Male and female delinquency trajectories from pre through middle adolescence and their continuation in late adolescence

This study of male and female adolescent delinquency trajectories focuses on the prediction of late adolescence delinquency, based on earlier delinquency and social support. In this 3-wave longitudinal survey, 270 Dutch adolescents (113 males and 157 females) ages 12 to 14, were followed for a period of 6 years. For males, the level of delinquent activity in late adolescence strongly depends on earlier delinquent activities (R2 = .33, p < .0005). In contrast, the level of female delinquency in late adolescence is far less predictable (R2 = .18, p < .001), and could not be predicted from delinquent activities during pre and early adolescence, while support from the mother during late adolescence was associated with reduced delinquency for females. Different models may be needed to explain the development of delinquency for males versus females.     

Parent Perception of Elementary School Aged Children’s Sleep Problems

Wide discrepancies exist concerning the reported occurrence of sleep problems for elementary school children. We describe parental perception of sleep problem behavior in elementary school aged children 5–12 years. Approximately 4% of parents reported their children experienced significant global sleep problems serious enough to adversely affect family functioning. Significant specific sleep problems reported by parents occurred for approximately 9–14% of the children in the sample. These ranges were in the low end of the ranges of sleep problems reported in previous literature for this age group.     

Short and long-term motor skill learning in an accelerated rotarod training paradigm

Rodent models of motor skill learning include skilled forelimb reaching and acrobatic locomotor paradigms. This study characterizes motor skill learning in the accelerated rotarod task. Thirty Long-Evans rats (300-400 g) were trained on an accelerated rotarod (1cm/s(2)) over eight consecutive sessions (=days, 20 trials each). Improvement in rotarod velocities mastered before falling off the rod was observed within and between sessions (plateau after five sessions). Intrasession improvement was incompletely retained at the beginning of the next day's session. Over several training sessions, intrasession improvement diminished, suggesting a ceiling effect. After 1 week of pause, the rotarod skill was retained. Locomotor exercise in a running wheel for 30 min before the first rotarod session did not affect intrasession improvement. Running-wheel exposure for 6 days did not diminish the rate of rotarod skill learning (steepness of the learning curve) but improved overall performance (upward shift of curve). Video analysis of gait on the rotarod showed that rats developed a motor strategy by modifying their gait patterns during training. The data demonstrate that rotarod improvement is not the result of enhanced general locomotor ability or fitness, which are trained in the running wheel, but requires a change in the motor strategy to master the task. Accelerated rotarod training can be regarded a valid paradigm for motor skill learning over short (intrasession, minutes) and long time frames (intersession, days).     

Association of serotonin transporter promoter gene polymorphism with violence: relation with personality disorders, impulsivity, and childhood ADHD psychopathology

There is evidence that disturbances in central serotonin (5-HT) function have a role in impulsive aggression, violence, and criminality. A deletion/insertion polymorphism within the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT) promoter gene (5-HTT gene-linked polymorphic region, 5-HTTLPR) is thought to be associated with several psychopathological phenotypes related to disturbed impulse control, anxiety and depression. This study examined the association of the 5-HTTLPR with violent behavior in a sample of 153 male Caucasians referred for a forensic psychiatric examination. We found a significant excess of the short (s) allele and the s/s genotype in patients characterized by recurrent and overt physical violent behavior. This genetic variance explained 5% of the variance of violent behavior. When controlled for the impact of several psychopathologies related to violent behavior, this association was observed in individuals with a history of childhood attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-related symptoms, but not presenting with personality disorder or increased impulsiveness. In conclusion, the results (i). suggest an association between serotonergic dysfunction and violent behavior, (ii). provide evidence for an-at least partial-genetic regulation of violent behavior in a subgroup of male offenders, and (iii). suggest a significant role for 5-HT transporter functionality for violent behavior.     

On the selective relation of frontal cortical asymmetry and anger-out versus anger-control

The model of anterior asymmetry and emotion proposes an asymmetric representation of approach and withdrawal systems in the left and right anterior brain regions. Within this framework, 3 different concepts have been related to anterior asymmetry: affective valence, motivational direction, and behavioral activation. The aim of the present study was an empirical investigation into the relation between anterior cortical activity and questionnaire measures related to the 3 dimensions positive versus negative affect, approach versus withdrawal motivation, and behavioral activation versus inhibition. Subjects with relative greater left than right frontal cortical activity showed higher anger-out scores and lower anger-control scores. These results support the hypothesis that motivational direction is related to frontal asymmetry (approach-left and withdrawal-right). Furthermore, subjects with greater bilateral (left and right) frontal cortical activity showed higher behavioral activation scores. This finding might suggest that behavioral activation is related to approach and withdrawal motivation.     

