Relationships Between Cognitive and Behavioral Measures of Executive Function in Children With Brain Disease

This study addressed the clinical and construct validity of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function. (BRIEF: Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000), a questionnaire designed to tap behavioral aspects of executive functions in children. BRIEF profiles in early treated phenylketonuria (PKU; n = 44), early treated hydrocephalus (n = 45), frontal focal lesions (n = 20) and controls (n = 80) were examined. Clinical validity was supported through significant between-group comparisons, especially between the frontal focal lesion group and other groups. To examine construct validity, raw scores on cognitive executive function measures including the Contingency Naming Test (CNT), Rey Complex Figure (RCF), Tower of London (TOL), and Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT), were correlated with BRIEF scale scores. Few significant correlations were found, indicating cognitive and behavioral measures appear to tap different constructs within the executive function domain. A dissociation was found between behavioral and cognitive impairments in the frontal as opposed to PKU and hydrocephalus groups. This is discussed in relation to underlying pathology, the cognitive measures used, and possible limitations in the BRIEF's usefulness for measuring behavioral executive dysfunction in groups only mildly affected by neurological compromise.     

Book reviews

Peter E. Hodgkinson and Michael Stewart (1998) A Handbook of Post-Disaster Psychosocial Aftercare, 2nd edn, London: Routledge, $15.99 (pb)

Caroline Garland (ed.) (1998) Understanding Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Approach, London: Duckworth, Tavistock Clinic Series, $14.95 (pb)

Claudio Neri (1998) Group, preface by Parthenope Bion Talamo, foreword by Malcolm Pines, London: Jessica Kingsley, $16.95

Robert L. Perkinson (1997) Chemical Dependency Counseling: A Practical Guide, London: Sage, $24

Mary Turner (1998) Talking with Children and Young People about Death and Dying: A Workbook, illustrated by Bob Thomas, London: Jessica Kingsley, $17.95

Jan Wiener and Mannie Sher (1998) Counselling and Psychotherapy in Primary Health Care: A Psychodynamic Approach, London: Macmillan, $11.99 (pb)

Melanie Hart and James Loader (eds) (1998) Generations: Poems between Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons, London: Penguin, $14.99

David Kennard and Neil Small (eds) (1997) Living Together, London: Quartet, $9.00

Sally Skaife and Val Huet (1998) Art Psychotherapy Groups: Between Pictures and Words, London: Routledge, $47.50 (hb), $15.99 (pb)     

Seeing and being seen in the experience of the client and the therapist

There is more to non-verbal communication than observing the client, although intense observation of the client has taken second place to listening to their words. After reflecting on the history of the use of sight in medicine and psychoanalysis, the author examines the significance for Freud and others of the ‘senses at a distance' (hearing and sight), and issues such as voyeurism and exhibitionism in the therapeutic relationship. The phenomenon of seeing and being seen is related through case examples to issues about distance and space, paranoid anxiety and communication disorders. Attention is also paid to illusion as a way of seeing, and its relevance in the counter-transference. The article concludes by looking at the way clients see therapists, tracing briefly the progression from self-pre-occupation to seeing the therapist as a separate other.     

Maternal expressed emotion predicts children's antisocial behavior problems: using monozygotic-twin differences to identify environmental effects on behavioral development

If maternal expressed emotion is an environmental risk factor for children's antisocial behavior problems, it should account for behavioral differences between siblings growing up in the same family even after genetic influences on children's behavior problems are taken into account. This hypothesis was tested in the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study with a nationally representative 1994-1995 birth cohort of twins. The authors interviewed the mothers of 565 five-year-old monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs and established which twin in each family received more negative emotional expression and which twin received more warmth. Within MZ pairs, the twin receiving more maternal negativity and less warmth had more antisocial behavior problems. Qualitative interviews were used to generate hypotheses about why mothers treat their children differently. The results suggest that maternal emotional attitudes toward children may play a causal role in the development of antisocial behavior and illustrate how genetically informative research can inform tests of socialization hypotheses.     

Contextual control of delay discounting by pathological gamblers

The present study demonstrated the relative impact of gambling and nongambling contexts on the degree of delay discounting by pathological gamblers. We used a delay-discounting task with 20 pathological gamblers in and out of the natural context in which they regularly gambled. For 16 of the 20 participants, it appeared that the difference of context altered the subjective value of delayed rewards, thereby producing relative changes in delay-discounting rates that were generally consistent with a hyperbolic model of intertemporal choice. The current data suggest that empirically derived k values from delay-discounting tasks are context sensitive and are not constant across various settings for the individual. Implications for future transitional research on addictive disorders generally, and gambling specifically, are discussed.     

Lateral interception II: predicting hand movements

D. M. Jacobs and C. F. Michaels (2006) concluded that aspects of hand movements in lateral catching were predicted by the ratio of lateral optical velocity to expansion velocity. Their conclusions were based partly on a modified version of the required velocity model of catching (C. E. Peper, R. J. Bootsma, D. R. Mestre, & F. C. Bakker, 1994). The present article considers this optical ratio in detail and asks whether it, together with a control law, predicts the (often curious) hand trajectories observed in lateral interception. The optical ratio was used to create a succession of target-position inputs for the vector integration to endpoint model of hand movements (D. Bullock & S. Grossberg, 1988). The model used this succession, initial hand position, and model parameters (fit to 60 trials) to predict hand trajectories on each trial. Predicted trajectories were then compared with observed hand trajectories. Hand movements were predicted accurately, especially in the binocular condition, and were superior to predictions based on lateral ball position, the input variable of the required velocity model. The authors concluded, as did C. E. Peper et al. (1994), that perceivers continuously couple movements to optics.     

The impact of stress on neutral and emotional aspects of episodic memory

The present experiment demonstrates that exposure to a significant psychological stressor (administered before watching a slide show) preserves or even enhances memory for emotional aspects of an event, and simultaneously disrupts memory for non-emotional aspects of the same event. Stress exposure also disrupted memory for information that was visually and thematically central to the event depicted in the slide show. Memory for peripheral information, on the other hand, was unaffected by stress. These results are consistent with theories invoking differential effects of stress on brain systems responsible for encoding and retrieving emotional memories (the amygdala) and non-emotional memories (e.g., the hippocampal formation), and inconsistent with the view that memories formed under high levels of stress are qualitatively the same as those formed under ordinary emotional circumstances. These data, which are also consistent with results obtained in a number of studies using animals and humans, have implications for the traumatic memory debate and theories regarding human memory.