Examining the Effects of Exercise on Pattern Separation and the Moderating Effects of Mood Symptoms

Aerobic exercise has broad cognitive benefits. One target of interest is enhanced memory. The present study explored pattern separation as a specific memory process that could be sensitive to acute and regular exercise and clinically significant for disorders (e.g., depression) characterized by cognitive-affective deficits and hippocampal impairment. In a within-subjects design, participants (N = 69) attended two visits during which they repeated a behavioral pattern separation task at rest and after an activity (cycling, stretching). Regular exercise habits, demographics, mood and anxiety symptoms, and recognition memory capacity were also measured. More regular exercise predicted better resting pattern separation, t(62) = 2.13, b = 1.74, p = .037. Age moderated this effect, t(61) = 2.35, b = .25, p = .02; exercise most strongly predicted performance among middle-age participants. There was no main effect of activity condition on post-activity performance, t(61) = .67, p = .51. However, with significant heterogeneity in reported mood symptoms and regular exercise habits, there was a three-way interaction between condition, regular exercise, and depression, t(55) = 2.08, b = .22, p = .04. Relative to stretching, cycling appears to have enhanced the benefit of regular exercise for pattern separation performance; however, this was evident among participants with mild to no symptoms of depression, but absent among participants with moderate to severe symptoms. Results have implications for how exercise might protect against declines in pattern separation. Future research should explore exercise’s potential as a prevention tool or early intervention for pattern separation and related clinical outcomes.     

Forgetting unwanted memories: directed forgetting and thought suppression methods

Experimental psychopathologists have tested hypotheses regarding mechanisms that ought to be operative if victims possess skills for forgetting material related to trauma. In this article, we review research on directed forgetting and thought suppression paradigms, concentrating on laboratory studies involving attempts by individuals reporting trauma histories to forget emotionally negative material. Most studies have shown that trauma survivors, especially those with post-traumatic stress disorder, are characterized by a breakdown in the ability to forget disturbing material. Studies on individuals reporting repressed or recovered memories of trauma have not confirmed predictions regarding heightened forgetting skills for trauma-related words. However, recent research on suppressing disturbing autobiographical memories suggests that people who report spontaneously recalling childhood abuse outside of psychotherapy may, indeed, possess skills for not thinking about disturbing material.     

Panic and posttraumatic stress disorder: implications for culture, risk, and treatment

The articles in this special series reflect productive cross-fertilization between the fields of panic disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. The purpose of this commentary is to elucidate the implications of this research for the broader themes of culture, risk factors, and treatment.     

Effects of level of academic training on client-perceived rapport and use of verbal response modes in counselling dyads

The Standardized Client procedure was used with 22 fifth-year counselling psychology trainees in 1 -hour interviews to assess the impact of counsellor verbal response modes upon client-perceived rapport in 1-minute segments collected during the entire interviews. In addition, the effects of level of academic training on client-perceived rapport and verbal response mode usage were investigated via comparisons with previous data collected from 10 fourth-year counselling psychology trainees. Data indicated that the higher level trainees produced higher mean levels of client-perceived rapport per minute than the lower level trainees, and that there were also different distributions of verbal response mode usage across rapport ratings for the two trainee groups. Implications for training programmes are discussed.     

The preparedness theory of phobias and human safety-signal conditioning

Seligman's preparedness theory of phobias implies that fear-relevant stimuli are contraprepared for safety-signal conditioning. This means that it should be very difficult to establish a fear-relevant stimulus as a safety-signal in nonphobic subjects. This hypothesis was tested in an electrodermal conditioning experiment with a picture of a snake serving as the fear-relevant CS and a picture of a flower serving as the fear-irrelevant CS. College students received discrimination training designed to establish the snake and the flower as safety-signals by nonreinforcing each in compound with a fear-eliciting CS. Although both the snake and the flower became conditioned safety-signals, neither stimulus showed greater safety-signal properties than the other. The results are inconsistent with predictions from preparedness theory.     

Predicting danger: the nature, consequences, and neural mechanisms of predictive fear learning

The ability to detect and learn about the predictive relations existing between events in the world is essential for adaptive behavior. It allows us to use past events to predict the future and to adjust our behavior accordingly. Pavlovian fear conditioning allows anticipation of sources of danger in the environment. It guides attention away from poorer predictors toward better predictors of danger and elicits defensive behavior appropriate to these threats. This article reviews the differences between learning about predictive relations and learning about contiguous relations in Pavlovian fear conditioning. It then describes behavioral approaches to the study of these differences and to the examination of subtle variations in the nature and consequences of predictive learning. Finally, it reviews recent data from rodent and human studies that have begun to identify the neural mechanisms for direct and indirect predictive fear learning.     

Anxiety sensitivity and history of panic as predictors of response to hyperventilation

In this study, we examined the effects of anxiety sensitivity on the response to hyperventilation in college students with and without a history of spontaneous panic attacks. Reiss et al.'s (Behav. Res. Ther. 24, 1-8, 1986) Anxiety Sensitivity Index and Norton et al.'s (Behav. Ther. 17, 239-252, 1986) Panic Attack Questionnaire were used to select Ss. Following five min of voluntary hyperventilation, high anxiety sensitivity Ss reported more anxiety and more hyperventilation sensations than did low anxiety sensitivity Ss. A history of panic was only associated with enhanced responding to hyperventilation in Ss with high anxiety sensitivity; low anxiety sensitivity Ss who had experience with panic were no more responsive than low anxiety sensitivity Ss who had never had a panic attack. These findings suggest that high anxiety sensitivity may be a crucial determinant of panic attacks provoked by biological challenges (e.g. hyperventilation, sodium lactate infusion).     

On "stress-induced recovery of fears and phobias"

Jacobs and Nadel (1985) proposed a neurobiological theory to explain the etiology of phobias. Their theory, however, is based on questionable assumptions about clinical fears. The present article is a critique of these assumptions.     

A Pilot Study of a Family History Risk Assessment Tool for Cardiovascular Disease

This study evaluated the effectiveness of using a family history questionnaire to ascertain patients and families at-risk for inherited cardiovascular disease. A questionnaire composed of 21 questions was developed based on the experience of a cardiovascular genetic counselor. This questionnaire was administered to 39 patients at a University-based cardiology practice reflecting general and specialized aspects of cardiovascular medicine. Using the number and degree of relatedness of relatives reported and limited age of onset information participants were ranked into three familial risk categories. Thirty-nine patients participated in this pilot study. Of the 39 patients, six Mendelian diseases were identified. All individuals surveyed in this study were found to be at high and/or moderate risk for at least one disease based on the family history questionnaire. Twenty-five out of 39 participants (64.1%) were found to be at high risk for at least one cardiovascular disease, and thirty-three out of 39 participants (84.6%) were found to be at moderate risk for at least one disease. A family history of arrhythmia disorders, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease and diabetes were more likely to be associated with a personal history in family histories of both moderate and high risk. Family history questionnaires in cardiology clinics can be a cost-effective tool for identifying patients and families who are in the greatest need of genetic evaluation and genetic counseling services.