Improving Delivery Behaviors During Exposure for Pediatric OCD: A Multiple Baseline Training Trial With Community Therapists

This study tested whether a new training tool, the Exposure Guide (EG), improved in-session therapist behaviors (i.e., indicators of quality) that have been associated with youth outcomes in prior clinical trials of exposure therapy. Six therapists at a community mental health agency (CMHA) provided exposure therapy for 8 youth with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design with random assignment to baseline lengths of 6 to 16 weeks, therapists received gold-standard exposure therapy training with weekly consultation (baseline phase) followed by addition of EG training and feedback (intervention phase). The primary outcome was therapist behavior during in-session exposures, observed weekly using a validated coding system. Therapist behavior was evaluated in relation to a priori benchmarks derived from clinical trials. Additional outcomes included training feasibility/acceptability, therapist response to case vignettes and beliefs about exposure, and independent evaluator-rated clinical outcomes. Three therapists reached behavior benchmarks only during the EG (intervention) phase. Two therapists met benchmarks during the baseline phase; one of these subsequently moved away from benchmarks but met them again after starting the EG phase. Across all therapists, the percentage of weeks meeting benchmarks was significantly higher during the EG phase (86.4%) vs. the baseline phase (53.2%). Youth participants experienced significant improvement in OCD symptoms and global illness severity from pre- to posttreatment. Results provide initial evidence that adding the EG to gold-standard training can change in-session therapist behaviors in a CMHA setting.     

Are high levels of religiosity inconsistent with a high valuation of science? Evidence from the United States,China and Iran

We asked whether high levels of religiosity are inconsistent with a high valuation of science. We explored this possibility in three countries that diverge markedly in the relation between the state and religion. Parents in the United States (n = 126), China (n = 234) and Iran (n = 77) completed a survey about their personal and parental stance towards science. The relation between religiosity and the valuation of science varied sharply by country. In the U.S. sample, greater religiosity was associated with a lower valuation of science. A similar but weaker negative relation was found in the Chinese sample. Parents in the Iranian sample, by contrast, valued science highly, despite high levels of religiosity. Given the small size of our United States and Iranian samples, and the non-probabilistic nature of our samples in general, we caution readers not to generalise our findings beyond the current samples. Despite this caveat, these findings qualify the assumption that religiosity is inconsistent with the valuation of science and highlight the role of sociocultural context in shaping adults' perception of the relation between religion and science.     

Boredom proneness,political orientation and adherence to social-distancing in the pandemic

Motivation and Emotion - Research recently showed that boredom proneness was associated with increased social distancing rule-breaking in a sample collected early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we...     

Word Order Variation is Partially Constrained by Syntactic Complexity

Previous work suggests that when speakers linearize syntactic structures, they place longer and more complex dependents further away from the head word to which they belong than shorter and simpler dependents, and that they do so with increasing rigidity the longer expressions get, for example, longer objects tend to be placed further away from their verb, and with less variation. Current theories of sentence processing furthermore make competing predictions on whether longer expressions are preferentially placed as early or as late as possible. Here we test these predictions using hierarchical distributional regression models that allow estimates of word order and word order variation at the level of individual dependencies in corpora from 71 languages, while controlling for confounding effects from the type of dependency (e.g., subject vs. object), and the type of clause (main vs. subordinate) involved as well as from trends that are characteristic of individual languages, language families, and language contact areas. Our results show the expected correlations of length with position and variation only for two out of six dependency types (obliques and nominal modifiers) and no difference between clause types. These findings challenge received theories of across-the-board effects of complexity on word order and word order variation and call for theoretical models that relativize effects to specific kinds of syntactic structures and dependencies.     

Personality Pathology and Substance Misuse in Later Life: Perspectives from Interviewer-, Self-, and Informant-Reports

Research indicates a robust association between personality and substance use and misuse. The high prevalence and pervasive detrimental impacts of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and smoking of tobacco necessitate more studies designed to identify factors closely associated with these outcomes in specific populations. The analyses reported in the present paper concern the relative utilities of five measures of personality and personality pathology rated by three sources (self, informant, and interviewer) in predicting AUD and regular smoking in a representative sample of 987 older adults, an understudied and uniquely vulnerable population. All measures and sources contributed to the predictions, with notable parallels as well as some important differences identified across substances and sources of information. In particular, low agreeableness robustly predicted AUD and smoking across self- and informant-reports. High interviewer-rated borderline personality pathology also strongly predicted AUD. Model fit indices suggested that measures of personality and personality pathology have stronger utility in predicting AUD as compared to regular smoking. These findings have important implications for the assessment of older adults in research and clinical settings and for the understanding of enduring risk factors for substance misuse later in life. Multi-source personality information is valuable for generating a complete picture of the relationship between personality and substance misuse.

     

Active or Inert? An Experimental Comparison of Creative Ideation across Incubation Periods

The primary objective of this study was to contribute to the growing research discipline investigating the effects of physical exercise on divergent thinking creativity performance. Thirty‐two students participated in this two‐visit, within‐subject intervention. Individuals consented to participate in two randomized, and counterbalanced, experimental conditions, consisting of 15 min of active treadmill walking and an inert, seated control incubation period. Creativity was assessed at baseline and post‐exercise (and control) via the Instances Creativity Task (ICT). Creativity scores for changes in fluency (F(1, 31) = 2.90, p = .10) were not statistically significant across the experimental conditions. Originality scores were higher at baseline and follow‐up when compared to the exercise condition (F(1, 31) = 6.82, p = .01). However, there was no statistically significant condition × time interaction effect (F(1, 31) = 1.78, p = .19). Further analyses demonstrated that there was no statistically significant difference between the experimental conditions on recall score (F(1, 31) = 1.04, p = .32). All models indicated statistically significant main effects for time: fluency (F(1, 31) = 131.17, p < .001); originality (F(1, 31) = 36.54, p < .001); and recall (F(1, 31) = 51.75, p < .001). These findings suggest that both active and inert creative incubation periods may similarly enhance subsequent divergent thinking performance.     

Apathy is Associated with Critical Psychological Determinants of Medication Adherence in HIV Disease

Apathy is common in HIV, separable from depression, and has been associated with non-adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). We examined the associations between apathy and critical psychological determinants of ART adherence, as per the information-motivation-behavioral model, in 85 persons living with HIV. Apathy was measured using a composite of the apathy subscale of the Frontal Systems Behavioral Scale and the vigor-activation scale of the Profile of Mood States. Independent of major depressive disorder, apathy was related at small-to-medium effect sizes with motivation to adhere and self-efficacy for health-related decision-making and medication management, but not with HIV knowledge or medication management skills. These findings suggest that apathy plays a unique role in several critical health adherence determinants and support the importance of assessment and management of apathy to maximize health outcomes among individuals with HIV disease.