Brief Counseling for Alcohol Misuse Among Trauma Patients: Two Interventions and Influence of Baseline Use

This study examined whether baseline trauma patient characteristics and randomized participation in 1 of 2 brief interventions predicted changes in alcohol use at 6 months postintervention. Higher total Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores predicted greater changes, and specific AUDIT items were significant predictors.     

The roles of order,distance, and interstitial items in temporal visual statistical learning

Humans are adept at learning regularities in a visual environment, even without explicit cues to structure and in the absence of instruction—this has been termed “visual statistical learning” (VSL). The nature of the representations resulting from VSL are still poorly understood. In five experiments, we examined the specificity of temporal VSL representations. In Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2, we compared recognition rates of triplets and all embedded pairs to chance. Robust learning of all structures was evident, and even pairs of non-adjacent items in a sequentially presented triplet (AC extracted from a triplet composed of ABC) were recognized at above-chance levels. In Experiment 3, we asked whether people could recognize rearranged pairs to examine the flexibility of learned representations. Recognition of all possible orders of target triplets and pairs was significantly higher than chance, and there were no differences between canonical orderings and their corresponding randomized orderings, suggesting that learners were not dependent upon originally experienced stimulus orderings to recognize co-occurrence. Experiment 4 demonstrates the essential role of an interstitial item in VSL representations. By comparing the learning of quadruplet sets (e.g., ABCD) and triplet sets (e.g., ABC), we found learning of AC and BD in ABCD (quadruplet) sets were better than the learning of AC in ABC (triplet) sets. This pattern of results might result from the critical role of interstitial items in statistical learning. In short, our work supports the idea of generalized representation in VSL and provides evidence about how this representation is structured.     

High voice pitch mitigates the aversiveness of antisocial cues in men's speech

Speech contains both explicit social information in semantic content and implicit cues to social behaviour and mate quality in voice pitch. Voice pitch has been demonstrated to have pervasive effects on social perceptions, but few studies have examined these perceptions in the context of meaningful speech. Here, we examined whether male voice pitch interacted with socially relevant cues in speech to influence listeners’ perceptions of trustworthiness and attractiveness. We artificially manipulated men's voices to be higher and lower in pitch when speaking words that were either prosocial or antisocial in nature. In Study 1 , we found that listeners perceived lower-pitched voices as more trustworthy and attractive in the context of prosocial words than in the context of antisocial words. In Study 2 , we found evidence that suggests this effect was driven by stronger preferences for higher-pitched voices in the context of antisocial cues, as voice pitch preferences were not significantly different in the context of prosocial cues. These findings suggest that higher male voice pitch may ameliorate the negative effects of antisocial speech content and that listeners may be particularly avoidant of those who express multiple cues to antisociality across modalities.     

Development and Initial Validation of the Five-Factor Model Adolescent Personality Questionnaire (FFM–APQ)

This research reports on the 4-phase development of the 25-item Five-Factor Model Adolescent Personality Questionnaire (FFM–APQ). The purpose was to develop and determine initial evidence for validity of a brief adolescent personality inventory using a vocabulary that could be understood by adolescents up to 18 years old. Phase 1 (N = 48) consisted of item generation and expert (N = 5) review of items; Phase 2 (N = 179) involved item analyses; in Phase 3 (N = 496) exploratory factor analysis assessed the underlying structure; in Phase 4 (N = 405) confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a 25-item inventory with 5 subscales.     

A church-based peer-led group intervention for mental illness

Religion and spirituality (R/S) can be powerful supports and provide important coping resources for individuals in recovery. Faith communities seem to offer many advantages for recovery-oriented support, but have rarely been the setting for empirically examined psychosocial rehabilitation efforts. This study describes the outcomes for individuals in Living Grace Groups (LGGs), a peer-led group intervention for mental illness that is based in churches and integrates R/S. Persons at all active LGGs were surveyed before and after participation using well-validated scales for recovery, psychiatric symptoms, and spirituality. LGGs attracted individuals with a broad range of persistent psychiatric difficulties, who described religion as important to them and rated the groups as very helpful. Participants reported improvements in recovery and spirituality as well as reductions in psychiatric symptoms. R/S-integrated support groups may improve care by increasing cultural match, as well as providing more access to recovery-oriented care by tapping the resources of faith communities.