Mental Health and Incarcerated Youth. I: Prevalence and Nature of Psychopathology

The incarceration of mentally ill youth is a serious problem not receiving the same attention as in adults. In this study, we examine the prevalence of psychopathology and level of behavioral symptomatology in incarcerated youth versus youth receiving community mental health services or hospitalization. We randomly recruited youth from middle South Carolina served by a local CMHC (n = 60), youth served by the state adolescent inpatient program (n = 50), and youth in the S.C. Dept. of Juvenile Justice facilities from the same region (n = 75). We used the DISC-PC 2.3 to evaluate DSM-III-R diagnoses and the CBCL and YSR to evaluate behavioral symptomatology. On the DISC, incarcerated youth had significantly higher mean number of diagnoses and symptoms than CMHC youth, but lower numbers than hospitalized youth. Level of caseness (at least one diagnosis) was 86% in hospital youth, 72% in incarcerated youth, and 60% in CMHC youth. The groups differed in CBCL mean total T, internalizing T, and externalizing T scores as well as mean YSR internalizing T scores. Our results indicate the comparability in level of psychopathology in incarcerated and community-treated populations of youth, and the need to develop diversionary programs to prevent the entry of such youth into the juvenile justice system.     

Adolescent substance use disorders: findings from a 14-year follow-up of speech/language-impaired and control children.

Intervening on the development of adolescent addiction requires an understanding of the role of precursors. In a community sample of youth with and without early childhood speech/language (S/L) impairments, 12.7% of participants had a substance use disorder (SUD). Among these participants, 42.0% met criteria for more than 1 SUD. Interestingly, rates of SUDs did not differ by S/L status. However, S/L-impaired participants did show greater psychiatric comorbidity and poorer functioning. A total of 80% of S/L participants with SUDs had a concurrent diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, compared with 43.8% of SUDs controls. In a logistic regression analysis, we found age 5 mother-rated problem behavior scores and an interaction between S/L status and teacher-rated conduct problem scores were predictive of SUDs. High conduct scores were predictive of SUDs development among control participants but not among S/L-impaired participants. First substance use and initial SUDs symptoms suggest that a window of opportunity exists to reach these troubled young people before they spiral into addiction.     

Hallucinations in schizophrenia, sensory impairment, and brain disease: a unifying model

Based on recent insight into the thalamocortical system and its role in perception and conscious experience, a unified pathophysiological framework for hallucinations in neurological and psychiatric conditions is proposed, which integrates previously unrelated neurobiological and psychological findings. Gamma-frequency rhythms of discharge activity from thalamic and cortical neurons are facilitated by cholinergic arousal and resonate in networks of thalamocortical circuits, thereby transiently forming assemblies of coherent gamma oscillations under constraints of afferent sensory input and prefrontal attentional mechanisms. If perception is based on synchronisation of intrinsic gamma activity in the thalamocortical system, then sensory input to specific thalamic nuclei may merely play a constraining role. Hallucinations can be regarded as underconstrained perceptions that arise when the impact of sensory input on activation of thalamocortical circuits and synchronisation of thalamocortical gamma activity is reduced. In conditions that are accompanied by hallucinations, factors such as cortical hyperexcitability, cortical attentional mechanisms, hyperarousal, increased noise in specific thalamic nuclei, and random sensory input to specific thalamic nuclei may, to a varying degree, contribute to underconstrained activation of thalamocortical circuits. The reticular thalamic nucleus plays an important role in suppressing random activity of relay cells in specific thalamic nuclei, and its dysfunction may be implicated in the biological vulnerability to hallucinations in schizophrenia. Combined with general activation during cholinergic arousal, this leads to excessive disinhibition in specific thalamic nuclei, which may allow cortical attentional mechanisms to recruit thalamic relay cells into resonant assemblies of gamma oscillations, regardless of their actual sensory input, thereby producing an underconstrained perceptual experience.     

