Comparison of Prolonged Exposure (PE) Coach to Treatment as Usual: A Case Series With Two Active Duty Soldiers

PE Coach is a mobile application (app) designed as a treatment companion to support patient and provider work during prolonged exposure (PE), a first-line treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. Little research exists about patients’ and providers’ reactions to mobile apps in the context of psychotherapy. The present study examined PE Coach with 2 soldiers to assess usability and satisfaction with the app. Soldiers completed 8 sessions of PE and used PE Coach during 4 of those sessions. Soldiers rated the PE Coach positively and reported higher levels of satisfaction during PE with PE Coach as compared with PE alone. Authors discuss their clinical observations from using PE Coach. The soldier and provider experiences demonstrate the potential value of PE Coach in enhancing treatment engagement and support the value of future research exploring mobile computing platforms to support evidence-based treatments, in general.     

Social Freezing in Medical Practice. Experiences and Attitudes of Gynecologists in Germany

Surveys of the German public have revealed a high acceptance of social freezing, i.e. oocyte conservation without medical indication. Up to now, there are no investigations available on the experiences and attitudes of health professionals towards social freezing. Between August 2015 and January 2016, we surveyed gynecologists Germany-wide on the topic social freezing. Five gynecologists specialized in reproductive medicine and five office-based gynecologists in standard care were chosen for the survey. The survey was conducted with an explorative, qualitative research design. The demand for social freezing in Germany is low. With regard to their fertility age, most women attend consultations too late, they have only little previous knowledge and false expectations. The gynecologists consider it the duty of society and politics to provide for the compatibility of family and work. They relate late parenthood to disadvantages primarily for the children. A majority of the gynecologists interviewed tend to advise natural reproduction. Social freezing is often mistaken as a kind of fertility insurance. Thus, it is necessary that physicians inform women early about the possibilities and limitations of social freezing. In the first place, social freezing is not a medical or medical-ethical topic. Women consider the method as a possibility to ensure the compatibility of family and work. This compatibility should be mostly perceived as a political topic. It cannot be a medical task to solve this issue. In fact, a debate in society as a whole is necessary that includes all relevant actors.     

Discrimination Against Vegans

There are many circumstances in which vegans are treated or considered worse than nonvegans, both in the private and the public sphere, either due to the presence of a bias against them (‘vegaphobia’) or for structural reasons. For instance, vegans sometimes suffer harassment, have issues at their workplace, or find little vegan food available. In many cases they are forced to contribute to, or to participate in, animal exploitation against their will when states render it illegitimate to oppose or refuse to support some uses of animals. For the most part this remains socially invisible. Vegans, however, often recognize this as a form of discrimination against them. But they seldom campaign against it, as they regard it as a consequence of another and more important discrimination, i.e. speciesist discrimination against nonhuman animals. If this is correct, discrimination against vegans can be characterized as a form of second-order discrimination, that is, discrimination against those who oppose another (first-order) form of discrimination. If speciesism really is unjustified and discriminatory, then discrimination against vegans will always be discriminatory and unjustified too. But even if our current attitudes towards animals were justified there would be strong reasons to claim that vegans do suffer several forms of private and public discrimination that are unjustified.     

The structure of affective action representations: temporal binding of affective response codes

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that preparing an action with a specific affective connotation involves the binding of this action to an affective code reflecting this connotation. This integration into an action plan should lead to a temporary occupation of the affective code, which should impair the concurrent representation of affectively congruent events, such as the planning of another action with the same valence. This hypothesis was tested with a dual-task setup that required a speeded choice between approach- and avoidance-type lever movements after having planned and before having executed an evaluative button press. In line with the code-occupation hypothesis, slower lever movements were observed when the lever movement was affectively compatible with the prepared evaluative button press than when the two actions were affectively incompatible. Lever movements related to approach and avoidance and evaluative button presses thus seem to share a code that represents affective meaning. A model of affective action control that is based on the theory of event coding is discussed.     

Structural model of acculturation attitudes and related psychosocial variables: Empirical evidence in native Spaniards

This work falls within the framework of the study of acculturation processes of natives and immigrants. Its goal is to test an explanatory multi‐group model of natives' acculturation attitudes as a function of diverse psychosocial variables: Prejudice and natives' appraisal of their own culture (in a direct way) and inter‐group contact and perceived inter‐group similarity (in an indirect way). Participants were 499 Spaniards surveyed for their attitude towards Romanian immigrants and 493 towards Ecuadorian immigrants. The indicators used took into account three socio‐cultural spheres: peripheral, intermediate and central areas. This multi‐group model shows an adequate fit to the data.     

Social identity and the transition to entrepreneurship: The role of group identification with workplace peers

What role does social identity play in the transition from employed work to entrepreneurship? It was expected that social identity affects the cognitive processes that, according to the theory of planned behavior (TPB), underlie the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. Focusing on academic scientists' intentions to commercialize research knowledge, we investigated social identity (scientists' group identification with their workplace peers in academia) as a moderator in the TPB model. Our hypotheses were tested in a sample of 488 German scientists. The data revealed that entrepreneurial intentions were predicted by attitude, social norms, and perceived control and that group identification was negatively associated with perceived control. Multi-group structural equation modeling further showed that group identification moderated the TPB-intention link. Scientists with low group identification based their entrepreneurial intentions not so much on social norms and attitudes but on their self-initiative and control beliefs. Among scientists with high group identification, in turn, entrepreneurial intentions were mainly a function of social norms. These results, in sum, illustrate the long-neglected importance of identification with, and social cohesion within, peer groups at the workplace for the transition to entrepreneurship.     

Neurocognition in schizophrenia: a study of the productivity and visibility of Spanish authors

This paper provides a map of the scientific productivity of authors affiliated to a Spanish institution and who have addressed one of the most important current topics in schizophrenia: The study of cognitive performance. A search of the Web of Science yielded 125 articles that met the inclusion criteria. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of scientific productivity, we examine several bibliometric indicators, concerning both productivity and impact or visibility. The analysis also focuses on qualitative aspects of key theoretical importance, such as the kinds of cognitive functions that are most often assessed and the tests most widely used to evaluate them in clinical practice. The study shows that interest in the subject of cognitive function in schizophrenia has increased considerably in Spain since the beginning of this century. The results also highlight the need to standardize the type of tests to be used in the cognitive assessment of patients with schizophrenia.     

Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the self-report Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire -4+ (PDQ-4+) in psychiatric outpatients

We examined the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the self-report Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4+ (PDQ-4+) in a sample of 437 psychiatric outpatients. Psychometric properties were assessed through internal consistency analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and concurrent validity. Results indicate that the Spanish version of the PDQ-4+ has moderate internal consistency, which was acceptable for 7 of the 12 self-report scales. The factor structure roughly replicated the DSM-IV clusters. The presence of Personality Disorders was associated with the character dimensions of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI).