The use of leisure counselling as a therapeutic technique

If leisure is defined as free or unobligated time, then leisure is clearly the category of time expenditure that has the greatest potential for making people healthy and happy but it also has the greatest potential for creating problems. Therefore, educating and counselling people on how to make best use of their free time can have a great impact on the physical and mental health of individuals. The intent of this paper is to explain how leisure counselling can be implemented as a therapeutic technique for the benefit of many different types of people. It is also the intent of this paper to provide those who work as counsellors with information about leisure and leisure counselling so that they can help their clients to improve their lives through leisure. Therefore, this paper examines the contributions that both leisure counselling and leisure education can make in promoting maximal physical and psychological well-being, although the main focus is on leisure counselling. The overall conclusion is that effective leisure counselling services can significantly help to improve the physical and mental well-being of individuals and society in general.     

Increasing access to low‐intensity interventions for childhood anxiety: A pilot study of a guided self‐help program for Scandinavian parents

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for child anxiety. However, access to treatment is limited. It has been suggested that low‐intensity formats of parent‐delivered CBT may improve access to treatment. Our aim was to develop and pilot‐test the acceptability and effect of a low‐intensity therapist‐guided parent‐delivered group program for anxious children (age 7–12 years) adjusted to the Scandinavian culture. The program required 1.5 hours of therapist‐time per family. Mothers, fathers and children reported on revised child anxiety and depression scale (RCADS) at referral, pre‐ and post‐treatment. Mothers and fathers also gave a qualitative account of their experiences. Thirty‐one families were enrolled and only one family dropped out. Mean age of the children was 9 years. Intent‐to‐treat analyses revealed significant reductions in anxiety and depressive symptoms from pre‐ to post‐treatment for all informants. Large effect sizes were found for child anxiety symptoms as reported by mothers and fathers, and for child depressive symptoms as reported by mothers. Medium to large effect sizes was found for the self‐reported anxiety symptoms by the children, and for depressive symptoms reported by both children and fathers. More than 93% of the parents would recommend the program. Results suggest that our program may provide a new approach to improve access to treatment for anxious children in Scandinavia; however, further research must be conducted before firm conclusions can be drawn.     

Disturbed prefrontal and temporal brain function during emotion and cognition interaction in criminal psychopathy

Impaired emotional responsiveness has been revealed as a hallmark of psychopathy. In spite of an increasing database on emotion processing, studies on cognitive function and in particular on the impact of emotion on cognition in psychopathy are rare. We used pictures from the International Affective Picture Set (IAPS) and a Simon Paradigm to address emotion-cognition interaction while functional and structural imaging data were obtained in 12 healthy controls and 10 psychopaths. We found an impaired emotion-cognition interaction in psychopaths that correlated with a changed prefrontal and temporal brain activation. With regard to the temporal cortex, it is shown that structure and function of the right superior temporal gyrus is disturbed in psychopathy, supporting a neurobiological approach to psychopathy, in which structure and function of the right STG may be important.     

从博弈游戏看儿童经济决策行为的发展

国外有研究借助最后通谍（UG）和独裁者博弈（DG）探查了儿童的决策行为,他们发现,随着儿童年龄的增长,他们分配给对方的金额呈上升趋势,即公平和分享行为随年龄增加。儿童的经济决策行为和社会化不可避免要受文化影响。研究探查了中国文化下小学三、六年级、初二、大学一年级四个年龄组学生在最后通谍（UG）和独裁者博弈（DG）中的经济决策行为发展。研究同时比较了个体决策和群体决策的差异。结果发现：儿童在两个博弈中的提议金额都显示出公平和分享行为,随着儿童年龄的增长,儿童在UG和随后进行的DG中的提议分配金额呈减少趋势。这个发现与以往国外研究结果明显不同。两个博弈的顺序对UG没有影响,但对DG有影响;儿童的个体决策和群体决策结果没有显示显著差异     

