Adapted motivational interviewing for women with binge eating disorder: a randomized controlled trial

In this randomized controlled trial, 108 women with binge-eating disorder (BED) recruited from the community were assigned to either an adapted motivational interviewing (AMI) group (1 individual AMI session + self-help handbook) or control group (handbook only). They were phoned 4, 8, and 16 weeks following the initial session to assess binge eating and associated symptoms (depression, self-esteem, quality of life). Postintervention, the AMI group participants were more confident than those in the control group in their ability to change binge eating. Although both groups reported improved binge eating, mood, self-esteem, and general quality of life 16 weeks following the intervention, the AMI group improved to a greater extent. A greater proportion of women in the AMI group abstained from binge eating (27.8% vs. 11.1%) and no longer met the binge frequency criterion of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) for BED (87.0% vs. 57.4%). AMI may constitute a brief, effective intervention for BED and associated symptoms.     

On the norming of homophones

Associative norms for homographs have been widely used in the study of language processing. A number of sets of these are available, providing the investigator with the opportunity to compare materials collected over a span of years and a range of locations. Words that are homophonic but not homographic have been used to address a variety of questions in memory as well as in language processing. However, a paucity of normative data are available for these materials, especially with respect to responses to the spoken form of the homophone. This article provides such data for a sample of 207 homophones across four different tasks, both visual and auditory, and examines how well the present measures correlate with each other and with those of other investigators. The finding that these measures can account for a considerable proportion of the variance in the lexical decision and naming data from the English Lexicon Project provides an additional demonstration of their utility. The norms from this study are available online in the Psychonomic Society Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, at www .psychonomic.org/archive.     

Social Involvement, Disclosure of Sexual Orientation, and the Quality of Lesbian Relationships

Gay and lesbian political activists encourage lesbians to come out and get involved. Is this good advice for lesbian couples? In these secondary analyses of data collected form 784 lesbian couples in 1979 for the American Couples Study (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983), we examined whether social involvement and disclosure of sexual orientation were systematically associated with the quality of women's relationships. We predicted and found that partners matched on level of social involvement were happier than mismatched couples. The extent of women's social involvement had a curvilinear association with relationship quality: moderately involved couples were the most satisfied. Contrary to predictions, lesbians who had disclosed to a greater number of important others did not have more satisfying romantic relationships, nor did partner matching on self-disclosure enhance relationship quality.     

The Zygote Argument Is Still Invalid: So What?

Philosophia - In “The Zygote Argument is Invalid: Now What?”, Kristin Mickelson argues that Alfred Mele’s original Zygote Argument is invalid: its two premises tell us merely that...     

A randomized motivational enhancement prevention group reduces drinking and alcohol consequences in first-year college women.

Alcohol consumption among college students has become an increasing problem that requires attention from college administrators, staff, and researchers. Despite the physiological differences between men and women, college women are drinking at increasingly risky rates, placing them at increased risk for negative consequences. The current study tested a group motivational enhancement approach to the prevention of heavy drinking among 1st-year college women. Using a randomized design, the authors assigned participants either to a group that received a single-session motivational enhancement intervention to reduce risky drinking that focused partly on women's specific reasons for drinking (n = 126) or to an assessment-only control group (n = 94). Results indicated that, relative to the control group participants, intervention participants drank fewer drinks per week, drank fewer drinks at peak consumption events, and had fewer alcohol-related consequences over a 10-week follow-up. Further, the intervention, which targeted women's reasons for drinking, was more effective in reducing consumption for participants with high social and enhancement motivations for drinking.     

Treatment for Youth in Short-Term Care Facilities: The Impact of a Comprehensive Behavior Management Intervention

We describe a comprehensive program to train emergency shelter staff in effective methods for dealing with youth who have behavioral and emotional problems; assess the degree to which staff implemented the treatment approach; measure the impact of the intervention on shelter-wide incidents such as out-of-control behavior, runaways, and violence against other youth; and examine pre-post changes in staff experiences at the shelter via anonymous surveys. Overall, the short-term shelter staff indicated adequate implementation of the intervention. The rate of youth incidents at the shelter significantly declined from pre to post assessment. Direct-care staff ratings of their satisfaction with their proficiency in behavior management and teaching youth skills increased significantly from pre to post implementation. These findings suggest that it is feasible to deliver an effective staff-training program to improve the behavior management and social skills of youth residing in short-term care facilities within the child welfare system.     

Automated respiratory sinus arrhythmia measurement: Demonstration using executive function assessment

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a quantitative metric that reflects autonomic nervous system regulation and provides a physiological marker of attentional engagement that supports cognitive and affective regulatory processes. RSA can be added to executive function (EF) assessments with minimal participant burden because of the commercial availability of lightweight, wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors. However, the inclusion of RSA data in large data collection efforts has been hindered by the time-intensive processing of RSA. In this study we evaluated the performance of an automated RSA-scoring method in the context of an EF study in preschool-aged children. The absolute differences in RSA across both scoring methods were small (mean RSA differences = –0.02–0.10), with little to no evidence of bias for the automated relative to the hand-scoring approach. Moreover, the relative rank-ordering of RSA across both scoring methods was strong (rs = .96–.99). Reliable changes in RSA from baseline to the EF task were highly similar across both scoring methods (96%–100% absolute agreement; Kappa = .83–1.0). On the basis of these findings, the automated RSA algorithm appears to be a suitable substitute for hand-scoring in the context of EF assessment.     

Athletic-ideal and thin-ideal internalization as prospective predictors of body dissatisfaction,dieting, and compulsive exercise

Although internalization of the thin ideal has been extensively researched and is now regarded as a risk factor for eating disturbance, endorsement of the firm, athletic body ideal has received only minimal attention. This short-term longitudinal study explored whether internalization of two aspects of the current cultural ideal (thinness and athleticism) prospectively predicted three potentially deleterious outcomes: body dissatisfaction, dieting, and compulsive exercise. Undergraduate women (N = 231) completed self-report measures at the beginning of the academic year and again 7 months later (N = 156 at Time 2). Athletic-ideal internalization predicted change in compulsive exercise over the 7-month study period but not body dissatisfaction or dieting; thin-ideal internalization predicted change in all three outcomes. When both internalization measures were tested simultaneously, neither contributed unique variance. Results suggest that athletic-ideal internalization is not as detrimental as thin-ideal internalization.