Strategies used with intrusive thoughts: a comparison of OCD patients with anxious and community controls

Models of intrusive thoughts attribute a key role to strategies used by people to cope with their unwanted cognitions. In an extension of previous work, the authors conducted structured interviews with 38 people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, 38 people with another anxiety disorder, and 19 healthy volunteers. The interview identified the repertoire of strategies used with the participant's most troubling thought. The 2 clinical groups reported significantly more strategies than the nonclinical group. The clinical groups also reported significantly greater intensity of the thought and their emotional response and lower efficacy for the strategies. People with OCD reported a significantly higher proportion of strategies that were specifically linked to the thought content (as distinct from nonspecific strategies that were only linked sequentially in time). The results identify both common and differential characteristics of intrusive cognition in anxiety disorders.     

Defining clinically significant changes in the treatment of child stutterers.

This study established a clinically significant criterion to evaluate outcomes of children's stuttering therapy. 30 stutterers, ages 6 to 15 years, and 30 non-stutterers served as subjects. Speech samples were recorded and the percentage of stuttered syllables and rate of speech analyzed. According to Jacobson and Revenstorf's procedure, 3% of stuttered syllables and 160 syllables per minute should become the target behaviors in the treatment of children's stuttering.     

Responsible gambling tools: pop-up messages and pauses on video lottery terminals

The authors examined the effect of messages and pauses, presented on video lottery terminal screens, on erroneous beliefs and persistence to play. At posttest, the strength of erroneous beliefs was lower for participants who received messages conveying information about randomness in gambling as compared to those who received pauses. Pauses also diminished the strength of erroneous beliefs, and there was no difference between the effects of pauses and messages on the number of games played. The authors discuss these results in terms of the use of messages and pauses on video lottery terminals as a strategy for promoting responsible gambling.     

Worry: daily self-report in clinical and non-clinical populations

The present study establishes an ecologically-valid point of reference for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) treatment outcome studies. Although worry is the main diagnostic criterion for GAD, it is also a common and everyday cognition. Few studies have investigated the normal manifestation of worry in a non-clinical population. For this research, time spent worrying and the tendency to worry were measured in a non-clinical sample (n = 36), where GAD was screened-out, and results were compared to those obtained from a GAD sample (n = 60). Participants recorded the time spent worrying in self-monitoring notebooks for two consecutive weeks and completed the French version of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ). It was found that the non-GAD group reported less time spent worrying on a daily basis as well as a lower tendency to worry than the GAD group. Results are discussed in terms of treatment implications.     

Development of action monitoring through adolescence into adulthood: ERP and source localization

In this study we examined the development of three action monitoring event-related potentials (ERPs) - the error-related negativity (ERN/Ne), error positivity (P(E)) and the N2 - and estimated their neural sources. These ERPs were recorded during a flanker task in the following groups: early adolescents (mean age = 12 years), late adolescents (mean age = 16 years), and adults (mean age = 29 years). The amplitudes of the ERN/Ne and N2 were greater in the adult and late adolescent groups than in the early adolescent group. Both of these components had neural sources in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Although P(E) was present across groups, P(E) amplitude was greater in the late adolescent group compared to the adult group and also had neural sources in the ACC. ERN/Ne amplitude was related to post-error slowing across age groups; it was related to task performance only in the adult group. These findings are discussed in light of the role of the maturation of the ACC in the development of action monitoring processes.     

Parental coping socialization is associated with healthy and anxious early‐adolescents’ neural and real‐world response to threat

The ways parents socialize their adolescents to cope with anxiety (i.e., coping socialization) may be instrumental in the development of threat processing and coping responses. Coping socialization may be important for anxious adolescents, as they show altered neural threat processing and over reliance on disengaged coping (e.g., avoidance and distraction), which can maintain anxiety. We investigated whether coping socialization was associated with anxious and healthy adolescents’ neural response to threat, and whether neural activation was associated with disengaged coping. Healthy and clinically anxious early adolescents (N = 120; M = 11.46 years; 71 girls) and a parent engaged in interactions designed to elicit adolescents’ anxiety and parents’ response to adolescents’ anxiety. Parents’ use of reframing and problem solving statements was coded to measure coping socialization. In a subsequent visit, we assessed adolescents’ neural response to threat words during a neuroimaging task. Adolescents’ disengaged coping was measured using ecological momentary assessment. Greater coping socialization was associated with lower anterior insula and perigenual cingulate activation in healthy adolescents and higher activation in anxious adolescents. Coping socialization was indirectly associated with less disengaged coping for anxious adolescents through neural activation. Findings suggest that associations between coping socialization and early adolescents’ neural response to threat differ depending on clinical status and have implications for anxious adolescents’ coping.     

CARACTÉRISTIQUES PSYCHOLOGIQUES DE LA PRISE DE RISQUE MONÉTAIRE DES JOUEURS ET DES NON-JOUEURS À LA ROULETTE*

This study compares different dimensions of the personality, the perception of control and risk-taking behavior of gamblers and non-gamblers exposed to American roulette. The analyses of the data revealed that no significant differences emerged among the two groups on personality or perception of control. Although gamblers started the game by stacking more money than non-gamblers, the latter rapidly bet as much as the regular gamblers. Furthermore, risk-taking behavior increased as the game progressed. The practical implications of the data are discussed in relation to the psychology of gambling.