Early-Onset Bipolar Spectrum Disorders: Diagnostic Issues

Since the mid 1990s, early-onset bipolar spectrum disorders (BPSDs) have received increased attention in both the popular press and scholarly press. Rates of diagnosis of BPSD in children and adolescents have increased in inpatient, outpatient, and primary care settings. BPSDs remain difficult to diagnose, particularly in youth. The current diagnostic system makes few modifications to accommodate children and adolescents. Researchers in this area have developed specific BPSD definitions that affect the generalizability of their findings to all youth with BPSD. Despite knowledge gains from the research, BPSDs are still difficult to diagnose because clinicians must: (1) consider the impact of the child’s developmental level on symptom presentation (e.g., normative behavior prevalence, environmental limitations on youth behavior, pubertal status, irritability, symptom duration); (2) weigh associated impairment and course of illness (e.g., neurocognitive functioning, failing to meet full DSM criteria, future impairment); and (3) make decisions about appropriate assessment (differentiating BPSD from medical illnesses, medications, drug use, or other psychiatric diagnoses that might better account for symptoms; comorbid disorders; informant characteristics and assessment measures to use). Research findings concerning these challenges and relevant recommendations are offered. Areas for further research to guide clinicians’ assessment of children with early-onset BPSD are highlighted. Principal Investigators and Coinvestigators of Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms (LAMS) Group are listed in Appendix.     

Is self‐esteem a universal need? Evidence from The People's Republic of China

In a provocative article, Heine et al. concluded that self-esteem needs are less important in collectivistic, East Asian countries than in individualistic, Western ones. Their conclusion was based, in part, on evidence that: (i) self-esteem scores are less positively biased in Japan than in Western countries; and that (ii) low self-esteem is less predictive of psychological distress in Japan than in Western countries. The present research examined whether these cultural differences occur in another collectivistic culture: The People's Republic of China. Two meta-analyses were conducted. Study 1 found that, for young and old alike, self-esteem was positively biased, with most participants reporting high levels of self-esteem. Study 2 found that low self-esteem in China is associated with three indicators of psychological distress: depression, anxiety and low subjective well-being. These findings are consistent with results in Western samples and suggest that high self-esteem may indeed be a universal psychological imperative.     

Multiple perceptual strategies used by macaque monkeys for face recognition

Successful integration of individuals in macaque societies suggests that monkeys use fast and efficient perceptual mechanisms to discriminate between conspecifics. Humans and great apes use primarily holistic and configural, but also feature-based, processing for face recognition. The relative contribution of these processes to face recognition in monkeys is not known. We measured face recognition in three monkeys performing a visual paired comparison task. Monkey and humans faces were (1) axially rotated, (2) inverted, (3) high-pass filtered, and (4) low-pass filtered to isolate different face processing strategies. The amount of time spent looking at the eyes, mouth, and other facial features was compared across monkey and human faces for each type of stimulus manipulation. For all monkeys, face recognition, expressed as novelty preference, was intact for monkey faces that were axially rotated or spatially filtered and was supported in general by preferential looking at the eyes, but was impaired for inverted faces in two of the three monkeys. Axially rotated, upright human faces with a full range of spatial frequencies were also recognized, however, the distribution of time spent exploring each facial feature was significantly different compared to monkey faces. No novelty preference, and hence no inferred recognition, was observed for inverted or low-pass filtered human faces. High-pass filtered human faces were recognized, however, the looking pattern on facial features deviated from the pattern observed for monkey faces. Taken together these results indicate large differences in recognition success and in perceptual strategies used by monkeys to recognize humans versus conspecifics. Monkeys use both second-order configural and feature-based processing to recognize the faces of conspecifics, but they use primarily feature-based strategies to recognize human faces.     

The long‐term effects of counselling: The process and mechanisms that contribute to ongoing change from a user perspective

Aims: This qualitative study aimed to expand the limited evidence base about the long‐term effects of psychological therapies.Method: We conducted in‐depth interviews with 15 people, 1–3 years after primary care counselling, to investigate whether they could identify enduring benefits and the mechanisms that brought about and maintained them. From their narratives, we developed a model of the change process of counselling and mechanisms that were perceived as essential to produce lasting benefit. The model conceptualised movement through distinct phases: engagement; exploration of internal and external worlds; consolidation and negotiated ending. Results: Mechanisms integral to sustained impact were: the active engagement of people during and between sessions to work toward their own solutions; and acquisition through the change process of skills which could be further built on after the counselling ended. These enabled ongoing, dynamic change in the way people conducted their lives and relationships. Conclusion: A key concept in securing long‐term benefit was co‐production, both during counselling and in taking ownership of and using the ‘box of skills’ acquired. Support of the model was reinforced through comparison with the experience of three interviewees who reported no long‐term benefit.     

ChoiceKey: A real-time speech recognition program for psychology experiments with a small response set

Psychological experiments often collect choice responses using buttonpresses. However, spoken responses are useful in many cases—for example, when working with special clinical populations, or when a paradigm demands vocalization, or when accurate response time measurements are desired. In these cases, spoken responses are typically collected using a voice key, which usually involves manual coding by experimenters in a tedious and error-prone manner. We describe ChoiceKey, an open-source speech recognition package for MATLAB. It can be optimized by training for small response sets and different speakers. We show ChoiceKey to be reliable with minimal training for most participants in experiments with two different responses. Problems presented by individual differences, and occasional atypical responses, are examined, and extensions to larger response sets are explored. The ChoiceKey source files and instructions may be downloaded as supplemental materials for this article from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

An exploratory study of consumer style: country differences and international segments

• An important consideration for marketers is determining the best approach to take when marketing their product or service across national borders. It has become clear that the answer to this is not as simple as complete standardization or adaptation, and the appropriate approach may be contingent on a complex set of variables. One key aspect of the puzzle relates to an understanding of the attitudes and behaviours of consumers. The current study examines consumer style (variables related to the way people engage in their consumption activities) as an important area of consideration related to international marketing efforts. Consumer style was investigated in three European countries and the US, using data from the DDB Brand Capital Study (a multi‐country survey). Although results showed that country differences are evident on consumption style, a cluster analysis suggests that there were four segments of consumers that transcend country boundaries. The findings add to our knowledge about consumers in these countries and the characteristics of the segments with respect to differing styles of consumption.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of the positive–negative asymmetry effect: in‐group exclusion norm as a mediator of children's evaluations on negative attributes

Two studies were conducted that go beyond previous research by examining when and why children might show intergroup bias in the attribution of positive, but not negative traits (PNAE: the positive–negative asymmetry effect, Mummendey & Otten, 1998, European review of social psychology, Vol. 9). In Study 1 (n = 107) children completed a ‘mixed’ trait attribution task in a dichotomous group context. As predicted there was a developmental trend between 7 and 12 years of age in the PNAE. The 7‐year olds were the only age group not to show the effect. Study 1 also found a quadratic developmental trend in children's national intergroup bias. Study 2 (n = 62) replicated the developmental path of the PNAE found in Study 1 using a wider age range of 6–16 years. This study used a ‘mixed’ list of traits which were not only antonyms and a procedure that made the positive and negative trait dimensions explicitly independent. Significantly, Study 2 found in‐group exclusion norm partially mediated the development of the PNAE. These findings support an account of the positive–negative asymmetry effect based upon normative processes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.