Evaluation of behavioral skills training to prevent gun play in children

This study evaluated behavioral skills training (BST), in a multiple baseline across subjects design, for teaching firearm safety skills to 6 6- and 7-year-old children. Similar to previous research with 4- and 5-year-olds, half of the children acquired the safety skills following BST and half acquired the skills following BST plus in situ training.     

Teaching safety skills to children to prevent gun play: an evaluation of in situ training

This study evaluated behavioral skills training with added in situ training for teaching safety skills to prevent gun play. Following baseline, each child received two sessions of behavioral skills training and one in situ training session. Additional in situ training sessions were conducted until the child exhibited the safety skills (don't touch the gun, get away, and tell an adult). All children acquired and maintained the safety skills at a 3-month follow-up. In addition, of the 7 children assessed in a dyad situation, all exhibited the correct skills in the presence of another child.     

Can the components of a cognitive model predict the severity of generalized anxiety disorder?

Over the past decade, a number of well-controlled studies have supported the validity of a cognitive model of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) that has four main components: intolerance of uncertainty, positive beliefs about worry, negative problem orientation, and cognitive avoidance. Although these studies have shown that the model components are associated with high levels of worry in nonclinical samples and with a diagnosis of GAD in clinical samples, they have not addressed the question of whether the model components can predict the severity of GAD. Accordingly, the present study sought to determine if the model components are related to diagnostic severity, worry severity, and somatic symptom severity in a sample of 84 patients with a primary diagnosis of GAD. All model components were related to GAD severity, although positive beliefs about worry and cognitive avoidance were only modestly associated with the severity of the disorder. Intolerance of uncertainty and negative problem orientation had more robust relationships with the severity of GAD (and with worry severity, in particular). When participants were divided into Mild, Moderate, and Severe GAD groups, intolerance of uncertainty and negative problem orientation distinguished the Moderate and Severe GAD groups from the Mild GAD group, even when age, gender, and depressive symptoms were statistically controlled. Overall, the results lend further support to the validity of the model and suggest that intolerance of uncertainty and negative problem orientation are related to the severity of GAD, independently of sociodemographic and associated clinical factors. The theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

A Clinical Case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

This article presents the clinical case of a 38-year-old man with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). “William” reports longstanding excessive and uncontrollable worry about a number of daily life events, including minor matters, his family, their health, and work. In addition, he endorses chronic symptoms of restlessness and irritability, muscle tension, concentration difficulties, and sleep disturbance. In an attempt to cope with his worries, William engages in excessive information and reassurance seeking, particularly with respect to decision making, and he often double-checks even minor tasks. In addition, he engages in procrastination, and avoids spontaneous or unplanned events. Although William describes himself as a born worrier, his GAD symptoms became noticeably problematic over the last several years, subsequent to an increasing number of stressors. Comorbid conditions as well as predisposing and precipitating factors are described in addition to the specific symptom presentation.     

Follow-up of a Pretend Play Intervention: Effects on Play,Creativity, and Emotional Processes in Children

This study investigated the effects of a pretend play intervention on 45 first and second grade children 2–8 months post-intervention. It was hypothesized that pretend play would be improved in the intervention groups and that they would score higher than controls on measures of play, creativity, and emotional processes. Subjects were randomly assigned to an affect, imagination, or control group. The imagination group significantly increased on multiple play scores from baseline to follow up and compared with controls, scores on frequency of positive affect expression were significantly higher. Differences on other scores were not found. Results indicate that play skills can be improved and cognitive play skills may have a stronger impact on affective processes than anticipated.     

Comparing the effects of implicit and explicit temporal expectation on choice response time and response conflict

