Improved Insight into and Prediction of Network Dynamics by Combining VAR and Dimension Reduction

To understand within-person psychological processes, one may fit VAR(1) models (or continuous-time variants thereof) to multivariate time series and display the VAR(1) coefficients as a network. This approach has two major problems. First, the contemporaneous correlations between the variables will frequently be substantial, yielding multicollinearity issues. In addition, the shared effects of the variables are not included in the network. Consequently, VAR(1) networks can be hard to interpret. Second, crossvalidation results show that the highly parametrized VAR(1) model is prone to overfitting. In this article, we compare the pros and cons of two potential solutions to both problems. The first is to impose a lasso penalty on the VAR(1) coefficients, setting some of them to zero. The second, which has not yet been pursued in psychological network analysis, uses principal component VAR(1) (termed PC-VAR(1)). In this approach, the variables are first reduced to a few principal components, which are rotated toward simple structure; then VAR(1) analysis (or a continuous-time analog) is applied to the rotated components. Reanalyzing the data of a single participant of the COGITO study, we show that PC-VAR(1) has the better predictive performance and that networks based on PC-VAR(1) clearly represent both the lagged and the contemporaneous variable relations.     

Pervasive traumatic loss from AIDS in the life of a 4-year-old African boy

It is estimated that, by the end of this century, over five million children under the age of 10 will have lost their mothers as a result of HIV infection. The psychological implications for the children who survive are extensive. These children suffer not only from bereavements and disruption to family life, they also suffer from prevailing anxieties about their own health and the health of their carers. It is the pervasive threat of death which constitutes chronic trauma for child survivors of HIV infection. Confusions abound in fact and in phantasy of where responsibility lies for the tragedies which surround them. Psychotherapeutic treatment for the survivors concentrates on both the cognitive and the emotional aspects of the traumas to enable the child to grieve and to feel appropriate anger for the tragedy in their life. This paper presents a detailed case history of a 4-year-old African boy of refugee parents who were victims of war as well as AIDS. Using a psychoanalytic framework, the child's distorted perceptions of his world are described and his attempts to make sense of his world and keep hope alive in spite of the continual threat of abandonment is demonstrated.     

How benefits of expressive writing vary as a function of writing instructions,ethnicity and ambivalence over emotional expression

Written emotional disclosure has been reported to confer a variety of benefits on physical and psychological well-being. However, variable findings suggest that outcomes may vary systematically as a function of specific parameters of the experimental design. This study aims to investigate the unique and combined effects of disclosure instructions focusing on emotional expression and instructions facilitating cognitive reappraisal and to examine how ambivalence over emotional expression and ethnicity moderate the effects of these writing instructions. Seventy-one Asian and 59 Caucasian undergraduates (N = 130) with at least minimal physical or depressive symptoms were randomly assigned to one of the four writing conditions: emotional disclosure (ED), cognitive reappraisal (COG), the combination of ED and COG, or a control condition. Self-reported physical symptoms, positive affect (PA) and negative affect were assessed at baseline and three follow-ups spanning 4 months. Mixed linear models revealed that COG writing reduced physical symptoms, ED buffered a decrease in PA over time, and the combination of ED and COG (i.e. self-regulation; SR) was most effective. Asians and highly ambivalent participants benefited most from expressive writing. Findings contribute to the development of a SR moderator model and carry implications for designing expressive disclosure studies, particularly for ethnic minorities.     

Benchmarking key service quality indicators in UK Employee Assistance Programme Counselling: A CORE System data profile

Background: Levels of psychological distress appear to be increasing in the workplace, in parallel with the growth of employee assistance programme (EAP) provision offering a range of talking treatments. However, such growth takes place in the absence of a substantive body of supporting research evidence despite a quarter of a decade of research activity. Aims: To analyse a national sample of EAP data and profile relative service quality on a set of key service indicators. Method: CORE System data profiles of over 28,000 clients were voluntarily donated by six EAP service providers. An established benchmarking methodology was used to assess the relative quality of EAP service provision compared with published CORE System benchmarks for NHS primary care and UK higher education student counselling services. Results: High quality data profiled an EAP service clientele who were quantifiably distressed, accessed treatment quickly, with the majority completing treatment and demonstrating high rates of recovery and/or improvement relative to published benchmarks from the NHS and HE comparative sectors. Limitations of the study and implications for practice and further investigation are considered.     

