Intelligence impairment, personality features and psychopathology disturbances in a family affected with CADASIL

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a small-vessel disease of the brain that is characterized by headache, recurring lacunar strokes, mood changes and progressive cognitive deterioration. The disease is transmitted with an autosomal dominant pattern and usually starts during midadulthood (at 30-50 years of age). Cognitive deficits in patients with CADASIL develop slowly. The dementia causes frontal-like symptoms and it typically develops after a history of recurrent stroke. We describe three patients from one Spanish family affected by this disease. All three cases underwent comprehensive clinical and neuropsychological examination, and were monitored for seven years. The results obtained in this study describe a) a significant loss of the intelligence quotient (IQ) and noticeable damage to abstract ability (g factor), b) mood and psychopathological disturbances (major depression and dysthymia), and c) a personality with neurotic features.     

Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Running Addiction Scale (RAS)

Despite the growing number of Spanish people who organize their lives to prepare and participate in marathons, bringing to it a very committed lifestyle that, sometimes, go in detriment of their own health. In this instrumental paper, we the adaptation and testing of the psychometric properties of the Running Addiction Scale (RAS) in Spanish. To this end, we conducted two independent studies. The aim of the first was to present the first preliminary psychometric data (pilot sample of 174 marathon runners). Explained the process of translation, adaptation and content validity of items, we carried out a statistical analysis of these, an exploration of dimensional structure and analysis of the reliability of the instrument. In the second study (sample of 975 marathon runners), the aim was to analyze the internal structure of the instrument with confirmatory procedures. The Spanish version of the RAS showed acceptable levels of internal consistency, temporal stability, inter-item correlations and total scale score. Also provides evidences of construct validity. Slight differences were obtained by sex and age. These findings support the use of the Spanish version of RAS to assess individual differences in negative addiction to running.     

The classification of Spanish adolescents based on substance consumption patterns and the analysis of the relationships within their social developmental contexts

This research is part of the 2006 edition of the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. The data presented were composed of a sample of 15942 Spanish adolescents ranging from 13 to 18 years of age. The instruments used included a variety of questions related to substance consumption among adolescents, their bio-psycho-social adjustment and developmental contexts, all of which are part of the HBSC study instrument bank. Through classification analysis, as well as significance and effect size tests, we obtained relevant information about the current epidemiology of substance consumption among Spanish adolescents. These results are representative of the Spanish adolescent population which allows the typical risk profile attributed to young people to be clarified. A gradual adjustment can be seen in terms of substance consumption levels in youth and that same level in their friends. Likewise, the analysis of the developmental context (family, friends and school) provides important information when it comes to preventing substance consumption, thus showing the advantages that coherence and connection have between the different environments where youth live, grow up and develop.     

Posture-related affordances guide attacks in basketball

Objectives

The purpose of this study was to investigate the decision made by the attacker to drive to the left or right of the defender.

Method

Participants were 32 novice and intermediate basketball players who were assigned the role of attacker or defender in a one-on-one subphase. We manipulated the defender’s posture and measured both the postures of defenders and attackers and the ensuing decision on drive direction.

Results

As hypothesized, the posture of defenders guided the decision behavior of the attacker. Both novice and intermediate attackers made the same affordance-based decision by driving to the side of the defender’s most advanced foot, but only when the distance between attacker and defender was small. Moreover, novice attackers conveyed postural information regarding their upcoming drive direction while intermediate attackers were better able to conceal this information.

Conclusions

These results lend further support to the notion of information-based control of interpersonal actions in sport contexts.     

Development of a new fear of hypoglycemia scale: FH-15

Hypoglycemia is the most common adverse event associated with insulin treatment in diabetes. The consequences of hypoglycemia can be quite aversive and potentially life threatening. The physical sequelae provide ample reason for patients to fear hypoglycemia and avoid episodes. For these reasons, our purpose in this study was to develop a new measure that explores specific fear of hypoglycemia (FH) in adult patients with type 1 diabetes and to examine its psychometric properties. The instrument developed to assess FH was initially made up of 20 items, of which 18 were negative and 2 were positive, assessed on a 5-point Likert scale (1-5). This scale was completed by 229 patients with type 1 diabetes. Additionally, a structured interview and a closed question called subjective fear of hypoglycemia were included as diagnostic criteria. A factor analysis employing the principal-components method and promax rotation was carried out, resulting in a new scale composed of 15 items. Three factors (fear, avoidance, and interference) were obtained and explained 58.27% of the variance. The scale showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .891) and test-retest reliability (r = .908, p < .001), as well as adequate concurrent and predictive validity. The cutoff score that provided the highest overall sensitivity and specificity was set at 28 points. The Fear of Hypoglycemia 15-item scale (FH-15) demonstrated good reliability and validity. This study suggests that the new instrument may serve as a valuable measure of specific FH for use in research and clinical practice.     

