Validation of the URICA-S in Group Therapy: Associations of Stages of Change with Therapeutic Factors and Treatment Outcome

Stages of change could be driving forces to activate the realization of therapeutic factors and symptom change. Consequently, the aims of the present study were to investigate whether the stages of change concept is valid in group therapy settings shown by factor analysis, internal consistencies, and criterion validity. A total of 377 patients completed measures of stages of change, symptom change, and therapeutic factors. A confirmatory factor analysis replicated the stages of change factors for group therapy. Related to the criterion validity, stages of change demonstrated only low, non-significant associations with symptom change, but some stages of change were significant predictors of certain therapeutic factors. Further research is needed to explore whether a stronger focus on motivational stages of change could help to intensify the realization of therapeutic factors in group therapy.     

Substance-related disorders among juvenile offenders: what role do psychopathic traits play?

Substance use disorders are associated with psychopathy, a personality disorder that is heterogeneous in both adults and youth; secondary variants of psychopathy with comorbid psychopathology and primary variants without comorbidity show distinct correlates and outcomes. In adult criminal populations, secondary variants report greater substance abuse compared with primary variants. The primary aim of this study is to replicate and extend these findings to a juvenile offender population. Compared with primary variants of juvenile psychopathy, secondary variants (a) reported significantly more frequent substance use--particularly alcohol--within the 6 months prior to incarceration (d = .43), (b) were almost twice as likely to abuse substances while incarcerated, and (c) were more likely to be diagnosed with a current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) substance use disorder. Practical implications for working with justice-involved youth are discussed.     

Capturing the Structure of Distinct Types of Individual Differences in the Situation‐specific Experience of Emotions: The Case of Anger

The aim of this paper was to understand why some people experience certain emotions in a specific situation, whereas others do not. We postulate that these individual differences arise from individual differences in two underlying processes of emotion elicitation: (i) individual differences in the emotion components (appraisals and action tendencies) that situations activate in a person and (ii) individual differences in how these emotion components are related to subjective emotional experience. In this paper, we re‐analysed data from two studies on anger to capture the structure of these two types of individual differences by using clustering modelling techniques. Consistent results across the two studies demonstrated that individuals differ in anger because they (i) differ in how easy they experience anger‐relevant appraisals (Studies 1 and 2) and action tendencies (Study 2) in increasingly negative situations and (ii) differ in which of these components are necessary to experience anger. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Validation of Catalan version of BRIEF-P

The BRIEF-P is one of the most used instruments to measure Executive Function (EF). This report is aimed at showing the psychometric properties of the Catalan version of it. To do this, a random cluster sampling was carried out in Osona (Catalonia), recruiting 417 teachers and 408 parents of children aged 3 to 6 years. As with the original instrument, results show that reliability is excellent and that girls have a better EF than boys in the following areas: Working Memory, Plan/Organize, and Inhibit. Since in some areas Catalonia's preschool children show EF values slightly better than those of the reference sample, a new scale for using it in this population is provided.     

The bank of standardized stimuli (BOSS): comparison between French and English norms

Throughout the last decades, numerous picture data sets have been developed, such as the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and have been normalized for variables such as name and familiarity; however, due to cultural and linguistic differences, norms can vary from one country to another. The effect due specifically to culture has already been demonstrated by comparing samples from different countries where the same language is spoken. On the other hand, it is still not clear how differences between languages may affect norms. The present study explores this issue by collecting and comparing norms on names and many other features from French Canadian speakers and English Canadian speakers living in Montreal, who thus live in similar cultural environments. Norms were collected for the photos of objects from the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) by asking participants to name the objects, to categorize them, and to rate their familiarity, visual complexity, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, and manipulability. Names and ratings from the French speakers are available in Appendix A, available in the supplemental materials. The results show that most of the norms are comparable across linguistic groups and also that the ratings given are correlated across linguistic groups. The only significant group differences were found in viewpoint agreement and visual complexity. Overall, there was good concordance between the norms collected from French and English native speakers living in the same cultural setting.     

