Effects of experienced disgust on habituation during repeated exposure to threat-relevant stimuli in blood-injection-injury phobia

Despite growing evidence implicating disgust in the etiology of blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia, the relevance of disgust for exposure-based treatment of BII phobia remains largely unknown. Individuals with BII phobia were randomly assigned to a disgust (view vomit videos) or neutral activation (view waterfall videos) condition. They were then exposed to 14 videotaped blood draws, during which fear and disgust levels were repeatedly assessed. Participants then engaged in a behavioral avoidance test (BAT) consisting of exposure to threat-relevant stimuli. Examination of outcome comparing the identical first and last blood-draw clips revealed that fear and disgust toward blood draws was significantly reduced in both groups. Disgust levels were also found to be more intense for the video stimuli relative to fear levels whereas the opposite was true for BAT stimuli. Contrary to predictions, the disgust induction did not enhance reductions in negative responses to the target video or reduce behavioral avoidance. Growth curve analyses did show that individuals with BII phobia exposed to the disgust induction showed greater initial fear levels during repeated exposure than those in the neutral condition. However, this effect was not consistently observed across different analytic approaches. Changes in fear during exposure were also found to be independent of changes in disgust but not vice versa, and greater initial fear levels during repeated exposure to threat was associated with fear and disgust levels during the BAT. The implications of these findings for conceptualizing the role of disgust in etiology and treatment of BII phobia are discussed.     

The role of negative affectivity and negative reactivity to emotions in predicting outcomes in the unified protocol for the transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders

The present study aimed to understand the contributions of both the trait tendency to experience negative emotions and how one relates to such experience in predicting symptom change during participation in the Unified Protocol (UP), a transdiagnostic treatment for emotional disorders. Data were derived from a randomized controlled trial comparing the UP to a waitlist control/delayed-treatment condition. First, effect sizes of pre- to post-treatment change for frequency of negative emotions and several variables measuring reactivity to emotional experience (emotional awareness and acceptance, fear of emotions, and anxiety sensitivity) were examined. Second, the relative contributions of change in negative emotions and emotional reactivity in predicting symptom (clinician-rated anxiety, depression, and severity of principal diagnosis) reductions were investigated. Results suggested that decreases in the frequency of negative emotions and reactivity to emotions following participation in the UP were both large in magnitude. Further, two emotional reactivity variables (fear of emotions and anxiety sensitivity) remained significantly related to symptom outcomes when controlling for negative emotions, and accounted for significant incremental variance in their prediction. These findings lend support to the notion that psychological health depends less on the frequency of negative emotions and more on how one relates to these emotions when they occur.     

Prevalence,Prediction, and Prevention of Psychologist Misconduct

Studies of psychologist misconduct generally focus on unethical sexual behaviours. In contrast, the following study reports on all complaints by the public against psychologists reported to the New South Wales Psychologists Registration Board over a 4‐year period. There were 248 independent notifications of misconduct about 224 registered psychologists, out of a total sample of 9,489 registered psychologists. The most frequent type of misconduct reported was in relation to poor communication standards (35.5%). Other complaints were in relation to professional incompetency (16.5%), poor report writing (14.1%), poor business practices (12.5%), boundary violations (9.7%), poor character (5.6%), registration status (3.2%), impairment (1.6%), and the inappropriate use of specialist titles (1.2%). Males were 2.5 times more likely to have a misconduct complaint made about them than females. Senior highly qualified psychologists attracted a greater number of complaints, but these were generally of a less serious nature. Over a 30‐year career, about 20 out of every 100 psychologists can expect to receive a complaint from the public, and two will receive a serious misconduct complaint that might lead to deregistration. Strategies for preventing malpractice arising from these results include regular peer consultation, developing quality practise standards, and maintaining professional boundaries.     

Health Care Behaviours and Beliefs in Hasidic Jewish Populations: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Cultural issues impact on health care, including individuals’ health care behaviours and beliefs. Hasidic Jews, with their strict religious observance, emphasis on kabbalah, cultural insularity and spiritual leader, their Rebbe, comprise a distinct cultural group. The reviewed studies reveal that Hasidic Jews may seek spiritual healing and incorporate religion in their explanatory models of illness; illness attracts stigma; psychiatric patients’ symptomatology may have religious content; social and cultural factors may challenge health care delivery. The extant research has implications for clinical practice. However, many studies exhibited methodological shortcomings with authors providing incomplete analyses of the extent to which findings are authentically Hasidic. High-quality research is required to better inform the provision of culturally competent care to Hasidic patients.     

