Semantic impairment and anomia in Alzheimer''s disease

Impairment in naming visually presented objects was investigated in patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Impaired object naming correlated with difficulty listing the names of objects from a specified semantic category and with erroneous selection of words semantically related to the correct names for objects in a name recognition test. These results suggest that patients with Alzheimer's disease have a semantic impairment characterized by inability to distinguish among objects that are members of the same semantic category, and that this impairment is associated with difficulty producing the names for objects. Semantic impairment was present in patients with normal ability to discriminate visually presented shapes, indicating that the semantic deficit in Alzheimer's disease occurs independently of abnormalities of visuospatial function. Patients tended to make errors on the same items in both confrontation naming and name recognition tests, suggesting that the semantic impairment in Alzheimer's disease involves loss of information about specific objects and their names.     

Using the Family Paper Sculpture for education,therapy, and research

The Family Paper Sculpture is a semi-projective task useful in family life education, in clinical work with families, and in research involving family system variables. Families or individuals are asked to make a picture of the family using round disks for individuals, red and black strips to show similarities and differences among individuals, and boundary markers to show individuals who are separate, or pairs, or groups of individuals who belong together. Examples are given which demonstrate the value of the technique for educational, therapeutic, and research purposes.She is on leave from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, Texas, where she is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences.The research reported here was supported in part by grants from the (U.S.) National Institute of Mental Health.     

The conflict cycle in the case of an adolescent in crisis

This is an extension of a previous paper describing a conflict cycle in families and therapy consisting of four steps: (1) the dispute; (2) blaming; (3) shame, guilt, or denial; and (4) reparation, reconciliation, or retaliation. The focus is on a single case of a 15-year-old male with a gender identity disorder in addition to a conduct disorder. He is an adopted child living in a small community in the southern United States. Conflict is illustrated from several perspectives in a single interview with the family and over the length of contact over a nine-month period: (1) between the adolescent and parents, (2) between the adolescent and community, (3) between the parents, and (4) between the Good Self and the Bad Self of the adolescent. The thesis is that the conflict cycle is an organizing principle helpful to therapists working with families to make assessments and plan interventions.This paper is an expanded and edited version of a presentation by the senior author in San Diego, California, on November 12, 1988, at the Western States Conference of the American Society of Adolescent Psychiatry.     

Nature of marital relations among chronic pain patients

Fifty-two chronic pain patients and their spouses were evaluated for their marital relations utilizing the FACES III. In most areas of family functioning the couples provided evidence of difficulties and demonstrated a significant level of agreement about the nature of the problems. On the circumplex model the couples were functioning at the mid-to extreme-range. This study suggests that marital difficulties among chronic pain sufferers may indeed be pervasive.     

Emotions and cognitions in consumer health behaviors: insights from chronically ill patients into the effects of hope and control perceptions

The lack of compliance to medical advice is a widely recognized healthcare concern with important implications to consumer well‐being. Through an in‐depth examination of the narratives provided by chronically ill patients, this study contributes to transformative consumer research by offering a better understanding of patients' compliance or lack of compliance with medical advice. The narratives are examined with a focus on two potential antecedents: hope and perceptions of control over health outcomes. Findings suggest that although control perceptions play a crucial role in compliance, chronically ill patients often feel that they have no control over their health outcomes. The narratives reveal that the positive emotion of hope is a motivator for positive health behaviors. Additionally, the lived experiences accounts suggest a possible relationship between hope and control perceptions: patients' belief in their ability to manage their chronic illness facilitates hope but might not be essential to it. The importance of healthcare providers' role in cultivating hope and customizing their interactions with patients is discussed. The implications also indicate that health initiatives aimed at increasing treatment compliance should consider alternatives to messages calling for patients to take control of their health. Instead, future research on health behavior should look beyond social cognition models of health behavior and focus on the role of positive emotions such as hope. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-gram analysis in R with <Literal>cmscu</Literal>

We present a new R package, cmscu, which implements a Count-Min-Sketch with conservative updating (Cormode and Muthukrishnan Journal of Algorithms, 55(1), 58–75, 2005), and its application to n-gram analyses (Goyal et al. 2012). By writing the core implementation in C++ and exposing it to R via Rcpp, we are able to provide a memory-efficient, high-throughput, and easy-to-use library. As a proof of concept, we implemented the computationally challenging (Heafield et al. 2013) modified Kneser–Ney n-gram smoothing algorithm using cmscu as the querying engine. We then explore information density measures (Jaeger Cognitive Psychology, 61(1), 23–62, 2010) from n-gram frequencies (for n=2,3) derived from a corpus of over 2.2 million reviews provided by a Yelp, Inc. dataset. We demonstrate that these text data are at a scale beyond the reach of other more common, more general-purpose libraries available through CRAN. Using the cmscu library and the smoothing implementation, we find a positive relationship between review information density and reader review ratings. We end by highlighting the important use of new efficient tools to explore behavioral phenomena in large, relatively noisy data sets.     

Don't ask,don't tell: a systematic review of the extent to which participant characteristics are reported in social anxiety treatment studies

Background and Objectives: This study examined the extent to which social anxiety treatment studies report the demographic characteristics of their participants. One hundred and 56 treatment studies published in English between 2001 and 2012 articles were collected. Methods: Each study was evaluated on whether or not it reported information on gender, age, race, relationship status, education, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and disability and also the extent to which the racial composition of the sample was described. Results: The majority of studies reported information on age (96.2%) and gender (94.2%), but the percentage of studies that reported anything else is much lower: race (50.0%), education (42.3%), relationship status (37.8%), socioeconomic status (5.1%), disability (2.6%), and sexual orientation (1.3%). One third (34.0%) of studies reported the race of all participants in their samples, while the remaining reported no information or information for only a subset of participants (e.g. “mostly white”). Conclusions: Participants of social anxiety disorder treatment studies generally are not described beyond their age and gender. Standards for reporting participant characteristics of treatment studies (similar to standards for reporting the methodology of treatment studies) could improve clinical researchers’ and clinicians’ ability to evaluate the external validity of this body of work.     

The Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC) Conceptual Model to Promote Mental Health for Adolescents with ASD

Despite an increased risk of mental health problems in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is limited research on effective prevention approaches for this population. Funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism, a theoretically and empirically supported school-based preventative model has been developed to alter the negative trajectory and promote wellbeing and positive mental health in adolescents with ASD. This conceptual paper provides the rationale, theoretical, empirical and methodological framework of a multilayered intervention targeting the school, parents and adolescents on the spectrum. Two important interrelated protective factors have been identified in community adolescent samples, namely the sense of belonging (connectedness) to school and the capacity for self and affect regulation in the face of stress (i.e. resilience). We describe how a confluence of theories from social psychology, developmental psychology and family systems theory, along with empirical evidence (including emerging neurobiological evidence), supports the interrelationships between these protective factors and many indices of wellbeing. However, the characteristics of ASD (including social and communication difficulties, and frequently difficulties with changes and transitions, and diminished optimism and self-esteem) impair access to these vital protective factors. The paper describes how evidence-based interventions at the school level for promoting inclusive schools (using the Index for Inclusion) and interventions for adolescents and parents to promote resilience and belonging [using the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP)] are adapted and integrated for adolescents with ASD. This multisite proof-of-concept study will confirm whether this multilevel school-based intervention is promising, feasible and sustainable.