Integrating the irrelevant sound

A distractor can be integrated with a target response and the subsequent repetition of the distractor can facilitate or hamper responding depending on whether the same or a different response is required, a phenomenon labeled distractor-response binding. In two experiments we used a priming paradigm with an identification task to investigate influences of stimulus grouping on the binding of irrelevant stimuli (distractors) and responses in audition. In a grouped condition participants heard relevant and irrelevant sounds in one central location, whereas in a non-grouped condition the relevant sound was presented to one ear and the irrelevant sound was presented to the other ear. Distractor-based retrieval of the prime response was stronger for the grouped compared to the non-grouped presentation of stimuli indicating that binding of irrelevant auditory stimuli with responses is modulated by perceptual grouping.     

Paw preference is not affected by postural demand in a nonprimate mammal (Felis silvestris catus)

Previously, it has been thought that handedness is unique to humans. Recently, it has been found that hand or paw preferences are common among a variety of vertebrate species. Different models have been put forth to describe the evolution of primate handedness. In this study we aimed to explore whether these models can also be used to predict manual laterality in nonprimate mammalian groups. The cat (Felis silvestris catus) is a good nonprimate model for manual laterality, as cats frequently use paws to catch and hold prey. Cats were exposed to two standardized manual laterality tasks, differing in postural demand. Subjects (N = 28) were forced to use either a stable or unstable body posture (i.e., sitting or standing vs. vertical clinging) to extract food items from a plastic box attached at two different heights. We revealed that cats exhibited paw preferences at an individual level with about 40% left, 30% right, 30% nonlateralized subjects. Postural demand was linked to task difficulty: the unstable body posture was found to be significantly more difficult than the stable body posture. However, these differences in postural demand and task difficulty did not lead to differences in direction or strength of paw preference. Findings suggested that nonprimate mammals differ from primates in their sensitivity to task related factors, such as postural demand. Results coincide with those of some prosimians, providing support for the hypothesis that postural demand and the associated task complexity became influencing factors on manual laterality in the course of primate evolution.     

Reciprocal relations between recovery and work engagement: the moderating role of job stressors

In this paper, we examined the within-person relations between morning recovery level (i.e., feeling refreshed and replenished) and work engagement throughout the day, and between work engagement throughout the day and the subsequent recovery level at the end of the workday. We hypothesized that job stressors (situational constraints, job demands) moderate these relations. A diary study over 1 workweek with 2 measurement occasions per day (N = 111 persons) provided support for most of the hypotheses: Morning recovery level predicted work engagement, and work engagement predicted subsequent recovery level at the end of the workday after controlling for morning recovery level. As predicted, situational constraints attenuated these relations, but job demands did not. The results suggest that recovery translates into employee work engagement, and work engagement, in turn, prevents a loss in recovery level throughout the day, particularly when situational constraints are low. Situational constraints seem to interrupt the reciprocal processes between recovery level and work engagement.     

Comparison between immigrant and Spanish native-born pathological gambling patients

The study compared clinical, psychopathological, and personality profiles between immigrants and Spanish native-born pathological gambling patients. A total of 1,601 native-born and 133 immigrant patients attending treatment at a specialized hospital unit were administered a battery of questionnaires during clinical assessment. Outcome measures were compared between both groups and the incremental predictive accuracy of the area of origin was examined using a regression model. Native-born Spaniards showed a mean 2.6 yr. greater duration of the disorder, while immigrants scored higher on South Oaks Gambling Screen, frequency of going to casinos, and total money spent (in a single day and/or to recover losses). General psychopathology and personality scores did not differ between the cohorts. However, immigration from Asia had a statistically significantly incremental validity for pathological gambling in South Oaks Gambling Screen scores. Both cohorts shared more similarities than differences in their gambling profiles.     

Dissociating linguistic and non-linguistic gesture processing: electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language

A fundamental advance in our understanding of human language would come from a detailed account of how non-linguistic and linguistic manual actions are differentiated in real time by language users. To explore this issue, we targeted the N400, an ERP component known to be sensitive to semantic context. Deaf signers saw 120 American Sign Language sentences, each consisting of a “frame” (a sentence without the last word; e.g. BOY SLEEP IN HIS) followed by a “last item” belonging to one of four categories: a high-close-probability sign (a “semantically reasonable” completion to the sentence; e.g. BED), a low-close-probability sign (a real sign that is nonetheless a “semantically odd” completion to the sentence; e.g. LEMON), a pseudo-sign (phonologically legal but non-lexical form), or a non-linguistic grooming gesture (e.g. the performer scratching her face). We found significant N400-like responses in the incongruent and pseudo-sign contexts, while the gestures elicited a large positivity.