Implicit interpretation biases affect emotional vulnerability: a training study

Cognitive theories of emotion propose that the interpretation of emotion-eliciting situations crucially shapes affective responses. Implicit or automatic biases in these interpretations may hinder emotion regulation and thereby increase risk for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative interpretation bias training using ambiguous social scenarios. After the completion of the training, a stress task was administered and changes in positive and negative affect and self-esteem were assessed. The results demonstrate that the interpretation bias training was successful in that participants exhibited a tendency to interpret novel scenarios in accordance with their training condition. Importantly, the positive training condition also had a protective effect on self-esteem. Participants in this condition did not exhibit a decrease in self-esteem after the stress task, whereas participants in the negative condition did. These results demonstrate that implicit cognitive biases can be trained and that this training affects self-esteem. Implications of these findings for research on psychopathology and emotion regulation are discussed.     

Sleep Problems in Childhood and Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms in Early Adolescence

Sleep disorders, such as insomnia and nightmares, are commonly associated with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in adulthood. Whether nightmares and sleep-onset and maintenance problems predate BPD symptoms earlier in development is unknown. We addressed this gap in the literature using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Participants included 6050 adolescents (51.4 % female) who completed the UK Childhood Interview for DSM-IV BPD at 11 to 12 years of age. Nightmares and sleep onset and maintenance problems were prospectively assessed via mother report when children were 2.5, 3.5, 4.8 and 6.8 years of age. Psychopathological (i.e., emotional temperament; psychiatric diagnoses; and emotional and behavioural problems) and psychosocial (i.e., abuse, maladaptive parenting, and family adversity) confounders were assessed via mother report. In logistic regressions, persistent nightmares (i.e., regular nightmares at 3 or more time-points) were significantly associated with BPD symptoms following adjustment for sleep onset and maintenance problems and all confounders (Adjusted Odds Ratio = 1.62; 95 % Confidence Interval = 1.12 to 2.32). Persistent sleep onset and maintenance problems were not significantly associated with BPD symptoms. In path analysis controlling for all associations between confounders, persistent nightmares independently predicted BPD symptoms (Probit co-efficient [β] = 0.08, p = 0.013). Emotional and behavioural problems significantly mediated the association between nightmares and BPD (β =0.016, p < 0.001), while nightmares significantly mediated associations between emotional temperament (β = 0.001, p = 0.018), abuse (β = 0.015, p = 0.018), maladaptive parenting (β = 0.002, p = 0.021) and subsequent BPD. These findings tentatively support that childhood nightmares may potentially increase the risk of BPD symptoms in early adolescence via a number of aetiological pathways. If replicated, the current findings could have important implications for early intervention, and assist clinicians in the identification of children at risk of developing BPD.     

Determinants of depressive mood states in everyday life: An experience sampling study

This study tests relative contributions and time-course of proposed risk/protective factors (e.g., stress, coping, and lack of social interactions) for influencing depressed mood states in daily life. Seventy-three participants completed baseline measurement of major depressive disorder symptomatology, followed by smartphone app-based monitoring of momentary experiences of depressed mood and risk/protective factors for 7 days. All predictors had deteriorating impacts on mood as lag increased, and the optimal lag appears to be less than 120 min. Linear decay in effect sizes was found for physical activity, social interaction, and tiredness, whereas exponential decline in effect sizes was found for stress and coping ability. Stress, coping, and depressed mood at the prior time-point were the best predictors of subsequent mood. These effects did not differ as a function of trait depressive symptom severity. Findings highlight the influence of spacing of assessments in identification and magnitude of predictors of mood states, and provide insights into key drivers of change in mood and their time-course.     

ASSESSMENT OF THE RELATIVE EFFECTS OF ATTENTION AND ESCAPE ON NONCOMPLIANCE

The current study presents a method for assessing the relative effects of attention and escape on noncompliance in preschoolers. Attention and escape conditions were alternated in a multielement design, and a contingency reversal procedure, in which one test condition served as a control for the other, was used to demonstrate control. For all 3 participants, noncompliance was maintained, at least in part, by social attention. Functional analyses of noncompliance such as the one described here may be valuable for developing function‐based treatments.     

Comorbidity of Pediatric Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder and Anxiety Disorders: Impact on Symptom Severity and Impairment

This study explored the impact of comorbidity on symptom severity and treatment outcome in a sample of 75 pediatric Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients. Forty received cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT). Overall, 56% had a comorbid disorder. Results revealed that youth with comorbid disorders (anxiety or otherwise) endorsed significantly more anxiety symptoms than youth with OCD only. Youth with comorbidities instead of or in addition to anxiety exhibited more severe OCD symptoms than youth with OCD alone or an anxiety-only comorbidity. Youth in the comorbidities instead of or in addition to anxiety group had the poorest CBT response relative to the other groups. These results suggest that relative to those with OCD alone or with an anxiety disorder comorbidity, youth with comorbidities instead of or in addition to anxiety have a differing clinical presentation (e.g., more severe symptoms) and worse psychotherapy outcome.

Daily Behavior Report Cards and Systematic Direct Observation: An Investigation of the Acceptability,Reported Training and Use,and Decision Reliability Among School Psychologists

More than ever, educators require assessment procedures and instrumentation that are technically adequate as well as efficient to guide data-based decision making. Thus, there is a need to understand perceptions of available tools, and the decisions made when using collected data, by the primary users of those data. In this paper, two studies that surveyed members of the National Association of School Psychologists with regard to two procedures useful in formative assessment, (i.e., Daily Behavior Report Cards; Systematic Direct Observation), are presented. Participants reported greater overall levels of training and use of Systematic Direct Observation than Daily Behavior Report Cards, yet both techniques were rated as equally acceptable for use in formative assessment. Furthermore, findings supported that school psychologists tend to make similar intervention decisions when presented with both types of data. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Accommodating variation: dialects, idiolects, and speech processing

Listeners are faced with enormous variation in pronunciation, yet they rarely have difficulty understanding speech. Although much research has been devoted to figuring out how listeners deal with variability, virtually none (outside of sociolinguistics) has focused on the source of the variation itself. The current experiments explore whether different kinds of variation lead to different cognitive and behavioral adjustments. Specifically, we compare adjustments to the same acoustic consequence when it is due to context-independent variation (resulting from articulatory properties unique to a speaker) versus context-conditioned variation (resulting from common articulatory properties of speakers who share a dialect). The contrasting results for these two cases show that the source of a particular acoustic-phonetic variation affects how that variation is handled by the perceptual system. We also show that changes in perceptual representations do not necessarily lead to changes in production.     

An Experimental Analysis of Mathematics Instructional Components: Examining the Effects of Student-Selected Versus Empirically-Selected Interventions

Within the context of an experimental analysis, the current study examined the effects of student- and empirically-selected interventions on the mathematics computational fluency of three elementary-aged students. For all of the participants, the empirically-selected intervention resulted in higher levels of computational fluency then the student-selected intervention. These results suggest that empirically-selected interventions may enhance the mathematics computational fluency of students experiencing mathematics problems. However, individual responsiveness to empirically-selected interventions suggests the importance of conducting brief experimental analyses to determine the most efficacious intervention. The implication of these results for intervention selection and incorporating choice-making opportunities into academic interventions are discussed.