powers: the role of apparent mental causation in the overestimation of personal influence

These studies examined whether having thoughts related to an event before it occurs leads people to infer that they caused the event--even when such causation might otherwise seem magical. In Study 1, people perceived that they had harmed another person via a voodoo hex. These perceptions were more likely among those who had first been induced to harbor evil thoughts about their victim. In Study 2, spectators of a peer's basketball-shooting performance were more likely to perceive that they had influenced his success if they had first generated positive visualizations consistent with that success. Observers privy to those spectators' visualizations made similar attributions about the spectators' influence. Finally, additional studies suggested that these results occur even when the thought-about outcome is viewed as unwanted by the thinker and even in field settings where the relevant outcome is occurring as part of a live athletic competition.     

You May Worry,But Can You Recognize Threats When You See Them?; Neuroticism,Threat Identifications,and Negative Affect

The present studies sought to investigate the hedonic consequences of threat-identification skills at low and high levels of neuroticism. Such skills were assessed in terms of both speed (Study 1) and accuracy (Study 2) of identifying threatening objects in cognitive tasks. As predicted, threat-identification skills interacted with trait neuroticism in predicting subjective experiences. Specifically, individuals high in neuroticism experienced lower levels of negative affect during their everyday lives if they were also skilled in identifying threats in the cognitive tasks (Studies 1-2). Such skills did not matter at low levels of neuroticism. This interactive pattern was also replicated in the context of life domain satisfaction (Study 2). The results support the view that avoidance motivation encompasses multiple component processes, including some that are cognitive in nature, and specifically extends self-regulatory views of neuroticism. Of most importance, our data indicate that threat-identification skills can be hedonically beneficial, rather than costly, at high levels of neuroticism.     

See what you want to see: motivational influences on visual perception

People's motivational states--their wishes and preferences--influence their processing of visual stimuli. In 5 studies, participants shown an ambiguous figure (e.g., one that could be seen either as the letter B or the number 13) tended to report seeing the interpretation that assigned them to outcomes they favored. This finding was affirmed by unobtrusive and implicit measures of perception (e.g., eye tracking, lexical decision tasks) and by experimental procedures demonstrating that participants were aware only of the single (usually favored) interpretation they saw at the time they viewed the stimulus. These studies suggest that the impact of motivation on information processing extends down into preconscious processing of stimuli in the visual environment and thus guides what the visual system presents to conscious awareness.