A Couple-Based Psychological Treatment for Chronic Pain and Relationship Distress

Chronic pain impacts individuals with pain as well as their loved ones. Yet, there has been little attention to the social context in individual psychological treatment approaches to chronic pain management. With this need in mind, we developed a couple-based treatment, “Mindful Living and Relating,” aimed at alleviating pain and suffering by promoting couples’ psychological and relational flexibility skills. Currently, there is no integrative treatment that fully harnesses the power of the couple, treating both the individual with chronic pain and the spouse as two individuals who are each in need of developing greater psychological and relational flexibility to improve their own and their partners’ health. Mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based action exercises were used to promote psychological flexibility. The intervention also targets relational flexibility, which we define as the ability to interact with one’s partner, fully attending to the present moment, and responding empathically in a way that serves one’s own and one’s partner’s values. To this end, the intervention also included exercises aimed at applying psychological flexibility skills to social interactions as well as emotional disclosure and empathic responding exercises to enhance relational flexibility. The case presented demonstrates that healthy coping with pain and stress may be most successful and sustainable when one is involved in a supportive relationship with someone who also practices psychological flexibility skills and when both partners use relational flexibility skills during their interactions.     

Online webcam-based eye tracking in cognitive science: A first look

Online experimentation is emerging in many areas of cognitive psychology as a viable alternative or supplement to classical in-lab experimentation. While performance- and reaction-time-based paradigms are covered in recent studies, one instrument of cognitive psychology has not received much attention up to now: eye tracking. In this study, we used JavaScript-based eye tracking algorithms recently made available by Papoutsaki et al. (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2016) together with consumer-grade webcams to investigate the potential of online eye tracking to benefit from the common advantages of online data conduction. We compared three in-lab conducted tasks (fixation, pursuit, and free viewing) with online-acquired data to analyze the spatial precision in the first two, and replicability of well-known gazing patterns in the third task. Our results indicate that in-lab data exhibit an offset of about 172 px (15% of screen size, 3.94° visual angle) in the fixation task, while online data is slightly less accurate (18% of screen size, 207 px), and shows higher variance. The same results were found for the pursuit task with a constant offset during the stimulus movement (211 px in-lab, 216 px online). In the free-viewing task, we were able to replicate the high attention attribution to eyes (28.25%) compared to other key regions like the nose (9.71%) and mouth (4.00%). Overall, we found web technology-based eye tracking to be suitable for all three tasks and are confident that the required hard- and software will be improved continuously for even more sophisticated experimental paradigms in all of cognitive psychology.     

Growth curve models in retrospective memory and prospective memory: the relationship between prediction and performance with task experience

Older adults commonly experience declines in episodic memory that affect their daily lives. The aim was to examine whether the acquired metacognitive awareness that comes with task experience, indexed by meta-retrospective memory (meta-RM)/meta-prospective memory (meta-PM), influences how older adults predict performance on later trials. Participants were 178 community-dwelling older adults. RM performance and predictions were measured using a multi-trial word-list learning task. Predictions and performance for PM were measured using a PM paradigm. Change in RM/PM performance and predictions over the trials/blocks were modelled using latent growth curve analyses. For RM, both predictions and performance increased with task experience. However, for PM, neither performance nor predictions changed with task experience. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that metacognitive awareness acquired during the RM and PM tasks influenced how older adults’ modified their predictions of subsequent task performance. Findings are consistent with [Toglia and Kirk’s (2000). Understanding awareness deficits following brain injury. NeuroRehabilitation, 15(1), 57–70] hypothesis that individuals compare ongoing performance to expectations based on metacognitive knowledge, such that a discrepancy between actual and expected performance may influence emergent awareness.     

Predicting Intentions of Romantic Partner Abuse with the Theory of Planned Behavior

From the theory of planned behavior, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were identified as predictors of intentions for verbal, physical, and sexual abuse toward romantic partners. Relationships among the three predictors across the three types of abuse were examined with responses from undergraduates involved in romantic relationships. The theory of planned behavior accounted for substantial variance associated with intentions to abuse romantic partners. Moreover, the components of the theory of planned behavior were differentially predictive of the three forms of abuse, which also varied by sex. A recommendation is that interventions should target different components of the theory of planned behavior depending on the type of abuse they are attempting to prevent.     

If you want to know, consider asking: how likely is it that patients will hurt themselves in the future?

Although self-harming behavior is a common and costly problem for psychiatric inpatients released from the hospital, standardized tools that assess patients' risk for self-harm are rarely used in clinical settings. In this study of dually diagnosed psychiatric inpatients (N = 147), we assessed the utility of patients' self-perceptions of risk in predicting self-harm in the community. Patients' self-perceptions of risk predicted self-harm 8 weeks after discharge from the hospital (Lag 1; area under the curve [AUC] = 0.75). Self-perceptions of risk at the 8-week interview also predicted self-harm 2 months later (Lag 2; AUC = 0.72). Self-perceived risk added predictive utility above and beyond scores on a measure of depression and seemed to capture changes in risk state over time. The results suggest that inpatients can accurately perceive their own risk and therefore may be important collaborators in the risk management process.     

Behavioral Activation Treatment for Depression in Older Adults Delivered via Videoconferencing: A Pilot Study

Depression affects up to 25% of older adults. Underdetection and subsequent undertreatment of depression in older adults has been attributed in part to difficulties in older adults being able to access treatment. This uncontrolled pilot study, N = 3, explored the acceptability and efficacy of a brief behavioral activation treatment delivered via videoconferencing to 3 participants, aged 64 to 73 years, diagnosed with major depressive disorder. The results indicate that a 5-session behavioral activation treatment delivered via videoconferencing produced clinically significant and reliable decreases in depression. The results also showed clinically significant and reliable decreases in negative affect and clinically significant and reliable increases in positive affect. Treatment gains were maintained at 1-month follow-up. Videoconferencing can be a valuable and effective tool in increasing accessibility to psychological treatment for older adults.     

Posterior cingulate cortex: adapting behavior to a changing world

When has the world changed enough to warrant a new approach? The answer depends on current needs, behavioral flexibility and prior knowledge about the environment. Formal approaches solve the problem by integrating the recent history of rewards, errors, uncertainty and context via Bayesian inference to detect changes in the world and alter behavioral policy. Neuronal activity in posterior cingulate cortex - a key node in the default network - is known to vary with learning, memory, reward and task engagement. We propose that these modulations reflect the underlying process of change detection and motivate subsequent shifts in behavior.     

Transcendent Experiences Among Pilgrims to Lourdes: A Qualitative Investigation

Journal of Religion and Health - Millions of pilgrims visit Lourdes each year, often seeking revitalisation rather than miraculous cures. We sought to understand the phenomenon of transcendent...