Transdiagnostic internet treatment for anxiety and depression: a randomised controlled trial

Disorder-specific cognitive behavioural therapy programs delivered over the internet (iCBT) with clinician guidance are effective at treating specific anxiety disorders and depression. The present study examined the efficacy of a transdiagnostic iCBT protocol to treat three anxiety disorders and/or depression within the same program (the Wellbeing Program). Seventy-seven individuals with a principal diagnosis of major depression, generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and/or social phobia were randomly assigned to a Treatment or Waitlist Control group. Treatment consisted of CBT-based online educational lessons and homework assignments, weekly email or telephone contact from a clinical psychologist, access to a moderated online discussion forum, and automated emails. Eighty one percent of Treatment group participants completed all 8 lessons within the 10 week program. Post-treatment data were collected from 34/37 Treatment group and 35/37 Control group participants, and 3-month follow-up data were collected from 32/37 Treatment group participants. Relative to Controls, Treatment group participants reported significantly reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression as measured by the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales-21 item, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 item, and Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 item scales, with corresponding between-groups effect sizes (Cohen’s d) at post treatment of.56,.58, and.52, respectively. The clinician spent a mean time of 84.76 min (SD = 50.37) per person over the program. Participants rated the procedure as highly acceptable, and gains were sustained at follow-up. These results provide preliminary support for the efficacy of transdiagnostic iCBT in the treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders.     

Prejudicial Expressions in Defense of Adolescent Masculine Identities in Interaction

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the efficacy of a fine-grained, discursive-narrative approach in the investigation of the use of prejudicial expressions in defense of emerging masculine identities in conversational interaction. The processes of masculinity construction by an adolescent, Kev, who used a prejudicial expression to bring a pejorative ‘small’ story to a climax, are examined in detail. Although immediate interlocutor responses were subdued and subtle, an explicit delayed response is followed-up by a repositioning of Kev as an ‘undesirable other,’ to which Kev constructs another small story as a counter-response. It is argued such an interactional approach to prejudice illuminates actors’ social-action goals in real time and could lead to the formulation of more sensitive interventions.     

Associations Between Parental Psychopathic Traits,Parenting, and Adolescent Callous-Unemotional Traits

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., callousness, low empathy, shallow affect) have been conceptualized as a downward extension of the...     

Parameters of Aggressive Behavior in a Treatment-Seeking Sample of Military Personnel: A Secondary Analysis of Three Randomized Controlled Trials of Evidence-Based PTSD Treatments

Aggressive behavior is prevalent among veterans of post-9/11 conflicts who have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, little is known about whether PTSD treatments reduce aggression or the direction of the association between changes in PTSD symptoms and aggression in the context of PTSD treatment. We combined data from three clinical trials of evidence-based PTSD treatment in service members (N = 592) to: (1) examine whether PTSD treatment reduces psychological (e.g., verbal behavior) and physical aggression, and; (2) explore temporal associations between aggressive behavior and PTSD. Both psychological (Estimate = -2.20, SE = 0.07) and physical aggression (Estimate = -0.36, SE = 0.05) were significantly reduced from baseline to posttreatment follow-up. Lagged PTSD symptom reduction was not associated with reduced reports of aggression; however, higher baseline PTSD scores were significantly associated with greater reductions in psychological aggression (exclusively; ß = -0.67, 95% CI = -1.05, -0.30, SE = -3.49). Findings reveal that service members receiving PTSD treatment report substantial collateral changes in psychological aggression over time, particularly for participants with greater PTSD symptom severity. Clinicians should consider cotherapies or alternative ways of targeting physical aggression among service members with PTSD and alternative approaches to reduce psychological aggression among service members with relatively low PTSD symptom severity when considering evidence-based PTSD treatments.     

Predicting eye-movement characteristics across multiple tasks from working memory and executive control

Individual differences in working memory (WM) and executive control are stable, related to cognitive task performance, and clinically predictive. Between-participant differences in eye movements are also highly reliable (Carter & Luke, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2018; Henderson & Luke, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40(4), 1390–1400, 2014). However, little is known about how higher order individual differences in cognition are related to these eye-movement characteristics. In the present study, healthy college-age participants performed several individual difference tasks to measure WM span and executive control. Participants also performed three eye-movement tasks: reading, visual search, and scene viewing. Across all tasks, higher WM scores were related to reduced skewness in fixation duration distributions. In reading, higher WM scores predicted longer saccades. In scene viewing, higher WM scores predicted longer fixations. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Novice chimpanzees cooperate successfully in the presence of experts,but may have limited understanding of the task

Despite many observations of cooperation in nature, laboratory studies often fail to find careful coordination between individuals who are solving a cooperative task. Further, individuals tested are often naïve to cooperative tasks and there has been little exploration of partnerships with mixed expertise. In the current study, we examined acquisition of a cooperative pulling task in a group with both expert (N = 4) and novice (N = 11) chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We used five measures of competence and understanding: (1) success at the task, (2) latency to succeed, (3) efficiency, (4) uncoordinated pulling, and (5) pulling when a partner was present versus absent. We found that novices showed evidence of trial and error learning and developed competence over time, whereas the behavior of experts did not change throughout the course of the study. In addition to looking at patterns over time, we compared the performance of novices in this mixed-expertise group to an earlier study of novices in a group of all-novices. Novices in the mixed-expertise group pulled the same overall amount but for shorter periods of time, leading to higher pulling rates than individuals in the all-novice group. Taken together, these results suggest that learning in the presence of experts led to rapid and frequent success, although not necessarily careful coordination.