Behavioral and Psychophysiological Effects of a Yoga Intervention on High-Risk Adolescents: A Randomized Control Trial

The purpose of this study was to conduct a pilot randomized control trial to test whether a mindful yoga intervention had a beneficial impact on substance use and its psychological and psychophysiological correlates in high-risk adolescents. Research on yoga has generated growing evidence for its positive effects on physical and emotional health. However, most studies are conducted with adults, with few controlled studies conducted with youth. We designed a 20-session mindful yoga intervention for adolescents attending a school for students at high-risk for dropping out. The 50-min classes were offered three times a week. The participants (mean age = 16.7 years) were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. Multi-rater (student, teacher), multi-method (survey, cognitive, psychophysiological) data were collected before and after the yoga curriculum. At post-test, students in the yoga condition, as compared to control students, exhibited trends toward decreased alcohol use and improved teacher-rated social skills (p < .10); and showed a non-significant increase in arousal in response to relevant stimuli as measured in skin conductance. Significant effects were not found on hypothesized proximal measures of self-regulation, mood, mindfulness, or involuntary engagement coping. Future research is needed to replicate and expand upon our findings. Studies are also needed with larger samples to further investigate potential mediators and moderators of yoga’s effects.     

Team-level goal orientation: an emergent state and its relationships with team inputs,process, and outcomes

Building on recent efforts to extend the concept of goal orientation to teams, we identify team-level goal orientation as an emergent state, distinct from static trait goal orientations of team members. We reinforce this distinction by developing and testing hypotheses about team inputs, processes, and outcomes as determinants of the development of team goal orientation over time. We test our hypotheses with longitudinal data from 230 participants on 64 teams engaged in a management simulation. We find that team members’ trait goal orientations affect the team’s state goal orientation, but only in the early stages of team functioning. Team process and interim outcomes drive changes in team state goal orientation.     

Clinical Correlates of Co-occurring Psychiatric and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Symptom-Induced Impairment in Children with ASD

Although psychiatric symptom severity and impairment are overlapping but nevertheless distinct illness parameters, little research has examined whether variables found to be associated with the severity are also correlated with symptom-induced impairment. Parents and teachers completed ratings of symptom-induced impairment for DSM-IV-referenced syndromes, and parents completed a background questionnaire for a consecutively referred sample of primarily male (81 %) 6-to-12 year olds with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (N?=?221). Some clinical correlates (e.g., IQ?<?70, maternal level of education, pregnancy complications, current use of psychotropic medication, season of birth) were associated with impairment for several disorders, whereas others were correlated with only a few syndromes (e.g., gender, co-morbid medical conditions) or were not related to impairment in any disorder (e.g., family psychopathology). There was little convergence in findings for parents’ versus teachers’ ratings. Some clinical correlates (e.g., season of birth, current psychotropic medication, maternal education) were unique predictors of three or more disorders. Pregnancy complications were uniquely associated with social anxiety and schizoid personality symptom-induced impairment. IQ was a unique predictor of schizophrenia, ASD, oppositional defiant disorder symptom-induced impairment. Children whose mothers had relatively fewer years of education had greater odds for symptom-induced impairment in social anxiety, depression, aggression, and mania and greater number of impairing conditions. Season of birth was the most robust correlate of symptom-induced impairment as rated by teachers but not by parents. Children born in fall evidenced higher rates of co-occurring psychiatric and ASD symptom-induced impairment and total number of impairing conditions. Many variables previously linked with symptom severity are also correlated with impairment.     

Does the Awareness of Mortality Shape People's Openness to Violence and Conflict? An Examination of Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that evoking death‐related thoughts (mortality salience; MS) in individuals or groups can lead to stronger worldview defence and greater support for extremist violence. In three experiments, we tested whether an MS manipulation, and associated moderators, increased support for extremist violence. In Australian university students, Study 1 found no statistically significant main or moderated effects for MS on measures of extremist violence. However, participants exposed to the MS manipulation reported increases in conservative religiosity (belief in divine power). In Study 2, the MS manipulation had no significant effect on support for extremist violence for Australian university students primed with an antiviolent extremism norm. And in young Australian Jewish people (Study 3), the MS manipulation did not increase support for violence against migrants. However, there was an increase in support for policies that act to fight against violent extremism in Iraq and Syria in those exposed to the MS manipulation. Across three studies, we find little support for the hypothesis that MS results in increased support for violent extremism. Larger more methodological sound studies are needed to address inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding TMT and the MS hypothesis, at least in regards to violence and extremism.     

Bedding down new words: Sleep promotes the emergence of lexical competition in visual word recognition

Lexical competition processes are widely viewed as the hallmark of visual word recognition, but little is known about the factors that promote their emergence. This study examined for the first time whether sleep may play a role in inducing these effects. A group of 27 participants learned novel written words, such as banara, at 8 am and were tested on their learning at 8 pm the same day (AM group), while 29 participants learned the words at 8 pm and were tested at 8 am the following day (PM group). Both groups were retested after 24 hours. Using a semantic categorization task, we showed that lexical competition effects, as indexed by slowed responses to existing neighbor words such as banana, emerged 12 h later in the PM group who had slept after learning but not in the AM group. After 24 h the competition effects were evident in both groups. These findings have important implications for theories of orthographic learning and broader neurobiological models of memory consolidation.     

Impairment in risk-sensitive decision-making in older suicide attempters with depression

Suicidal behavior is a potentially lethal complication of late-life depression. In younger adults, suicide has been linked to abnormal decision-making ability. Given that there are substantial age-related decreases in decision-making ability, and that older adults experience environmental stressors that require effective decision-making, we reasoned that impaired decision-making may be particularly relevant to suicidal behavior in the elderly. We thus compared performance on a probabilistic decision-making task that does not involve working memory ("Cambridge Gamble Task") in four groups of older adults: (1) individuals with major depression and a history of suicide attempt (n = 25), (2) individuals with major depression with active suicidal ideation but no suicide attempt (n = 13), (3) individuals with major depression without suicidality (n = 35), and (4) nondepressed control subjects (n = 22). There was a significant effect of group on quality of decision-making, whereby the suicide attempters exhibited poorer ability to choose the likely outcome, compared with the nonsuicidal depressed and nondepressed comparison subjects. There were no group differences in betting behavior. The suicide attempters differed in several aspects of social problem-solving on a self-report scale. Quality of decision-making was negatively correlated with the score on the impulsive/careless problem-solving subscale. These data suggest that older suicide attempters have a deficit in risk-sensitive decision-making, extending observations in younger adults. More specifically, older suicide attempters seem to neglect outcome probability and make poor choices. These impairments may precipitate and perpetuate suicidal crisis in depressed elders. Identification of decision-making impairment in suicidal elders may help with designing effective interventions.