Sudden gains in treatment-as-usual couple therapy for military veterans

Previous studies of couple therapy have conceptualized change as a gradual process. However, there is growing evidence that, for many clients, the majority of gains in other treatment modalities are often achieved between just 2 sessions. Isolating the frequency, nature, and predictors of these sudden gains (SGs) in couple therapy can add to a growing understanding of how and why couple therapy works. In a sample of 67 couples receiving treatment-as-usual couple therapy in two Veterans Affairs hospitals, 25% of individuals experienced a SG in relationship satisfaction. The magnitude of these SGs were large (d = 1.62) and fully explained the total pre-post change for individuals who experienced them. Individuals with SGs showed significantly greater satisfaction gains during therapy; however SGs were not related to relationship satisfaction or relationship status at 18-month follow-up. SGs were predicted by the content of the previous session, putative change mechanisms of communication, intimacy, and behavior, as well as the partner's SGs during the same period. Results suggest that SGs are an important component of change during couple therapy for some individuals, challenging the assumption of continuous change in previous studies. In addition, predictors of SGs were generally consistent with theoretical and empirical examinations of mechanisms of change in couple therapy.     

Development of a Patient Adherence Scale for Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy

Exposure and response prevention (EX/RP) is an evidence-based treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). For EX/RP to be maximally effective, it is believed that patients must adhere outside of sessions to the procedures they learn in therapy. To date, there is no standard measure of patient EX/RP adherence, despite the importance of accurately assessing EX/RP adherence in both clinical research and practice. This paper describes the development of the Patient EX/RP Adherence Scale (PEAS), which assesses the patient's between-session adherence to the therapist's EX/RP instructions, and presents initial data on the scale's reliability and validity. The scale was designed to focus on the key procedures of EX/RP and to be brief enough to be used at each treatment session. The scale demonstrates excellent interrater reliability and good face and content validity. The usefulness of the scale is considered in the context of being an important tool to researchers trying to understand and improve outcomes of EX/RP for OCD as well as to EX/RP therapists in clinical practice. Future research will need to test the scale's reliability and validity in a larger sample of patients over the course of treatment.     

Self-esteem and self-disgust both mediate the relationship between dysfunctional cognitions and depressive symptoms

Previous research indicates that self-disgust partially mediates the relationship between dysfunctional cognitions and depression. However, as self-disgust is only a partial mediator, other variables are also likely to mediate this relationship. One potential variable is self-esteem, which has consistently been linked to depression in the literature. Hence, the current study aimed to examine whether self-disgust and self-esteem both mediate the relationship between dysfunctional cognitions and depression. Measures of self-disgust, self-esteem, dysfunctional cognitions and depression were completed by a non clinical sample of 120 participants. Self-disgust and self-esteem were found to be conceptually distinct constructs and both constructs were found to be partial mediators of the relationship between dysfunctional cognitions and depression: a finding which generalised across two measures of depression. The important mediational role of emotions in the development of depression needs to be taken into account in therapeutic practice.     

Changes in attachment orientations across the transition to parenthood

According to attachment theory, individuals should experience changes in attachment orientations (styles) if they encounter experiences or events that strongly reinforce or directly contradict the major concerns of their existing orientations. Systematic changes should be most evident across stressful life transitions. Wives and husbands expecting their first child completed scales measuring their attachment orientations along with perceptions of themselves, their spouses, and their marriage both 6 weeks before and 6 months after childbirth. As predicted, women became more ambivalent across the transition if they entered parenthood perceiving less spousal support and more spousal anger, with perceptions of anger having stronger impact. Women who entered parenthood seeking less spousal support and those whose husbands were higher in avoidance became more avoidant across the transition. Men who perceived themselves as providing more prenatal support to their wives became less avoidant. These results extend attachment theory and research in novel directions.     

《周易》对中国古代数学的影响

分析中国古代数学史上重要的数学著作可以看出,《周易》往往被古代数学家们视作数学发展最早的源头,而且在一些重要的数学著作中,数学家们运用《周易》中的有关概念表述数学问题,对《周易》中的数学问题及其相关问题进行深入的研究,取得了重要的数学成就。这一切足以表明《周易》对于古代数学发展具有非常重要的影响。     

INCREASING THE ACCURACY OF CORRECTIONS FOR RANGE RESTRICTION: IMPLICATIONS FOR SELECTION PROCEDURE VALIDITIES AND OTHER RESEARCH RESULTS

The common practice in meta-analyses and in individual studies of correcting for direct range restriction even though range restriction is actually indirect has long been known to lead to undercorrection, but this error has been assumed to be small. Using validity generalization data sets for 4 jobs, this study calibrated this error by comparing meta-analysis results based on corrections for direct range restriction with the more accurate results from a recently developed method of correcting for indirect range restriction. It was found that, on average, correction for direct range restriction resulted in substantial underestimation of operational validities for both job performance measures (21%) and training performance measures (28%). In addition, 90% credibility values were on average underestimated by 38%–40%. In addition to the implications for personnel selection, these findings suggest that similar underestimation of important relationships has occurred in other areas of research, with potential implications for theory development.     

