Acting or listening: Adult age differences in source recall of enacted and nonenacted statements

This study explored age-related differences in item and source recall of enacted and nonenacted items in a sample of healthy adults between the ages of 35 and 80 years (N=1,000). Participants were screened on a variety of demographic, psychometric, and biological variables. They were presented with sentences (e.g., Lift the book) that they either read or enacted. They were then asked to recall the object of each stimulus sentence (item recall) and to identify its format of encoding (source recall). Age-related decrements were observed both in item and source memory, although age differences in source memory were more accentuated than in item memory. Further, the results indicated an overall impairment of source memory across age when individual differences in the demographic, psychometric, and biological variables were taken into consideration.     

Task concentration training versus applied relaxation, in combination with cognitive therapy, for social phobia patients with fear of blushing, trembling, and sweating

Social phobia patients with fear of blushing, trembling, sweating and/or freezing as main complaint (N = 65) were randomly assigned to either task concentration training (TCT) or applied relaxation (AR) both followed by cognitive therapy (CT). Measurements took place before and after wait-list, after TCT or AR (within-test), after CT (post-test), at 3-months and at 1-year follow-up. Effects were assessed on fear of showing bodily symptoms (the central outcome variable), social phobia, other psychopathology, social skills, self-consciousness, self-focused attention, and dysfunctional beliefs. No changes occurred during wait-list. Both treatments were highly effective. TCT was superior to AR in reducing fear of bodily symptoms and dysfunctional beliefs at within-test. This difference disappeared after CT, at post-test and at 3-months follow-up. However, at 1-year follow-up the combination TCT-CT was superior to AR-CT in reducing fear of bodily symptoms, and effect sizes for TCT-CT reached 3. Furthermore, at all assessment moments TCT or the combination TCT-CT was superior to AR-CT in reducing self-consciousness and self-focused attention. The superior long-term effect of TCT on fear of showing bodily symptoms is explained by lasting changes in attentional focus.     

The processing of free and bound gender-marked morphemes in speech production: evidence from Dutch

In many languages, the production of noun phrases requires the selection of gender-marked elements like determiners or inflectional suffixes. There is a recent debate as to whether the selection of freestanding gender-marked elements, such as determiners, follows the same processing mechanisms as the selection of bound gender-marked morphemes, such as adjective suffixes. Most of the evidence on which this debate is based relates to the gender-congruency effect in picture-word interference experiments. In the present article, the authors address this issue with a pure picture-naming task, extending previous work in German (H. Schriefers, J. D. Jescheniak, & A. Hantsch, 2005). The results of the present study on noun phrase production in Dutch show that both types of gender-marked morphemes are selected via the same basic processing mechanisms.     

Internet-Delivered Exposure-Based Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents With Functional Abdominal Pain or Functional Dyspepsia: A Feasibility Study

Functional abdominal pain (FAP) and functional dyspepsia (FD) are common in adolescents and associated with low quality of life. Exposure-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is efficient for adult and adolescent irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but has never been evaluated for adolescent FAP/FD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and potential efficacy of a novel disorder-specific Internet-delivered CBT (Internet-CBT) for adolescents with FAP or FD, using an uncontrolled open pilot including 31 adolescents. The Internet-CBT consisted of 10 weekly online modules, which focused mainly on exposure to abdominal symptoms. Parents received modules to help them reduce unhelpful parental behaviors. Participants reported the treatment to be credible, and an overall satisfaction with the treatment. Data attrition rate was low (7%) and adherence to treatment was acceptable. We saw a significant and large effect on the primary outcome, pain intensity, at posttreatment (d = 1.20, p < .001) that was further improved after 6 months (d = 1.69, p < .001). Participants also made significant and large improvements on gastrointestinal symptoms (d = 0.84, p < .001) and quality of life (d = 0.84, p < .001) that were sustained or further improved at follow-up 6 months after treatment. This study demonstrated that exposure-based Internet-CBT, tailored for adolescents with FAP or FD, is a feasible treatment that potentially improves pain intensity, gastrointestinal symptoms, and quality of life.     

Heart Rate Variability and Sustained Attention in ADHD Children

The major goal of the current study was to investigate the association between continuous performance tests (CPTs) and the heart rate variability (HRV) of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children. The HRV, specifically the 0.10-Hz component, may be considered to be a psychophysiological index of effort allocation (motivation): The less effort the subject allocates, the greater the 0.10-Hz component. Results indicated that, compared to controls, ADHD subjects had a greater 0.10-Hz component, which was associated with poor test performance over time. Thus, using a psychophysiological measure, we were able to confirm the clinical concept of ADHD from a motivational perspective.     

Interpretation and judgmental biases in social phobia

Previous research demonstrated that social phobia is characterized by content-specific interpretation and judgmental biases. The present study investigated whether this interpretation bias occurs not only in ambiguous, but also in positive and negative social events, and whether social phobic patients (SPs) are more characterized by a judgmental bias in costs than in probability. Besides, we argued that the judgmental bias observed in former studies could also be attributed to accurate estimations of SPs (of, for example, stuttering). Therefore, we assessed judgmental bias by the ratings of probability and costs of a negative evaluation (e.g. ‘people dislike me’) and not, as in previous studies, of negative social events (e.g. ‘stuttering’). SPs (n=228) and normal controls (n=33) were presented social and non-social events ranging from positive to profoundly negative. They ranked four different interpretations on likelihood to assess interpretation bias, and rated the profoundly negative interpretation on probability and cost to assess judgmental bias. SPs demonstrated content-specific interpretation and judgmental biases that also occurred in positive and negative social events. In contrast with expectations, SPs were characterized by a judgmental bias in both costs and probability.