Observed behaviors during clinical interviews predict improvement in depression

A considerable percentage of depressed patients do not respond to antidepressive treatment. Early indicators of prognosis are needed. The aims of this study are to examine (a) whether the interpersonal behavior of patients and psychiatrist, as assessed by means of direct observation of behavior during a baseline clinical interview, might have predictive value with respect to therapeutic outcome and (b) which predictive potency measures of psychomotor activation, as assessed by less refined methods, such as global clinical judgment, might have. In the analysis used, speech-pause behavior was taken as the basic structure of the interaction. The relations of other behaviors such as looking and hand and head movement with this structure were determined. Evidence is presented that in a group of 31 depressives, improvement after a period of 10 weeks was related to observed behaviors during a baseline interview. The behaviors of the patients are interpreted as relational or nonrelational. The relational behaviors (i.e., looking yesnodding, gesturing) occur less in patients who will improve, whereas the nonrelational behaviors (i.e., intensive body touching, head movements) occur more in these patients. The nonrelational behaviors are presumed to be indicative of the state of arousal. The predictive potency of these variables could not be explained by their relationship with the baseline severity of depression, which in itself also predicted improvement. Moreover, global clinical assessment of psychomotor activation (i.e., retardation and agitation) could not be related to outcome.     

Anticipation across modalities in children and adults: Relating anticipatory alpha rhythm lateralization,reaction time,and executive function

The development of the ability to anticipate—as manifested by preparatory actions and neural activation related to the expectation of an upcoming stimulus—may play a key role in the ontogeny of cognitive skills more broadly. This preregistered study examined anticipatory brain potentials and behavioral responses (reaction time; RT) to anticipated target stimuli in relation to individual differences in the ability to use goals to direct action (as indexed by measures of executive function; EF). A cross-sectional investigation was conducted in 40 adults (aged 18–25 years) and 40 children (aged 6–8 years) to examine the association of changes in the amplitude of modality-specific alpha-range rhythms in the electroencephalogram (EEG) during anticipation of lateralized visual, tactile, or auditory stimuli with inter- and intraindividual variation in RT and EF. Children and adults exhibited contralateral anticipatory reductions in the mu rhythm and the visual alpha rhythm for tactile and visual anticipation, respectively, indicating modality and spatially specific attention allocation. Variability in within-subject anticipatory alpha lateralization (the difference between contralateral and ipsilateral alpha power) was related to single-trial RT. This relation was more prominent in adults than in children, and was not apparent for auditory stimuli. Multilevel models indicated that interindividual differences in anticipatory mu rhythm lateralization contributed to the significant association with variability in EF, but this was not the case for visual or auditory alpha rhythms. Exploratory microstate analyses were undertaken to cluster global field power (GFP) into a distribution-free temporal analysis examining developmental differences across samples and in relation to RT and EF. Anticipation is suggested as a developmental bridge construct connecting neuroscience, behavior, and cognition, with anticipatory EEG oscillations being discussed as quantifiable and potentially malleable indicators of stimulus prediction.     

Utility maximization and melioration: Internalities in individual choice

How do people go about choosing between alternatives in relatively simple settings? This study explores some of the variables that past work suggests may be relevant. Volunteer subjects worked for money in six procedures in which the probability of a payment from either of two alternatives was 1.0, but the rate of pay (i.e. the speed with which a payment was delivered or the size of the payment) interacted with the subjects recent allocation of choices, which we define as the ‘internalities’. Because of the internalities, choosing the currently more profitable alternative did not maximize total earnings. Subjects were more likely to fail to maximize when the interaction between present pay and past choices was spread over longer sequences of choices, or when the reward variable was the speed, rather than the value, of each payment. Subjects often disregarded the internalities and were instead guided by the current yields of the two alternatives, which is a frequently observed tendency, called ‘melioration’, in experiments on choices by animals. The tendency toward melioration was only partially counteracted by explicit instructions on how to maximize earnings. We discuss a theoretical framework for melioration that postulates both motivational and cognitive sources.     

DIE MARXISMUS – DEBATTE IM “SILBERNEN ZEITALTER”

Im Anfang des 20.Jahrhunderts unterzog eine Reihe von jungen, später berühmt gewordenen Philosophen den Marxismus einer tiefen Kritik. Ihnen ist es gelungen, wichtige Defekte der revolutionären Doktrinen aufzudecken und ihre verhängnivsollen Konsequenzen vorwegzunehmen. Diese Kritik ist auch für die gegenwärtige geistig-politische Situation aktuell.     

