Attention training toward and away from threat in social phobia: effects on subjective, behavioral, and physiological measures of anxiety

Social phobics exhibit an attentional bias for threat in probe detection and probe discrimination paradigms. Attention training programs, in which probes always replace nonthreatening cues, reduce attentional bias for threat and self-reported social anxiety. However, researchers have seldom included behavioral measures of anxiety reduction, and have never taken physiological measures of anxiety reduction. In the present study, we trained individuals with generalized social phobia (n = 57) to attend to threat cues (attend to threat), to attend to positive cues (attend to positive), or to alternately attend to both (control condition). We assessed not only self-reported social anxiety, but also behavioral and physiological measures of social anxiety. Participants trained to attend to nonthreatening cues demonstrated significantly greater reductions in self-reported, behavioral, and physiological measures of anxiety than did participants from the attend to threat and control conditions.     

Telepsychology outcome research with children and adolescents: A review of the literature

Using technology as a service medium has been touted as a potentially feasible and effective alternative and/or adjunct to in-person services. The telepsychology literature has given less attention to children and adolescents in comparison to adults. This review provides a summary and critique of the empirical research focused on psychological services provided to children and adolescents using three technology media (i.e., videoconferencing, Internet, and telephone). The evidentiary support for providing services with each of these media for a range of concerns is encouraging. The quantity and quality of research, however, both need to be enhanced to better understand how technology mediates the provision of youth services, as well as to elevate telepsychology within professional psychology. Future research and its subsequent impact on policy and practice are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Narrative self and high risk for schizophrenia: remembering the past and imagining the future

ABSTRACT

We examined the narrative self of those at high psychometric risk for schizophrenia (HR). Eighty undergraduate students wrote personal narratives about a turning-point event in their life, and about a possible future. The turning-point narratives were coded for topic, specificity, event valence, valence of causal coherence link, overall level of causal coherence, and agency. The future narratives were coded for the number and valence of goals, topic of goals, and specificity of goals. Word count was applied to all narratives. The HR group expressed lower levels of agency and a trend of lower levels of causal coherence when narrating turning-point events. When imagining their futures, HR participants produced shorter narratives and showed a trend of having fewer goals. Including the dimensions of both the turning point and the future narratives revealed that the HR group membership was best predicted by lower levels of agency and of causal coherence in the turning-point narrative, and fewer words in the future narrative. Narratives differed specifically in those few elements that are critical for the achievement of narrative continuity. Consistent with the theory, people at high risk for schizophrenia already present, to some extent, an impoverishment in their narrative sense of self.     

Reflections on the Theory-Practice Gap in Cognitive Behavior Therapy

The papers in this special series, edited by Pilecki and McKay (2013--this issue), are devoted to examining the theory-practice gap in cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT). A gap between theory and practice can occur at more than one level. First, there exists a substantial and concerning gap between the theories and interventions supported by research and those being offered to patients in the community (i.e., research-practice gap). There is also a growing concern in the field that the techniques and procedures that characterize cognitive-behavioral therapies are becoming increasingly divorced from underlying theories (i.e., theory-procedure gap). In the present commentary we hope to summarize and comment on some of the themes, issues, and future directions raised by our contributors.     

Children remember early childhood: long‐term recall across the offset of childhood amnesia

Young children's verbal recall for personally experienced events was examined over extended time periods across the traditional boundary of childhood amnesia. Forty children, aged 5½, discussed with an experimenter personal experiences that had taken place when they were as young as 1½. At 5½ children had not yet forgotten at least some events from before age 3½, the average offset of childhood amnesia. There was a qualitative shift in children's recall for events that occurred before age 2; for events that happened before age 2, only around half of children's recall was accurate. For events that occurred after this age, over 75% of children's recall was accurate. Complete forgetting of very early childhood has not yet occurred by age 5½. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised Very Short Form: A New Factor Structure's Associations With Parenting Perceptions and Child Language Outcomes

The Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised–Very Short Form (IBQ–R VSF; Putnam, Helbig, Gartstein, Rothbart, &; Leerkes, 2014 Putnam, S. P., Helbig, A. L., Gartstein, M. A., Rothbart, M. K., &; Leerkes, E. (2014). Development and assessment of short and very short forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96, 445–458. doi:10.1080/00223891.2013.841171[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is a new publicly available measure of infant temperament measuring positive affectivity/surgency (PAS), negative emotionality (NEG), and orienting and regulatory capacity (ORC). Although the initial psychometric properties of the 3-factor model appear promising, it has not been administered to a large and diverse sample and its predictive validity has not been established. This study administered the IBQ–R VSF to a diverse sample of 5,639 mothers of infants aged between 23 and 52 weeks. Confirmatory factor analysis found that the 3-factor solution did not meet the requirement for satisfactory model fit. Exploratory factor analysis found that a 5-factor solution (PAS, NEG, Orienting Capacity, Affiliation/Regulation, and Fear) was statistically and conceptually the most parsimonious. All 5 temperament dimensions were found to relate to both mother- and partner-reported infant closeness, parenting confidence, and parenting satisfaction, and four of the dimensions (PAS, Orienting Capacity, NEG, and Fear) related to the infants' communication development. Some parental differences were also found. Together these findings suggest that the 5-factor IBQ–R VSF is a promising measure of infant temperament and is related to parenting perceptions and child language development.     

A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form: An Item Response Theory Analysis of Infant Temperament in New Zealand

The Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised Very Short Form (IBQ–R VSF; Putnam, Helbig, Gartstein, Rothbart, &; Leerkes, 2014 Putnam, S. P., Helbig, A. L., Gartstein, M. A., Rothbart, M. K., &; Leerkes, E. (2014). Development and assessment of short and very short forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96, 445–458. doi:10.1080/00223891.2013.841171[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is a newly published measure of infant temperament with a 3-factor structure. Recently Peterson et al. (2017 Peterson, E. R., Waldie, K. E., Mohal, J., Reese, E., Atatoa Carr, P.E., Grant, C. C., &; Morton, S. M. B. (2017). Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised Very Short Form: A new factor structure's associations with parenting perceptions and child language outcomes. Journal of Personality Assessment. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/00223891.2017.1287709[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) suggested that a 5-factor structure (Positive Affectivity/Surgency, Negative Emotionality, Orienting Capacity, Affiliation/Regulation, and Fear) was more parsimonious and showed promising reliability and predictive validity in a large, diverse sample. However, little is known about the 5-factor model's precision across the temperament dimensions range and whether it discriminates equally well across ethnicities. A total of 5,567 mothers responded to the IBQ–R VSF in relation to their infants (N = 5,639) between 23 and 52 weeks old. Using item response theory, we conducted a series of 2 parameter logistic item response models and found that 5 IBQ–R VSF temperament dimensions showed a good distribution of estimates across each latent trait range and these estimates centered close to the population mean. The IBQ–R VSF was also similarly precise across 4 ethnic groups (European, Māori, Pacific peoples, and Asians), suggesting that it can be used as comparable measure for infant temperament in a diversity of ethnic groups.