Homework Compliance and Quality in Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Homework assignments are an integral part of cognitive behavioral therapy, providing patients with opportunities to practice skills between sessions. Generally, greater homework compliance is associated with better treatment outcomes. However, fewer studies have examined the effect of homework quality on treatment outcomes. This study examined homework compliance and quality as predictors of outcome and attrition across five CBT protocols. A sample of 179 individuals with principal diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder were randomized to receive a transdiagnostic CBT protocol (the Unified Protocol) or a single-diagnosis CBT protocol corresponding to their principal diagnosis. The Unified Protocol had a lower homework burden than the majority of the single-diagnosis protocols, which varied in degree of assigned homework. Despite this, there were no differences in average homework compliance or quality across principal diagnosis, treatment condition, or their interaction. Homework quality was significantly related to all symptom outcomes (self-reported and clinician-rated anxiety and depressive symptoms, clinician-rated clinical severity). Homework compliance was significantly related to clinician-rated anxiety symptom outcomes. Additionally, greater homework quality and compliance were both significantly associated with increased odds of completing treatment, suggesting homework variables can be useful and easily obtainable predictors of treatment retention.     

Dissonance and abstraction: Cognitive conflict leads to higher level of construal

This study investigated the effects of cognitive conflict on abstract thinking. According to action‐identification theory, an ambiguous and unfamiliar situation might propel an individual to a more abstract mindset. Based on this premise, cognitive conflict was hypothesized to put people in an abstract mindset. The induced compliance paradigm, in which participants are asked to write a counter‐attitudinal essay under either low choice (producing little dissonance) or high choice (producing more dissonance), was employed. Results showed that an abstract mindset was in fact activated in the induced compliance paradigm, and this effect was more pronounced for participants having a more concrete mindset to begin with. The results suggest that the experience of cognitive conflict is closely related to increased abstraction.     

Virtuous Play: The Ethics,Pleasures, and Burdens of Brain Training

Through normative appeals of cognitive enhancement, the brain has become a site of both promise and peril. Displaying oneself as ethically sound may now include showing requisite care for cognitive capacities. Moreover, enhancing our cognitive reserves is framed as aspirational means of averting neurodegenerative disease and neoliberal precarity. Such demanding labours of self-care warrant close scrutiny. Promissory discourses proclaim our ‘neuroplasticity’, encouraging subjects to work on endlessly improvable functional capacities that hold labour market value. Yet a ‘fun morality’ is equally prevalent in today’s experiential economies. Neuro-enhancement is thus sold not as an ascetic chore, but an ecstatic potential. Hope, fear, pleasure, and ethical conduct are, therefore, all closely entwined in the ‘virtuous play’ of ‘brain training’, where commercial entities use digital platforms for game-based tasks designed to enhance cognitive abilities. These services are typically promoted through appeals to our dutiful biocitizenship. This type of virtuous play is increasingly the means by which subjects produce themselves as simultaneously pleasure-seeking, productive, and resoundingly ‘well’. However, this understanding of virtuosity is often narrowly derived—reduced to ‘active ageing’, corporate-style ‘neurohacking’, and ‘brain profiles’—that threaten to foreclose other ways of imagining well-being. In failing to recognize the neoliberal underpinnings of virtuous play we entrench burdensome attachments to emerging modes of personal enhancement. Against these seductive appeals of combining pleasure with self-improvement, we must cultivate a critical reflexivity regarding exactly how ‘enhancement’ is conceived, opening room for lines of possibility outside of currently dominant frameworks.     

The effect of layout and pacing on learning from diagrams with unnecessary text

Although the presentation of extraneous (i.e., irrelevant or unnecessary) information hinders learning, it is unclear whether and how layout and pacing influence this effect. In two experiments, participants learned how the heart functions using four different layouts: a diagram presented without unnecessary text (diagram only), with unnecessary text separated from the diagram (separated) or integrated into the diagram (integrated), or with separated unnecessary text and the instruction to integrate (integration instruction). In Experiment 1, study time was self‐paced for half of the participants and system paced for the other half. There were no effects of layout and of pacing on learning, although system pacing was more effortful than self‐pacing. In Experiment 2, which was system paced and employed eye tracking, the integrated condition showed worse learning outcomes than the separated condition. Moreover, in the integrated condition, participants made more integration attempts between the unnecessary text and the diagram than in the separated condition.     

Neurocognitive outcomes in children with unilateral basal ganglia arterial ischemic stroke and secondary hemidystonia

Dystonia is a movement disorder that involves excessive, involuntary muscle contractions resulting in repetitive movements and/or abnormal posturing. One common cause of unilateral dystonia in childhood is ischemic stroke involving the basal ganglia and/or thalamus. Virtually nothing is known about neuropsychological outcomes in children who have dystonia following basal ganglia stroke. The present study explored whether or not children with secondary dystonia experience additional cognitive challenges when compared to children with similar patterns of brain injury, but no dystonia. We examined intellectual function, academics, and several aspects of executive function in children with unilateral basal ganglia stroke during childhood, comparing those with dystonia and those without. Although groups did not differ in terms of lesion size, we found significantly lower performance on measures of verbal and nonverbal reasoning, inhibitory control, and academic ability in children with secondary dystonia compared to those without. In contrast, there were no significant group differences on parent ratings of their child’s executive function in daily life. These findings suggest that maladaptive reorganization following basal ganglia stroke may contribute to the development of secondary dystonia and also to poor intellectual and academic outcomes in this group.     