Links between rapid ERP responses to fearful faces and conscious awareness

To study links between rapid ERP responses to fearful faces and conscious awareness, a backward‐masking paradigm was employed where fearful or neutral target faces were presented for different durations and were followed by a neutral face mask. Participants had to report target face expression on each trial. When masked faces were clearly visible (200 ms duration), an early frontal positivity, a later more broadly distributed positivity, and a temporo‐occipital negativity were elicited by fearful relative to neutral faces, confirming findings from previous studies with unmasked faces. These emotion‐specific effects were also triggered when masked faces were presented for only 17 ms, but only on trials where fearful faces were successfully detected. When masked faces were shown for 50 ms, a smaller but reliable frontal positivity was also elicited by undetected fearful faces. These results demonstrate that early ERP responses to fearful faces are linked to observers' subjective conscious awareness of such faces, as reflected by their perceptual reports. They suggest that frontal brain regions involved in the construction of conscious representations of facial expression are activated at very short latencies.     

Retrosplenial cortex lesion affected segregation of spatial information in place avoidance task in the rat

Retrosplenial cortex (RSC) together with the hippocampus is a component of the spatial memory circuit. To elucidate the role of the RSC in spatial memory formation in the immediate presence of both relevant and irrelevant spatial stimuli, we used a new place avoidance task, in which rats learn to avoid shock in an unmarked place. In the present study, we manipulated the relevance of distal "Room" stimuli and local "Arena" stimuli for place avoidance. Rats with ibotenate lesions of RSC, control sham lesions (Csl) and intact control rats (Cint) initially learned the (Room&Arena)+ task variant in which both Room and Arena stimuli are relevant for defining the shock sector. Afterwards, different subsets of rats from each group were trained in the following task variants: (i) Room+Arena-, in which the arena continuously rotated so that Room stimuli were relevant and Arena stimuli were irrelevant for avoiding shock; (ii) Arena+, in which the arena and shock sector rotated in a dark room so that Arena stimuli were relevant and Room stimuli were irrelevant for avoiding shock; (iii) Room+, in which the arena was covered in shallow water so that only Room stimuli were relevant for avoiding the shock sector whether the arena was stationary or rotating. We found that damage of RSC impaired the Room+Arena- variant that required relevant and irrelevant stimuli to be segregated. Importantly, the same lesions spared task variants that did not require segregation. Our results suggest an involvement of retrosplenial cortex in the segregation of spatial information.     

Measures of spatial memory and routes of learning

Spatial memory was investigated in two experiments by direct methods. Methods included scaling of distances, estimation of bearings, and positioning of objects. Participants learned small-scale configurations under different orders of presentation. In Exp. 1, routes included a shortest path, i.e., a traveling salesman solution, a random sequence, and a path that maximized distances. In Exp. 2, spatial and temporal distances varied independently. It was analyzed whether the different methods yielded the same information. For bearing estimates a new scaling procedure was developed. Computations resulted in two-dimensional Euclidean solutions in close correspondence with the stimulus configuration. In addition, solutions showed an effect of temporal conditions of learning.     

A signal detection theory analysis of gap detection in the rat

An innocuous sensory event (a prestimulus) briefly preceding a startle-eliciting stimulus (SES) reduces the amplitude of the elicited reflex. This study used signal detection theory (SDT) techniques to quantify the effects of gaps (pauses in otherwise continuous noise) on the rat’s acoustic startle reflex. Sixteen rats were given four identical test sessions consisting of the randomized presentation of 150 trials of the SES alone and 150 trials of a gap-and-SES combination. Gap duration (1, 2, 4, and 8 msec) varied between sessions. Data analyses based on amplitude, difference scores, percentage scores, and SDT techniques identified similar patterns. The three longest gaps, but not the shortest, were reliably detected, and differences among these three were identified with percentage and SDT analyses. Analyses of amplitude changes over test sessions yielded different patterns for each measure. The results demonstrate that an SDT analysis is a sensitive index of prestimulus effects.