Behavior therapy: A review.

The questionable effectiveness of traditional psychodynamic psychotherapies and the development of brief new treatment techniques derived from modern learning theory have stimulated interest in applications of conditioning procedures to behavior disorders. A review of this literature revealed that behavior therapies have been applied to many neurotic and psychotic disorders, and have been most successful with disorders involving specific maladaptive behaviors. Conditioning procedures were highly effective with phobic reactions, anxiety reactions, enuresis, stuttering, and tics, but disappointing with alcoholism and some sexual disorders. Cures seemed long-lasting, with remarkably little evidence of the symptom substitution predicted by psychodynamic depth theories. Behavior therapy offers promising opportunities for the application of well-established psychological principles to the treatment of maladaptive behavior. (4 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treating co-occurring Axis I disorders in recurrently suicidal women with borderline personality disorder: A 2-year randomized trial of dialectical behavior therapy versus community treatment by experts.

This study evaluated whether dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) was more efficacious than treatment by nonbehavioral psychotherapy experts in reducing co-occurring Axis I disorders among suicidal individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Women with BPD and recent and repeated suicidal and/or self-injurious behavior (n = 101) were randomly assigned to 1 year of DBT or community treatment by experts (CTBE), plus 1 year of follow-up assessment. For substance dependence disorders (SDD), DBT patients were more likely to achieve full remission, spent more time in partial remission, spent less time meeting full criteria, and reported more drug- and alcohol-abstinent days than did CTBE patients. These findings suggest that improvements in co-occurring SDD among suicidal BPD patients are specific to DBT and cannot be attributed to general factors associated with nonbehavioral expert psychotherapy. Further, group differences in SDD remission were not explained by either psychotropic medication usage or changes in BPD criterion behaviors. DBT and CTBE did not significantly differ in the reduction of anxiety disorders, eating disorders, or major depressive disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Compensatory reaction to angularly displaced visual feedback in behavior.

Compensatory reaction to displaced visual feedback is investigated by requiring S to operationally negate the effects of the feedback displacement by adjusting the direction of response. In this experiment, such compensatory behavior has been compared with direct reactions to the same conditions of angularly displaced vision. As predicted from systematic theory, the efficacy of the compensatory response is generally less than that of direct reaction to displaced vision, both initially and finally in learning. The results also show that learning to respond to displaced visual feedback is specific to the direction and type of compensatory and direct modes of response used. The methods and results of the experiment illustrate how the techniques of displaced and delayed sensory-feedback analysis, using scientific television instrumentation, can be applied to study of the general problems of compensatory behavior, as used in different patterns of adaptive behavior and in response to machine systems of specialized design. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shaping behavior in voice therapy

This study demonstrates the process of learning and shaping of behavior which occurs during a program of therapy for individuals with hyperfunctional hoarse voice quality. First a therapy program delineating the techniques and criteria to be used was written. The program was presented during 16 individual half-hour sessions over an eight-week period to three clients known to have vocal nodules. The clients' responses were charted at various points from audiotape recordings of each therapy session using a modification of the Boone-Prescott analysis system, to obtain data to demonstrate the learning processes. It was concluded that: (1) the client's behaviors in this vocal rehabilitation program reflected a learning process; (2) facilitating techniques were used to modify or shape behavior through successive approximations to the terminal goal; (3) self-evaluation is an important factor needed to bring about successful changes in behavior; (4) analysis of client's behaviors in relation to the learning process can aid in evaluating the effectiveness of the facilitating techniques; and (5) from such evaluation intraclient and interclient program changes are derived hopefully resulting in a greater success rate and maximum benefits from time spent in therapy.     

Impairment of probabilistic reward-based learning in schizophrenia.

Recent models assume that some symptoms of schizophrenia originate from defective reward processing mechanisms. Understanding the precise nature of reward-based learning impairments might thus make an important contribution to the understanding of schizophrenia and the development of treatment strategies. The present study investigated several features of probabilistic reward-based stimulus association learning, namely the acquisition of initial contingencies, reversal learning, generalization abilities, and the effects of reward magnitude. Compared to healthy controls, individuals with schizophrenia exhibited attenuated overall performance during acquisition, whereas learning rates across blocks were similar to the rates of controls. On the group level, persons with schizophrenia were, however, unable to learn the reversal of the initial reward contingencies. Exploratory analysis of only the subgroup of individuals with schizophrenia who showed significant learning during acquisition yielded deficits in reversal learning with low reward magnitudes only. There was further evidence of a mild generalization impairment of the persons with schizophrenia in an acquired equivalence task. In summary, although there was evidence of intact basic processing of reward magnitudes, individuals with schizophrenia were impaired at using this feedback for the adaptive guidance of behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavior modification and the psychoses of childhood: A review.