Pain coping and social support as predictors of long-term functional disability and pain in early rheumatoid arthritis

Pain-related avoidance factors and social resources, as assessed by pain coping and social support, are supposed to have lasting effects on functional disability and pain in chronic pain disorders. As a follow-up to a prospective study demonstrating short-term effects after one year (Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 179-193, 1998), the role of pain coping and social support at the time of diagnosis was investigated in relationship to the long-term course of functional disability and pain after three and five years in 78 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), taking into account personality characteristics of neuroticism and extraversion, clinical status and use of medication. In line with findings at the one-year follow-up, results showed that more passive pain coping predicted functional disability at the three-year, but not the five-year follow-up. In addition, low levels of social support at the time of diagnosis consistently predicted both functional disability and pain at the three and five-year follow-ups. Results indicate that pain coping and social support, assessed very early in the disease process, can affect long-term functional disability and pain in RA, and suggest that early interventions focusing on pain-related avoidance factors and social resources for patients at risk may beneficially influence long-term outcomes in RA.     

Effects of daily events on mood states in major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by high negative affect (NA) and low positive affect (PA), but little is known about emotional reactivity in daily life. The authors used experience sampling methodology to investigate changes in NA and PA following minor daily events in MDD compared with healthy participants. Contrary to expectation, MDD participants did not report more frequent negative events, although they did report fewer positive events. Multilevel regression showed that both NA and PA responses to negative events were blunted in the MDD group, whereas responses to positive events were enhanced. NA responses to negative events persisted longer in MDD participants. Depressed participants with a positive family history or longer current episodes showed relatively greater NA responses to negative events.     

Developmental dyslexia in different languages: language-specific or universal?

Most of the research on developmental dyslexia comes from English-speaking countries. However, there is accumulating evidence that learning to read English is harder than learning to read other European orthographies (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003). These findings therefore suggest the need to determine whether the main English findings concerning dyslexia can be generalized to other European orthographies, all of which have less irregular spelling-to-sound correspondences than English. To do this, we conducted a study with German- and English-speaking children (n=149) in which we investigated a number of theoretically important marker effects of the reading process. The results clearly show that the similarities between dyslexic readers using different orthographies are far bigger than their differences. That is, dyslexics in both countries exhibit a reading speed deficit, a nonword reading deficit that is greater than their word reading deficit, and an extremely slow and serial phonological decoding mechanism. These problems were of similar size across orthographies and persisted even with respect to younger readers that were at the same reading level. Both groups showed that they could process larger orthographic units. However, the use of this information to supplement grapheme-phoneme decoding was not fully efficient for the English dyslexics.     

Signing enhances memory like performing actions

In three experiments, we investigated the influence of the overt performance of signs on memory. Deaf and hearing participants studied lists of action phrases (Experiment 1) or nouns (Experiment 2) under standard verbal instruction, under the instructions to sign the verbal phrase, to symbolically perform the denoted action, or to carry out a prototypical action corresponding to each noun. Higher recall and recognition performances were observed when actions were performed than in the verbal encoding condition, and signing was as effective for memory as was enactment. Thus, overt signing can induce an enactment effect. In contrast, Experiment 3 demonstrated that performing an unrelated action did not. A unique but unrelated action was not memory efficient.     

Validation of the URICA-S in Group Therapy: Associations of Stages of Change with Therapeutic Factors and Treatment Outcome

Stages of change could be driving forces to activate the realization of therapeutic factors and symptom change. Consequently, the aims of the present study were to investigate whether the stages of change concept is valid in group therapy settings shown by factor analysis, internal consistencies, and criterion validity. A total of 377 patients completed measures of stages of change, symptom change, and therapeutic factors. A confirmatory factor analysis replicated the stages of change factors for group therapy. Related to the criterion validity, stages of change demonstrated only low, non-significant associations with symptom change, but some stages of change were significant predictors of certain therapeutic factors. Further research is needed to explore whether a stronger focus on motivational stages of change could help to intensify the realization of therapeutic factors in group therapy.