PTSD arousal and depression symptoms associated with increased right-sided parietal EEG asymmetry

Researchers have proposed that depression and particular types of anxiety are associated with unique patterns of regional brain activation. The authors examined the relationship among posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depressive symptoms and frontal, temporal, and parietal EEG alpha asymmetry in female Vietnam War nurse veterans. The results indicate that PTSD arousal symptoms are associated with increased right-sided parietal activation. However, the combination of arousal, depression, and their interaction explain more than twice the variance in parietal asymmetry compared with arousal alone. The results support the contention that the association between anxiety and right-sided posterior activation is specific to the anxious arousal subtype. These findings underscore the importance of isolating, both theoretically and statistically, emotional subcomponents in studies of regional brain activation.     

Predicting rape events: The influence of intimate partner violence history,condom use resistance,and heavy drinking

Sexual aggression perpetration is a public health epidemic, and burgeoning research aims to delineate risk factors for individuals who perpetrate completed rape. The current study investigated physical and psychological intimate partner violence (IPV) history, coercive condom use resistance (CUR), and heavy episodic drinking (HED) as prospective risk factors for rape perpetration. Young adult men (N = 430) ages 21–30 completed background measures as well as follow‐up assessments regarding rape events perpetrated over the course of 3 months. Negative binomial regression with log link function was utilized to examine whether these risk factors interacted to prospectively predict completed rape. There was a significant interaction between physical IPV and HED predicting completed rape; men with high HED and greater physical IPV histories perpetrated more completed rapes during follow‐up than men with low HED at the same level of physical IPV. Moreover, psychological IPV and coercive CUR interacted to predict completed rape such that men with high coercive CUR and greater psychological IPV histories perpetrated more completed rapes throughout the follow‐up period than men with low coercive CUR at the same level of psychological IPV. Findings suggest targets for intervention efforts and highlight the need to understand the topography of different forms of aggression perpetration.     

Prospective memory,working memory,planning, and attention in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: A comparative study

There is a need to study prospective memory (PM) and its relationship with aspects of frontal lobe functioning in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The study aims to investigate event‐based (EB) and time‐based (TB) PM functioning in the two groups, and its association with working memory, planning, and attention. A word categorisation task was developed to assess PM functioning among 90 participants (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and a control group). Frontal lobe functioning was assessed using Tower of London, N‐Back test, and triads test. Mean comparisons revealed significantly higher impairment in TB PM in comparison to EB PM in both the clinical groups. Significant relationship between PM and frontal lobe impairment was found. Relationship between PM and frontal lobe deficits in the clinical groups emphasises the need to include its assessment at an early stage and to develop PM rehabilitation strategies to improve the quality of living.     

Incidental learning in a multisensory environment across childhood

Multisensory information has been shown to modulate attention in infants and facilitate learning in adults, by enhancing the amodal properties of a stimulus. However, it remains unclear whether this translates to learning in a multisensory environment across middle childhood, and particularly in the case of incidental learning. One hundred and eighty‐one children aged between 6 and 10 years participated in this study using a novel Multisensory Attention Learning Task (MALT). Participants were asked to respond to the presence of a target stimulus whilst ignoring distractors. Correct target selection resulted in the movement of the target exemplar to either the upper left or right screen quadrant, according to category membership. Category membership was defined either by visual‐only, auditory‐only or multisensory information. As early as 6 years of age, children demonstrated greater performance on the incidental categorization task following exposure to multisensory audiovisual cues compared to unisensory information. These findings provide important insight into the use of multisensory information in learning, and particularly on incidental category learning. Implications for the deployment of multisensory learning tasks within education across development will be discussed.     

The Mediating Role of Autonomy and Relatedness on Maternal and Child Outcomes

The current study examined the mediating role of both mother and child interactive behaviors, which granted or undermined autonomy and relatedness, on the bidirectional and longitudinal association between maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing behaviors, as well as the association between maternal substance use and child externalizing behaviors. Child’s sex and mother’s drug of choice were explored as potential moderators of the mediation relationship. Data were collected from 183 dyads including treatment-seeking substance using mothers and their children (95 males, aged between 8 and 16 years old). Structural equation modeling analysis showed girls’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors at the 3-month follow-up were negatively associated with the same behaviors at the 12-month follow-up through increased relatedness undermining behaviors from their mothers at the 6-month follow-up. Among mothers with opioids as their drug of choice (DOC), children’s externalizing behaviors at the 3-month follow-up were positively associated with mothers’ substance use at the 12-month follow-up through the elevated levels of mothers’ relatedness undermining behaviors at the 6-month follow-up. Among mothers with alcohol as their DOC, maternal depressive symptoms at the 3-month follow-up were positively related to children’s internalizing behaviors at the 12-month follow-up through reduced relatedness undermining behaviors exhibited by mothers at the 6-month follow-up. To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to attempt to unravel these longitudinal and bidirectional influences as well as the moderated mediation pathways among families with a substance using mothers.     

Perceived Social Support and Mental Health among First-Year College Students with Histories of Bullying Victimization

Although childhood bullying victimization is associated with adult depression and anxiety, the majority of previously bullied youth do not develop psychopathology. Identifying protective factors has implications for designing interventions that can support a successful adjustment to emerging adulthood. In this study, we investigate whether perceived social support protects against depression and anxiety among first-year college students who had previously experienced bullying. We collected data from 1474 first-year college students attending four large universities across the United States. Students completed a web-based survey in fall 2012 (Wave 1) and 436 (29.5 %) participated in a follow-up survey in spring 2013 (Wave 2). Participants reported on childhood bullying victimization, current depression and anxiety, and current social support (overall and from family, friends, and significant others). Results indicated that a history of childhood bullying victimization was positively associated with depression and anxiety in both fall and spring. Further, overall social support reported in fall moderated the association between childhood bullying victimization and fall and spring anxiety. Also, higher levels of perceived family support, in particular, buffered previously bullied students’ risk for spring anxiety. Results suggest that perceptions of familial social support during the initial adjustment to college may protect previously bullied first-year students from anxiety during their adjustment to college. Research and clinical implications, study limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Witnessing postevents does not change memory traces,but can affect their retrieval

The results of three experiments suggest that a memory trace for an event is not altered by witnessing similar events, but that postevents can interfere with its retrieval. On an immediate recall test, details from an original story (e.g. wrench) were recalled less often if a subsequent story mentioned a ‘screwdriver’ than if it did not. The interference effect occurred if people were asked to recall details fromboth stories (tool —— ——), but not if people were asked to recall primarily from the first story. Thus, the interference effect in immediate recall was averted if the target trace could be activated selectively (Experiments 1a and 1b). A more general interference effect was found after a day. Fewer targets from the original story were recalled if the second story was presented just before the test than if both stories occurred a day earlier. Thus, the second story interfered with recall only if it emphasized contextual retrieval cues that did not match the trace for the targets (Experiment 2). Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Critical Incidents in the Professional Lives of First Year MFT Students

First year MFT students engaged in a journaling project, selecting one event daily which captured something about being a student, including the process of therapy, consultation, and supervision, that struck them as important in terms of their professional development. On reflection, the students saw therapeutic success and professional confidence as systemic products of a variety of contextual factors: transient and enduring aspects of the self and the client, faculty, peer, and family influences, and treatment setting and program factors. Students and faculty experienced this formative self study as valuable and believe that it should be done at the beginning, middle, and end of an educational program and the results shared with both faculty and students.