Group cognitive-behavioral therapy for hoarding disorder: an open trial

Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) appears to be a promising treatment approach for hoarding disorder, treatment to date has been quite labor intensive. The goal of this study, therefore, was to assess the potential effectiveness of group CBT for hoarding, without home visits by the clinician. Forty-five individuals with hoarding disorder enrolled in either a 16 or 20 session program of group CBT; 30 (67%) completed treatment. Using mixed-effects models to account for missing data, we report data from 35 (78%) participants who provided enough data for analysis. Participants demonstrated significant improvements in hoarding symptoms, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety, and quality of life. Improvements in hoarding symptoms were comparable to two published clinical trials on individual CBT for hoarding disorder. Results of this study suggest that group CBT for hoarding, without home discarding sessions by the clinician, may be an effective treatment option with the potential advantage of increasing treatment access by reducing clinician burden and cost of treatment.     

Visual statistical learning in the newborn infant

Statistical learning – implicit learning of statistical regularities within sensory input – is a way of acquiring structure within continuous sensory environments. Statistics computation, initially shown to be involved in word segmentation, has been demonstrated to be a general mechanism that operates across domains, across time and space, and across species. Recently, statistical leaning has been reported to be present even at birth when newborns were tested with a speech stream. The aim of the present study was to extend this finding, by investigating whether newborns’ ability to extract statistics operates in multiple modalities, as found for older infants and adults. Using the habituation procedure, two experiments were carried out in which visual sequences were presented. Results demonstrate that statistical learning is a general mechanism that extracts statistics across domain since the onset of sensory experience. Intriguingly, present data reveal that newborn learner’s limited cognitive resources constrain the functioning of statistical learning, narrowing the range of what can be learned.     

Does mentioning "some people" and "other people" in a survey question increase the accuracy of adolescents' self-reports?

A great deal of developmental research has relied on self-reports solicited using the "some/other" question format ("Some students think that… but other students think that…"). This article reports tests of the assumptions underlying its use: that it conveys to adolescents that socially undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors are not uncommon and legitimizes reporting them, yielding more valid self-reports than would be obtained by "direct" questions, which do not mention what other people think or do. A meta-analysis of 11 experiments embedded in four surveys of diverse samples of adolescents did not support the assumption that the some/other form increases validity. Although the some/other form led adolescents to think that undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were more common and resulted in more reports of those attitudes and behaviors, answers to some/other questions were lower in criterion validity than were answers to direct questions. Because some/other questions take longer to ask and answer and require greater cognitive effort from participants (because they involve more words), and because they decrease measurement accuracy, the some/other question format seems best avoided.     

Starting over: a tentative theory exploring the effects of past relationships on postbereavement remarried couples

Using grounded theory methodology 24 participants were asked to discuss how the death of a previous spouse, either theirs or their partner's, was currently affecting their second marriage. Participants were interviewed individually and as a couple. The central category was memories of the deceased spouse. Six additional categories emerged from the data: past spouse on pedestal, current/past comparison, insecurity of current spouse, curiosity about past spouse/relationship, partner's response to curiosity, and impact on the current relationship. Existing literature, auditors, and participant feedback were all used to validate the results. Expanding on a tentative theory (Brimhall, Wampler, & Kimball, 2008), provisional hypotheses were developed, thus helping clinicians who work with complex issues involving remarried couples.     

Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: a meta-analytic review

This paper provides meta-analytic support for an integrated model specifying the antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment. Results indicate that contextual antecedent constructs representing perceived high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support, leadership, and work characteristics are each strongly related to psychological empowerment. Positive self-evaluation traits are related to psychological empowerment and are as strongly related as the contextual factors. Psychological empowerment is in turn positively associated with a broad range of employee outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and task and contextual performance, and is negatively associated with employee strain and turnover intentions. Team empowerment is positively related to team performance. Further, the magnitude of parallel antecedent and outcome relationships at the individual and team levels is statistically indistinguishable, demonstrating the generalizability of empowerment theory across these 2 levels of analysis. A series of analyses also demonstrates the validity of psychological empowerment as a unitary second-order construct. Implications and future directions for empowerment research and theory are discussed.     

