A Single-Subject Evaluation of the Treatment of Morphing Fear

We present a single-subject prospective outcome study of a man with severe morphing fear and long history of OCD who was not helped by previous interventions, and who received an adapted form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) as part of this study. Treatment consisted of a cognitively focused approach tailored to address his fear of morphing and included developing a stronger sense of self-stability. We describe the details of the case, the treatment protocol, and the therapeutic outcomes as assessed over 36 weeks by questionnaires, rating scales, and semistructured interviews. The intervention was effective in eradicating the patient’s morphing fears and reducing other symptoms of OCD, anxiety, and depression. The presented case illustrates the need to appropriately conceptualize, assess, and address the specific nature of morphing fear symptoms in treatment.     

Family conflict is associated with longitudinal changes in insular‐striatal functional connectivity during adolescent risk taking under maternal influence

Maternal presence has marked effects on adolescent neurocognition during risk taking, influencing teenagers to make safer decisions. However, it is currently unknown whether maternal buffering changes over the course of adolescence itself, and whether its effects are robust to individual differences in family relationship quality. In the current longitudinal study, 23 adolescents completed a risk‐taking task under maternal presence during an fMRI scan before and after the transition to high school. Behavioral results reveal that adolescent risk taking increased under maternal presence across a one‐year period. At the neural level, we found that adolescents reporting higher family conflict showed longitudinal increases in functional coupling between the anterior insula (AI) and ventral striatum (VS) when making safe decisions in the presence of their mother, which was associated with increased real‐world risk taking. These findings show that individual differences in family relationship quality undermine effective development of AI‐VS connectivity resulting in increased risk taking.     

Mother still knows best: Maternal influence uniquely modulates adolescent reward sensitivity during risk taking

Adolescent decision‐making is highly sensitive to input from the social environment. In particular, adult and maternal presence influence adolescents to make safer decisions when encountered with risky scenarios. However, it is currently unknown whether maternal presence confers a greater advantage than mere adult presence in buffering adolescent risk taking. In the current study, 23 adolescents completed a risk‐taking task during an fMRI scan in the presence of their mother and an unknown adult. Results reveal that maternal presence elicits greater activation in reward‐related neural circuits when making safe decisions but decreased activation following risky choices. Moreover, adolescents evidenced a more immature neural phenotype when making risky choices in the presence of an adult compared to mother, as evidenced by positive functional coupling between the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex. Our results underscore the importance of maternal stimuli in bolstering adolescent decision‐making in risky scenarios.     

When Intertemporal Rewards Are Hedonic,Larger Units of Wait Time Boost Patience

In intertemporal choices between smaller‐sooner (SS) and larger‐later (LL) rewards, five studies reveal that patience for the LL option is influenced by an interactive effect of the measurement units used to express wait time (large vs. small) and the type of the reward (hedonic vs. utilitarian). Specifically, larger time units boost patience, but more so when rewards are hedonic rather than utilitarian. In line with the numerosity heuristic, the effect of time units on patience is mediated by larger time units shrinking wait time perception. This effect arises because hedonic (vs. utilitarian) rewards promote a reliance on heuristics rather than systematic calculations. Therefore, a more calculative mindset diminishes the effect of units even for hedonic rewards and eliminates the hedonic‐utilitarian asymmetry. These results contribute to research on numerosity, intertemporal choice, and hedonic‐utilitarian differences, and offer a simple tool for practitioners to influence patience.     

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Father Engagement Questionnaire

While there has been increasing interest in promoting father engagement in parenting interventions for child wellbeing, both research and practice endeavors have been hindered by a lack of a measure of father engagement practices. This paper reports the development and evaluation of a comprehensive, practitioner-report measure of father engagement practices–—the Father Engagement Questionnaire (FEQ). Practitioners (N?=?589; 84.5% females; mean age?=?38.56) involved in delivering parenting interventions in Australia completed the FEQ, along with background demographics and questions regarding their own and organization’s practice. A separate sample of 28 practitioners completed the FEQ twice, with a two-week interim, to assess test–retest stability of the measure. Exploratory factor analysis revealed five factors corresponding to the measure’s five intended content areas: Confidence in Working with Fathers, Competence in Using Engagement Strategies, Perceived Effectiveness of Engagement Strategies, Frequency of Strategy Use, and Organizational Practices for Father Engagement. Each of these scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency reliability and test–retest stability. As the five scales appear to be related but distinct, it is recommended that the FEQ is used as a multidimensional measure of father engagement. In terms of predictive validity, higher scores on the Confidence in Working with Fathers, Frequency of Strategy Use, and Organizational Practices for Father Engagement scales were associated with a higher likelihood of practitioner-reported father attendance. The results provide support for adequate psychometric properties of the FEQ as a research and clinical tool for assessing and monitoring father engagement practices.     

