Affect and alcohol use: an ecological momentary assessment study of outpatients with borderline personality disorder

Alcohol use may be viewed as an attempt (albeit maladaptive) to regulate negative emotional states. We examined associations between both negative and positive affects and alcohol use in outpatient women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD; n=74), a prototype of emotional dysregulation, as well as a psychiatric control group of women with current depressive disorder (major depressive disorder/dysthymic disorder [MDD\DYS]; n=50). Participants completed randomly prompted reports of mood and alcohol use up to six times a day over a 28-day period using electronic diaries. Mean levels of either positive or negative affects did not distinguish between drinkers and nondrinkers in either diagnostic group. However, levels of both negative and positive affects were positively associated with alcohol use at the momentary level in BPD drinkers. More robust findings were obtained with respect to within-person affective variability, which was related to alcohol use in multiple ways. BPD drinkers showed higher within-person variability for most negative affects than BPD nondrinkers; MDD\DYS drinkers in general showed less within-person variability than MDD\DYS nondrinkers for negative affects. Multilevel lagged analyses for BPD drinkers indicated that alcohol use was positively related to variability in all affects, concurrently, but fewer significant effects of affect variability on the next day's drinking or significant effects of alcohol use on the next day's affect variability were observed. Among MDD\DYS drinkers, we observed more significant associations between affect variability on next day's alcohol use and of alcohol use on next day's affect variability. We discuss theoretical and methodological issues relevant to these findings as well as implications for future research.     

Integration of disparity and velocity information for haptic and perceptual judgments of object depth

Do reach-to-grasp (prehension) movements require a metric representation of three-dimensional (3D) layouts and objects? We propose a model relying only on direct sensory information to account for the planning and execution of prehension movements in the absence of haptic feedback and when the hand is not visible. In the present investigation, we isolate relative motion and binocular disparity information from other depth cues and we study their efficacy for reach-to-grasp movements and visual judgments. We show that (i) the amplitude of the grasp increases when relative motion is added to binocular disparity information, even if depth from disparity information is already veridical, and (ii) similar distortions of derived depth are found for haptic tasks and perceptual judgments. With a quantitative test, we demonstrate that our results are consistent with the Intrinsic Constraint model and do not require 3D metric inferences (Domini, Caudek, & Tassinari, 2006). By contrast, the linear cue integration model (Landy, Maloney, Johnston, & Young, 1995) cannot explain the present results, even if the flatness cues are taken into account.     

English- and Chinese-learning infants map novel labels to objects and actions differently

Research based on naturalistic and checklist methods has revealed differences between English and Chinese monolingual children in their trajectories of learning nouns and verbs. However, studies based on controlled laboratory designs (e.g., Imai et al., 2008) have yielded a more mixed picture. Guided by a multidimensional view of word learning (in which different mechanisms are weighted and recruited to different extents over development), we examined English- and Mandarin-learning infants' (n = 128) ability to map novel labels to unfamiliar actions and objects. Findings reveal cross-linguistic variations in the mapping of words to actions versus objects that are consistent with those found previously with naturalistic and checklist methods. Specifically, English learners were able to map novel labels to both actions and objects at 18 months but to neither actions nor objects at 14 months. In an identical experimental paradigm, Mandarin learners at both 14 and 18 months of age were able to map novel labels to actions but not to objects. Similar patterns were found when infants were grouped based on their vocabulary size. Combined results lend support for a dynamic view of word learning that take into account multiple mechanisms interacting across developmental time with important cultural constraints.     

Social cognitive predictors of Mexican American college students' academic and life satisfaction

In this study, we used Lent's (2004) social cognitive model of well being to examine the academic and life satisfaction of 457 Mexican American college students attending a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Using structural equation modeling, results indicated that the model provided a good fit to the data. Specifically, we found positive relations from positive affect to enculturation, acculturation, college self-efficacy, academic satisfaction, and life satisfaction; from enculturation to college self-efficacy; from acculturation to college self-efficacy and college outcome expectations; from college self-efficacy to college outcome expectations, academic goal progress, academic satisfaction, and life satisfaction; from college outcome expectations to academic satisfaction; from academic goal progress to academic and life satisfaction; and from academic satisfaction to life satisfaction. Findings indicated the model was invariant across gender groups, and overall, 38% and 14% of the variance in academic satisfaction and life satisfaction, respectively, were explained by the predictor variables. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Data-based decision making: the impact of data variability, training, and context

The current study examines agreement among individuals with varying expertise in behavior analysis about the length of baseline when data were presented point by point. Participants were asked to respond to baseline data and to indicate when to terminate the baseline phase. When only minimal information was provided about the data set, experts and Board Certified Behavior Analyst participants generated baselines of similar lengths, whereas novices did not. Agreement was similar across participants when variability was low but deteriorated as variability in the data set increased. Participants generated shorter baselines when provided with information regarding the independent or dependent variable. Implications for training and the use of visual inspection are discussed.     

Development of sensitivity to spacing versus feature changes in pictures of houses: Evidence for slow development of a general spacing detection mechanism?

Adults are expert at recognizing faces, in part because of exquisite sensitivity to the spacing of facial features. Children are poorer than adults at recognizing facial identity and less sensitive to spacing differences. Here we examined the specificity of the immaturity by comparing the ability of 8-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults to discriminate houses differing in the spacing between features versus those differing in the shape of the features themselves. By 8 years of age, children were more accurate for discriminations involving the feature set compared with the spacing set, and the difference in accuracy compared with adults was greater for the spacing set than for the feature set. Importantly, when sets were matched in difficulty for adults, this greater immaturity on the spacing set than on the feature set remained. The results suggest that, at least by age 8, immaturities in sensitivity to the spacing of features may be related to immaturities in general perceptual mechanisms rather than face-specific mechanisms.     

The specificity of age-related decline in interpretation of emotion cues from prosody

Older adults are not as good as younger adults at decoding prosodic emotions. We sought to determine the specificity of this finding. Performance of older and younger adults was compared on a prosodic emotion task, a "pure" prosodic emotion task, a linguistic prosody task, and a "pure" linguistic prosody task. Older adults were less accurate at interpreting prosodic emotion cues and nonemotional contours, concurrent semantic processing worsened interpretation, and performance was further degraded when identifying negative emotions and questions. Older adults display a pervasive problem interpreting prosodic cues, but further study is required to clarify the stage at which performance declines.     

Confirmatory Analyses of the School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised: Replication and Extension to a Truancy Sample

School absenteeism and school refusal behavior are prevalent and serious issues for youth, but few measures have been developed specifically for this population. The School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised (child and parent versions) provides clinicians with a profile of the relative strength of four functions or maintaining variables regarding school refusal behavior. The scales have been previously tested largely on clinical samples in outpatient treatment settings, however. This study examined 216 youth with primary school refusal behavior and their parent/guardian referred to a community-based truancy court or truancy diversion setting for problematic absenteeism. The four-factor structure of the scales (Kearney Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 24:235–245, 2002a; Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 28:139–144, 2006) was supported via confirmatory factor analysis and specific functions were associated with specific symptom sets as predicted. The results help extend the generalizability of the scales to youths and their families who are more ethnically diverse and referred to a legal process.