Early motor development and cognitive abilities among Mexican preschoolers

Psychomotricity plays a very important role in children’s development, especially for learning involving reading–writing and mathematical calculations. Evaluate motor development in children 3 years old and its relationship with their cognitive abilities at the age of 5 years. Based on a cohort study, we analyzed the information about motor performance evaluated at 3 years old by Peabody Motor Scale and cognitive abilities at 5 years old. The association was estimated using linear regression models adjusted by mother’s intelligence quotient, sex, Bayley mental development index at 18 months, and quality of the environment at home (HOME scale). 148 children whose motor performance was determined at age 3 and was evaluated later at age 5 to determine their cognitive abilities. Cognitive abilities (verbal, quantitative, and memory) measured by McCarthy Scales. Significant positive associations were observed between stationary balance at age 3 with verbal abilities (β = 0.67, p = .04) and memory (β = 0.81, p = .02) at 5 years. Grasping and visual-motor integration were significant and positively associated with quantitative abilities (β = 0.74, p = .005; β = 0.61, p = .01) and memory (β = 2.11, p = .001; β = 1.74, p = .004). The results suggest that early motor performance contributes to the establishment of cognitive abilities at 5 years. Evaluation and early motor stimulation before the child is faced with formal learning likely helps to create neuronal networks that facilitate the acquisition of academic knowledge.     

Causes of cultural disparity: Switches,tuners, and the cognitive science of religion

Cultural disparity – the variation across cultural traits such as knowledge, skill, and belief – is a complex phenomenon, studied by a number of researchers with an expanding empirical toolkit. While there is a growing consensus as to the processes that generate cultural variation and change, general explanatory frameworks require additional tools for identifying, organizing, and relating the complex causes that underpin the production of cultural disparity. Here I develop a case study in the cognitive science of religion and demonstrate how concepts and distinctions drawn from work on contrastive explanation and manipulationist accounts of causation provide such tools for distinguishing explanatory levels, organizing causal narratives, and accounting for cross-cultural patterns.     

Trust in organization as a moderator of the relationship between self‐efficacy and workplace outcomes: A social cognitive theory‐based examination

Drawing on a social cognitive theory perspective, we contend that an employee's trust in oneself, or self‐efficacy, will interact with the individual's trust in the system, or trust in organization, to predict job attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, we expected that self‐efficacy would have stronger effects on job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and behaviours (task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours) to the degree to which employees perceive high levels of trust in organization. Using data collected from 300 employees and their respective supervisors at a manufacturing organization in Turkey across three waves, we found that self‐efficacy had more positive effects on job satisfaction, task performance, and citizenship behaviours when trust in organization was high. Interestingly, self‐efficacy had a positive effect on turnover intentions when trust in organization was low, indicating that high trust in organization buffered the effects of self‐efficacy on intentions to leave. The results suggest that the motivational value of trust in oneself is stronger to the degree to which employees also have high trust in the system, whereas low trust in system neutralizes the motivational benefits of self‐efficacy.

Practitioner points

• Practicing managers should not only invest in increasing self‐efficacy of their employees, but also invest in building trust to improve employees’ attitudes, behaviours, and performance. This is because when employee trust in organization is high, employee self‐efficacy has greater potential to have a positive influence over job satisfaction, task performance, and organizational citizenship behaviours.
• Self‐efficacy may actually increase an employee's desire to leave the organization when organizational conditions are unfavourable, such as in the case of low trust in the organization. Practicing managers should be aware that employees who have high levels of confidence may be at higher risk of turnover when they are unhappy with the organization.

     

Younger and older adults’ associative memory for medication interactions of varying severity

While older adults face various deficits in binding items in memory, they are often able to remember information that is deemed important. In Experiment 1, we examined how younger and older adults remember medication interactions of varying severity. There were no age differences in overall memory accuracy, but older adults’ performance depended on the severity of the interactions (such that the interactions associated with the most severe health outcomes were remembered most accurately) while younger adults’ did not. In Experiment 2, a similar task was designed to create interference in memory. Even with this more difficult task there were no age differences in recall accuracy, and both age groups remembered the interactions with the severe outcomes most accurately. These findings suggest that, under certain circumstances, older adults do not face deficits in associative recognition accuracy of information that varies in importance.     

“THE NEW SCIENCE OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS”: INVESTIGATING BUDDHIST ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MEDITATION

Clinical and neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditation practices are frequent topics in the news media, and have helped certain practices (such as mindfulness) achieve mainstream cultural status. Buddhists have reacted by using these studies in a number of ways. Some deploy the studies to show the compatibility of science and Buddhism, often using the authority of science to lend credence to Buddhism. Other Buddhists use meditation studies to demonstrate the superiority of Buddhism over science. Within inter‐Buddhist debates, meditation studies are used to argue for changes in practice or belief, but also sometimes to reinforce certain traditional practices. Benjamin Zeller's threefold categorization of religious groups’ attitudes toward science (guide, replace, absorb) and José Ignacio Cabezón's three ideal types of relationships between Buddhism and science (conflict/ambivalence, compatibility/identity, complementarity) contribute to analysis of Buddhist uses of scientific studies of meditation.