Neuro-feedback intervention efficacy for treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study explored practitioners perceptions of a neuro-feedback intervention in treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’s (ASD). Informants were a convenience sample of ten South African neuro-feedback practitioners registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). The data on their views on neuro-feedback treatment efficacy, with children with ASD, were collected by means of semi-structured in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis of the data suggest practitioners to perceive neuro-feedback treatment to enhance the social, mood, behaviour, academic life, and family functioning of children with ASD. Additionally, the practitioners perceived neuro-feedback treatment to assist in reducing anxiety among children with ASD.     

Phone coaching in Dialectical Behavior Therapy: frequency and relationship to client variables

Telephone coaching is a treatment mode in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) that is designed to help clients generalize skills, prevent suicidal behaviors, and repair therapeutic ruptures. To date, phone coaching has received scant empirical investigation. The aims of this study were to (1) describe patterns in frequency of telephone calls and text messaging in DBT and (2) investigate whether demographic factors, baseline severity, suicidal behaviors, and therapeutic alliance are associated with phone and text frequency. Participants were 51 adults (35 treatment completers) with borderline personality disorder (BPD) in a six-month comprehensive DBT treatment program. Phone coaching frequency was documented by therapist weekly session notes. The average number of contacts per month was 2.55 (SD = 4.49). Four of the 35 treatment completers comprised 56% of the contacts. Having a recent history of suicidal behaviors, degree of severity at baseline, or the strength of the therapeutic alliance was not associated with phone coaching use. However, lower income was significantly associated with a higher frequency of phone coaching use. These preliminary results can help clinicians and administrators make informed decisions on how to better provide phone coaching and clarify the degree of effort involved in providing this service to clients with BPD.     

Autism: Hard to Switch from Details to the Whole

It has long been proposed that individuals with autism exhibit a superior processing of details at the expense of an impaired global processing. This theory has received some empirical support, but results are mixed. In this research we have studied local and global processing in ASD and Typically Developing children, with an adaptation of the Navon task, designed to measure congruency effects between local and global stimuli and switching cost between local and global tasks. ASD children showed preserved global processing; however, compared to Typically Developing children, they exhibited more facilitation from congruent local stimuli when they performed the global task. In addition, children with ASD had more switching cost than Typically Developing children only when they switched from the local to the global task, reflecting a specific difficulty to disengage from local stimuli. Together, results suggest that ASD is characterized by a tendency to process local details, they benefit from the processing of local stimuli at the expense of increasing cost to disengage from local stimuli when global processing is needed. Thus, this work demonstrates experimentally the advantages and disadvantages of the increased local processing in children with ASD.     

Reduction of Pain Sensitivity after Somatosensory Therapy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often present with somatosensory dysfunction including an abnormal reactivity to tactile stimuli and altered pain perception. A therapy based on somatosensory stimuli has shown effectiveness in reducing pain sensitivity among adults with cerebral palsy. The present study aims at exploring the influence of somatosensory therapy on somatosensory parameters in children with ASD. Children with high-functioning ASD were randomly assigned to either the intervention (n?=?29) or the control group (n?=?30). The intervention group received a somatosensory therapy consisting of four types of exercises (touch, proprioception, vibration, stereognosis). Somatosensory function (pressure pain thresholds, tactile thresholds, stereognosis, proprioception) was assessed before and immediately after the therapy. Children in the intervention group showed a significant reduction of pain sensitivity and increase of tactile sensitivity after treatment, whereas children in the control group displayed increased pain sensitivity in the absence of changes of tactile sensitivity. No changes were observed for proprioception or stereognosis. The repetitive somatosensory stimulation therapy led to a decrease of pain sensitivity and an increase of tactile sensitivity. These findings may have important research and clinical implications, as promoting early tactile interventions in children with ASD may lead to a more adequate development of somatosensory processing and less somatosensory abnormalities upon adult life.     

Memory and conceptual learning of relevant and non-relevant items in item-method directed forgetting

The present research investigates the fate of non-target information when people are trying to either intentionally memorise or forget target information. By using an object-based attentional manipulation within a directed forgetting paradigm (item-method), we show a directed forgetting effect (DFE, i.e., better memory for to-be-remembered (TBR) than for to-be-forgotten (TBF) items) for items that participants are explicitly instructed to attend but not for irrelevant items that happen to be part of the context. Alongside the classic DFE, we investigate how the category of the attended and unattended items are learned. The results obtained in three experiments, show that people can successfully learn only the category of the TBR attended items and that the DFE extends to new items that are related to the old TBR and TBF items (an effect that we call conceptual DFE). These results give us new insight about how TBR and TBF items are processed and conceptually learned.     

