What do We Know about Family Interventions for Psychosis at the Process Level? A Systematic Review

The evidence regarding effectiveness of family interventions for psychosis (FIP) is strong and consistent. However, there is a gap in the research on the process of these interventions, and little is known about their active ingredients. This review aims to identify the active ingredients of FIP. We conducted a systematic literature review, focusing on qualitative research, and analyzed 22 papers in total. We found a single study comprehensively exploring the process of FIP. All other studies focused on particular aspects of process‐related variables. The key elements of FIP seem to be the so‐called “common therapeutic factors”, followed by education about the illness and coping skills training. This review supports the value of a stepped model of intervention according to the needs of the families. However, the evidence reviewed also reveals a gap in the research findings based on the limited research available. FIP are complex, psychosocial interventions with multiple components, and more intensive, qualitative research is needed to establish linkages between process and outcome.     

Perceptual and affective mechanisms in facial expression recognition: An integrative review

Facial expressions of emotion involve a physical component of morphological changes in a face and an affective component conveying information about the expresser’s internal feelings. It remains unresolved how much recognition and discrimination of expressions rely on the perception of morphological patterns or the processing of affective content. This review of research on the role of visual and emotional factors in expression recognition reached three major conclusions. First, behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational measures indicate that basic expressions are reliably recognized and discriminated from one another, albeit the effect may be inflated by the use of prototypical expression stimuli and forced-choice responses. Second, affective content along the dimensions of valence and arousal is extracted early from facial expressions, although this coarse affective representation contributes minimally to categorical recognition of specific expressions. Third, the physical configuration and visual saliency of facial features contribute significantly to expression recognition, with “emotionless” computational models being able to reproduce some of the basic phenomena demonstrated in human observers. We conclude that facial expression recognition, as it has been investigated in conventional laboratory tasks, depends to a greater extent on perceptual than affective information and mechanisms.     

Revisiting letter transpositions within and across morphemic boundaries

Early morphological decomposition of complex words has been supported by evidence showing that the magnitude of masked transposed-letter (TL) priming effects is greater for within-morpheme transpositions than for between-morpheme transpositions. However, these findings have lately been called into question, and a recent article by Sánchez-Gutiérrez and Rastle (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 988–996, 2013) suggested that the above-mentioned interaction could have been the consequence of a false positive (i.e., a Type I error). Considering recent evidence showing that morpho-orthographic interactions are highly sensitive to individual differences in reading skills, we explored whether participants’ averaged reading speeds were responsible for modulating the size of within- versus between-morpheme TL priming effects. A large-scale lexical decision experiment with a set of 420 suffixed Spanish words (N = 80 participants) was run using the masked-priming technique. The results revealed that individual differences modulated the magnitude of the masked TL priming effect between morphemes: Faster readers (but not slower readers) yielded greater TL priming for within- than for between-morpheme transpositions. The present data help reconcile previous divergent data by showing that faster readers revealed a morpho-orthographic interaction, whereas slower readers may rely more on a morphological-processing strategy that is not sensitive to morpho-orthographic interactions.     

Making the Decision to Participate in Predictive Genetic Testing for Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy

This paper describes the experience of predictive genetic testing for Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy in the context of novel gene discovery. Two approaches to making the decision to engage in genetic testing were apparent: the decision to be tested either (a) develops gradually over time or (b) happens so quickly that it is felt as a “fait accompli.” Six key factors that influenced the particular approach taken by the participants were identified: (1) scientific process—available and relevant predictive genetic test; (2) numerous losses or deaths within the family; (3) physical signs and symptoms of disease; (4) gender; (5) sense of relational responsibility or moral obligation to other family members; and (6) family support. This study found that at risk individuals juxtapose scientific knowledge against their experiential knowledge and the six identified factors in order to make the decision to participate in genetic testing. Recommendations include the creation of a relational space within which to provide psychological counselling and assessment for the six identified factors that shape the decision to engage in predictive genetic testing.     

Facial expression recognition in peripheral versus central vision: role of the eyes and the mouth

This study investigated facial expression recognition in peripheral relative to central vision, and the factors accounting for the recognition advantage of some expressions in the visual periphery. Whole faces or only the eyes or the mouth regions were presented for 150 ms, either at fixation or extrafoveally (2.5° or 6°), followed by a backward mask and a probe word. Results indicated that (a) all the basic expressions were recognized above chance level, although performance in peripheral vision was less impaired for happy than for non-happy expressions, (b) the happy face advantage remained when only the mouth region was presented, and (c) the smiling mouth was the most visually salient and most distinctive facial feature of all expressions. This suggests that the saliency and the diagnostic value of the smile account for the advantage in happy face recognition in peripheral vision. Because of saliency, the smiling mouth accrues sensory gain and becomes resistant to visual degradation due to stimulus eccentricity, thus remaining accessible extrafoveally. Because of diagnostic value, the smile provides a distinctive single cue of facial happiness, thus bypassing integration of face parts and reducing susceptibility to breakdown of configural processing in peripheral vision.     

What Makes a Satisfied Immigrant? Host-Country Characteristics and Immigrants’ Life Satisfaction in Eighteen European Countries

Based on the data from six waves of the European Social Survey collected from 18 European countries between 2002 and 2012, we aimed at explaining the variation in immigrants’ life satisfaction across countries, by focusing on host countries’ characteristics. By adopting the multi-level analysis, we examined the national-level traits from three aspects: namely, the climate of immigrant reception, the extent of public goods provision and the level of economic inequality. Our findings suggest that immigrants are likely to be more satisfied in countries that offer more welcoming social settings. However, this association is significant only when the social setting is measured by attitudes of the native-born towards immigrants, rather than by legal immigration regulations and policies. When taking into account the extent to which host country is able to provide public goods, country’s wealth levels seems not to matter for immigrants’ life satisfaction, whereas countries’ levels of human development is associated with an increase in immigrants’ life satisfaction albeit only at the 10% significance level. The role of economic inequality varies with immigrants’ own socio-economic statuses. On average, immigrants are less satisfied with their lives in host countries with higher levels of economic inequality. However, highly educated immigrants tend not to perceive economic inequality of the country as an obstacle of their satisfaction.     

SEM Based CARMA Time Series Modeling for Arbitrary N

This article explains in detail the state space specification and estimation of first and higher-order autoregressive moving-average models in continuous time (CARMA) in an extended structural equation modeling (SEM) context for N = 1 as well as N > 1. To illustrate the approach, simulations will be presented in which a single panel model (T = 41 time points) is estimated for a sample of N = 1,000 individuals as well as for samples of N = 100 and N = 50 individuals, followed by estimating 100 separate models for each of the one-hundred N = 1 cases in the N = 100 sample. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how to test the difference between the full panel model and each N = 1 model by means of a subject-group-reproducibility test. Finally, the proposed analyses will be applied in an empirical example, in which the relationships between mood at work and mood at home are studied in a sample of N = 55 women. All analyses are carried out by ctsem, an R-package for continuous time modeling, interfacing to OpenMx.