The efficacy of cue exposure with response prevention in extinguishing drug and alcohol cue reactivity

It has been suggested that drug cue‐elicited urges and psychophysiological reactions are the results of Pavlovian conditioning processes and that it should be possible to extinguish these responses with cue exposure with response prevention. It has already been shown that subjective cue‐elicited urges can be extinguished, but it is unclear whether this is also true for cue‐elicited psychophysiological arousal. This was tested in the present study in a heterogeneous sample of drug and alcohol dependent patients. It was found that cue‐elicited urges can indeed be extinguished. However, such a clear pattern of extinguished cue reactivity was not found for the psychophysiological measures. Furthermore, the extinction of drug urges was not specific for cue exposure treatment. It is concluded that cue‐elicited psychophysiological arousal does not underlie subjective cue reactivity and may not reflect Pavlovian conditioned drug responding. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Primary and secondary effects of parenting and stress management interventions for parents of children with developmental disabilities: a meta-analysis

A meta-analysis of the group intervention research for parents of children with developmental disabilities was conducted in order to characterize the efficacy of treatments in reducing depressive symptoms and other forms of psychological distress associated with stress in parents of children with developmental disabilities. An extensive search led to the identification of 17 studies which were divided into three categories for comparative purposes: parenting education studies usually based on behavioral parent training, coping skills education studies based primarily on cognitive behavioral training, and studies that combined these methods along with other support services. Studies were rated for the quality of the research designs and of the reports. Consistent positive benefits were found in the form of reductions in parents' distress, and these effects were comparable to those reported in other syntheses of parenting interventions for parents of children without disabilities. The studies were evaluated in order to assess whether or not they met standards for established evidence-based practices. On the basis of the quality and number of the randomized trials, we present evidence to support the claim that there are established evidence-based interventions for reducing psychological distress at least in middle-class mothers in the short term. The interventions for fathers are promising as are the data on somewhat longer-term effects. The need for replications with a more diverse group of parents and longer-term follow-up were discussed. Multiple component interventions addressing both parent well-being and behavioral parent training were significantly more effective than either behavioral parent training or cognitive behavioral training along.     

Latent Trait Modeling with the Common beliefs Survey III: Using Item Response Theory to Evaluate an Irrational Beliefs Inventory

Assessment of irrational beliefs by such measures as the Common Beliefs Survey III (CBS) has traditionally relied upon classical test theory assumptions, in which the properties of specific test items are less important than the total test score as the aggregate of all item responses. An alternative approach using item response theory (IRT) methodology allows one to specify the parameters of difficulty and discrimination for each test item. Difficulty levels of CBS items range along a continuum of irrationality, the implied latent trait measured by responses to the questionnaire as a whole. We evaluated the CBS responses of 605 individuals from clinical and college settings, drawing from current and archival data. The original Likert scale ratings were recoded into dichotomous scores. Fourteen of the 54 items were highly or very highly discriminating in distinguishing respondents with high and low irrationality levels. However, discriminating items exhibited a very narrow range of difficulty; most functioned at a point a little above the halfway mark on the continuum of irrationality. Item characteristic curves and test information curves were very similar for female (n = 424) and male (n = 179) respondents. We derived a 4-item screening test for irrationality from our IRT analyses of the 54 CBS items. Further test development, focused on the selection and scaling of items with a much broader range of difficulty, would facilitate evaluation of the hierarchical structure of irrational beliefs. Portions of this paper were presented at the 39th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Washington, DC, November, 2005.     

Concurrent task performance enhances low-level visuomotor learning

Visuomotor association learning involves learning to make a motor response to an arbitrary visual stimulus. This learning is essential for visual search and discrimination performance and is reliant upon a well-defined neural circuit in the brain that includes the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampal formation. In the present study, we investigated the possible role of attentional processes during such learning using dual-task interference. A motor, verbal, or perceptual concurrent task was performed during the learning/training block of a simple visual discrimination task. Contrary to expectation, the dual-task groups showed improved learning and learning-dependent performance compared with untrained control and non-dual-task trained groups. A second experiment revealed that this effect did not appear to be due to increased arousal level; the inclusion of alerting tones during learning did not result in facilitation. These findings suggest that the engagement of attention, but not arousal, during the acquisition of a visuomotor association can facilitate this learning and its expression.     