The literature pertaining to the use of operant-training procedures with psychotic children is reviewed. Ferster's concept of "behavioral deficit" is discussed as the explicit theoretical framework that can most parsimoniously govern these behavior analyses and subsequent modification programs. With relatively simple and communicable methods, beneficial results have been rapidly achieved, even by nonprofessional workers. Despite some lack of experimental rigor, the evidence is interpreted as strongly supportive of a social-learning model of severely pathological behavior and an operant-training model of therapy. A simplified etiological hypothesis is offered, and the issue of generality of adaptive change is discussed. Emphasis is placed upon attentional reorientation and the acquisition of elementary "learning strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pharmacotherapy in Autism and Related Disorders.

Autistic disorder is characterized by qualitative impairment in the areas of social interaction and communication, as well as stereotypic, repetitive patterns of behavior. In addition to the core features of autism, many individuals display a range of behavioral concerns including anxiety, aggression, agitation, overactivity, self-injury, and stereotypic behavior. Recent prevalence estimates indicate that over 45% of individuals with autism are prescribed psychotropic medications for management of associated behavioral disorders. Yet, there remain considerable gaps in our knowledge of medication efficacy and safety in this population. This article provides an overview of the research in this area, including efficacy and potential side effects of the most commonly prescribed psychotropic medications for children and adolescents with autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accurate identification of fear facial expressions predicts prosocial behavior.

The fear facial expression is a distress cue that is associated with the provision of help and prosocial behavior. Prior psychiatric studies have found deficits in the recognition of this expression by individuals with antisocial tendencies. However, no prior study has shown accuracy for recognition of fear to predict actual prosocial or antisocial behavior in an experimental setting. In 3 studies, the authors tested the prediction that individuals who recognize fear more accurately will behave more prosocially. In Study 1, participants who identified fear more accurately also donated more money and time to a victim in a classic altruism paradigm. In Studies 2 and 3, participants' ability to identify the fear expression predicted prosocial behavior in a novel task designed to control for confounding variables. In Study 3, accuracy for recognizing fear proved a better predictor of prosocial behavior than gender, mood, or scores on an empathy scale. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why behavior analysts should study emotion: the example of anxiety

Historically, anxiety has been a dominant subject in mainstream psychology but an incidental or even insignificant one in behavior analysis. We discuss several reasons for this discrepancy. We follow with a behavior-analytic conceptualization of anxiety that could just as easily be applied to emotion in general. Its primary points are (a) that languageable humans have an extraordinary capacity to derive relations between events and that it is a simple matter to show that neutral stimuli can acquire discriminative functions indirectly with no direct training; (b) that private events can readily acquire discriminative functions; (c) that anxiety disorders seem to occur with little apparent direct learning or that the amount of direct learning is extraordinarily out of proportion with the amount of responding; and (d) that the primary function of anxious behavior is experiential avoidance. We conclude that the most interesting aspects of anxiety disorders may occur as a function of derived rather than direct relations between public events and overt and private responses with avoidance functions. Implicit in this conclusion and explicit in the paper is the assertion that anxiety is a suitable subject for behavior-analytic study.     

Reliability, validity, and preliminary normative data for the Inventory to Diagnose Depression in a college population.

The Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD; M. Zimmerman et al; see record 1987-14495-001) was designed to assess both the diagnosis of major depressive episode and the severity of depressive symptoms. When used with a college population, the IDD was a stable and internally consistent measure of depressive symptomatology. IDD total scores correlated significantly with other commonly used depression inventories, and a principal-components analysis revealed a general depression factor associated with IDD responses. Last, the IDD yielded diagnoses of major depressive episode that compared favorably with interview-derived diagnoses, and preliminary normative data for the IDD in a population of college students are reported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of How people change.

