Effectiveness of a brief group RET treatment for divorce-related dysphoria

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a brief, group rational-emotive (RET) treatment and problem solving treatment for divorce related dysphoria, involving six hours of therapy over 22 days. A waiting list condition was used for comparison. On three measures of dysphoria, RET and Problem-Solving subjects improved significantly more than Waiting List subjects and RET and Problem-Solving subjects maintained their improvement at a one-month follow-up. There was no significant difference in improvement between RET and Problem-Solving treatments. Effectiveness of the treatments could have been due either to specific content, group therapy components, or nonspecific effects.John Malouff is a clinical psychologist with the Rehabilitation Center of Palm Beach, Florida. Richard Lanyon is a professor in the Psychology Department at Arizona State University in Tempe. Nicola Schutte is an assistant professor of psychology at Nova University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The authors wish to acknowledge the many contributions of Kris Cooper, Wendy Ramerth and Denise Gehrling to the study.     

Rats depend on habit memory for discrimination learning and retention

We explored the circumstances in which rats engage either declarative memory (and the hippocampus) or habit memory (and the dorsal striatum). Rats with damage to the hippocampus or dorsal striatum were given three different two-choice discrimination tasks (odor, object, and pattern). These tasks differed in the number of trials required for learning (~10, 60, and 220 trials). Dorsal striatum lesions impaired discrimination performance to a greater extent than hippocampal lesions. Strikingly, performance on the task learned most rapidly (the odor discrimination) was severely impaired by dorsal striatum lesions and entirely spared by hippocampal lesions. These findings suggest that discrimination learning in the rat is primarily supported by the dorsal striatum (and habit memory) and that rats engage a habit-based memory system even for a task that takes only a few trials to acquire. Considered together with related studies of humans and nonhuman primates, the findings suggest that different species will approach the same task in different ways.     

The effects of precedence on Navon-induced processing bias in face recognition

Macrae and Lewis (2002) showed that repeated reporting of the global dimension of Navon stimuli improved performance in a subsequent face identification task, whilst reporting the features of the Navon stimuli impaired performance. Using a face composite task, which is assumed to require featural processing, Weston and Perfect (2005) showed the complementary pattern: Featural responding to Navon letters speeded performance. However, both studies used Navon stimuli with global precedence, in which the overall configuration is easier to report than the features. Here we replicate the two studies above, whilst manipulating the precedence (global or featural) of the letter stimuli in the orientation task. Both studies replicated the previously reported findings with global precedence stimuli, but showed the reverse pattern with local precedence stimuli. These data raise important questions as to what is transferred between the Navon orientation task and the face-processing tasks that follow.     

Reduced orthographic learning in dyslexic adult readers: evidence from patterns of letter search

Visual letter search performance was investigated in a group of dyslexic adult readers using a task that required detection of a cued letter target embedded within a random five-letter string. Compared to a group of skilled readers, dyslexic readers were significantly slower at correctly identifying targets located in the first and second string position, illustrating significantly reduced leftward facilitation than is typically observed. Furthermore, compared to skilled readers, dyslexic readers showed reduced sensitivity to positional letter frequency. They failed to exhibit significantly faster response times to correctly detect target letters appearing in the most, compared to least, frequent letter position within five-letter words, and response times correlated with positional letter frequency only for the initial, and not the final, letter position. These results are compatible with the SERIOL (sequential encoding regulated by inputs to oscillations within letter units) model of orthographic processing proposed by Whitney and Cornelissen (2005). Furthermore, they suggest that dyslexic readers are less efficient than skilled readers at learning to extract statistical regularities from orthographic input.     

Efficacy of constant time delay implemented by peer tutors in general education classrooms

We evaluated the effects of teaching 13 typically developing children to use constant time delay when tutoring three of their peers who had substantial disabilities. We measured the extent to which the tutors used the constant time delay procedure correctly and the tutees' correct performance on the skills being taught. A multiple probe design across behaviors was used. The results indicated that (a) the tutors used each step of the constant time delay with a high degree of procedural fidelity; (b) the students with disabilities acquired the skills that were taught during peer tutoring; and (c) modifications of the procedure were required for 2 of the 3 students with disabilities, and the peers tutors were able to implement the modifications. Implications for practice and future research are described.     

Deviant peer affiliations,crime and substance use: a fixed effects regression analysis

The present study was designed to assess the influence of deviant peer affiliations on crime and substance use in adolescence/young adulthood. Data were used from a 21-year longitudinal study of health, development, and adjustment of a birth cohort of 1,265 New Zealand children. Annual assessments of deviant peer affiliations were obtained for the period from age 14–21 years, together with measures of psychosocial outcomes including, violent crime, property crime, alcohol abuse, cannabis abuse, and nicotine dependence. Affiliating with deviant peers was found to be significantly associated with each of these outcomes (p < .0001). Statistical control for confounding by both fixed and time dynamic factors reduced the strength of association between deviant peer affiliations and outcome measures. Nevertheless, deviant peer affiliations remained significantly associated (p < .0001) with all outcomes. For violent/property crime, cannabis and alcohol abuse there was significant evidence of age-related variation in the strength of association with deviant peer affiliations, with deviant peer affiliations having greater influence on younger participants (14–15 years) than older participants (20–21 years). These results suggest that deviant peer affiliations are associated with increased rates of a range of adjustment problems in adolescence/young adulthood with deviant peer affiliations being most influential at younger ages.     

Objects, events and "to be" verbs in Spanish--an ERP study of the syntax-semantics interface

In Spanish, objects and events at subject position constrain the selection of different forms of the auxiliary verb “to be”: locative predicates about objects require “estar en”, while those relating to events require “ser en”, both translatable as “to be in”. Subjective ratings showed that while the “object + ser + en” is considered as incorrect, the “event + estar + en” combination is also perceived as unacceptable but to a lesser degree. In an ERP study, we evaluated the impact of a purely semantic distinction (object versus events) on the subsequent processing of these auxiliary verbs followed by locatives in Spanish. For the “ser en” predicate, the P600 component was larger when the subject was an object than when it was an event. This P600 effect is consistent with an online repair of the defining predicate when it does not fit with the adequate semantic properties of the subject. On the other hand, for the “estar en” predicate, event subjects when compared to object subjects showed more positive ongoing amplitudes between 280 and 380 ms after the presentation of the “en” preposition, followed by a longer positive wave starting around 400 ms and lasting until 700 ms after the presentation of the following determiner, with central and frontal scalp distributions respectively. Thus, the different subject-predicate combinations, depending on the semantic features of the subjects, triggered syntactic reparatory processes at a structural level. These findings are consistent with an incremental interpretation of sentence meaning based on the interaction between syntactic and semantic information.     

Predicting future reconviction in offenders with intellectual disabilities: the predictive efficacy of VRAG, PCL-SV, and the HCR-20

Accurate predictions of future reconviction, including those for violent crimes, have been shown to be greatly aided by the use of formal risk assessment instruments. However, it is unclear as to whether these instruments would also be predictive in a sample of offenders with intellectual disabilities. In this study, the authors have shown that the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (V. L. Quinsey, G. T. Harris, M. E. Rice, & C. Cormier, 1998); the Psychopathy Checklist--Screening Version (S. D. Hart, D. N. Cox, & R. D. Hare, 1995); and the History, Clinical, Risk Management--20 (C. D. Webster, K. S. Douglas, D. Eaves, & S. D. Hart, 1997) were all significant predictors of violent and general reconviction in this sample, and in many cases, their efficacy was greater than in a control sample of mentally disordered offenders without an intellectual disability.