Depressed Adolescents and Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders: Are There Differences in the Presentation of Depression?

Patterns and correlates of comorbidity, as well as differences in manifest depressive profiles were investigated in a sample of depressed adolescents. A sub-sample of the youth were characterized as belonging to either a Pure depression group, an Internalizing group (depression and co-occurring internalizing disorders), or an Externalizing group (depression and co-occurring externalizing disorders). Item response theory (IRT) and differential item functioning (DIF) were used to assess whether the depressed adolescents from the different comorbidity groups presented with different depressive symptoms. Results indicated that the comorbidity groups were meaningfully distinct in terms of psychosocial correlates as well as showed differences in depressive symptom profiles as informed by DIF analyses. In particular, the comorbidity groups differed in terms of presentation of psychomotor changes and cognitive impairments. Implications for assessment are discussed.

Emotional Policy: Personal Sadness and Anger Shape Judgments about a Welfare Case

When making decisions about a welfare case, it is reasonable for one's thoughts and feelings about the potential welfare recipient to influence the decision. It is less reasonable for one's "incidental" feelings (e.g., sadness or anger arising from an event in one's personal life) to influence such decisions. In two studies, however, data reveal that incidental anger and sadness do in fact carry over, shaping welfare policy preferences. Study 1 found that incidental anger decreased the amount of welfare assistance participants recommended providing relative to neutral emotion, whereas sadness increased the amount recommended. Study 2 replicated the results and found that limiting participants' cognitive resources eliminated the difference between sadness and anger, thus implying that differences in depth-of-thought drove the effects. In sum, the results reveal ways in which: (a) personal emotions carry over to shape preferences for public policies, (b) emotions of the same valence have opposing effects, and (c) differential depth-of-cognitive-processing contributes to such effects.     

Rethinking barriers: a novel conceptualization of exercise barriers in cancer survivors

Previous research suggests different types of barriers may demonstrate different relationships with intention to engage in health behaviors. This study explored global, practical, and health-related barriers’ relationships with exercise intention and behavior among cancer survivors. The mediating role of intention in the barriers-behavior relationships was also evaluated. Cancer survivors (N = 152) completed self-report measures of exercise barriers, intention, and behavior at baseline and of exercise behavior two months later. Global barriers were negatively related (p < .01) and practical and health-related barriers were unrelated (ps ≥ .07) to exercise intention. Global and practical barriers were negatively related (ps < .01) and health-related barriers were unrelated (p = .48) to subsequent exercise behavior. Exercise intention did not mediate any barriers-behavior relationships. Results suggest that global and practical barriers should be targeted in barriers reduction interventions and highlight the intention-behavior gap problem. Future research should explore multidimensionality of barriers for other health behaviors.     

Emotion Priming and Attributions for Terrorism: Americans' Reactions in a National Field Experiment

The terrorist attacks of September 11 elicited many forms of negative affect, including anger and sadness. They also elicited a search for explanations. A national field study that experimentally primed emotion evaluated how priming anger and sadness differentially evoked causal judgments about the attacks. It found that priming anger triggered more causal attributions than did priming sadness. Thus, specific emotions, rather than general negativity, shaped citizens' attributions regarding September 11. In addition to its theoretical implications, the study demonstrates a method for studying ecologically valid emotions, under conditions of experimental control, with a nationally representative sample.     

Predictors of cognitive change from preclinical to clinical Alzheimer's disease

We examined individual-difference variables in relation to the rate of change in global cognitive performance, measured by the MMSE, from 3 years prior to diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) to the time of diagnosis. The population-based sample consisted of 230 incident AD persons who were followed over a 3-year interval. The average annual decline in MMSE was 1.81 points. Being older and acquiring additional diseases during the 3 years preceding diagnosis predicted a faster rate of decline in global cognitive functioning. However, other individual difference variables such as sex, education, depression, vitamin levels (vitamin B12 and folic acid), apolipoprotein status, and social network did not precipitate the rate of decline in the preclinical phase of AD.     

Functional lateralization of the human premotor cortex during sequential movements

A neurological truism is that each side of the brain controls movements on the opposite side of the body. Yet some left hemisphere brain lesions cause bilateral impairment of complex motor function and/or ideomotor apraxia. We report that the left dorsal premotor cortex of normal right-handed people plays a fundamental role in sequential movement of both right and left hands. Subjects performed sequential finger movements during functional magnetic resonance imaging of the motor cortices. In right-handed subjects, the volume of activated dorsal premotor cortex showed a left hemispheric predominance during hand movements. We suggest that the observed left premotor dominance contributes to the lateralization found in lesion studies.     

Systematic review and meta-analysis of psychological and activity-based interventions for cancer-related fatigue.

CONTEXT: Fatigue is among the most common and distressing symptoms experienced by cancer patients. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluates the efficacy of psychological and activity-based interventions against cancer-related fatigue in cancer patients. DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL. STUDY SELECTION: Randomized controlled trials of psychological and activity-based interventions involving adult cancer patients in which fatigue was an outcome were reviewed. EXTRACTION: Forty-one trials were reviewed and 30 were included in a meta-analysis. DATA SYNTHESIS: Fifty percent of psychological trials and 44% of activity-based trials rated fair or better in quality yielded significant findings favoring the intervention condition. Meta-analysis yielded an overall effect size of 0.09 (95% CI = .02- .16) favoring nonpharmacological conditions. Further analysis indicated that effect sizes were significant for psychological interventions (d-sub(w) = .10, 95% CI = .02-.18) but not activity-based interventions (d-sub(w) = .05, 95% CI = -.08 - .19). CONCLUSIONS: Findings provide limited support for use of nonpharmacological interventions to manage cancer-related fatigue. The lack of research with heightened fatigue as an eligibility criterion is a notable weakness of the existing evidence base.     

Test-retest reliability in fMRI of language: group and task effects

This paper explores how the test-retest reliability is modulated by different groups of participants and experimental tasks. A group of 12 healthy participants and a group of nine stroke patients performed the same language imaging experiment twice, test and retest, on different days. The experiment consists of four conditions, one audio condition and three audiovisual conditions in which the hands are either resting, gesturing, or performing self-adaptive movements. Imaging data were analyzed using multiple linear regression and the results were further used to generate receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for each condition for each individual subject. By using area under the curve as a comparison index, we found that stroke patients have less reliability across time than healthy participants, and that when the participants gesture during speech, their imaging data are more reliable than when they are performing hand movements that are not speech-associated. Furthermore, inter-subject variability is less in the gesture task than in any of the other three conditions for healthy participants, but not for stroke patients.     

Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims

When donating to charitable causes, people do not value lives consistently. Money is often concentrated on a single victim even though more people would be helped, if resources were dispersed or spent protecting future victims. We examine the impact of deliberating about donation decisions on generosity. In a series of field experiments, we show that teaching or priming people to recognize the discrepancy in giving toward identifiable and statistical victims has perverse effects: individuals give less to identifiable victims but do not increase giving to statistical victims, resulting in an overall reduction in caring and giving. Thus, it appears that, when thinking deliberatively, people discount sympathy towards identifiable victims but fail to generate sympathy toward statistical victims.