Children's memory of events: effects of stress,age, time delay and location of interview

To examine the ability of children aged between 4 and 12 years to recall a stressful event (venipuncture) compared with a non-stressful event (demonstration of venipuncture), recall was tested after 6–8 weeks. Half also had recall tested after 2–7 days. Testing took place where the stressful event occurred (n=122) or at a neutral location (n=127). Children who experienced the stressful event were less likely to give inaccurate responses in free recall or to acquiesce to suggestive misleading questions. Apart from incorrect responses in free recall, correct responses increased and incorrect responses decreased with increasing age. Recall after 2–7 days was superior to recall after 6–8 weeks. Those who had an early and a late interview had better recall at the late interview than those who had a late interview only. The location of interview showed no effects on recall. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relation between infants' self/mother knowledge and three attachment categories

The relation between attachment and knowledge of self and mother was assessed in 1-to 2-year-old infants. Infant behavior in the Strange Situation was classified according to three attachment categories: secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant. Infants' featural knowledge was measured by featural recognition, name, possession, and gender. Infants who were securely or resistantly attached had significantly more complex knowledge of mother than self, whereas avoidantly attached infants did not differ in the complexity of knowledge of self and mother. Securely attached infants had more complex self-knowledge than both categories of insecurely attached infants. In contrast, avoidantly attached infants had less complex knowledge of mother than did securely or resistantly attached infants. These data are discussed in the context of how infants' strategies of coping with stress are related to the acquisition of self- and mother-knowledge.     

Connection and separation in the infant-mother dyad: Patterns of touch and use of interpersonal space

Infant-mother boundaries were operationalized in terms of body-to-body contact and use of interpersonal space. The unit of observation was the infant-mother dyad. Infants between the ages of 12 and 24 months and their mothers were observed in three situations: self- and mother-recognition tasks, and the free-play and second reunion episodes of the Strange Situation. Infant-mother touch and the pattern of proximity-distality were principally determined by context of interaction; and, in the more stressful and more structured situations, the connection-separation balance favored connection, whereas in the free-play situation the balance favored separation. Infant-mother touch and use of interpersonal space were not found to be isomorphic to attachment; in addition, attachment interacted with age and gender of the infant to describe level of connection-separation. Results are discussed in the context of working models of the relationship and formation of boundaries.     

Anxiety, anxiety disorders, tobacco use, and nicotine: a critical review of interrelationships

Smoking is highly prevalent across most anxiety disorders. Tobacco use increases risk for the later development of certain anxiety disorders, and smokers with anxiety disorders have more severe withdrawal symptoms during smoking cessation than smokers without anxiety disorders. The authors critically examined the relationships among anxiety, anxiety disorders, tobacco use, and nicotine dependence and reviewed the existing empirical literature. Future research is needed to better understand the interrelationships among these variables, including predictors, moderators, and mechanisms of action. Increased knowledge in these areas should inform prevention efforts as well as the development and improvement of smoking cessation programs for those with anxiety and other psychiatric disorders.     

Beyond the forest and the trees: local and global interference in hierarchical visual stimuli containing three levels

Our visual world can be thought of as organised in a hierarchical manner. Studies on hierarchical letter stimuli (a large letter composed of smaller letters) suggest that processing of a visual scene is global to local, a phenomenon known as the global-precedence effect. Elaborating on this global-to-local hypothesis we tested whether global interference will increase with increasing level of globality. For this, we used three-level hierarchical letter stimuli with a global, middle, and local level. When attending to the local level of the stimulus, only the middle level showed an interference effect, whereas the global level did not interfere at all. We argue that, considering the perceptual and attentional contributions to this effect, the hypothesis of global-to-local processing of a visual scene may only hold within a limited spatial attentional window.