The role of sustained attention,maternal sensitivity,and infant temperament in the development of early self-regulation

This study investigated infant predictors of early cognitive and emotional self-regulation from an intrinsic and caregiving environmental perspective. Sustained attention, reactive aspects of infant temperament, and maternal sensitivity were assessed at 10 months (n = 124) and early self-regulation (including executive functions, EF, and emotion regulation) was assessed at 18 months. The results indicated that sustained attention predicted early EF, which provide empirical support for the hierarchical framework of EF development, advocating early attention as a foundation for the development of cognitive self-regulation. Maternal sensitivity and surgency predicted emotion regulation, in that infants of sensitive mothers showed more regulatory behaviours and a longer latency to distress, whereas high levels of surgency predicted low emotion regulation, suggesting both the caregiving environment and temperament as important in the development of self-regulation. Interaction effects suggested high sustained attention to be a protective factor for children of insensitive mothers, in relation to emotion regulation. In addition, high levels of maternal sensitivity seemed to foster development of emotion regulation among children with low to medium levels of sustained attention and/or surgency. In all, our findings point to the importance of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors in infant development of self-regulation.     

A Computational Model of the Self‐Teaching Hypothesis Based on the Dual‐Route Cascaded Model of Reading

The self‐teaching hypothesis describes how children progress toward skilled sight‐word reading. It proposes that children do this via phonological recoding with assistance from contextual cues, to identify the target pronunciation for a novel letter string, and in so doing create an opportunity to self‐teach new orthographic knowledge. We present a new computational implementation of self‐teaching within the dual‐route cascaded (DRC) model of reading aloud, and we explore how decoding and contextual cues can work together to enable accurate self‐teaching under a variety of circumstances. The new model (ST‐DRC) uses DRC’s sublexical route and the interactivity between the lexical and sublexical routes to simulate phonological recoding. Known spoken words are activated in response to novel printed words, triggering an opportunity for orthographic learning, which is the basis for skilled sight‐word reading. ST‐DRC also includes new computational mechanisms for simulating how contextual information aids word identification, and it demonstrates how partial decoding and ambiguous context interact to achieve irregular‐word learning. Beyond modeling orthographic learning and self‐teaching, ST‐DRC’s performance suggests new avenues for empirical research on how difficult word classes such as homographs and potentiophones are learned.     

Mental health consequences of weight cycling in the first-year post-treatment for breast cancer

Objectives: Weight cycling is linked with advanced breast cancer diagnosis, increased risk of cancer reoccurrence and cancer-related mortality. While women treated for breast cancer report challenges with navigating their post-treatment body shape and weight, the effects of weight cycling on body image and mental health have not been elucidated. This study examined associations between weight changes and weight cycling on psychological health (i.e. weight-related guilt, shame and depressive symptoms) among women in the first-year post-treatment.

Design and Outcome Measures: Self-reported assessments of pre-cancer weight cycling, post-treatment weight-related guilt, shame and depressive symptoms, and objective assessments of weight were assessed in a longitudinal sample of 173 women treated for breast cancer (M_age = 55.01 ± 10.96 years).

Results: Based on findings from multilevel models, women experienced the most weight-related shame when their weight was heavier than their personal average. Additionally, heavier weight was associated with worse psychological health, particularly for women with a history of stable (vs. cycling) weight pre-cancer.

Conclusions: Weight cycling pre-cancer and post-treatment weight change have important implications for psychological well-being. Due to the potential psychological consequences associated with a history of weight cycling, targeted strategies are needed to improve overall health outcomes for women’s survivorship after breast cancer.