Treatment specific competence predicts outcome in cognitive therapy for social anxiety disorder

Several studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between competence and outcome in CBT for depression but studies of CBT for anxiety disorders are lacking. The present study explores the relationship between competence and outcome in cognitive therapy (CT) for social anxiety disorder, using hierarchical linear modeling analyses (HLM). Data were drawn from a multicenter randomized controlled trial. Five trained raters evaluated videotapes of two therapy sessions per patient using the Cognitive Therapy Competence Scale for Social Phobia (CTCS-SP). Overall adherence to the treatment manual and patient difficulty were also assessed. Patient outcome was rated by other assessors using the Clinical Global Impression Improvement Scale (CGI-I) and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). Results indicated that competence significantly predicted patient outcome on the CGI-I (β = .79) and LSAS (β = .59). Patient difficulty and adherence did not further improve prediction. The findings support the view that competence influences outcome and should be a focus of training programs. Further research is needed to compare different ways of assessing competence and to understand the complex relationships between competence and other therapy factors that are likely to influence outcome.     

Why Bayesians Needn’t Be Afraid of Observing Many Non-black Non-ravens

According to Hempel??s raven paradox, the observation of one non-black non-raven confirms the hypothesis that all ravens are black. Bayesians such as Howson and Urbach (Scientific reasoning: the Bayesian approach, 2nd edn. Open Court, Chicago, 1993) claim that the raven paradox can be solved by spelling out the concept of confirmation in the sense of the relevance criterion. Siebel (J Gen Philos Sci 35:313?C329, 2004) disputes the adequacy of this Bayesian solution. He claims that spelling out the concept of confirmation in the relevance sense lets the raven paradox reappear as soon as numerous non-black non-ravens are observed. It is shown in this paper that Siebel??s objection to the Bayesian solution is flawed. Nevertheless, the objection made by Siebel may give us an idea of how Bayesians can successfully handle situations in which we observe more than one non-black non-raven.     

Chronic psychosocial stress increases the risk for inflammation-related colon carcinogenesis in male mice

Patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC) than the general population. Furthermore, chronic psychosocial stress increases the likelihood of developing IBD and multiple types of malignant neoplasms, including CRC. Here, for the first time, we investigate the effects of chronic psychosocial stress in male mice on an artificially induced CRC, by employing the chronic subordinate colony (CSC) housing paradigm in combination with the reliable azoxymethane (AOM)/dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) CRC model. Colonoscopy revealed that CSC mice showed accelerated macroscopic suspect lesions. In addition, more CSC mice developed low-grade dysplasia (LGD) and/or high-grade dysplasia (HGD) in the colonic tissue compared to the single-housed control mice (SHC). CSC mice showed an increased number of Ki67+ and a decreased number of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling epithelial cells in colonic tissue. Colonic liver receptor homolog-1 (LRH-1), cyclooxygenase II (COXII), tumor necrosis factor, forkhead box P3 (FoxP3) mRNA as well as colonic ?-catenin, COXII, and LRH-1 protein expression were also increased in CSC compared with SHC mice. Although the number of CD4+ Th cells was increased, a tendency toward a decreased colonic interferon-γ (IFN-γ) mRNA expression was observed. Furthermore, despite an increased percentage of CD3+ cells and CD3+/FoxP3+ double-positive cells within mesenteric lymph node cells of CSC mice, IFN-γ secretion from these cells was unaffected. Altogether, our results suggest that chronic psychosocial stress increases the risk for AOM/DSS-induced and, thus, inflammation-related CRC. Finally, assessment of additional time points may test whether the shift from tumor-protective Th1 cell to regulatory T-cell immunity represents a consequence of increased carcinogenesis or a causal factor involved in its development.     

Furnishing hypnotic instructions with implementation intentions enhances hypnotic responsiveness

Forming implementation intentions has been consistently shown to be a powerful self-regulatory strategy. As the self-regulation of thoughts is important for the experience of involuntariness in the hypnotic context, investigating the effectiveness of implementation intentions on the suppression of thoughts was the focus of the present study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (hypnotic instruction plus implementation intention, hypnotic instruction, implementation intention, and control condition). Results showed that participants who received information included in the "Carleton Skill Training Program" and in addition formed implementation intentions improved their hypnotic responsiveness as compared to all of the other three groups on measures of objective responding and involuntary responding. Thus, in line with the nonstate or cognitive social-psychological view of hypnosis stating that an individual's hypnotic suggestibility is not dispositional but modifiable, our results suggest that hypnotic responsiveness can be heightened by furnishing hypnotic instructions with ad hoc implementation intentions.     

The phenomenon and the transcendental: Jean-Luc Marion, Marc Richir, and the issue of phenomenalization

After reviewing the status of the concept of the phenomenon in Husserl??s phenomenology and the aim of successive attempts to reform, de-formalize, and to widen it, we show the difficulties of a method that, following the example of Jean-Luc Marion??s phenomenology, intends to connect the phenomenon directly to the revelation of an exteriority. We argue that, on the contrary, Marc Richir??s phenomenology, which strives to grasp the phenomenon as nothing-but-phenomenon, is more likely to capture the ??meaning?? of the phenomenological, and hence to help us orient in the field of problems that phenomenology encounters without always knowing how to tackle them. Yet, this extension of the phenomenon??s domain does not thereby encompass everything: there may well be certain issues that require a phenomenology without phenomenon; but the meaning of this cannot be determined before the complete reenvisioning of transcendental phenomenology.     

An argument against global no miracles arguments

Synthese - Howson famously argues that the no-miracles argument, stating that the success of science indicates the approximate truth of scientific theories, is a base rate fallacy: it neglects the...     

Item performance in visual word recognition

Standard factorial designs in psycholinguistics have been complemented recently by large-scale databases providing empirical constraints at the level of item performance. At the same time, the development of precise computational architectures has led modelers to compare item-level performance with item-level predictions. It has been suggested, however, that item performance includes a large amount of undesirable error variance that should be quantified to determine the amount of reproducible variance that models should account for. In the present study, we provide a simple and tractable statistical analysis of this issue. We also report practical solutions for estimating the amount of reproducible variance for any database that conforms to the additive decomposition of the variance. A new empirical database consisting of the word identification times of 140 participants on 120 words is then used to test these practical solutions. Finally, we show that increases in the amount of reproducible variance are accompanied by the detection of new sources of variance.     

Sense of Closeness to Parents and Family Rules: A Study of Arab and Jewish Youth in Israel

The present study investigated adolescents' perception of closeness to their parents and family rules restricting their conduct, in Arab and Jewish Israeli samples. A total of 854 11th-grade high school students reported their perceptions by a self-report questionnaire. Overall, the results indicate that the Arab youths perceived more closeness toward their parents and more rules restricting their conduct, compared with their Jewish counterparts. In both cultures, girls reported more restrictions on dating and leaving home than boys. Among Israeli Arab adolescents a positive association was uncovered between closeness to parents and number of rules. No such pattern was evident among Israeli Jewish youth. These and additional findings are discussed within the context of Triandis' cross-cultural dimension of collectivism-individualism.