Sexual Identification in the United States at the Intersections of Gender,Race/Ethnicity,Immigration, and Education

Sex Roles - Sexual identification is shaped by social processes that vary across multiple axes of marginalization and social position—including gender, race/ethnicity, immigration status, and...     

Thought-shape fusion in anorexia nervosa: an experimental investigation

Cognitive biases and cognitive distortions have been implicated as important factors in the development and maintenance of many disorders. The concept of thought-shape fusion (TSF) in eating disorders was developed by Shafran, Teachman, Kerry, and Rachman (British Journal of Clinical Psychology 38 (1999) 167) as a variant of thought-action fusion, described by Shafran, Thordarson and Rachman (Journal of Anxiety Disorders 10 (1996) 379). TSF occurs when thinking about eating certain types of food increases a person's estimate of their shape and/or weight, elicits a perception of moral wrongdoing, and/or makes the person feel fat. Shafran et al. (1999) examined both the psychometric and experimental properties of TSF in an undergraduate sample. This paper reports an extension of this work to a clinical group (N=20) of patients with anorexia nervosa. After completing a set of relevant questionnaires, participants were asked to think about a food which they considered extremely fattening. They were then asked to write out the sentence, "I am eating--.", inserting the name of the fattening food in the blank. After being asked to rate their anxiety, guilt, feelings about their weight, morality, etc., participants were given the opportunity to neutralize their statement in any way they chose. The majority of the participants neutralized in ways consistent with the findings of Shafran et al. (1999). The results are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural formulations of eating disorders, and of the influence of cognitive biases and cognitive distortions on the processing of information relevant to food, weight and shape in anorexia nervosa.     

Extinction-induced immobility in the water maze and its neurochemical concomitants in aged and adult rats: a possible model for depression?

Extinction of escape behavior in the water maze due to the removal of the platform, was hypothesized to induce a negative state, including the development of immobility, which is held to reflect a state of "despair" when measured in the forced swimming test. 27 aged and 8 adult animals (26 and 3 months old Wistar rats, respectively) were tested in the water maze during nine days with a platform hidden, followed by 7 days of extinction trials with the platform absent. As expected, both age groups developed immobility over the extinction trials, with the aged showing more than the adults. To examine whether the age difference in immobility was related to performance differences during acquisition, the aged were subdivided into superior, intermediate and inferior learners (n = 9 per group) on the basis of overall times to platform during acquisition, and compared with each other and the adults. Results showed that the aged inferior learners displayed the highest levels of immobility among the aged. Immobility scores were then correlated with post-mortem neurotransmitter contents in the hippocampus and ventral striatum. In the ventral striatum, levels of immobility were correlated with levels of acetylcholine, dopamine and the metabolite dihydroxyphenylacetic acid in the aged, and with norepinephrine in the adults. The data support the hypothesis that multiple extinction trials in the water maze result in immobility that may indicate "behavioral despair," and that striatal neurotransmitter systems correlate with the degree of its expression. The concept of extinction-induced despair is held to provide the promise of a conceptual and empirical model of human depression that is the consequence of loss of reinforcers.     

A neuropsychiatric developmental model of serial homicidal behavior

Serial sexual homicide has been the object of intensive study from forensic psychiatric, criminological, developmental, and sociological perspectives. In contradistinction to these approaches, neuropsychiatric concepts and methods have received relatively little attention in this area. In this article we adopt a neuropsychiatric developmental perspective and undertake a review of the psychiatric literature on violence and autism spectrum disorders. Our analysis of this literature suggests the presence of an association between autism spectrum psychopathology and serial homicidal behavior. Recommendations for further research to help clarify the nature of this association are briefly discussed.     

Engagement and outcome in the treatment of bulimia nervosa: first phase of a sequential design comparing motivation enhancement therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy

Despite the major advances in the development of treatments for bulimia nervosa, drop-outs and a lack of engagement in treatment, continue to be problems. Recent studies suggest that the transtheoretical model of change may be applicable to bulimia nervosa. The aim of this study was to examine the roles of readiness to change and therapeutic alliance in determining engagement and outcome in the first phase of treatment. One hundred and twenty five consecutive female patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for bulimia nervosa took part in a randomised controlled treatment trial. The first phase of the sequential treatment compared four sessions of either cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or motivational enhancement therapy (MET) in engaging patients in treatment and reducing symptoms. Patients in the action stage showed greater improvement in symptoms of binge eating than did patients in the contemplation stage. Higher pretreatment scores on action were also related to the development of a better therapeutic alliance (as perceived by patients) after four weeks. However, pretreatment stage of change did not predict who dropped out of treatment. There were no differences between MET and CBT in terms of reducing bulimic symptoms or in terms of developing a therapeutic alliance or increasing readiness to change. The results suggest that the transtheoretical model of change may have some validity in the treatment of bulimia nervosa although current measures of readiness to change may require modification. Overall, readiness to change is more strongly related to improvement and the development of a therapeutic alliance than the specific type of treatment.     

Brain Gene Expression During REM Sleep Depends on Prior Waking Experience

In most mammalian species studied, two distinct and successive phases of sleep, slow wave (SW), and rapid eye movement (REM), can be recognized on the basis of their EEG profiles and associated behaviors. Both phases have been implicated in the offline sensorimotor processing of daytime events, but the molecular mechanisms remain elusive. We studied brain expression of the plasticity-associated immediate-early gene (IEG) zif-268 during SW and REM sleep in rats exposed to rich sensorimotor experience in the preceding waking period. Whereas nonexposed controls show generalized zif-268 down-regulation during SW and REM sleep, zif-268 is upregulated during REM sleep in the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus of exposed animals. We suggest that this phenomenon represents a window of increased neuronal plasticity during REM sleep that follows enriched waking experience.     

The assessment of obsessionality using the Padua inventory: its validity in a British non-clinical sample

The Padua Inventory (PI) is a measure of obsessive–compulsive phenomena, which permits measurement of both number and severity of symptoms. Data is available from Italy, the US, the Netherlands and Australia on non-clinical samples. The present study provides a psychometric evaluation of the PI on a British non-clinical sample (N=1855). Comparisons are made with other data and further suggestions for the use of the PI are made. Results from the present study indicate that the PI has similar, though not identical, factor structure to previous studies, adequate internal reliability and construct validity. Four factors emerged, containing clusters of items broadly relating to ‘impaired control over mental activities/doubting', ‘contamination', ‘checking' and ‘worries about losing control over motor behaviour' and these included most of the items loading on the same factors in earlier studies together with additional items.The relationships of age and gender with the PI scores are investigated. Differences were found from the Sanavio (1988) [Sanavio, E. (1988). Obsessions and compulsions: the Padua Inventory. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 26, 169–177.] Italian sample. These differences are in keeping with other available data from British samples and other data on the epidemiology of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The five factor structure found in the one study using clinical and non-clinical subjects is discussed in relation to the present analyses.