A question of honor: Chief Wahoo and American Indian stereotype activation among a university based sample

For over 30 years, a debate has raged regarding the appropriateness of high school, university, and professional sports teams using American Indian mascots. Proponents of such mascots state that these images are traditions and honor Indigenous People. Opponents of these images argue that the symbols foster stereotypes (Pewewardy, 1999) and negatively affect American Indians (Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, & Stone, 2008). The purpose of this investigation was to examine if exposure to an American Indian mascot activated American Indian stereotypes in a predominately European American sample. In addition, we explored the role of personal motivation, prejudice level, and experience on stereotype activation. We found that the Chief Wahoo image (i.e., Cleveland Indian's logo) compared to other images activated negative, but not positive, American Indian stereotypes. Participants' motivation to control prejudice, prejudice level, and experience did not predict negative stereotype activation. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Religiousness,Spirituality, and Psychological Distress in Taiwan

Most of the previous research on religion and mental health has focused solely on Western, predominantly Christian societies. Using a 2004 national survey of 1,881 adults in Taiwan, this study investigates the relationships between multidimensional measures of religiousness/spirituality and psychological distress in an Eastern context. Our findings differ from previous studies in the West, showing that: (1) religious-based supernatural beliefs are associated with more distress; (2) daily prayer is associated with less distress; (3) engaging in secular-based supernatural activities like fortune-telling is related to more distress; and (4) the frequency of religious attendance is unrelated to levels of distress. Broader theoretical and empirical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Psychometric evaluation of the Dutch translation of the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for adults (OASES-A-D)

The Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for adults (OASES-A; [Yaruss and Quesal, 2006] and [Yaruss and Quesal, 2010]) is a patient-reported outcome measure that was designed to provide a comprehensive assessment of “the experience of the stuttering disorder from the perspective of individuals who stutter” (Yaruss & Quesal, 2006, p. 90). This paper reports on the translation process and evaluates the psychometric performance of a Dutch version of the OASES-A. Translation of the OASES-A into Dutch followed a standard forward and backward translation process. The Dutch OASES-A (OASES-A-D) was then administered to 138 adults who stutter. A subset of 91 respondents also evaluated their speech on a 10-point Likert scale. For another subset of 45 respondents, a clinician-based stuttering severity rating on a 5-point Likert scale was available. Thirty-two of the respondents also completed the Dutch S-24 scale (Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003). The OASES-A-D showed acceptable item properties. No ceiling effects were observed. For 30 out of 100 items, most of which were in Section IV (Quality of Life), floor effects were observed. Cronbach's α coefficients for all sections and subsections surpassed the 0.70 criterion of good internal consistency and reliability. Concurrent validity was moderate to high. Construct validity was confirmed by distinct scores on the OASES-A-D for groups with different levels of stuttering severity as rated by the speakers themselves or by clinicians. These results suggest that the OASES-A-D is a reliable and valid measure that can be used to assess the impact of stuttering on Dutch adults who stutter.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (a) describe the purpose of the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for adults (OASES-A) measurement tool; (b) summarize the translation process used in creating the Dutch version of the OASES-A (OASES-A-D); (c) evaluate the psychometric properties of the OASES-A-D; and (d) compare the psychometric properties of the OASES-A-D with those of the original American English OASES-A.     

School Counseling Programs as Spiritual and Religious Safe Zones

The authors present a model for creating spiritual and religious safe zones in school counseling programs that implements the Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling's (ASERVIC; 2009) Competencies for Addressing Spiritual and Religious Issues in Counseling in a school setting. The authors frame the model within the context of issues related to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and posit that students' ability to discuss and explore spiritual and religious issues promotes their personal and social‐emotional development.