Early Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) intervention in a disaster mental health care context

‘Early psychological intervention’ is defined as commencing treatment within three months of the traumatic event, with the aim to prevent or treat posttraumatic stress disorder, ongoing distress or acute stress disorder. In natural disaster situations, specific issues may limit the amount of time available for treatment and the possibility of interventions. Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be used without regard to these limits. The aim of the study is to evaluate the effects of EMDR, Recent Traumatic Episode Protocol (R-TEP) provided within three months of the traumatic event to a large sample of individuals exposed to the earthquake that hit Emilia Romagna Region (Northern Italy) in 2012. This study is based on a retrospective review of medical records collected during the activities of psychological and psychosocial unit in the immediate aftermath of earthquake. In total, 529 participants completed the Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R) (pre e post treatment). In order to provide a comparison similar to a waitlist-like control group, a method of cohort analysis was applied. In addition, possible time dependent effect was tested. ET (early-treated sample, participants treated within one month after the earthquake) and LT (late-treated sample, participants treated after the first month from the earthquake) reported at post-treatment an improvement to a level below the IES-R cutoff (65.8% of the ET sample and 64.02% of the LT sample). Control group analogue and time-outcome correlation suggest that positive changes in symptoms were likely due to the treatment provided and not merely to the time lapse from the traumatic event. The results of this study suggest that EMDR is a viable treatment option in response to a disaster crisis and in reducing psychological distress of acutely traumatized individuals within the context of a natural disaster.     

So many lifetimes locked inside: reflecting on the use of music and songs to enhance learning through emotional and social connection in Trainee Clinical Psychologists

Music is universal; it can provide a common language that speaks from the heart enabling others to connect with the private felt experiences of others regardless of differences within or between people. This ability to empathise with, and understand, the position of others from differing backgrounds is an important competency within the therapeutic work of Clinical Psychologists. There are many facets to diversity just as there are many facets to music. Diversity in music genres can reflect diversity in people. Indeed, there is music to cater for all tastes, cultural/ethnic backgrounds, gender, age and generations with listening often being guided by individual preferences. In the United Kingdom training to become a Clinical Psychologist consists of a university-based 3-year full time professional research doctorate funded through the National Health Service. Trainees work on placements 3 days a week and attend university for academic and research teaching 2 days a week. As part of the academic programme, Trainees undertake experiential learning through workshops and methods such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL). One of the PBL exercises is based on a typical referral within an Adult Mental Health (AMH) service. For the AMH PBL exercise music is used to enhance trainees’ ability to connect emotionally with the personhood of referrals, consider associated complexities, and to reflect on personal and professional boundaries and reflective practice during training and beyond. This paper reflects on the utility of music and songs to enhance the learning experience.     

Food approach conditioning and discrimination learning using sound cues in benthic sharks

The marine environment is filled with biotic and abiotic sounds. Some of these sounds predict important events that influence fitness while others are unimportant. Individuals can learn specific sound cues and ‘soundscapes’ and use them for vital activities such as foraging, predator avoidance, communication and orientation. Most research with sounds in elasmobranchs has focused on hearing thresholds and attractiveness to sound sources, but very little is known about their abilities to learn about sounds, especially in benthic species. Here we investigated if juvenile Port Jackson sharks could learn to associate a musical stimulus with a food reward, discriminate between two distinct musical stimuli, and whether individual personality traits were linked to cognitive performance. Five out of eight sharks were successfully conditioned to associate a jazz song with a food reward delivered in a specific corner of the tank. We observed repeatable individual differences in activity and boldness in all eight sharks, but these personality traits were not linked to the learning performance assays we examined. These sharks were later trained in a discrimination task, where they had to distinguish between the same jazz and a novel classical music song, and swim to opposite corners of the tank according to the stimulus played. The sharks’ performance to the jazz stimulus declined to chance levels in the discrimination task. Interestingly, some sharks developed a strong side bias to the right, which in some cases was not the correct side for the jazz stimulus.     

Intracellular calcium chelation and pharmacological SERCA inhibition of Ca2+ pump in the insular cortex differentially affect taste aversive memory formation and retrieval

Variation in intracellular calcium concentration regulates the induction of long-term synaptic plasticity and is associated with a variety of memory/retrieval and learning paradigms. Accordingly, impaired calcium mobilization from internal deposits affects synaptic plasticity and cognition in the aged brain. During taste memory formation several proteins are modulated directly or indirectly by calcium, and recent evidence suggests the importance of calcium buffering and the role of intracellular calcium deposits during cognitive processes. Thus, the main goal of this research was to study the consequence of hampering changes in cytoplasmic calcium and inhibiting SERCA activity by BAPTA-AM and thapsigargin treatments, respectively, in the insular cortex during different stages of taste memory formation. Using conditioned taste aversion (CTA), we found differential effects of BAPTA-AM and thapsigargin infusions before and after gustatory stimulation, as well as during taste aversive memory consolidation; BAPTA-AM, but not thapsigargin, attenuates acquisition and/or consolidation of CTA, but neither compound affects taste aversive memory retrieval. These results point to the importance of intracellular calcium dynamics in the insular cortex during different stages of taste aversive memory formation.     

