Modification of Hostile Interpretation Bias in Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Interpretation Bias Modification (IBM) is gaining attention in the literature as an intervention that alters cognitive biases and reduces associated symptoms. Forty, primarily college-aged, non-treatment-seeking adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) were randomly assigned to receive either IBM targeting hostile interpretation bias (IBM-H) or a healthy video control (HVC) condition. Compared to those in HVC, participants in IBM-H reported more benign interpretations and fewer hostile interpretations at posttreatment. No difference in depressive interpretation bias was found between groups at posttreatment. IBM-H led to improved anger control at posttreatment and follow-up compared to HVC, though no effects of condition were found on trait anger or depressive symptoms. The IBM-H group perceived their treatment as less credible than the HVC group. For individuals with high expectancy of treatment success, IBM-H led to lower posttreatment depressive symptoms compared to HVC, while findings trended in the opposite direction for those with low expectancy of success. Overall, these preliminary findings point to boundary conditions for the efficacy of IBM protocols for anger and depression and potential improvements to be made to future IBM protocols.     

Investigating the mechanisms of visually-evoked tactile sensations

When attempting to detect a near-threshold signal, participants often incorrectly report the presence of a signal, particularly when a stimulus in a different modality is presented. Here we investigated the effect of prior experience of bimodal visuotactile stimuli on the rate of falsely reported touches in the presence of a light. In Experiment 1, participants made more false alarms in light-present than light-absent trials, despite having no experience of the experimental visuotactile pairing. This suggests that light-evoked false alarms are a consequence of an existing association, rather than one learned during the experiment. In Experiment 2, we sought to manipulate the strength of the association through prior training, using supra-threshold tactile stimuli that were given a high or low association with the light. Both groups still exhibited an increased number of false alarms during light-present trials, however, the low association group made significantly fewer false alarms across conditions, and there was no corresponding group difference in the number of tactile stimuli correctly identified. Thus, while training did not affect the boosting of the tactile signal by the visual stimulus, the low association training affected perceptual decision-making more generally, leading to a lower number of illusory touch reports, independent of the light.     

Adult outcomes as a function of an early childhood educational program: an Abecedarian Project follow-up

Adult (age 30) educational, economic, and social-emotional adjustment outcomes were investigated for participants in the Abecedarian Project, a randomized controlled trial of early childhood education for children from low-income families. Of the original 111 infants enrolled (98% African American), 101 took part in the age 30 follow-up. Primary indicators of educational level, economic status, and social adjustment were examined as a function of early childhood treatment. Treated individuals attained significantly more years of education, but income-to-needs ratios and criminal involvement did not vary significantly as a function of early treatment. A number of other indicators were described for each domain. Overall, the findings provide strong evidence for educational benefits, mixed evidence for economic benefits, and little evidence for treatment-related social adjustment outcomes. Implications for public policy are discussed.     

The Parentification Inventory: Development,Validation, and Cross-Validation

Abstract

This study hypothesized that subjects who strongly endorse unrealistic beliefs about intimate relationships would score higher on a measure of exposure to popular romantic media than subjects who do not. The relationship between exposure to media and satisfaction with one's current intimate relationship was also explored. Results for the 109 adult subjects support the hypothesis (r=.18, p<.05). There was also a trend for married women who were more exposed to the popular romantic media to be less satisfied with their current intimate relationships (r=? .26, p<.10). These results would seem to have significant psychological and social implications.     

CHull as an alternative to AIC and BIC in the context of mixtures of factor analyzers

Mixture analysis is commonly used for clustering objects on the basis of multivariate data. When the data contain a large number of variables, regular mixture analysis may become problematic, because a large number of parameters need to be estimated for each cluster. To tackle this problem, the mixtures-of-factor-analyzers (MFA) model was proposed, which combines clustering with exploratory factor analysis. MFA model selection is rather intricate, as both the number of clusters and the number of underlying factors have to be determined. To this end, the Akaike (AIC) and Bayesian (BIC) information criteria are often used. AIC and BIC try to identify a model that optimally balances model fit and model complexity. In this article, the CHull (Ceulemans & Kiers, 2006) method, which also balances model fit and complexity, is presented as an interesting alternative model selection strategy for MFA. In an extensive simulation study, the performances of AIC, BIC, and CHull were compared. AIC performs poorly and systematically selects overly complex models, whereas BIC performs slightly better than CHull when considering the best model only. However, when taking model selection uncertainty into account by looking at the first three models retained, CHull outperforms BIC. This especially holds in more complex, and thus more realistic, situations (e.g., more clusters, factors, noise in the data, and overlap among clusters).     

Ethical social justice: Do the ends justify the means?

This article offers an ethical decision‐making model, informed by community psychology values, as a means for guiding psychologists when engaging in social justice‐oriented work. The applicability of this model is demonstrated through a case analysis elucidating how America's psychologists individually and collectively arrived at the decision to endorse torture—ostensibly as a means for preventing terrorism. Critics have wondered how the American Psychological Association succumbed to these involvements, and how to prevent such ethical lapses in the future. Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association's ethical codes fail to provide explicit guidance for psychologists' involvement in social justice work that impacts communities and systems. To address this gap, we present a values‐driven, ethical decision‐making framework that may be used to guide psychologists' future practices. This framework infuses fundamental community psychology values (i.e., caring and compassion; health; self‐determination and participation, human diversity, social justice; and critical reflexivity) into a 9‐step model.