Does a rat release a soaked conspecific due to empathy?

In Experiment 1, rats choosing in an E maze preferred to release a rat standing in a pool of water to dry ground over a rat already standing on dry ground. Five additional experiments showed that the choosing rat’s preference for releasing the wet rat was maintained by two separable outcomes: (1) the social contact offered by the released rat and (2) the reinforcing value of proximity to a pool of water. These results call into question Sato et al.’s (Anim Cogn 18:1039–1047, 2015) claim to have demonstrated that a rat’s releasing of a wet rat to dry ground is empathically motivated.     

Social Anxiety and Specificity of Positive Alcohol Expectancies: Preliminary Findings

This preliminary study examined the relationship between social anxiety and specificity of positive alcohol outcome expectancies (AOE) in a community sample of 62 drinking adults. The sample was divided into subsets of socially anxious (n = 17) and nonsocially anxious (n = 45) men and women. The Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire (DEQ) and Alcohol Expectancies in Social Evaluative Situations Scale (AESES) were used to determine if groups differed in the general positive AOE they hold, or only in AOE specific to social situations. ANOVAs revealed that socially anxious individuals had greater positive AOE specific to social situations (DEQ—Assertion scale and AESES) than nonsocially anxious individuals, with no differences in other positive AOE. Partial correlations controlling for social anxiety revealed that AOE specific to social situations correlated with greater drinking and alcohol dependency levels. Findings indicate that identification of AOE specific to social situations may be useful in classifying socially anxious individuals at risk for alcoholism and as a focus of expectancy challenge strategies for individuals with co-occurring social anxiety and drinking problems.     

Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation and behavioral analysis of mouse mutants with altered glucocorticoid or mineralocorticoid receptor function

Corticosteroid receptors are critical for the maintenance of homeostasis after both psychological and physiological stress. To understand the different roles and interactions of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) during stress, it is necessary to dissect the role of corticosteroid signaling at both the system and sub-system level. A variety of GR transgenic mouse lines have recently been used to characterize the role of GR in the CNS as a whole and particularly in the forebrain. We will describe both the behavioral and cellular/molecular implications of disrupting GR function in these animal models and describe the implications of this data for our understanding of normal endocrine function and stress adaptation. MRs in tight epithelia have a long established role in sodium homeostasis. Recently however, evidence has suggested that MRs in the limbic brain also play an important role in psychological stress. Just as with GR, targeted mutations in MR induce a variety of behavioral changes associated with stress adaptation. In this review, we will discuss the implications of this work on MR. Finally, we will discuss the possible interaction between MR and GR and how future work using double mutants (through conventional means or virus based gene alteration) will be needed to more fully understand how signaling through these two steroid receptors provides the adaptive mechanisms to deal with a variety of stressors.     

Latent Trait Modeling with the Common beliefs Survey III: Using Item Response Theory to Evaluate an Irrational Beliefs Inventory

Assessment of irrational beliefs by such measures as the Common Beliefs Survey III (CBS) has traditionally relied upon classical test theory assumptions, in which the properties of specific test items are less important than the total test score as the aggregate of all item responses. An alternative approach using item response theory (IRT) methodology allows one to specify the parameters of difficulty and discrimination for each test item. Difficulty levels of CBS items range along a continuum of irrationality, the implied latent trait measured by responses to the questionnaire as a whole. We evaluated the CBS responses of 605 individuals from clinical and college settings, drawing from current and archival data. The original Likert scale ratings were recoded into dichotomous scores. Fourteen of the 54 items were highly or very highly discriminating in distinguishing respondents with high and low irrationality levels. However, discriminating items exhibited a very narrow range of difficulty; most functioned at a point a little above the halfway mark on the continuum of irrationality. Item characteristic curves and test information curves were very similar for female (n = 424) and male (n = 179) respondents. We derived a 4-item screening test for irrationality from our IRT analyses of the 54 CBS items. Further test development, focused on the selection and scaling of items with a much broader range of difficulty, would facilitate evaluation of the hierarchical structure of irrational beliefs. Portions of this paper were presented at the 39th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Washington, DC, November, 2005.     

A five-year follow-up of patients with borderline pathology of childhood

Borderline pathology of childhood (BPC) may be a precursor of personality disorders. There is a lack of data concerning outcome in adolescence. A group of 59 adolescents, who had been treated as children in a Child Psychiatry Day Hospital five to seven years earlier, was evaluated. Using the child version of the Retrospective Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines, 28 participants had been diagnosed with BPC while the remaining 31 participants who did not have a history of BPC served as the comparison group. The youth and their parents were given a battery of measures assessing current psychopathology and functional status. The group with a history of BPC was more likely than the comparison group to exhibit a combination of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Adolescents with a history of BPC were more impaired than the comparison group on a global measure of functional status. Compared to children with no history of BPC, children diagnosed with BPC are more likely to display poorer functioning as adolescents and continue to be at risk for psychopathology during adolescence. Future directions for research are discussed.     

How content and co‐viewers elicit emotional discomfort in moviegoing experiences: Where does the discomfort come from and how is it handled?

Although watching movies is typically enjoyable, they also can elicit discomfort. The present studies investigated what makes some moviegoing experiences emotionally uncomfortable. Using autobiographical memory (Study 1) and scenarios/vignettes methodology (Study 2), young adults remembered watching a movie that had made them uncomfortable or responded to scenarios about watching a particular type of movie with particular co‐viewers (e.g. violent movie with one's spouse). Movies eliciting discomfort were most often dramas (39%) or comedies (26%). Discomfort most often arose from content, particularly fairly explicit sex or violence, and secondarily from the presence of co‐viewers. Often the two interacted, for example, being uncomfortable watching explicit sex with one's parents. In terms of dealing with the discomfort, women were overall more direct and men more avoidant. A sizable minority was glad they had seen the film, in spite of the discomfort, and was open to seeing it again. Arguing from converging evidence, these different methodologies produced consistent results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Do Interviewers and Children Discuss Individual Occurrences of Alleged Repeated Abuse in Forensic Interviews?

Police interviews (n = 97) with 5‐ to 13‐year‐olds alleging multiple incidents of sexual abuse were examined to determine how interviewers elicited and children recounted specific instances of abuse. Coders assessed the labels for individual occurrences that arose in interviews, recording who generated them, how they were used and other devices to aid particularisation such as the use of episodic and generic language. Interviewers used significantly more temporal labels than did children. With age, children were more likely to generate labels themselves, and most children generated at least one label. In 66% of the cases, interviewers ignored or replaced children's labels, and when they did so, children reported proportionately fewer episodic details. Children were highly responsive to the interviewers' language style. Results indicate that appropriately trained interviewers can help children of all ages to provide the specific details often necessary to ensure successful prosecution. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.