Paying attention to distress: What's wrong with rumination?

We explored the notion—derived from conceptualisations of mindfulness—that what makes attention to distress harmful is negative judgement about it. In Study 1 we examined factors of Nolen-Hoeksema's Ruminative Response Scale (RRS). A “Brooding” scale included items describing negative judgements of experience, and a “Reflection” scale, comprised items describing analysis of thoughts and feelings without obvious judgement. Correlations of Reflection with depression and thought suppression were lower than those for Brooding, but still significant, perhaps because all items implied some judgement. In Study 2, items were reworded to de-emphasise evaluative judgements (RRS-nonjudging) and compared to the original RRS. Although the factor structures of the original and RRS-nonjudging versions were essentially identical, the RRS-nonjudging Reflection scale was uncorrelated with depression and thought suppression, and was more highly correlated with emotional processing than was the original Reflection scale.     

Ideomotor perception modulates visuospatial cueing

The ideomotor theory of action posits that the cognitive representation of an action includes the learned perceptual effects of the action. Support for this theory has come from studies demonstrating how perceptual features that match the outcome of a response can facilitate selection of that response. We investigated another, complementary implication of ideomotor theory: would a bias toward selecting a response result in a perceptual bias toward the known effect of the response? In other words, would an action tendency direct attention to the anticipated perceptual features? Through an initial acquisition phase, participants learned that two possible responses (left/right keypress) consistently produced two distinct colors. Next, in a test phase, we manipulated response bias at the beginning of each trial, using an uninformative spatial prime presented at the left or right periphery. We then examined the extent to which color transients that either matched or mismatched the induced response bias can orient participants’ visual attention. Results revealed a perceptual bias toward the color effect of the primed response, manifested in a stronger visual orienting toward this color. Thus, biasing response selection can bias perception. These findings extend the scope of the ideomotor theory to visual perceptual processes.     

Perinatal Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Implications for Occupational Therapy in Early Intervention Practice

The purpose of this article is to present literature regarding perinatal posttraumatic stress disorder and to describe the implications of research findings for occupational therapy screening and treatment in early intervention practice. Changes in legislation regarding early intervention practice and family centered care are presented as a rationale for including maternal mental health screening as a standard practice in the field of early intervention. A case study illustrates symptoms of perinatal posttraumatic stress disorder and the effect on maternal-infant co-occupational engagement. The Model of Human Occupation is used to guide clinical reasoning about potential occupational therapy interventions.     

Conflict management: A premarital training program in mutual problem solving

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a structured educational program designed to train premarital couples in communication and mutual problem-solving skills. Twenty-six couples participated in an eight-week, 24-hour problem-solving training program, while 28 similar couples participated in an eight-week, 24-hour relationship discussion group. Results indicated that the problem-solving group, as compared to the relationship-discussion group, showed a significant increase in communication and mutual problem-solving skills. Discussion focused on the benefits for premarital couples of learning effective problemsolving procedures as well as the need for follow-up assessments of both behavioral skill level and relationship satisfaction and adjustment.     

Relevant dimensions of cyberbullying — Results from two experimental studies

Cyberbullying is a prevalent problem of adolescents. However, several conceptual and measurement questions, regarding its defining characteristics and relevant dimensions in comparison to conventional bullying, remain unanswered. To this end we conducted two studies with experimental methods. Study I shows that power imbalance in terms of perceived popularity is relevant for the affective, cognitive, and behavioral experience of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying by a popular bully is more distressing than cyberbullying by an unpopular bully. Study II shows that factors unique to cyberbullying are also relevant for the experience of cyberbullying, namely the media and the type of cyberbullying. For example, different types of cyberbullying are related to different patterns of relevant coping strategies. Therefore, cyberbullying seems both a unique phenomenon and closely related to conventional bullying.     

Choice as a Moderator of Placebo Expectation Effects: Additional Support From Two Experiments

Two experiments investigated the hypothesis that treatment choice enhances placebo treatment efficacy. In Experiment 1, prior to a pain task, participants were given either an expectation that two (inert) products could reduce pain or no expectation. In addition, participants either selected between the two products or were assigned a product to use. Participants given both the placebo expectation and treatment choice reported the lowest pain. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated this finding using a placebo paradigm with aversive auditory stimuli. Additional control conditions indicated that a choice availability (rather than choice restriction) explanation best accounted for these results.     

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for ADHD: A Conceptual Overview and Critical Literature Review

ABSTRACT

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a chronic disorder beginning in childhood, is identifiable and diagnostically valid during the preschool years. Compared to school-aged children, preschoolers have not received as much attention in the literature. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an empirically-supported parent training program for young children with disruptive behaviors that may also be effective in treating ADHD. The purpose of the current article was to explore the theoretical rationale for utilizing PCIT with this population and to conduct a literature review of published PCIT treatment outcome studies that measured ADHD symptoms. The literature demonstrates that children with ADHD have been included in PCIT research and evidence suggests that PCIT may be effective for young children with ADHD. However, future research is needed to specifically examine the effects of PCIT on ADHD.     

Decreasing Self-Injurious Behavior in a Student with Autism and Tourette Syndrome through Positive Attention and Extinction

This case study was conducted with a student diagnosed with autism and Tourette syndrome who displayed severe self-injurious behavior (SIB). We conducted a functional behavioral assessment which indicated that SIB was maintained by multiple functions using an ABAC design to determine the effect of positive social attention and extinction. Results show a considerable decrease in SIB incidents, particularly when session duration was reduced from 10 minutes to 5 minutes during the second intervention phase. Thus, the combination of contingent social attention formulated from the functional assessment and extinction was successful in bringing about significant decreases in SIB. This combination holds great promise as a nonintrusive positive strategy for SIB.     

Illegitimate concept equating in the partial fusion of construct validation theory and latent variable modeling

There has come to exist a partial fusion of construct validation theory and latent variable modeling at the center of which is located a practice of equating concepts such as construct, factor, latent variable, concept, unobservable, unmeasurable, underlying, hypothetical variable, theoretical term, theoretical variable, intervening variable, cause, abstractive property, functional unity, and measured property. In the current paper we: a) provide a structural explanation of this concept equating; b) provide arguments to the effect that it is illegitimate; c) suggest that the singular reason for the presence of construct in the literature of the social and behavioral sciences is to mark an allowance taken by the social and behavioral scientist to obliterate the concept/referent distinction that is foundational of sound science.     

A text analysis of the poems of Sylvia Plath

Changes in the words used in the poems of Sylvia Plath were examined using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a computer program for analyzing the content of texts. Major changes in the content of her poems were observed over the course of Plath's career, as well as in the final year of her life. As the time of her suicide came closer, words expressing positive emotions became more frequent, while words concerned with causation and insight became less frequent.