Validation of the URICA-S in Group Therapy: Associations of Stages of Change with Therapeutic Factors and Treatment Outcome

Stages of change could be driving forces to activate the realization of therapeutic factors and symptom change. Consequently, the aims of the present study were to investigate whether the stages of change concept is valid in group therapy settings shown by factor analysis, internal consistencies, and criterion validity. A total of 377 patients completed measures of stages of change, symptom change, and therapeutic factors. A confirmatory factor analysis replicated the stages of change factors for group therapy. Related to the criterion validity, stages of change demonstrated only low, non-significant associations with symptom change, but some stages of change were significant predictors of certain therapeutic factors. Further research is needed to explore whether a stronger focus on motivational stages of change could help to intensify the realization of therapeutic factors in group therapy.     

Why God Has Left the Netherlands: Explanations for the Decline of Institutional Christianity in the Netherlands Between 1966 and 2015

Why has the Netherlands witnessed such a strong process of secularization? This article examines this process very extensively. Based on modernization theory, it follows several social cultural developments in Dutch society over the last 50 years and distinguishes between effects on the individual level as well as on the level of society. We are able to do so because of rich data availability, derived from micro‐level longitudinal surveys (God in the Netherlands, Social and Cultural Developments in the Netherlands) enriched with macro‐level statistics (Statistics Netherlands). With this integrated approach, we provide explanatory insights into the transition of the Netherlands from a predominant Christian nation to a predominant secular nation. Our analysis clearly shows that macro‐level educational expansion has affected this process of secularization in the Netherlands, supplemented with the increase in social security, as a so‐called cohort effect. Moreover, the long‐term effect of Christian socialization is waning; Dutch people who were raised in a religious way increasingly lapse later in their life.     

Sweet-cheeks vs. pea-brain: embodiment,valence, and task all influence the emotional salience of language

Previous research has found that more embodied insults (e.g. numbskull) are identified faster and more accurately than less embodied insults (e.g. idiot). The linguistic processing of embodied compliments has not been well explored. In the present study, participants completed two tasks where they identified insults and compliments, respectively. Half of the stimuli were more embodied than the other half. We examined the late positive potential (LPP) component of event-related potentials in early (400–500?ms), middle (500–600?ms), and late (600–700?ms) time windows. Increased embodiment resulted in improved response accuracy to compliments in both tasks, whereas it only improved accuracy for insults in the compliment detection task. More embodied stimuli elicited a larger LPP than less embodied stimuli in the early time window. Insults generated a larger LPP in the late time window in the insult task; compliments generated a larger LPP in the early window in the compliment task. These results indicate that electrophysiological correlates of emotional language perception are sensitive to both top-down and bottom-up processes.     

Still a Hetero-Gendered World: A Content Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Romantic Ideals in Chinese Boy Love Stories

Boy’s Love (BL) stories are a fictional fantasy textual story that describes a romantic relationship between men. Previous qualitative studies claimed that BL stories have depicted androgynous characters and egalitarian love relationships. The current study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 87 randomly sampled popular Chinese BL stories. Our coding system for coding both the masculinity and femininity of each main character in the selected BL stories was developed based on several previous studies. Gay male characters in BL stories were depicted as either similar to traditional masculine men (i.e., scoring high in masculinity and low in femininity) or similar to traditional feminine women (i.e., scoring high in femininity and low in masculinity). In the romantic relationships, BL stories typically paired a masculine character with a feminine character. In addition, heterosexual romantic ideals were prevalent in BL stories. Such an analysis challenges the previous analysis of BL stories. It suggests that heteronormative gender stereotypes exist in BL stories, even if these stories depict gay male characters and romantic relationships. These findings have important implications for understanding media effects in stereotypes toward gay men in contemporary Chinese society. It also encourages further research on alternative explanations for women’s motivation in reading and writing BL stories.     

Electrophysiological evidence for age effects on sensory memory processing of tonal patterns

In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.     

