Psychological Treatments for Mental Disorders in Children and Adolescents: A Review of the Evidence of Leading International Organizations

In recent decades, the evidence on psychological treatments for children and adolescents has increased considerably. Several organizations have proposed different criteria to evaluate the evidence of psychological treatment in this age group. The aim of this study was to analyze evidence-based treatments drawn from RCTs, reviews, meta-analyses, guides and lists provided by four leading international organizations. The institutions reviewed were the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (Division 53) of the American Psychological Association, Cochrane Collaboration and the Australian Psychological Society in relation to mental disorders in children and adolescents. A total of 137 treatments were analyzed for 17 mental disorders and compared to determine the level of agreement among the organizations. The results indicate that, in most cases, there is little agreement among organizations and that there are several discrepancies within certain disorders. These results require reflection on the meaning attributed to evidence-based treatments with regard to psychological treatments in children and adolescents. The possible reasons for these differences could be explained by a combination of different issues: the procedures or committees may be biased, different studies were reviewed, different criteria are used by the organizations or the reviews of existing evidence were conducted in different time periods.     

Attentional orienting and awareness: evidence from a discrimination task

We used several cue–target SOAs (100, 500, 1000 ms) and three different degrees of cue predictability (Non-predictive-50%, Predictive-75%, Counter-predictive-25%), to investigate the role of awareness of cue–target predictability on cueing effects. A group of participants received instructions about the informative value of the cue, while another group did not receive such instructions. Participants were able to extract the predictive value of a spatially peripheral cue and use it to orient attention, whether or not specific instructions about the predictive value of the cue were given, and no matter their ability to correctly report it in a post-test questionnaire. In the non-predictive block, bad estimators who received no instructions showed regular cueing effects, while good estimators exhibited smaller and non-significant facilitatory effects at the short SOA and an absence of significant IOR at longer SOAs. However, for the instructions group, the pattern of results reversed.     

Emotional reactions to scandals: When does moral character make a difference?

A scandal can evoke public outrage when it is widely publicized and involves an individual who is perceived to have a high level of cultural representativeness. Two experiments showed that when the scandalous target's moral character was highlighted, emotional responses towards the target were least negative when the scandal was widely circulated and when the target was seen as a representative of his culture. These results suggest that when a cultural symbol is implicated in a widely‐circulated scandal, the negative emotions directed towards the scandalous individual can be alleviated when the public remains confident in his or her commitment to morality.     

The modulation of spatial congruency by object-based attention: analysing the "locus" of the modulation

Earlier studies have demonstrated that spatial cueing differentially reduces stimulus-stimulus congruency (e.g., spatial Stroop) interference but not stimulus-response congruency (e.g., Simon; e.g., Lupiá?ez & Funes, 2005). This spatial cueing modulation over spatial Stroop seems to be entirely attributable to object-based attention (e.g., Luo, Lupiá?ez, Funes, & Fu, 2010). In the present study, two experiments were conducted to further explore whether the cueing modulation of spatial Stroop is object based and/or space based and to analyse the "locus" of this modulation. In Experiment 1, we found that the cueing modulation over spatial Stroop is entirely object based, independent of stimulus-response congruency. In Experiment 2, we observed that the modulation of object-based attention over the spatial Stroop only occurred at a short cue-target interval (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA), whereas the stimulus-response congruency effect was not modulated either by object-based or by location-based attentional cueing. The overall pattern of results suggests that the spatial cueing modulation over spatial Stroop arises from object-based attention and occurs at the perceptual stage of processing.     

Spatial attention and conscious perception: the role of endogenous and exogenous orienting

Attention has often been considered to be a gateway to consciousness (Posner, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 91(16), 7398–7403, 1994). However, its relationship with conscious perception (CP) remains highly controversial. While theoretical models and experimental data support the role of attention in CP (Chica, Lasaponara, Lupiáñez, Doricchi, &; Bartolomeo, NeuroImage, 51, 1205–1212, 2010; Dehaene, Changeux, Naccache, Sackur, &; Sergent, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 204–211, 2006; Mack &; Rock, Inattentional blindness, 1998), recent studies have claimed that at least some forms of attention—endogenous or top-down spatial attention—are neither sufficient nor necessary for CP (Koch &; Tsuchiya, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 16–22, 2007). In the present experiments, we demonstrate the importance of exogenously triggered attention for the modulation of CP. Weak or null effects were instead observed when attention was triggered endogenously. Our data are discussed in the framework of recent neuropsychological models (Dehaene et al., Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 204–211, 2006), postulating that activity within reverberating frontoparietal networks, as colocalized with spatial--orienting systems, is the brain correlate of consciously processed information.     