Emotional responses to rejection of gestures of intergroup reconciliation

Four experiments examine the emotional and attitudinal consequences of victim group rejection of a gesture of reconciliation from a transgressor group. Participants were reminded about an ingroup transgression and were told that their ingroup provided an apology (Studies 1 and 4) or an offer of repair (Studies 2 and 3). The authors varied whether the victim group rejected or accepted these gestures. As predicted, rejection resulted in greater anger and lower levels of satisfaction directed toward the victim group. Victim group response had little systematic effect on anxiety or shame, however. Appraisals of the response as illegitimate mediated the effects of victim group response (Studies 3 and 4). Furthermore, Study 4 showed that the emotional backlash toward victim groups who reject an offer of reconciliation leads to heightened racism and reduced intentions to financially compensate victim groups. Implications for how groups reconcile in the face of historical transgressions are discussed.     

Emerging effortful control in toddlerhood: the role of infant orienting/regulation, maternal effortful control, and maternal time spent in caregiving activities

Latent growth modeling (LGM) was used to examine the contribution of changes in infant orienting/regulation (O/R) to the emergence of toddler effortful control (EC), the contributions of maternal EC to the development of infant O/R and the emergence of toddler EC, the influence of maternal time spent in caregiving activities on toddler EC and the slope of infant O/R, and the contribution of maternal EC to subsequent maternal time spent in caregiving activities. Mothers from 158 families completed a self-report measure of EC when their infants were 4 months of age, a measure of infant O/R when their infants were 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 months of age, and a measure of toddler EC when their children reached 18 months of age. Information concerning maternal time spent in various interactive caregiving activities was collected when infants were 6 months old. Results indicated higher maternal EC predicted interindividual differences in the intercept (i.e., higher intercepts), but not slope, of infant O/R and that higher maternal EC, higher infant O/R intercept, and higher infant O/R slope contributed to higher toddler EC. Furthermore, higher maternal EC predicted greater maternal time spent in interactive caregiving activities with their infants and greater maternal time in interactive caregiving with infants also contributed to higher toddler EC after controlling for maternal EC. These findings contribute to the understanding of the influence of maternal EC, directly and through caregiving, on toddler EC. Additional implications as they are related to early developing regulatory aspects of temperament are discussed.     

The effects of age,rank and neophobia on social learning in horses

Social learning is said to meet the demands of complex environments in which individuals compete over resources and cooperate to share resources. Horses (Equus caballus) were thought to lack social learning skills because they feed on homogenously distributed resources with few reasons for conflict. However, the horse’s social environment is complex, which raises the possibility that its capacity for social transfer of feeding behaviour has been underestimated. We conducted a social learning experiment using 30 socially kept horses of different ages. Five horses, one from each group, were chosen as demonstrators, and the remaining 25 horses were designated observers. Observers from each group were allowed to watch their group demonstrator opening a feeding apparatus. We found that young, low-ranking and more exploratory horses learned by observing older members of their own group, and the older the horse, the more slowly it appeared to learn. Social learning may be an adaptive specialisation to the social environment. Older animals may avoid the potential costs of acquiring complex and potentially disadvantageous feeding behaviours from younger group members. We argue that horses show social learning in the context of their social ecology and that research procedures must take such contexts into account. Misconceptions about the horse’s sociality may have hampered earlier studies.     

Trajectories of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms in Adolescent Girls: A Comparison of Parallel Trajectory Approaches

Longitudinal mixture models have become popular in the literature. However, modest attention has been paid to whether these models provide a better fit to the data than growth models. Here, we compared longitudinal mixture models to growth models in the context of changes in depression and anxiety symptoms in a community sample of girls from age 10 to 17. Model comparisons found that the preferred solution was a 5-class parallel process growth mixture model that differed in the course of depression and anxiety symptoms reflecting both ordering of symptoms and qualitative group differences. Comparisons between classes revealed substantive differences on a number of outcomes using this solution. Findings are discussed in the context of clinical assessment and implementation of growth mixture models.