Psychometric properties of the Social Skills Questionnaire: Portuguese adaptation of the student form (grades 7 to 12)

The present study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the student form (Grades 7 to 12) of the Social Skills Questionnaire authored by Gresham and Elliott (1990), on a sample of Portuguese adolescents. Participants included 573 students, both female and male, aged 14 to 19. Reliability was assessed through Cronbach's alpha and was .87 for the total scale, ranging from.58 to .72 for the subscales. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the main adjustment indices presented unexpected values. A principal components analysis indicated that several items of the cooperation subscale correlated with other factors. Adequate adjustment indices were found when cooperation was removed from the model. Semantic dualities due to cultural factors and difficulties assuming the cooperation dimension as an independent dimension might explain the results observed. The reorganization of the SSQ offers a reliable and valid instrument for research within the Portuguese population.     

Irrelevant objects of expertise compete with faces during visual search

Prior work suggests that nonface objects of expertise can interfere with the perception of faces when the two categories are alternately presented, suggesting competition for shared perceptual resources. Here, we ask whether task-irrelevant distractors from a category of expertise compete when faces are presented in a standard visual search task. Participants searched for a target (face or sofa) in an array containing both relevant and irrelevant distractors. The number of distractors from the target category (face or sofa) remained constant, whereas the number of distractors from the irrelevant category (cars) varied. Search slopes, calculated as a function of the number of irrelevant cars, were correlated with car expertise. The effect was not due to car distractors grabbing attention, because they did not compete with sofa targets. Objects of expertise interfere with face perception even when they are task irrelevant, visually distinct, and separated in space from faces.     

Manipulating informational constraints shapes movement reorganization in interceptive actions

Movement organization of cricket batters' actions was analyzed under three distinct experimental task constraints: a representative condition of a practice context in which the batters batted against a "live" bowler, a ball projection machine, and a near life-size video simulation of a bowler. Results showed that each distinct set of task constraints led to significant variations in the patterns of movement control. Removal of advanced information sources from a bowler's actions when the batters faced the ball projection machine caused significant delays in movement initiation, resulting in reduced peak bat swing velocities and a reduction in the quality of bat-ball contact, when compared with batting against a "live" bowler. When responding to a two-dimensional video simulation, batters were able to use information from the bowlers' action, enabling fidelity of initial behavioral responses consistent with the task of batting against a "live" bowler. However, without interceptive task requirements or actual ball flight information, significant variations in downswing initiation timing and peak bat velocities were demonstrated. Findings stress the need for representative experimental and learning designs in fast ball sports for developing performers.     

Animacy in the adjunction of Spanish RCs to complex NPs

The present paper focuses on the role of animacy in the processing of relative clauses (RCs) after complex NPs. We follow research by the Desmet et al. team on Dutch in exploring the role of animacy in Spanish RCs. We present data from a corpus study and two self-paced experiments and we compare the three studies and the Dutch and Spanish results. Our main objective is to fill important gaps in past research on the processing of adjunction ties in Spanish and to offer a more detailed exploration of grain effects in exposure-based accounts. In particular, we have sought both to analyse the match between corpus studies and online processing in Spanish much more closely than it has been until now and to see whether animacy could revert the well-established tendency of Spanish RCs to attach high inside the complex noun phrase.     

I will help you because we are similar: Quality of contact mediates the effect of perceived similarity on facilitative behaviour towards immigrants

This research aimed to analyse interpersonal behaviour towards immigrants by exploring related psychosocial variables such as intergroup similarity and quality of intergroup contact. A new interpersonal behavioural tendencies scale was developed. In Study 1, Spanish participants reported their willingness to take different actions towards a Moroccan (i.e. a devalued target, n = 132) or an Ecuadorian (i.e. a valued target, n = 138), perceived intergroup similarity and quality of intergroup contact. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis identified the expected dimensions: active facilitation (AF), passive facilitation (PF), passive harm (PH) and active harm (AH). Participants reported less similarity, less pleasant contact, less AF and less PF, and more PH with respect to Moroccans relative to Ecuadorians. Quality of contact mediated the effect of perceived similarity on interpersonal behaviour (especially facilitative behaviour) towards immigrants. Study 2 (N = 134) confirmed that this mediation effect also applied to Romanian immigrants, and tested a serial mediation pathway, in which perceived similarity affected symbolic threat, which in turn affected quality of contact, which finally affected behaviour. Changing perceived intergroup similarity might be a way of improving the quality of contact with minority groups, and this would be expected to increase pro‐social behaviour towards such groups.     

Parenting Styles and Suicidal Ideation in Adolescents: Mediating Effect of Attachment

The present study aims to analyze the role of parenting styles in the development of suicidal ideation in adolescents, as well as test the mediating role of attachment to parents in the association between authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting style and suicidal ideation. The sample was made up of 604 individuals, aged between 15 and 18. In order to gather data, the Styles & Dimensions Questionnaire: Short Version, the Father/Mother Attachment Questionnaire and the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire were used. The results suggest that the relations with parents, which are characterized by inhibition of exploration and of individuality, contribute to an emotional maladjustment being positively associated with suicidal ideation (r?=?.26 to r?=?.28). This confirmed the mediating role of parental attachment in the association between authoritative and permissive parenting styles from father and mother to suicidal ideation. It was also verified also a partial mediation, through the attachment to parents, in the association between the parent’s authoritarian style and the mother’s permissive styles and suicidal ideation. Furthermore, it was found the presence of total mediation, by throughout to attachment to the father, in the association between the father’s permissive style and suicidal ideation. The results suggest the importance of adopting authoritative parenting styles, since they seem to facilitate the development of the quality of attachment with parents. The results were analyzed in light of the attachment theory, taking into consideration the importance of parenting styles in understanding the processes inherent to suicidal ideation in adolescence.