Predictors of response and drop-out during intensive dialectical behavior therapy

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness, and predictors of response and drop-out during a four-week course of intensive dialectical behavior therapy (I-DBT) in 447 outpatients suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD), over a 10-year period. Assessments included a diagnostic interview, the International Personality Disorder Examination Screening Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Beck Hopelessness Scale. Among these participants, 103 started a second course of treatment. In agreement with previous reports, I-DBT was effective in reducing levels of depression and hopelessness with a trend of increasing effectiveness over the study period. High schizoid scores and low narcissistic score predicted poor response. Treatment completion rate was high, and low education predicted dropout. A discussion on the usefulness of a second course of treatment should be held with patients and staff as it was not effective in reducing depression and hopelessness.     

Commitment of Cultural Minorities in Organizations: Effects of Leadership and Pressure to Conform

Purpose  

In this study, we investigated the commitment of cultural minorities and majorities in organizations. We examined how contextual factors, such as pressure to conform and leadership styles, affect the commitment of minority and majority members.     

Irrational Beliefs in Employees with an Adjustment,a Depressive,or an Anxiety Disorder: a Prospective Cohort Study

It remains unclear if patients with different types of common mental disorders, such as adjustment, anxiety and depressive disorders, have the same irrational ideas. The aim of this prospective cohort study (n = 190) is to investigate differences in level and type of irrational beliefs among these groups and to examine whether a change in irrational beliefs is related to symptom recovery. Irrational beliefs (IBI) and symptoms were measured at four points in time: at baseline, after 3, 6 and 12 months. Results showed that diagnostic groups differed in their level of irrational beliefs and this effect remained over time. Highest levels of irrationality were observed in the double diagnosis group, followed by the anxiety disorder group and the depression group. Participants with adjustment disorders showed the lowest levels of irrationality, comparable to a community sample. We did not find differences in the type of irrational beliefs between diagnostic groups. The level of irrationality declined over time for all diagnostic groups. No differences in decrease were observed between diagnostic groups. The magnitude and direction of change in irrational beliefs were related to the magnitude of recovery of depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms over time. These results support the application of general cognitive interventions, especially for patients with a depressive or an anxiety disorder.     

Personality predicts temporal attention costs in the attentional blink paradigm

Accuracy for a second target is reduced when it is presented within 500 msec of a first target. This phenomenon is called the attentional blink (AB). A diffused attentional state (via positive affect or an additional task) has been shown to reduce the AB, whereas a focused attentional state (via negative affect) has been shown to increase the AB, purportedly by influencing the amount of attentional investment and flexibility. In the present study, individual differences in personality traits related to positive affect, negative affect, and cognitive flexibility were used to predict individual differences in AB magnitude. As hypothesized, greater extraversion and openness predicted smaller ABs. Greater openness also predicted higher overall target accuracy. Greater neuroticism predicted larger ABs and lower overall target accuracy. Conscientiousness, associated with less cognitive flexibility, predicted lower overall target accuracy. Personality may modulate the AB by influencing overinvestment via dispositional tendencies toward more or less stringent or capable cognitive control.     

Interaction of stimulus and contextual information during reading: Identifying words within sentences

In general, studies on the effects of a sentence context on word identification have focused on how context affects the efficiency of processing a single target word, presented separately from the context. Such studies probably would be incapable of measuring contextual facilitation resulting from cascaded or parallel processing of neighboring words within a sentence. To measure these and other types of facilitation, we presented entire phrases and sentences for subjects to read as fast as possible and to monitor for nonwords. Subjects read at rates representative of natural reading. Experiment 1 demonstrated a large contextual facilitation effect on decision time. Experiment 2 showed that facilitation is caused by specific semantic information and, perhaps to a greater degree, by nonpredictive syntactic information. Experiment 3 showed that the amount of facilitation is greater than could be accounted for by separate contributions from autonomous word level and sentence level processes. These results present difficulties for an autonomous model of reading, but are consistent with interactive models, in which the results of ongoing sentential analyses are combined with stimulus information to identify words.     

American and Chinese Students’ Calibration of Comprehension and Performance

In the present study we examined the ability of American and Chinese undergraduate students to calibrate their understanding of textbook passages translated into their native languages. Students read a series of texts and made predictions of their understanding of each text as well as the number of questions they would be able to answer correctly. Students also made postdictions of their test performance. Chinese students were significantly better than American students in calibrating their understanding of passages and predicting how many comprehension items they would answer correctly. Chinese students also outperformed American students on comprehension tests. All students were able to make more accurate postdictions of comprehension test scores than predictions. Results are related to possible instructional differences between American and Chinese students. Several possible directions for future research are discussed.     

Evidence for a Multi-Dimensional Latent Structural Model of Externalizing Disorders

Strong associations between conduct disorder (CD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and substance use disorders (SUD) seem to reflect a general vulnerability to externalizing behaviors. Recent studies have characterized this vulnerability on a continuous scale, rather than as distinct categories, suggesting that the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) take into account the underlying continuum of externalizing behaviors. However, most of this research has not included measures of disorders that appear in childhood [e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)], nor has it considered the full range of possibilities for the latent structure of externalizing behaviors, particularly factor mixture models, which allow for a latent factor to have both continuous and categorical dimensions. Finally, the majority of prior studies have not tested multidimensional models. Using lifetime diagnoses of externalizing disorders from participants in the Fast Track Project (n?=?715), we analyzed a series of latent variable models ranging from fully continuous factor models to fully categorical mixture models. Continuous models provided the best fit to the observed data and also suggested that a two-factor model of externalizing behavior, defined as (1) ODD+ADHD+CD and (2) SUD with adult antisocial behavior sharing common variance with both factors, was necessary to explain the covariation in externalizing disorders. The two-factor model of externalizing behavior was then replicated using a nationally representative sample drawn from the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication data (n?=?5,692). These results have important implications for the conceptualization of externalizing disorders in DSM-5.