Teaching Paragraph Composition to Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders Using the Simultaneous Prompting Procedure

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the simultaneous prompting procedure in teaching paragraph composition to 4, 5th grade students identified with emotional behavioral disorder (EBD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The instructor taught students how to construct and proofread a 5-sentence paragraph using the simultaneous prompting procedure with embedded non-targeted information related to the writing process. A multiple probe design across participants assessed effectiveness of the procedure. Results indicated that all students learned to compose a paragraph, acquired the non-targeted information, maintained the skills up to 6 weeks later, and generalized the skills to other writing tasks.     

Children's and Adults’ Ability to Build Online Emotional Inferences During Comprehension of Audiovisual and Auditory Texts

Two studies examined inferences drawn about the protagonist's emotional state in movies (Study 1) or audiobooks (Study 2). Children aged 5, 8, and 10 years old and adults took part. Participants saw or heard 20 movie scenes or sections of audiobooks taken or adapted from the TV show Lassie. An online measure of emotional inference was designed that assessed the ability of the participants to understand the main protagonist's emotional state. The participants’ emotional knowledge and media literacy were assessed as further variables. The results of the studies provide evidence that children from the age of 5 build emotional inferences when both watching movies and listening to audiobooks. A developmental trend exists with regard to the precision of the emotional inferences. Media literacy and emotional knowledge differed in terms of their influence on the ability to generate inferences, which was dependent on the age of the participant and the presentation mode.     

Aging and visual search: Generalized cognitive slowing or selective deficit in attention?

Abstract

Selective attention in normal aging was investigated using simple and conjoined feature visual search tasks. the effects of varying the location of the target (central vs. peripheral, left vs. right hemifield) and the complement of distractors, together with variability in task performance across subject groups, were also examined. the findings indicated that the feature extraction stage of visual search was preserved in older aged subjects. However, there was a differential age-related impairment in the feature integration stage of visual processing in the two older groups (66-75 years, 76-85 years). This was greater than the magnitude of decline predicted on the basis of generalized cognitive slowing. There was no evidence of a speed-accuracy trade-off in the performance of either search task. the findings of this study contribute towards the delineation of age-dependent and -independent processes subserving visual selective attention. the performance of older individuals may be relatively well preserved on more automatic, less demanding tasks such as simple feature search. By contrast, there may be differential age-related impairments on visual search tasks such as conjoined feature search, which may require more effortful or controlled attentional processing.     

When the half-full glass is appraised as half empty and memorised as completely empty: Mood-congruent true and false recognition in depression is modulated by salience

Since the 1980s a large body of empirical effort has been devoted to mood-congruent memory (MCM) biases in clinical depression. Whereas there is broad, albeit not unequivocal, evidence that depressive patients retain negative-valenced memory items better than neutral material, few studies have investigated false memories in depression. In a pilot study we gathered support for both enhanced true and false memory for emotional material in depression. The present study aimed to extend these preliminary findings. In view of investigations suggesting that arousing and meaningful stimuli have facilitated access to memory, personal salience was considered a moderator for MCM. In the present study 21 depressed and 22 healthy participants were presented six false memory lists dealing with neutral, negative, and positive themes. At recognition, each item had to be appraised for its degree of valence subsequent to an old–new judgement. Pre-categorised and subjective valence did not discriminate groups. However, relative to controls depressed patients showed both more veridical as well as false recognition for items that concurrently elicited higher salience ratings in patients. In contrast, group differences in recognition performance did not significantly affect salience ratings. Results indicate that salience modulates MCM and may account for discrepancies in the literature.     

Affective and cognitive attitudes,uncertainty avoidance and intention to obtain genetic testing: An extension of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

To ensure successful implementation of genetic screening and counselling according to patients best interests, the attitudes and motives of the public are important to consider. The aim of this study was to apply a theoretical framework in order to investigate which individual and disease characteristics might facilitate the uptake of genetic testing. A questionnaire using an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour was developed to assess the predictive value of affective and cognitive expected outcomes, subjective norms, perceived control and uncertainty avoidance on the intention to undergo genetic testing. In addition to these individual characteristics, the predictive power of two disease characteristics was investigated by systematically varying the diseases fatality and penetrance (i.e. the probability of getting ill in case one is a mutation carrier). This resulted in four versions of the questionnaire which was mailed to a random sample of 2400 Norwegians. Results showed genetic test interest to be quite high, and to vary depending on the characteristics of the disease, with participants preferring tests for highly penetrant diseases. The most important individual predictor was uncertainty avoidance.     

Visuospatial Short-Term Memory Explains Deficits in Tower Task Planning in High-Functioning Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Previous findings on planning abilities in individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFA) are inconsistent. Exploring possible reasons for these mixed findings, the current study investigated the involvement of memory in planning performance in 15 children with HFA and 17 typically developing controls. In addition to planning abilities (measured with the Tower of London), short-term memory and delayed recall for verbal as well as visuospatial material were assessed. Findings suggest that particularly reduced efficiency in visuospatial short-term memory is associated with Tower task planning deficits in children with HFA.     

Aus vier mach zwei

Background

The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders 5 (DSM-5) includes a revision of the DSM-IV criteria for somatoform disorders. The aim of the current work was to investigate whether (a) patients with DSM-IV diagnoses of somatization disorder, pain disorder and hypochondriasis and (b) whether patients categorized as having the DSM-5 somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder differ with respect to illness anxiety and cognition regarding somatic symptoms.

Material and methods

The data from 269 inpatients from the psychosomatic clinic Schön Klinik Bad Bramstedt were used. Somatoform disorders were diagnosed using the German version of the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV (SCID).

Results

Patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of hypochondriasis differed in illness anxiety and catastrophizing interpretation of somatic symptoms compared to patients with other somatoform disorders. Patients with illness anxiety disorder differed in the catastrophizing interpretation of physical symptoms, autonomic sensations, bodily weakness and intolerance of physical complaints compared to patients with somatic symptom disorder.

Conclusion

The present results indicate that illness anxiety and a catastrophizing interpretation of somatic symptoms play a fundamental role in patients with somatoform disorders. Therefore, psychotherapy should address illness anxiety and health-related concerns in all patients with somatoform disorders.     

Iconic Prosody in Story Reading

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance (e.g., Shintel et al., 2006). This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed (e.g., a fast drive, slow career progress) and size (e.g., a small grasshopper, an important contract). Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size‐related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech.     

School Counselors' Ways of Knowing and Social Orientation in Relationship to Poverty Beliefs

The beliefs about poverty, ways of knowing, and social relationship orientation of 513 American School Counselor Association members were evaluated using canonical correlation analysis. Results indicated a relationship between the beliefs that poverty is caused by individuals' internal characteristics, connected knowing, and social hierarchies. A relationship also exists for school counselors who believe that poverty is caused by external factors, use a combination of connected and separate knowing, and embrace social equality.