Eating disorder prevention programs: a meta-analytic review

This meta-analysis of eating disorder prevention programs found that intervention effects ranged from an absence of any effects to reductions in current and future eating pathology. Certain effects persisted as long as 2 years and were superior to minimal-intervention control conditions. Larger effects occurred for selected (vs. universal), interactive (vs. didactic), and multisession (vs. single session) programs; for programs offered solely to females and to participants over age 15; for programs without psychoeducational content; and for trials that used validated measures. The results identify promising prevention programs and delineate sample, format, and design features that are associated with larger effects, but they suggest the need for improved methodological rigor and statistical modeling of trials and enhanced theoretical rationale for interventions.     

Grammatical language impairment and the specificity of cognitive domains: relations between auditory and language abilities

Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological deficits and thereby SLI. We investigate this possibility by testing the auditory discrimination abilities of G-SLI children for speech and non-speech sounds, at varying presentation rates, and controlling for the effects of age and language on performance. For non-speech formant transitions, 69% of the G-SLI children showed normal auditory processing, whereas for the same acoustic information in speech, only 31% did so. For rapidly presented tones, 46% of the G-SLI children performed normally. Auditory performance with speech and non-speech sounds differentiated the G-SLI children from their age-matched controls, whereas speed of processing did not. The G-SLI children evinced no relationship between their auditory and phonological/grammatical abilities. We found no consistent evidence that a deficit in processing rapid acoustic information causes or maintains G-SLI. The findings, from at least those G-SLI children who do not exhibit any auditory deficits, provide further evidence supporting the existence of a primary domain-specific deficit underlying G-SLI.     

Part-whole practice of movement sequences

A 16-element movement sequence was taught under part-whole and whole-practice conditions. Participants (N = 18) produced a right-arm lever movement to sequentially presented target locations. The authors constructed part-whole practice by providing practice on only the 1st 8 elements on the 1st day of practice (100 repetitions of the 8-element sequence) and on all 16 elements on the 2nd day of practice (100 repetitions of the 16-element sequence). The whole-practice group practiced all 16 elements on both days (100 repetitions of the 16-element sequence per day). No differences in sequence structure or in movement duration of the 16-element sequence were noted on the retention test (Day 3). On transfer tests in which the 1st and last 8 elements were tested separately, however, the participants in the part-whole practice group performed more quickly than the participants in the whole-practice group, especially on the last 8 elements. Participants in the whole-practice group appeared to code the sequence so that it was relatively difficult to fully partition it into separate movements. Thus, on the transfer tests, there continued to be residual effects of the 8 elements that did not have to be produced but slowed down the rate of responding for the whole-practice group. That finding was not observed for the part-whole practice group.     

Conceptual processing effects on automatic memory

In the present study, influences of conceptual processing on automatic forms of memory were investigated, using a category production task. The experiment employed Jacoby's (1991) process dissociation procedure and fits of multinomial models to estimate conscious and automatic memory for semantic and graphemic study tasks. Memory estimates from a generate-source model indicated more automatic memory for semantic than for graphemic items on the category production task. These results provide support for conceptual processing influences on automatic forms of memory.     

Now you feel it, now you don't: frontal brain electrical asymmetry and individual differences in emotion regulation

Recent theoretical accounts of emotion regulation assign an important role in this process to the prefrontal cortex, yet there is little relevant data available to support this hypothesis. The current study assessed the relation between individual differences in asymmetric prefrontal activation and an objective measure of uninstructed emotion regulation. Forty-seven participants 57 to 60 years old viewed emotionally arousing and neutral visual stimuli while eyeblink startle data were collected. Startle probes were also presented after picture presentation to capture the persistence or attenuation of affect following the offset of an emotional stimulus. Subjects with greater relative left-sided anterior activation in scalp-recorded brain electrical signals displayed attenuated startle magnitude after the offset of negative stimuli. This relation between resting frontal activation and recovery following an aversive event supports the idea of a frontally mediated mechanism involved in one form of automatic emotion regulation.     

Posthypnotic suggestion and the modulation of Stroop interference under cycloplegia

Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation (e.g., visual blurring or looking away) could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing.     

Complementarity of Linguistic and Prosodic Processes in the Intact Brain

Despite considerable speculation in the research literature regarding the complementarity of functional lateralization of prosodic and linguistic processes in the normal intact brain, few studies have directly addressed this issue. In the present study, behavioral laterality indices of emotional prosodic and traditional linguistic speech functions were obtained for a sample of healthy young adults, using the dichotic listening method. After screening for adequate emotional prosody and linguistic recognition abilities, participants completed the Fused Rhymed Words Test (FRWT; Wexler & Halwes, 1983) and the Dichotic Emotion Recognition Test (DERT; McNeely & Netley, 1998). Examination of the difference in ear asymmetries for these measures within individuals revealed a complementary pattern in 78% of the sample. However, the correlation between laterality quotients for the FRWT and DERT was near zero, supporting Bryden's model of "statistical" complementarity (e.g., Bryden, 1990).     

Content Analysis of Cognitive Bias: Development of a Standardized Measure

The purpose of this research was to develop a standardized content analytic measure of cognitive bias as conceptualized in Beck's (1987) cognitive theory of depression. In a pilot study it was determined that a written stimulus format was preferable to an audiotaped stimulus format with respect to comprehensibility. Valence and expectancy ratings collected in this pilot study also served as the basis for selection of items for the final measure, balancing positive and negative, expected and unexpected events. In study 2 open-ended written responses to questions about the main cause of each event, and the justifications for these attributions, were coded for indices of bias, defined (as in Cook & Peterson, 1986) as justifications that fail to cite covariation of the ascribed cause with the effect. Cognitive bias scores in Study 2 showed internal consistency (positive item-remainder correlations) and high interrater reliability. As predicted, justifications of attributions for expected events were more biased and less rational than were justifications of attributions for unexpected events.     

Does infancy matter? predicting social behavior from infant temperament

In this essay we argue that infant temperament, defined as behavioral styles that appear early in life as a direct result of neurobiological factors, plays a significant role in the development and expression of social behavior. Temperament may be studied using a typological or dimensional approach and the relations between early temperament and later behavior can be examined in terms of homotypic or heterotypic continuity. The implication of each of these approaches for understanding the influence of infant temperament on social development is examined. As well, utilizing data from our laboratory, we suggest that under certain circumstances one can predict social behavior by identifying two temperament types in infancy. These types are high reactive/high negative infants and high reactive/high positive infants. A significant proportion of the high reactive/high negative infants display behavioral inhibition and social reticence through the preschool years, whereas a significant proportion of the high reactive/high positive infants display exuberance and positive social interaction through the preschool period.