Prospective Pilot Study of the Mastering Each New Direction Psychosocial Family Systems Program for Pediatric Chronic Illness

Psychosocial interventions for pediatric chronic illness (CI) have been shown to support health management. Interventions that include a family systems approach offer potentially stronger and more sustainable improvements. This study explores the biopsychosocial benefits of a novel family systems psychosocial intervention (MEND: Mastering Each New Direction). Forty‐five families participated in a 21‐session intensive outpatient family systems‐based program for pediatric CI. Within this single arm design, families were measured on five domains of Health‐Related Quality of Life (HRQL) self‐report measures; Stress, Cognitive Functioning, Mental Health, Child HRQL, Family Functioning. Both survey and biological measures (stress: catecholamine) were used in the study. Results from multivariate general linear models showed positive pre‐, post‐, and 3‐month posteffects in all five domains. The program effects ranged from small to moderate (η² = .07–.64). The largest program effects were seen in the domains of cognitive functioning (η² = .64) and stress (η² = .27). Also, between disease groups, differences are noted and future implications for research and clinical practice are discussed. Conclusions suggest that the MEND program may be useful in helping families manage pediatric chronic illnesses. Study results also add to the growing body of literature suggesting that psychosocial interventions for pediatric chronic illness benefit from a family systems level of intervention.     

Reduced prefrontal and increased subcortical brain functioning assessed using positron emission tomography in predatory and affective murderers

There appear to be no brain imaging studies investigating which brain mechanisms subserve affective, impulsive violence versus planned, predatory violence. It was hypothesized that affectively violent offenders would have lower prefrontal activity, higher subcortical activity, and reduced prefrontal/subcortical ratios relative to controls, while predatory violent offenders would show relatively normal brain functioning. Glucose metabolism was assessed using positron emission tomography in 41 comparisons, 15 predatory murderers, and nine affective murderers in left and right hemisphere prefrontal (medial and lateral) and subcortical (amygdala, midbrain, hippocampus, and thalamus) regions. Affective murderers relative to comparisons had lower left and right prefrontal functioning, higher right hemisphere subcortical functioning, and lower right hemisphere prefrontal/subcortical ratios. In contrast, predatory murderers had prefrontal functioning that was more equivalent to comparisons, while also having excessively high right subcortical activity. Results support the hypothesis that emotional, unplanned impulsive murderers are less able to regulate and control aggressive impulses generated from subcortical structures due to deficient prefrontal regulation. It is hypothesized that excessive subcortical activity predisposes to aggressive behaviour, but that while predatory murderers have sufficiently good prefrontal functioning to regulate these aggressive impulses, the affective murderers lack such prefrontal control over emotion regulation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reduced orthographic learning in dyslexic adult readers: evidence from patterns of letter search

Visual letter search performance was investigated in a group of dyslexic adult readers using a task that required detection of a cued letter target embedded within a random five-letter string. Compared to a group of skilled readers, dyslexic readers were significantly slower at correctly identifying targets located in the first and second string position, illustrating significantly reduced leftward facilitation than is typically observed. Furthermore, compared to skilled readers, dyslexic readers showed reduced sensitivity to positional letter frequency. They failed to exhibit significantly faster response times to correctly detect target letters appearing in the most, compared to least, frequent letter position within five-letter words, and response times correlated with positional letter frequency only for the initial, and not the final, letter position. These results are compatible with the SERIOL (sequential encoding regulated by inputs to oscillations within letter units) model of orthographic processing proposed by Whitney and Cornelissen (2005). Furthermore, they suggest that dyslexic readers are less efficient than skilled readers at learning to extract statistical regularities from orthographic input.     

Contemporary Muslim Families: Research and Practice

This research project was undertaken to provide family professionals with the basic information necessary to work appropriately with Muslim families. The Muslim population represents 4–6 million people in the United States, yet it is significantly underrepresented in the family literature. Qualitative analysis of focus groups and interviews revealed multiple key findings. Emergent themes include an interest in gender respect rather than gender equity, the importance of extended family, the centralism of Islam in daily life and the qualified acceptance of professional interventions. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Surface dyslexia

Two cases of surface dyslexia are described. In this disorder, irregular words such as broad or steak are less likely to be read aloud correctly than regularly-spelled words like breed or steam; and when irregular words are misread the incorrect response is often a regularisation (reading broad as "brode" and steak as "steek, for example). When reading comprehension was tested, homophones were often confused with each other: for example, soar was understood as an instrument for cutting, and route was understood as being part of a tree. Spelling was also impaired, with the majority of spelling errors being phonologically correct: for example, "search" was spelled surch. "Orthographic" errors in reading aloud (omitting, altering, adding or transposing letters) were also noted. These errors were not due to defects at elementary levels of visual processing.

One of our cases was a developmental dyslexic, and the other was an acquired dyslexic. The close similarity of their reading and spelling performance supports the view that surface dyslexia can cccur both as a developmental and as an acquired dyslexia.

A theoretical interpretation of surface dyslexia within the framework of the logogen model (including a grapheme-phoneme correspondence system for reading non-words) was offered: defects within the input logogen system, and in communication from that system to semantics, were postulated as responsible for most of the symptoms of surface dyslexia.     

Paap and Noel revisited: Individual differences in independent word recognition tasks in relation to the dual-task paradigm

Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants' pronunciation latencies were faster for low-frequency irregular words when named under a concurrent high digit memory load than when named under a low load. The effects reported by Paap and Noel have proved difficult to replicate in subsequent studies. The present research suggests that individual differences in word recognition skill relate to who will or will not show these effects. In two experiments, participants were allocated to skill groups on the basis of latency in tasks tapping lexical and sub-lexical reading processes. In both studies, only one group (the "intermediate skilled"), showed evidence of such effects. A combined analysis of the data from Experiments 1 and 2 was carried out. This confirmed and extended the analyses of the individual experiments. The results are discussed in relation to contemporary models of word recognition.     

Religiosity and coping with loneliness

Loneliness is a universal experience which transcends age, sex, geography, and culture. Religion, and often one's religiosity, are known to affect one's approach to life, behaviour, and social involvement. The present, preliminary study aimed to explore whether coping with loneliness is influenced by one's religious observance. The present study focused on Israeli Jews. 250 participants identified themselves as Secular, Conservative, or Orthodox, by answering a 34-item yes/no questionnaire on loneliness. The three groups statistically significantly differed in their manner of coping with loneliness only on the Religion and Faith subscale, as hypothesized. Similar studies with people of other religious denominations could further highlight that issue.     

Environmental Visual Distraction during Retrieval Affects the Quality,Not the Quantity,of Eyewitness Recall

Eyewitnesses instructed to close their eyes during retrieval remember more correct, and fewer incorrect, visual and auditory details. These effects are assumed to arise because eye‐closure reduces distraction from the retrieval environment, and so increased environmental distraction should have the reverse effects. To test this idea, 48 participants witnessed a video clip before verbally answering questions about visual and auditory details in the presence of irrelevant visual distraction varying in amount and predictability. More distraction led to fewer correct and more incorrect visual and auditory details being recalled, but the predictability of the distraction had no effect. These findings suggest that environmental distraction impacts upon memory quality rather than quantity, a pattern that may be hard for interviewers to detect. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.