Apocalyptic Argument and the Anticipation of Catastrophe: the Prediction of Risk and the Risks of Prediction

This essay proposes to extend the model of apocalyptic argument developedin my recent book Arguing the Apocalypse (OLeary, 1994) beyond the study ofreligious discourse, by applying this model to the debate over awell-publicized earthquake prediction that caused a widespread panic in theAmerican midwest in December, 1990. The first section of the essay willsummarize the essential elements of apocalyptic argument as I have earlierdefined them; the second section will apply the model to the case of the NewMadrid, Missouri, earthquake prediction, in order to demonstrate thatcertain patterns of reasoning characteristic of religious apocalyptic arepresent in the discourse over an anticipated local disaster. My ultimatepurpose is to show that predictions of global and local catastrophe mayserve as extreme cases that will illuminate the dynamics of predictiveargument in general. Thus my argument will seek to undercut Daniel Bellsdistinction between prophecy and prediction (Bell, 1973) by establishingthat these discourses share identifiable formal and substantivecharacteristics, and depend for their rhetorical effect on anxiety, hope,far, and excitement as modes of temporal anticipation.     

Antecedents of information-processing skills in infants: Habituation, novelty responsiveness, and cross-modal transfer

Three skills which characterize cognitive functioning in human infants in the middle of the first year of life—habituation, novelty responsiveness, and cross-modal transfer—predict mental ability in later childhood. Antecedents of each skill at 5 months postnatal were examined in a short-term prospective longitudinal study of infant ability and maternal intelligence and interaction style. Infant perceptuocognitive performance at 2 months, maternal intelligence, and maternal responsiveness at 5 months relate to the expression of the three infant cognitive skills, but in different ways. Variation in infant information-processing abilities can be explained by specific child and maternal factors that are evident soon after birth.     

Correlation and prediction in ordinal test theory

Based on the test theory model for ordinal measurements proposed by Schulman and Haden, the present paper considers correlations between tests, attenuation, regressions involving true and observed scores, and prediction of test reliability.The population correlation between tests is shown to be related to the expected sample correlation for samples of sizen ₁ andn ₂. Errors of estimation, measurement and prediction are found to be similar to their counterparts in interval test theory, while attenuation is identical to its counterpart. The bias in estimating population reliability from sample data is compared for Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho.The author wishes to thank the referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and in particular, for the suggested alternative methods of establishing some of the presented results.     

How a high working memory capacity can increase proactive interference

Previous findings suggested that a high working memory capacity (WMC) is potentially associated with a higher susceptibility to proactive interference (PI) if the latter is measured under high cognitive load. To explain such a finding, we propose to consider susceptibility to PI as a net effect of individual executive processes and the intrinsic potential for PI. With the latter, we refer to the amount of information that is activated at a given time and that has the potential to exert PI subsequently. In two studies deploying generalized linear mixed models, susceptibility to PI was modeled as the decline of performance over trials of a complex span task. The results revealed that a higher WMC was associated with a higher susceptibility to PI. Moreover, the number of stimuli recalled in one trial as a proxy variable for the intrinsic potential for PI negatively affected memory performance in the subsequent trial.     

Students’ individual interest in physical education: Development and validation of a questionnaire

Identifying the specificity of students’ individual interest in physical education is necessary to capture the different facets of this construct. In contrast to existing questionnaires in education which assess the multidimensionality of individual interest, the current scale used in physical education consists of a single‐item measurement which rates students’ individual interest for multiple physical activities taught during lessons. Even if this single‐item rating provides a basis for classifying interest relative to others, it does not provide information about the nature and internal components of individual interest. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable questionnaire measuring the multidimensionality of students’ individual interest in physical education. Four stages were followed: (1) the development of a preliminary version based on the findings of a literature review on individual interest and a committee process validation; (2) a first study conducted on 481 secondary school students to establish the factor structure, and internal reliability of this questionnaire; (3) a second study based on 243 secondary school students to confirm its factor structure and to test its temporal stability; and finally, (4) a third study with 253 students to test its concurrent validity. The final form of the questionnaire consists of a three‐factor structure based on 14 items that measure students’ individual interest in physical education: positive affect and willingness to reengage (five items), stored utility value (four items), and stored attainment value and knowledge‐seeking intentions (five items).     

Do early birds share their worms? How prosocial behaviour and empathy vary across the day

Social behaviours have been proposed to follow circadian patterns across the course of the day, but empirical support is mixed. As a within-subject test of circadian effects on everyday behaviour, we conduct an experience-sampling study with a near-representative population of 285 Americans (7405 observations). Prosocial behaviour and empathy were both somewhat more frequent in the morning (d = 0.08). However, these non-linear patterns only described morning-type participants; evening-types had consistent (and lower) rates of prosocial behaviour and empathy across time-of-day. These patterns were explained by morning-types reporting more social opportunities earlier in the day. These findings suggest that small, within-subject diurnal effects on social behaviour occur in daily life, and that some circadian effects may be driven by situation selection.