Reviews the book, How people change by Rebecca Curtis and George Stricker (see record 1991-98045-000). This book, subtitled "Inside and Outside Therapy," brings together knowledgeable and thoughtful people from the practitioner domains of clinical/counseling psychology and similarly scholarly individuals from other areas of psychology (such as industrial/organizational and social psychology). Reading this book called to mind a time when we used to consider psychology a single discipline with areas of specialization, not the fragmented puzzle whose pieces do not appear to fit together. The attempts to integrate the ideas related to behavior change are reminiscent of Dollard and Miller's attempts to blend Freudian theory with the data and methodology of learning theory; Rotter's (1954) attempt to incorporate concepts from both learning theory and Lewinian models of social interaction into a theory for clinical psychology. This book serves as evidence that reports of the demise of an integrated body of knowledge we call psychology have been greatly exaggerated. This work will appeal to the careful, thoughtful reader, one who is interested in extrapolating to the larger issues relevant to the issue of how human behavior changes. Curtis and Stricker, following the trail set by integrationists like C. R. Snyer and John Harvey, are to be commended for their work on this volume and for their own written contributions to it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In the worst rather than the best of times: Effects of salient intergroup ideology in threatening intergroup interactions.

Three studies demonstrated that a salient multicultural ideology increases hostile treatment of threatening outgroup interaction partners. The effect of multiculturalism on hostile behavior was evident regardless of whether threat was operationalized in terms of disagreement with an outgroup partner on important social issues (Studies 1 and 3) or rejection by the partner (Study 2). Moreover, the results clearly point to the learning orientation fostered by multiculturalism—as opposed to other factors such as enhanced other-focus, group-level attributions, or focus on differences—as the critical mediator of its effect on hostile behavior under threat. Thus, it appears that multiculturalism enhances the expression of hostility because it prompts individuals to really engage with and attach meaning and importance to threatening behaviors exhibited by outgroup members. The effects of multiculturalism were distinct from those of anti-racism and color-blindness, which set in motion processes that in many respects are directly opposite to those instantiated by multiculturalism. The findings highlight that the behavioral implications of multiculturalism may be quite different in conflictual interactions than they have previously been demonstrated to be in less threatening exchanges. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of chronic achievement motivation and achievement primes on the activation of achievement and fun goals.

This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In 4 studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured, and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Elevated trajectories of externalizing problems are associated with lower awakening cortisol levels in midadolescence.

A growing body of research suggesting a negative association between basal levels of cortisol and persistent antisocial behavior has emerged. The present study examined relations between awakening cortisol levels and antisocial trajectories from ages 5 to 15 years among individuals in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Antisocial behavior was defined by semiparametric group modeling techniques, which revealed antisocial patterns parallel to Moffitt's (1993) taxonomy of antisocial trajectories. In contrast to the claim that biological diatheses are uniquely characteristic of individuals who demonstrate an early-onset pattern of antisocial behavior, our results suggest that individuals with elevated patterns of antisocial behavior between 5 and 15 years of age—irrespective of the timing of onset or desistance—are more likely to evidence lower awakening cortisol levels compared with individuals with persistently low levels of antisocial behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Reliability, validity, and preliminary normative data for the Inventory to Diagnose Depression in a college population": Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by D. B. Goldston et al (Psychological Assessment, 1990[Jun], Vol 2[2], 212–215. On page 214, the specificity of the Inventory to Diagnose Depression in the sample of college students was listed as 87.5%. The correct value is 95%. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in PA, Vol 77:32114). The Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD; M. Zimmerman et al; see record 1987-14495-001) was designed to assess both the diagnosis of major depressive episode and the severity of depressive symptoms. When used with a college population, the IDD was a stable and internally consistent measure of depressive symptomatology. IDD total scores correlated significantly with other commonly used depression inventories, and a principal-components analysis revealed a general depression factor associated with IDD responses. Last, the IDD yielded diagnoses of major depressive episode that compared favorably with interview-derived diagnoses, and preliminary normative data for the IDD in a population of college students are reported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) rapidly learn to select dominant individuals in videos of artificial social interactions between unfamiliar conspecifics.

