Phenomenology of Early Childhood Onset Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

This paper describes the phenomenological features of early childhood onset obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD; defined as children meeting DSM-IV criteria for OCD with age of onset <8 years). Fifty-eight children (ages 4–8) were included in the sample. OCD and comorbid diagnoses were determined by structured interview, and OCD severity was measured using the Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS). Mean age of OCD onset was almost five, and mean age of presentation was between 6 and 7. Mean symptom severity was in the moderately severe range. Comorbidity and family history of OCD were common. Contamination and aggressive/catastrophic obsessions and washing and checking compulsions were endorsed most frequently. Results indicate that early childhood onset OCD may have a lower boy to girl ratio and lower rates of depressive disorders, but may be similar to later childhood onset OCD in terms of OCD symptom presentation and severity.     

Natalie Deprez: Transcendence et incarnation: Le statut de l'intersubectivite comme alterite a soi chez Husserl

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The relation of prosocial behavior to the development of aggression and psychopathology

The development of prosocial behavior is traced from middle childhood to adulthood in a 22-year longitudinal study of 800 children first seen at age 8 and is compared to the development of aggression over the same period. Prosocial behavior and aggression seem to represent opposite ends of a single dimension of behavior since they are consistently negatively related to each other and relate in opposite ways to correlated variables both synchronously and over time. Both are stable forms of behavior with good predictability over the time span studied and both are related to the quality of the parent-child relationship. The most important deterrent to the development of antisocial behavior and the encouragement of prosocial behavior is probably a close identification between the child and his/her parents.     

Hypnotic enhancement of cognitive-behavioral interventions for pain: an analogue treatment study.

Recent meta-analyses have shown that adding hypnosis enhances the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. This hypnotic enhancement effect was evaluated in the analogue treatment of pain. Individuals scoring in the high (n = 135) and low (n = 150) ranges of hypnotic suggestibility were randomly assigned to 1 of 6 conditions: Stress Inoculation Training, the same treatment provided hypnotically, nonhypnotic analgesia suggestions, hypnotic analgesia suggestions, a hypnotic induction treatment, or a control condition. The 5 analogue treatments reduced experimental pain more than the control condition, but were not different from one another. Under circumstances optimized to detect an enhancement effect, neither Stress Inoculation Training nor analgesia suggestions produced more relief when delivered in a hypnotic context than identical treatments provided nonhypnotically.     

An examination of the assumptions in the demand characteristics thesis: With special reference to the Velten mood induction procedure

We examine the assumptions that are generally made when it is argued that a set of experimental findings is due to the subjects' compliance to demand characteristics. There is little evidence supporting many of these assumptions: that many experimental subjects disbelieve the cover story given them, that they are eager to search for clues revealing the study's actual purpose, that they are highly sophisticated in making inferences on the basis of any cues they detect, and that they are motivated to confirm the experimenter's hypothesis, whether to aid science or to make their participation meaningful. Our argument is applied to studies contending that results obtained with the Velten mood induction procedure are substantially affected by demand compliance. In particular, we question an assumption often made by these studies and point out the following: A demonstration that subjects can accurately mimic the reactions of participants given the Velten statements when they are explicitly asked to do so, or when they are instructed how to simulate these reactions, does not necessarily mean that subjects will voluntarily engage in such accurate play-acting when they are not asked to engage in this make-believe. Research has also noted that a number of Velten-induced reactions are probably too subtle to have been deliberately faked.     

Pastoral care and AIDS: Assessing the stress and satisfaction from caring for persons with AIDS

Members from religious communities in New York City (17 men, 8 women) who volunteer pastoral care to persons with AIDS completed and returned through the mail the (AIDS) Caregiver Scale and the Attitudes toward AIDS Scale. Results indicated that satisfaction from providing care was related to pastoral training, an understanding of the spiritual nature of death, and a positive attitude toward persons with AIDS. Self-reported stress from providing care was inversely related to pastoral training to deal with death. The pastoral volunteers also reported greater satisfaction and lower stress from caregiving than volunteer buddies from upstate New York.     

Self-concept and attraction for similar and dissimilar others.

The present study investigated the role of self-concept as a moderator of the similarity-attraction relationship described by Byrne. Subjects conducted face-to-face interviews with confederates who played roles as job applicants. Similarity-dissimilarity was manipulated by the confederate roles as well as by the information given the subjects in accordance with the procedures described by Byrne. The hypothesis was tested and confirmed that persons with favorable self-concepts would be more attracted to others with similar attitudes than to others with dissimilar attitudes. Persons with negative self-concepts did not show a preference for similar others. It was suggested that earlier studies in this area suffered from methodological flaws and did not constitute an adequate test of the hypothesis. Suggestions for future work in the area were given.     

Partial reinforcement effects in classical aversive conditioning in rabbits and human beings.

The partial reinforcement extinction effect (the PREE) in classical aversive conditioning was investigated in 2 experiments. In the first, the nictitating membrane responses of 120 rabbits were conditioned at a 250-msec. interstimulus interval (ISI) under continuous reinforcement, partial reinforcement with the unconditioned stimulus (US) omitted (Group PO), or partial reinforcement with the US delayed to 1,500 msec. (Group PD). These 3 groups were factorially extinguished under US-Omitted, US-Unpaired, or US-Delayed extinction regimens. A significant PREE was obtained, but only for PO training and US-Omitted extinction. The second experiment, employing human subjects in a masked eye blink conditioning task, produced parallel results. A general discrimination view of the classical PREE seems applicable, but one in which neither cognitive factors nor intertrial conditioning of reinforcement aftereffects play a significant role.