Book reviews

Abstract

Boff, K. R., Kaufmann, L., &; Thomas, J. P. (Eds) (1986). Handbook of perception and human performance, Vols 1 and 2. Chichester: John Wiley. ISBN 0-471-88544-4 and 0-471-82957-9. £85.00 and £77.50.

Garnham, A. (1988). Artificial intelligence: An introduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pp. 277. ISBN 0-7102-1416-2. £8.95.     

The role of perceptual salience during the segmentation of connected speech

Statistical learning allows listeners to track transitional probabilities among syllable sequences and use these probabilities for subsequent speech segmentation. Recent studies have shown that other sources of information, such as rhythmic cues, can modulate the dependencies extracted via statistical computation. In this study, we explored how syllables made salient by a pitch rise affect the segmentation of trisyllabic words from an artificial speech stream by native speakers of three different languages (Spanish, English, and French). Results showed that, whereas performance of French participants did not significantly vary across stress positions (likely due to language-specific rhythmic characteristics), the segmentation performance of Spanish and English listeners was unaltered when syllables in word-initial and word-final positions were salient, but it dropped to chance level when salience was on the medial syllable. We argue that pitch rise in word-medial syllables draws attentional resources away from word boundaries, thus decreasing segmentation effectiveness.     

The Conversos of Valencia: Prosopography of a Socio-Religious Community (1391–1420)

Since the nineteenth century, conversos have been among the most prolific lines of research for medievalists and early modern historians. The persecution they suffered at the hands of the Inquisition, the veracity of the claims that attributed to them a clear tendency to remain Jewish in secret long after they were baptized, and their role as cultural agents and active contributors to Spanish culture, particularly in the field of literature, have appealed greatly to researchers. However, in contrast to the vast amount of academic research focusing on Jews from a social perspective, our knowledge of the first generations of conversos is limited. In this article, we present the results of prosopographical research devoted to the converso collective of Valencia from July 9, 1391—the year of the violent and massive conversion of the city’s Hebrew population—to 1420. In particular, we discuss the methodological obstacles presented by such research; evaluate whether the converted population in Valencia can be considered a community after 1391; analyze the socio-professional structure and general economic activities of conversos; and study the social dynamics and interpersonal conflicts that developed both within the group and with Old Christians during this thirty-year period.

     

Repetition increases false recollection in older people

Aging is accompanied by an increase in false alarms on recognition tasks, and these false alarms increase with repetition in older people (but not in young people). Traditionally, this increase was thought to be due to a greater use of familiarity in older people, but it was recently pointed out that false alarms also have a clear recollection component in these people. The main objective of our study is to analyze whether the expected increase in the rate of false alarms in older people due to stimulus repetition is produced by an inadequate use of familiarity, recollection, or both processes. To do so, we carried out an associative recognition experiment using pairs of words and pairs of images (faces associated with everyday contexts), in which we analyzed whether the repetition of some of the pairs increases the rate of false alarms in older people (compared to what was found in a sample of young people), and whether this increase is due to familiarity or recollection (using a remember‐know paradigm). Our results show that the increase in false alarms in older people due to repetition is produced by false recollection, calling into question both dual and single‐process models of recognition. Also, older people falsely recollect details of never studied stimuli, a clear case of perceptual illusions. These results are better explained in terms of source‐monitoring errors, mediated by people's retrieval expectations.     

Constructivism, the so-called semantic learning theories, and situated cognition versus the psychological learning theories

In this paper, the perspective of situated cognition, which gave rise both to the pragmatic theories and the so-called semantic theories of learning and has probably become the most representative standpoint of constructivism, is examined. We consider the claim of situated cognition to provide alternative explanations of the learning phenomenon to those of psychology and, especially, to those of the symbolic perspective, currently predominant in cognitive psychology. The level of analysis of situated cognition (i.e., global interactive systems) is considered an inappropriate approach to the problem of learning. From our analysis, it is concluded that the pragmatic theories and the so-called semantic theories of learning which originated in situated cognition can hardly be considered alternatives to the psychological learning theories, and they are unlikely to add anything of interest to the learning theory or to contribute to the improvement of our knowledge about the learning phenomenon.