Combined effect of context change and retention interval on interference in causality judgments

Four experiments studied the effects of context change and retention interval on retroactive interference in human causal learning. Experiment 1 found evidence of retroactive interference. Experiment 2 found that either a 48-hr retention interval or a change in the context after the interference treatment decreased retroactive interference. An interaction between context change and retention interval effects was also found, eclipsing the context change effect after the 48-hr retention interval. Experiments 3 and 4 found additivity between context change and retention interval effects when participants were remained of the difference between physical contexts before the test, independently of whether the context change involved a return to the original acquisition context. These results add to the evidence suggesting that spontaneous forgetting is caused by a change in either the physical or the temporal contexts where information is acquired.     

A longitudinal study on depressive symptoms and physical activity during the Spanish lockdown

Background/Objective: The aim was to evaluate the evolution of depressive symptoms and to explore the influence of physical activity (PA) practice during the home confinement due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain. Method: Information was collected from 595 confined participants who reported personal and contextual information, depressive symptoms and PA levels at four time points. Results: The changes in depressive symptoms were analyzed using a linear mixed model with cubic splines. Results showed a significant increase, with a significant rise between T1 and T2 (OR = 2.38, 95% CI = 1.83-3.10). It continued growing until T4 (OR = 2.93, 95% CI = 1.97-4.38). A negative relationship was observed between the increase in depressive symptoms and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels, with a significant slope up to 4 hours of MVPA per week (OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.29-0.90) that tended to increase until 16 hours per week of MVPA (OR = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.20-0.87). Conclusions: Results from a partition model showed that moderate intensity of PA could be enough to prevent an increase of depressive symptoms during home isolation.     

Adherence predictors in an Internet-based Intervention program for depression

Internet-delivered psychotherapy has been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of depression. Nevertheless, the study of the adherence in this type of the treatment reported divergent results. The main objective of this study is to analyze predictors of adherence in a primary care Internet-based intervention for depression in Spain. A multi-center, three arm, parallel, randomized controlled trial was conducted with 194 depressive patients, who were allocated in self-guided or supported-guided intervention. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were gathered using a case report form. The Mini international neuropsychiatric interview diagnoses major depression. Beck Depression Inventory was used to assess depression severity. The visual analogic scale assesses the respondent’s self-rated health and Short Form Health Survey was used to measure the health-related quality of life. Age results a predictor variable for both intervention groups (with and without therapist support). Perceived health is a negative predictor of adherence for the self-guided intervention when change in depression severity was included in the model. Change in depression severity results a predictor of adherence in the support-guided intervention. Our findings demonstrate that in our sample, there are differences in sociodemographic and clinical variables between active and dropout participants and we provide adherence predictors in each intervention condition of this Internet-based program for depression (self-guided and support-guided). It is important to point that further research in this area is essential to improve tailored interventions and to know specific patients groups can benefit from these interventions.     

Economic Impact of Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapies: A Systematic Review and Quality Assessment of Economic Evaluations in Randomized Controlled Trials

The term third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) encompasses new forms of CBT that both extend and innovate within CBT. Most third-wave therapies have been subject to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) focused on clinical effectiveness; however, the number and quality of economic evaluations in these RCTs has been unknown and may be few. Evidence about efficiency of these therapies may help support decisions on efficient allocation of resources in health policies. The main aim of this study was to systematically review the economic impact of third-wave therapies in the treatment of patients with physical or mental conditions. We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and CINALH to identify economic evaluations of third-wave therapies. Quality and Risk of Bias (RoB) assessment of economic evaluations was also made using the Drummond 35-item checklist and the Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias, respectively. Eleven RCTs were included in this systematic review. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and extended Behaviour Activation (eBA) showed acceptable cost-effectiveness and cost-utility ratios. No study employed a time horizon of more than 3 years. Quality and RoB assessments highlight some limitations that temper the findings. There is some evidence that MBCT, MBSR, ACT, DBT, and eBA are efficient from a societal or a third-party payer perspective. No economic analysis was found for many third-wave therapies. Therefore, more economic evaluations with high methodological quality are needed.     

Mapping the apetitive and aversive systems with emotional pictures using a block-design fMRI procedure

Negative emotional pictures from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS) have been successful in mapping brain areas related to the aversive system. However, the capacity of positive emotional pictures to study the brain areas related to the appetitive system (i.e., nucleus accumbens, prefrontal cortex) is less established. In this study, we used a block fMRI design to investigate this issue, including emotional pictures as background while participants performed a vowel-consonant discrimination task. Importantly, participants were heterosexual males and all positive pictures were related to erotic couples, opposite-sex erotica, or romantic scenes. Negative pictures were similar to those used in previous studies. Results were consistent with previous studies using event-related designs, showing activation of amygdala, lateral prefrontal cortex, and occipito-temporal areas, but positive pictures showed a significant activation in the left nucleus accumbens. These findings provide evidence of the utility of block designs in emotional research (positive emotional pictures).     

Extending the CLAST sequential rule to one-way ANOVA under group sampling

Several studies have demonstrated that the fixed-sample stopping rule (FSR), in which the sample size is determined in advance, is less practical and efficient than are sequential-stopping rules. The composite limited adaptive sequential test (CLAST) is one such sequential-stopping rule. Previous research has shown that CLAST is more efficient in terms of sample size and power than are the FSR and other sequential rules and that it reflects more realistically the practice of experimental psychology researchers. The CLAST rule has been applied only to thet test of mean differences with two matched samples and to the chi-square independence test for twofold contingency tables. The present work extends previous research on the efficiency of CLAST to multiple group statistical tests. Simulation studies were conducted to test the efficiency of the CLAST rule for the one-way ANOVA for fixed effects models. The ANOVA general test and two linear contrasts of multiple comparisons among treatment means are considered. The article also introduces four rules for allocatingN observations toJ groups under the general null hypothesis and three allocation rules for the linear contrasts. Results show that the CLAST rule is generally more efficient than the FSR in terms of sample size and power for one-way ANOVA tests. However, the allocation rules vary in their optimality and have a differential impact on sample size and power. Thus, selecting an allocation rule depends on the cost of sampling and the intended precision.     

Selling Citizenship: A Defence

Many people think that citizenship should not be for sale. On their view, it is morally wrong for states to sell citizenship to foreigners. In this article, I challenge this view. I argue that it is in principle permissible for states to sell citizenship. I contend that, if states can permissibly deny foreigners access to citizenship in some cases, then states can permissibly give foreigners the option of buying citizenship in these cases. Furthermore, I defend the permissibility of selling citizenship against the objections that selling citizenship values citizenship in the wrong way, corrupts civic norms, and unfairly discriminates against poor foreigners. I conclude by noting that, although selling citizenship is not intrinsically wrong, it could still be wrong for states to sell citizenship in practice. If existent immigration restrictions are unjust, then it may be impermissible for states to sell citizenship in the real world.