Effectiveness of treatments for social phobia in an applied field

Social phobia is one of the most common disorders and one that requires the most attention from psychological clinics. The aim of this article was to study the effectiveness of psychological treatments in a University Psychological Clinic. Seventy-one social phobia patients requested psychological assistance. The average number of assessment sessions was 3.8 and the average number of treatment sessions was 16.1. Therapeutic success reached 64.2%, withdrawal percentage was 11.3%, and drop-out percentage was 24.5%. The effect size (Cohen's d) achieved in the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD) and Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) were 1.96 and 1.78, respectively. Comparing these results with efficacy research (particularly meta-analysis), it has been shown that the treatment effectiveness achieved is very similar. It is concluded that cognitive behavioural treatments for social phobia can be transferred from research settings to clinical practice.     

Accuracy of diagnosis of depression in patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus

This study assesses the clinical accuracy of physicians (Specialists in Endocrinology and Nutrition: SEN) to make the diagnosis of depression in patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1). This study involved 11 SEN physicians, and 153 patients with DM1. The diagnosis of depression was performed using the SCID-1 structured interview and clinical assessment. From the initial sample, 50 patients were randomly selected (imposing the condition that it was included 25 patients with depression and 25 without depression). The results show that clinicians performed a higher percentage of negative diagnoses (patients without depression) than positive ones (patients with depression). A significant percentage of patients with depression were not diagnosed (25%). It therefore seems necessary to provide adequate clinical protocols to evaluate the presence of this disorder in DM1, as well as continuing research into the diagnostic process for clinical decision making.     

Alexithymia and experimentally induced emotion recognition in people with somatizations

This study is part of an investigation aimed at assessing the cognitive-emotional process of emotional recognition in somatizing patients. The specific objective was to verify whether there were differences in the self-assessment of emotional reaction among patients with somatization and non-clinical controls. To obtain the self-assessment of their emotional reaction in the affective dimensions of valence and activation in clinical and control participants, we resorted to a procedure that minimizes the use of verbal skills and comprehension. Participants were 119 people, 47 patients and 72 non-clinical participants. The prevalence of alexithymia in the clinical group was 42.55%, whereas in non-clinical controls, it was 30.55%. Results showed the existence of a deficit in the clinical group's self-assessment of activation in response to the corresponding images with high levels of the affective dimension of activation and high valence images, associated with the clinical condition but not with alexithymia. Alexithymia has a modulatory effect on the clinical participants' and controls' evaluation of the valence of the unpleasant images or of low valence pictures.     

Why are auditory novels distracting? Contrasting the roles of novelty, violation of expectation and stimulus change

Past studies show that novel auditory stimuli, presented in the context of an otherwise repeated sound, capture participants’ attention away from a focal task, resulting in measurable behavioral distraction. Novel sounds are traditionally defined as rare and unexpected but past studies have not sought to disentangle these concepts directly. Using a cross-modal oddball task, we contrasted these aspects orthogonally by manipulating the base rate and conditional probabilities of sound events. We report for the first time that behavioral distraction does not result from a sound’s novelty per se but from the violation of the cognitive system’s expectation based on the learning of conditional probabilities and, to some extent, the occurrence of a perceptual change from one sound to another.     

Cross-domain analogies as relating derived relations among two separate relational networks

Contemporary behavior analytic research is making headway in analyzing analogy as the establishment of a relation of coordination among common types of trained or derived relations. Previous studies have been focused on within-domain analogy. The current study expands previous research by analyzing cross-domain analogy as relating relations among separate relational networks and by correlating participants' performance with a standard measure of analogical reasoning. In two experiments, adult participants first completed general intelligence and analogical reasoning tests. Subsequently, they were exposed to a computerized conditional discrimination training procedure designed to create two relational networks, each consisting of two 3-member equivalence classes. The critical test was a two-part analogical test in which participants had to relate combinatorial relations of coordination and distinction between the two relational networks. In Experiment 1, combinatorial relations for each network were individually tested prior to analogical testing, but in Experiment 2 they were not. Across both experiments, 65% of participants passed the analogical test on the first attempt. Moreover, results from the training procedure were strongly correlated with the standard measure of analogical reasoning.