Working memory and two-digit number processing

The processing of two-digit numbers in comparison tasks involves the activation and manipulation of magnitude information to decide which number is larger. The present study explored the role of different working memory (WM) components and skills in the processing of two-digit numbers by examining the unit–decade compatibility effect with Arabic digits and number words. In the study, the unit–decade compatibility effect and different WM components were evaluated. The results indicated that the unit–decade compatibility effect was associated to specific WM skills depending on the number format (Arabic digits and number words). We discussed the implications of these results for the decomposed view of two-digit numbers.     

Management Communication and Employee Performance: The Contribution of Perceived Organizational Support

This study used a cross-lagged panel design to examine the temporal relationship between management communication and perceived organizational support (POS), and its consequences for performance. We assessed management communication and POS 2 times, separated by a 3-year interval, in a social services organization (N?=?236). Our findings suggest that management communication was positively associated with a temporal change in POS. In addition, we found that POS fully mediates the relationship between management communication and both in-role and extra-role performance. The present study advances our theoretical knowledge concerning how management communication affects performance, with implications for practice. Specifically, it reveals that management communication affects performance mainly because it signals that the organization cares about the well-being and values the contributions of its employees.     

Emotional expressivity in men and women: Stereotypes and self-perceptions

Three studies were conducted to assess prevalent stereotypes regarding men's and women's emotional expressivity as well as self-perceptions of their emotional behaviour. Emotion profiles were employed to assess both modal emotional reactions and secondary emotional reactions to hypothetical events and personal experiences. In Study 1 we asked how men and women in general would react to a series of hypothetical emotional events. In Study 2 we asked how participants themselves expected to react to these same situations and in Study 3 we asked participants to report a personal emotional event in narrative form. Two gender differences emerged across all three studies. Specifically, women were expected to be more likely to react with sadness to negative emotion-eliciting events in general. They also expected themselves to be more likely to react with sadness as well as to cry and to withdraw more when experiencing negative emotional events. Finally, women report more sadness when describing personal events. In contrast, men were expected to react with more happiness/serenity during negative emotional situations. Also, they expect themselves to react more frequently this way as well as to laugh and smile more and to be more relaxed in negative situations. Finally, men tend to report more happiness when describing negative personal events. In sum, the present study gives a more detailed portrayal of how men and women are expected and expect themselves to react to specific emotional situations and presents some evidence that these expectations may influence the way they reconstruct emotional events from their past.     

Facilitated detection of angry faces: Initial orienting and processing efficiency

In a visual search task, displays of four schematic faces (angry, sad, happy, or neutral) were presented. Participants decided whether the faces were all the same or whether one was different. A discrepant angry face in a context of three neutral faces was detected faster than other faces. This occurred in the absence of a higher probability of first fixation on the angry face. Moreover, angry faces were more accurately detected even when presented parafoveally. These results are not consistent with the hypothesis that angry faces are detected faster because they are looked at earlier. In contrast, angry faces were looked at less than other faces during the search process and were more accurately detected than other faces when the display duration was reduced to 150 ms. These results support the processing efficiency hypothesis, according to which fewer attentional resources are needed to identify angry faces, which would account for their speeded detection time. In addition, parafoveal analysis of the angry faces may start preattentively, which would account for the fewer and shorter fixations that they need later, when they come under the focus of attention.     

Spatial location and emotion modulate voice perception

ABSTRACT

How do we perceive voices coming from different spatial locations, and how is this affected by emotion? The current study probed the interplay between space and emotion during voice perception. Thirty participants listened to nonverbal vocalizations coming from different locations around the head (left vs. right; front vs. back), and differing in valence (neutral, positive [amusement] or negative [anger]). They were instructed to identify the location of the vocalizations (Experiment 1) and to evaluate their emotional qualities (Experiment 2). Emotion-space interactions were observed, but only in Experiment 1: emotional vocalizations were better localised than neutral ones when they were presented from the back and the right side. In Experiment 2, emotion recognition accuracy was increased for positive vs. negative and neutral vocalizations, and perceived arousal was increased for emotional vs. neutral vocalizations, but this was independent of spatial location. These findings indicate that emotional salience affects how we perceive the spatial location of voices. They additionally suggest that the interaction between spatial (“where”) and emotional (“what”) properties of the voice differs as a function of task.