People can use temporally structured sensory information to anticipate future events. Temporal information can be presented implicitly through probability manipulation without participants’ awareness of the manipulation, or explicitly conveyed through instructions. We examined how implicit and explicit temporal information established temporal expectations that influenced choice response times and response conflict (measured as flanker effects). We implicitly manipulated temporal structure by block-wise varying the likely timing of a target. In the short-interval block, a target was presented frequently (80 % of trials) after a short (400 ms) cue-to-target interval and infrequently (20 % of trials) after a long (1200 ms) interval; the probability assignment was reversed in the long-interval block. Building on this baseline condition (Experiment 1), we augmented the temporal information by filling the cue-to-target intervals with tones (Experiment 2), explicitly informed participants of the prevalent time interval (Experiment 3) and provided trial-by-trial reminders of the prevalent time interval (Experiment 4). The temporal probability manipulation alone (of which participants were unaware) influenced choice response times but only when the temporal information was augmented with tones, whereas providing the explicit knowledge of the temporal manipulation, with or without trial-by-trial reminders, robustly influenced choice response times. Response conflict was unaffected by these conditions. These results suggest that temporal expectation can be established by the implicit learning of a temporal structure given that sufficiently strong temporal information is presented as well as by the explicit knowledge of the temporal structure. This established temporal expectation influences choice response times without necessarily affecting the strength of response conflict.     

Negative problem orientation (Part I): psychometric properties of a new measure

Negative problem orientation, a set of dysfunctional attitudes toward social problem-solving, has increasingly become an important construct in our understanding of deficits in problem-solving ability in daily life. Until recently, no measure was specifically constructed to assess negative problem orientation directly, other than as a subscale in a more global measure of problem-solving ability. The goal of the present study was to translate the French version of the Negative Problem Orientation Questionnaire (NPOQ), and to examine its psychometric properties. The sample consisted of 201 university students who completed five questionnaires assessing psychological distress, pessimism, components of problem-solving ability, and the NPOQ. A unitary factor structure was revealed, accounting for 54.8% of the variance. The NPOQ had excellent internal consistency, good test-retest reliability at 5 weeks, and demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity when measured against self-reported pessimism, depression, anxiety, and problem-solving ability. The findings suggest that the NPOQ is a measure with sound psychometric properties that will be a valuable tool in future research on problem orientation.     

Behavioral Sleep Problems in Children and Adolescents

Sleep problems in children and adolescents are common, and they impact multiple domains of child and family functioning. Psychologists have a critical role in the assessment and treatment of sleep problems and are integral to interdisciplinary sleep teams. Certain sleep problems may be related to co-morbid psychological or developmental conditions, and others are considered to be primarily medical, yet behavioral approaches may be applicable. There are also sleep problems considered to be behavioral in etiology (e.g. inadequate sleep hygiene, behavioral insomnia of childhood, nightmares/bad dreams/nighttime fears, delayed sleep phase syndrome, and psychophysiological insomnia). In this article, the assessment of behavioral sleep problems, as well as specific behavioral sleep disorders, and their treatments will be discussed.     

Lactation deficit in OFA hr/hr rats may be caused by differential sensitivity to stress compared with Wistar and Sprague Dawley rats

OFA hr/hr (OFA) rats present a major lactation deficit that impairs offspring survival. To explore whether abnormal stress responsiveness causes this deficit, we compared their hormonal (prolactin, progesterone, and corticosterone) responses to stress (room change and 2-min ether exposure) with those of Wistar and Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. We tested responses during the estrous cycle, pregnancy, lactation, after ovariectomy, and ovarian steroid hormone priming, and responses to suckling. We evaluated hypothalamic expression of receptors for prolactin (PRLRlong) and the isoforms of receptors for progesterone (PRA and B) and estrogen (ERα and β) in late pregnancy. We tested whether administration of an anxiolytic (diazepam) improved lactation. Ether exposure increased circulating levels of the three hormones in the three strains of rats, cycling and ovariectomized, but was less effective in pregnancy and lactation. Elevated estrogen level (estrus and estradiol-treated ovariectomized rats) potentiated the prolactin response more in SD and OFA rats than in Wistar rats. Elevated progesterone level (late pregnancy, lactation, progesterone-treated ovariectomized rats) inhibited the prolactin response less in OFA than in SD or Wistar rats. Ether exposure inhibited the prolactin and oxytocin responses to suckling only in OFA rats. Diazepam treatment increased pup survival rate and the prolactin response to suckling. Hypothalamic total PR mRNA content, assayed by RT-PCR, was higher in pregnant OFA rats compared with SD and Wistar rats, but the PRB/PRA protein ratio determined by Western blot was lowest in Wistar rats, intermediate in OFA rats, and highest in SD rats. The heightened sensitivity to stress of lactating OFA rats may contribute to their lactational deficit and be caused by a combination of hypoprolactinemia and reduced inhibitory capacity of progesterone.