Are Conservatives Less Likely to be Prosocial Than Liberals? From Games to Ideology,Political Preferences and Voting

Do political preferences reflect individual differences in interpersonal orientations? Are conservatives less other‐regarding than liberals? On the basis of past theorising, we hypothesised that, relative to individuals with prosocial orientations, those with individualistic and competitive orientations should be more likely to endorse conservative political preferences and vote for conservative parties. This hypothesis was supported in three independent studies conducted in Italy (Studies 1 and 2) and the Netherlands (Study 3). Consistent with hypotheses, a cross‐sectional study revealed that individualists and competitors endorsed stronger conservative political preferences than did prosocials; moreover, this effect was independent of the association between need for structure and conservative political preferences (Study 1). The predicted association of social value orientation and voting was observed in both a four‐week (Study 2) and an eight‐month (Study 3) longitudinal study. Taken together, the findings provide novel support for the claim that interpersonal orientations, as measured with experimental games rooted in game theory, are important to understanding differences in ideology at the societal level. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Questioning Process in Maudsley Family-Based Treatment. Part 1: Deviation Amplification

Maudsley family based treatment (FBT) continues to demonstrate promising evidence in the treatment of adolescent presentations of anorexia nervosa. In the earlier stages of this treatment modality, the process of empowering families, and in particular, helping parent to follow their natural instincts in making united decisions around re-feeding their child is critical. This paper aims to provide FBT practitioners with structured interviewing guidelines around the amplification of familial interactions around food, drawing on existing familial strengths and therefore empowering parents and families in their process of change. The questioning skills outlined are discussed in light of the theoretical tenets of the Maudsley FBT model.     

Perfectionism, Coping, Social Support, and Depression in Maltreated Adolescents

The current study examined the associations among dimensions of perfectionism, coping, social support, and depression in 58 adolescents with a history of maltreatment. Participants completed the Child-Adolescent Perfectionism, multidimensional measures of coping and social support, and the CES-D Depression Scale. Correlational analyses showed that depression was associated with socially prescribed perfectionism, internalized emotion-oriented coping, avoidant-oriented distancing, and low family support and peer support. Analyses of coping responses and perfectionism established links between self-oriented perfectionism and internalized emotion-oriented coping responses and self-reliant problem-solving. Socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with avoidance-oriented coping (i.e., distancing). While self-oriented perfectionism and social support were unrelated, socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with reduced levels of family support. Collectively, the findings highlight the roles of poor coping and social support as contributors to the emotional distress experienced by maltreated adolescents. Moreover, it is suggested that the distress experienced by perfectionistic youth with a history of maltreatment reflects, in part, the role of maladaptive coping styles and coping resource deficits. Our findings support further consideration of personality dimensions such as perfectionism as contributors to poor functioning among maltreated youth.     

Learning to Make Selection and Detection Decisions: The Roles of Base Rate and Feedback

The effects of type of feedback and base rate on threshold learning in a multiple‐cue decision task were examined. In most such decision experiments, participants receive feedback after every trial (full feedback), and a single base rate (usually 0.5) is used. Our experiment explored conditional feedback (feedback only after positive decisions) representing common selection and detection tasks (such as hiring), where the decision maker receives no feedback unless the decision is positive (e.g., hire the applicant). We used three base rates (0.2, 0.5, and 0.8). As expected, performance was best in full feedback, but after 300 learning trials, the difference was small. Conditional feedback generally resulted in fewer positive decisions than full feedback, but this difference was not found in the low (0.2) base rate condition. There were interactions between base rates and types of feedback. Results provide partial support for the constructivist encoding hypothesis of Elwin and colleagues. Simulation results suggest that our results may reflect overconfidence when feedback is not given. With respect to rate of learning, when the base rate was 0.2, conditional feedback participants reached approximately the same selection rate but did so more slowly than the full feedback participants. Partial feedback participants learned slower and appeared to be still learning after 500 trials. When the base rate was 0.5 or 0.8, partial feedback was nearly as good as full feedback, but conditional feedback resulted in a systematically lower rate of positive decisions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.