Is Disgust a Homogeneous Emotion?

Many theoretical accounts consider disgust to be a unitary emotion, although others have challenged this notion. We predict that if core disgust and socio-moral disgust are different constructs, then their co-associated elicited emotions are likely to be different, and time as well as gender are likely to differentially affect their intensity (via a greater reliance of socio-moral disgust on cognitive appraisal). To test these predictions, participants were shown photographs of core and socio-moral disgust elicitors and asked to provide a wide ranging rating of their emotional response to each at 3 time points. Each elicitor generated a significantly different emotional response. Furthermore, the disgust response to core elicitors weakened over time whereas socio-moral responses intensified. Males and females showed similar levels of disgust to socio-moral elicitors, but females showed higher levels to core elicitors. Overall, the results suggest that a different emotional construct was activated by each type of elicitor.     

Clinician testimony in suicide litigation: A cause to be uneasy

This is an illustrative article rather than a research study. We offer opinions and recommendations about what we view as unfortunate clinician testimony in suicide‐related malpractice cases, testimony that – inadvertently or not – supports or encourages inadequate care of suicidal patients. The principles apply to both psychiatrists and non‐psychiatrists, although the former appear more often in our work. We particularly consider the roles and testimony, in court or at deposition, of psychiatrists, whether as defendants, expert witnesses, or fact witnesses. We cite examples of what we view as poor, disingenuous, dishonest and even dangerous testimony that we believe moves the profession toward unsafe patient care. The examples illustrate what we (and sometimes others) describe as normalization of deviance, pre‐suit puffery, self‐serving defendant testimony, expert pride supplanting testimonial responsibility, expert arrogance, expert parroting of attorney suggestions, witness ignorance and avoiding facts, unconscious expert bias, inexperience thwarting justice, misleading use of terms such as “predictability,” and expert witnesses who lack the direct‐care experience that jurisdictions often require in order to opine about defendant clinicians' day‐to‐day patient care. The examples often reveal concerns beyond the category chosen, and should not be expected to convey all of the facts of a particular case.     

Perceived Morality and Antiatheist Prejudice: A Replication and Extension

Recent evidence suggests that, although moral distrust drives antiatheist prejudice, certain types of morality are central: Perceived atheist moral capacity for caring and compassion appears to be central, whereas perceived atheist moral capacity for fairness, in-group loyalty, deferential respect, or purity/decency is not (Simpson & Rios, 2017). Here, we extend this research. First, we conceptually replicated experimental effects: Manipulating the perception that atheists strongly versus weakly value morality affects antiatheist prejudice much more strongly if the type of morality relates to caring/compassion rather than purity/sanctity (N = 162; U.S. Christian theists recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk). This finding was particularly strong among White participants. Second, we provide evidence for cross-national replication of correlational findings among Australian undergraduate theists (N = 85; recruited from the University of Melbourne) as well as evidence to suggest that the type of perceived morality that predicts prejudice differs according to the social group in question. Specifically, only perceived atheist concern for caring/compassion reliably predicted antiatheist prejudice, whereas perceived Jewish concern caring/compassion and in-group loyalty predicted anti-Jewish prejudice. Results reinforce existing evidence that increasing perceptions of atheist benevolence will help reduce antiatheist prejudice and provide novel support for social-functionalist theories of prejudice.     

Adult attachment and the transition to parenthood

This study examined how a major life stressor--the transition to parenthood--affects marital satisfaction and functioning among persons with different attachment orientations. As hypothesized, the interaction between women's degree of attachment ambivalence and their perceptions of spousal support (assessed 6 weeks prior to childbirth) predicted systematic changes in men's and women's marital satisfaction and related factors over time (6 months postpartum). Specifically, if highly ambivalent (preoccupied) women entered parenthood perceiving lower levels of support from their husbands, they experienced declines in marital satisfaction. Women's ambivalence also predicted their own as well as their husbands' marital satisfaction and functioning concurrently. The degree of attachment avoidance did not significantly predict marital changes, although women's avoidance did correlate with some of the concurrent marital measures. These findings are discussed in terms of attachment theory.