Patient-Informed Treatment Development of Behavioral Smoking Cessation for People With Schizophrenia

The objective of this study was to use qualitative methodology to tailor and refine an existing smoking cessation intervention for the population of people who use cigarettes and are diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or psychotic disorder. Successive cohort design methodology was used to iteratively modify the treatment in response to qualitative participant, therapist, and consultant feedback on the intervention. Qualitative methodology for participant feedback included analysis of semistructured interviews with participants, visualization of app utilization data, and stakeholder feedback from study therapists and consultants. Using the successive cohort design, a tailored multicomponent mobile health smoking cessation intervention was developed. The intervention included mobile contingency management (i.e., financial compensation for confirmed abstinence from smoking), pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation, cognitive-behavioral counseling sessions, and the Stay Quit app for relapse prevention. Two cohorts (N = 13) were completed in the study; after each cohort, the treatment protocol was revised. The intervention is described, as well as the qualitative findings from each cohort and subsequent changes made to the intervention based upon patient and provider feedback. Metrics of patient engagement included treatment adherence (40% in Cohort 1 and 63% in Cohort 2). Both participants and therapists reported that the intervention was helpful. Over one third of participants self-reported abstinence at posttreatment. Since qualitative methodology is often underutilized in mental health treatment development, this study demonstrates the utility of the successive cohort design for treatment development of behavior change interventions for at-risk, vulnerable populations.     

Semantic detail in the developing verb lexicon: An extension of Naigles and Kako (1993)

Verbs are often uttered before the events they describe. By 2 years of age, toddlers can learn from such an encounter. Hearing a novel verb in transitive sentences (e.g. The boy lorped the cat), even with no visual referent present, they later map it to a causative meaning (e.g. feed) (e.g. Yuan & Fisher, 2009 ). How much semantic detail does their verb representation include on this first, underinformative, encounter? Is the representation sparse, including only information for which they have evidence, or do toddlers make more specific guesses about the verb's meaning? In two experiments (N = 76, mean age 27 months), we address this using an event type studied by Naigles and Kako ( 1993 ); they found that when toddlers hear a novel transitive verb while simultaneously viewing a non‐causative referent—a contact event such as patting—they map the verb to the contact event. In Experiment 1 we replicated this basic result. Further, toddlers’ representations persisted over a 5‐minute delay, manifesting again during a retest. In Experiment 2, toddlers heard the verbs while watching two actors converse instead of while seeing contact events. At test, they showed no evidence of mapping the verbs to contact events, either initially or after a 5‐minute delay, despite that in prior work they mapped verbs to causative events under identical circumstances. We infer that on hearing a novel verb in a transitive frame, absent a relevant visual scene, toddlers posit a more specific representation than the evidence requires—one that incorporates causative semantics. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/aRCqSTbr6Bw     

The Impact of Films on Viewer Attitudes towards People with Schizophrenia

The media, including television, newspapers, and popular films have been implicated in the facilitation of mental illness stigmatization by presenting negative and inaccurate depictions of various diagnoses. The current study examined the impact of film on participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards people with schizophrenia. A total of 106 participants completed questionnaires before and after viewing a 45-min film excerpt. Films viewed included a fear-based inaccurate, likeable-inaccurate, and an educational-accurate depiction of schizophrenia. There was also a control group. There were significant increases in stigmatizing attitudes for participants in the fear-based inaccurate group compared to the accurate and control group. Fear-based participants reported increased negative affect and endorsed statements suggesting that people with schizophrenia were unpredictable, dependent, and dangerous. These results provide support for the hypothesis that negative, inaccurate portrayals of severe mental illness enhance stigmatizing attitudes. Accurate film depictions, advocacy for social equality, and the continued education of individuals, clients, families, communities and organizations will help to mitigate the impact of films on mental illness stigmatization.     

Emotional Functioning in Children and Adolescents with Elevated Depressive Symptoms

Difficulties with emotion and its regulation are of central importance to the etiology and course of depression. The current study investigated these constructs in relation to childhood and adolescence by comparing the emotional functioning of 170 9- to 15-year-olds reporting high levels of depressive symptoms (HD) to a matched sample of 170 children and adolescents reporting low levels of depressive symptoms (LD). Compared to LD, HD participants reported significantly greater shame proneness, poorer functioning on emotion regulation competencies (emotional control, self-awareness and situational responsiveness), less healthy emotion regulation strategy use (less reappraisal and greater suppression), and lower levels of guilt proneness. Empathic concern did not differ between the two groups. The findings enhance current knowledge by providing a more comprehensive profile of the emotional difficulties experienced by children and adolescents with elevated depressive symptoms.     

Social anxiety disorder in children and youth: A research update on aetiological factors

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a heterogeneous and distressing problem for many children and youth. This review focuses on the etiology and maintenance of SAD, and examines research findings in several key areas of investigation: genetic or hereditary factors (twin and family studies), temperament characteristics (behavioural inhibition), and parent–child interactions (attachment, parenting styles). It is concluded that genetic influences, behavioural inhibition, and parent–child interactions play significant and interactive roles in the development and maintenance of SAD. Other influences such as peer relationships, social skills deficits, and traumatic experiences are also acknowledged. Ultimately, an understanding of such pathways should facilitate effective early screening and intervention of children at risk for severe social anxiety.     

Temporal resolution of figures and grounds

Recent studies have demonstrated that establishing figure–ground organization influences other perceptual processes. Specifically, figures undergo perceptual processing earlier than ground regions (Lester, Hecht, & Vecera, 2009), and they are processed for longer durations relative to ground regions (Hecht & Vecera, 2011). One potential consequence of figures' extended processing is degraded temporal resolution compared to ground regions. To test this hypothesis, observers completed a modified flicker-fusion task while viewing either displays that contained well-defined figures and grounds or displays that were ambiguous. As evidenced by increased sensitivity for flickering targets on the ground regions, the current results support the claim that figures have poorer temporal resolution than ground regions.     

Avoiding The Unavoidable? Judith Shklar’s Unwilling Search For An Overlapping Consensus

No less an authority than John Rawls identified Judith Shklar as a ‘political’ liberal. However, though their respective conceptions of political liberalism are similar in a number of important respects, Shklar emphasizes that her vision differs notably from that of Rawls. In particular, she explicitly eschews Rawls’s focus on establishing and sustaining an overlapping consensus, arguing that his belief in the possibility of securing such a consensus is naïve and, indeed, dangerous insofar as it embodies an obvious disregard for the painful lessons of history and thereby not only allows but invites the occurrence of new cruelties and horrors. Obviously, such an approach would seem to diverge dramatically from that promoted by Rawls and many other political liberals. The purpose of this essay is to analyze Shklar’s arguments and determine the validity of her claims regarding the differences between her conception and that of Rawls and, in so doing, assess the extent to which Shklar’s ‘liberalism of fear’ can be said to represent a meaningfully distinctive model of political liberalism.     

The Rotter Locus of Control Scale in 43 Countries: A Test of Cultural Relativity

A databank of 9140 responses to the Rotter (1966) locus of control scale was analyzed, using multidimensional scaling techniques. Respondents were employees in business organizations in 43 countries. Three interpretable dimensions were identified. The first was interpreted in terms of Schwartz's (1992) dimensions of mastery over the environment versus harmony with the environment. It also correlated significantly with country means for internality. The second distinguished responses from countries identified by Hofstede (1980) as individualist and collectivist. The third referred principally to the role of luck and chance. Parallels with the results of Levenson (1981) and the implications of convergence with the results of cross-cultural studies not based upon the concept of locus of control are discussed.