Reduced Reliance on Optimal Facial Information for Identity Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Previous research into face processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has revealed atypical biases toward particular facial information during identity recognition. Specifically, a focus on features (or high spatial frequencies [HSFs]) has been reported for both face and nonface processing in ASD. The current study investigated the development of spatial frequency biases in face recognition in children and adolescents with and without ASD, using nonverbal mental age to assess changes in biases over developmental time. Using this measure, the control group showed a gradual specialization over time toward middle spatial frequencies (MSFs), which are thought to provide the optimal information for face recognition in adults. By contrast, individuals with ASD did not show a bias to one spatial frequency band at any stage of development. These data suggest that the “midband bias” emerges through increasing face-specific experience and that atypical face recognition performance may be related to reduced specialization toward optimal spatial frequencies in ASD.     

Reality television and the muscular male ideal

Although researchers have examined the negative effects of viewing reality television (RTV) on women's body image, this research has not been extended to men. Exploring the extent to which RTV depicts men who embody the muscular ideal may enhance our understanding of the potential influence of this media genre. We explored the extent to which RTV depicted men who embodied the muscular ideal using a quantitative content analysis. Based on binomial tests, the primary male cast members of programs airing on networks popular among young adult men during the Fall 2009 broadcast season were more muscular, with lower levels of body fat, than average U.S. men. The chest-to-waist and shoulder-to-waist ratios of these cast members did not differ as a function of program type (i.e., reality drama, endurance, and romance). Young men who view RTV programs included in the present study would be exposed to an unrepresentative muscular ideal.     

Number-of-translation norms for Dutch—English translation pairs: A new tool for examining language production

We collected number-of-translation norms on 562 Dutch-English translation pairs from several previous studies of cross-language processing. Participants were highly proficient Dutch—English bilinguals. Form and semantic similarity ratings were collected on the 1,003 possible translation pairs. Approximately 40% of the translations were rated as being similar across languages with respect to spelling/sound (i.e., they were cognates). Approximately 45% of the translations were rated as being highly semantically similar across languages. At least 25% of the words in each direction of translation had more than one translation. The form similarity ratings were found to be highly reliable even when obtained with different bilinguals and modified rating procedures. Number of translations and meaning factors significantly predicted the semantic similarity of translation pairs. In future research, these norms may be used to determine the number of translations of words to control for or study this factor. These norms are available at http://www.talkbank.org/norms/tokowicz/.     

Applicability of two violence risk assessment tools in a psychiatric prison hospital population

The risk of violent behavior is known to be higher for patients who suffer from a severe mental disorder. However, specific prediction tools for clinical work in prison psychiatry are lacking. In this single-center study, two violence risk assessment tools (Forensic Psychiatry and Violence Tool, “FoVOx,” and Mental Illness and Violence Tool, “OxMIV”) were applied to a prison hospital population with a primary psychotic or bipolar disorder and subsequently compared. The required information on all items of both tools was obtained retrospectively for a total of 339 patients by evaluation of available patient files. We obtained the median and inter-quartile range for both FoVOx and OxMIV, and their rank correlation coefficient along with 95% confidence intervals (CIs)—for the full cohort, as well as for cohort subgroups. The two risk assessment tools were strongly positively correlated (Spearman correlation = 0.83; 95% CI = 0.80–0.86). Such a high correlation was independent of nationality, country of origin, type of detention, schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, previous violent crime and alcohol use disorder, where correlations were above 0.8. A lower correlation was seen with patients who were 30 years old or more, married, with affective disorder and with self-harm behavior, and also in patients without aggressive behavior and without drug use disorder. Both risk assessment tools are applicable as an adjunct to clinical decision making in prison psychiatry.