Tightness shifts in the U.S. and China: Implications of tightening or loosening norms during the coronavirus pandemic

Emergent research identifies cultural tightness-looseness as an important factor for understanding cross-national outcome differences during the coronavirus pandemic. Because perceived tightness-looseness can be measured as an individual-level difference rather than a nation-level difference, and because tightness-looseness may shift during large-scale crises, we investigated whether such shifts occurred early in the coronavirus pandemic in both China (a relatively tight nation, n = 3642) and the U.S. (a relatively loose nation, n = 3583) across three cohorts. Tightness increased across cohorts in China and reduced across cohorts in the U.S. These changes transmitted corresponding indirect effects whereby compliance and institutional trust (scientific and government) about the pandemic were increased in China across cohorts, but decreased in the U.S. across cohorts. These patterns extend advice that national governments can increase compliance and trust via “tightening” by cautioning against norm-setters signaling the reverse (that norms about compliance are loose) given the outcomes observed in the U.S. samples.     

Effects of training with added difficulties on RADAR detection

Three experiments simulating military RADAR detection addressed a training difficulty hypothesis (training with difficulty promotes superior later testing performance) and a procedural reinstatement hypothesis (test performance improves when training conditions match test conditions). Training and testing were separated by 1 week. Participants detected targets (either alphanumeric characters or vehicle pictures) occurring among distractors. Two secondary tasks were used to increase difficulty (a concurrent, irrelevant tone‐counting task and a sequential, relevant action‐firing response). In Experiment 1 , involving alphanumeric targets with rapid displays, tone counting during training degraded test performance. In Experiment 2, involving vehicle targets with both sources of difficulty and slower presentation times, training under relevant difficulty aided test accuracy. In Experiment 3, involving vehicle targets and action firing with slow presentation times, test accuracy tended to be worst when neither training nor testing involved difficult conditions. These results show boundary conditions for the training difficulty and procedural reinstatement hypotheses. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Summary knowledge of results for skill acquisition: support for the guidance hypothesis

Summary knowledge of results (KR) involves the presentation KR for each of a set of trials (e.g., 10) only after the last trial in the set has been completed. Earlier, Lavery (1962) showed that, relative to providing KR after each trial, a 20-trial summary KR was detrimental to performance in a practice phase with KR present but was beneficial for a no-KR retention test. Using a relatively simple ballistic-timing task, we examined summary lengths of 1 (essentially KR after every trial), 5, 10, and 15 trials, searching for an inverted-U relationship between summary length and retention performance as predicated by a guidance hypothesis for KR. During acquisition when KR was present and being manipulated, all groups showed improvements in performance across practice, while increased summary lengths generally depressed performance. However, in a delayed no-KR retention test, there was an inverse relation between the summary length in acquisition and absolute constant error on the retention test. A guidance hypothesis is favored to explain how, relative to immediate KR, long KR summaries can provide detrimental effects in acquisition while enhancing retention performance.     

Unawareness of impaired face recognition

We report investigations of the face processing abilities of SP, a right-handed woman who had suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage from a right middle cerebral artery aneurysm. Although she could correctly assign visual stimuli to the 'face' category without difficulty, SP performed poorly on all other face processing, tasks, including 'closure' (Mooney faces), perception of facial expression, unfamiliar face matching, and identification of familiar faces. Identification of familiar people from nonfacial cues (names) remained relatively well-preserved, but severe impairments were evident on all face recognition tasks. Her errors mostly involved either failures to find a face familiar at all, or misidentification as another familiar person. In face-name learning tasks, there was evidence of 'covert' recognition of faces she failed to recognize overtly. SP's face processing impairment remained stable across a 20-month period of investigation, yet throughout this period she did not think that she had any problems in face recognition, and continued to show lack of insight into this impairment even when directly confronted with its consequences on formal testing. In contrast, SP showed adequate insight into other physical and cognitive impairments produced by her illness, including poor memory, hemiplegia, and hemianopia. We propose that her lack of insight into her face recognition problems involves a deficit-specific anosognosia, resulting from impairment of domain-specific monitoring abilities.