Social animals, such as primates, must behave appropriately in complex social situations such as dominance interactions. Learning dominance information through trial and error would be dangerous; therefore, cognitive mechanisms for rapid learning of dominance information by observation would be adaptive. We used a set of digitally edited artificial social interactions to examine whether rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) can learn dominance relationships between unfamiliar conspecifics through observation. Our method allowed random assignment of stimulus monkeys to ranks in an artificial hierarchy, controlling for nonbehavioral cues that could indicate dominance. Subject monkeys watched videos depicting 1 stimulus monkey behaving dominantly toward another and were rewarded for selecting the dominant individual. Monkeys rapidly learned this discrimination across 5 behavior types in Experiment 1 and transferred performance to novel videos of new individuals in Experiment 2. In addition, subjects selected the dominant individual more often than expected by chance in probe videos containing no behavioral dominance information, indicating some retention of the relative dominance status of stimulus monkeys from training. Together, our results suggest that monkeys can learn dominance hierarchies through observation of third-party social interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Screening for congenital hypothyroidism used as an indicator of the degree of iodine deficiency and of its control

Neonatal thyroid screening using serum thyrotropin (TSH) as the primary screening test detects not only permanent sporadic congenital hypothyroidism, whose incidence is about 1 per 4000 births, but also compensated or transient primary hypothyroidism, whose incidence can be as high as 1 in 10 neonates and whose main cause is iodine deficiency. Elevated serum TSH in the neonate indicates insufficient supply of thyroid hormones to the developing brain, and therefore, constitutes the only indicator that allows prediction of possible impairment of mental development at a population level, which is the main consequence of iodine deficiency. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and the International Council for Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (ICCIDD) included neonatal TSH as one of the indicators for assessing iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) and their control. In the absence of iodine deficiency, the frequency of neonatal TSH above 5 mU/L whole blood (or 10 mU/L serum) is less than 3%. A frequency of 3%-19.9% indicates mild IDD. Frequencies of 20%-39.9% and above 40% indicate moderate and severe IDD, respectively. Neonates exhibit elevated serum TSH more frequently than adults for a similar degree of iodine deficiency. Consequently, they appear hypersensitive to the effects of iodine deficiency. This characteristic is explained by a particularly low iodine content of the thyroid of neonates and, consequently, by an accelerated turnover rate of their intrathyroidal iodine reserves. This turnover rate is 1% in adults. It is 17% in the neonate in conditions of iodine repletion, but is as high as 62% and 125% in conditions of moderate and severe iodine deficiency, respectively. Such an accelerated turnover rate requires thyroid hyperstimulation by TSH that is morphologically evidenced even in moderately iodine deficient neonates. Neonatal screening using primary TSH is implemented in most countries with mild IDD where it detects the cases of sporadic, permanent congenital hypothyroidism and where it is also used as a monitoring tool for IDD evaluation and control. However, the implementation of such programs in countries affected by moderate or severe IDD is still insufficient because of lack of resources of the countries. This should be considered in the framework of the external support often provided to these countries for the implementation of programs of universal salt iodization. Monitoring of these programs in order to achieve the goal of sustainable elimination of IDD now constitutes an absolute priority.     

Self-care independence in children with neurological disorders: An interactional model of adaptive demands and executive dysfunction.

Objective: To describe a neuropsychological assessment model that proposes executive functioning as a key moderator in the development of self-care independence. Setting: Inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation facilities. Participants: Transition-age youths with congenital and acquired neurological disorders. Intervention: Transition to the adaptive roles and expectations of adulthood can be challenging for adolescents with neurological disorders and other chronic medical conditions. These individuals frequently encounter functional problems related to additional time requirements, new life skill demands, and increased need for organization and planning. In addition, the neuropsychological consequences of these disorders often include deficits in motor speed and coordination as well as executive control (including planning, organization, and working memory). Consideration of the integrity of executive function skills and the presence of atypical adaptive demands is crucial during planning for transition of individuals into self-care independence and development of an approach to assessment and intervention. Conclusions: Rehabilitation psychologists have the potential to improve the quality of life of adolescents with neurological disorders as they transition into adulthood by considering the "executive burden" posed to the individuals by various combinations of executive dysfunction and atypical adaptive demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Basic behavioral science research for mental health: Perception, attention, learning, and memory.

Examines the cognitive processes of sensation and perception, attention, learning, and memory to understand cognitive disorders seen in mental illnesses. The sensation and perception review includes recognizing patterns and shapes, perceiving words in reading and the "Where" and "When" Modules of the visual system. The focus on attention concerns it's important cognitive role to planned, adaptive behavior. Many aspects of learning are discussed, including learning and prediction, conditioning and addiction, instrumental learning, modulating and preserving behavior, and social learning of fears and phobias. Reconstructive memory, emotion and memory, forms of memory (working and implicit memory), and the cognitive unconscious are discussed. Directions for future research on perception, attention, learning, and memory are given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditioned behavioral responses to a context paired with the predator odor trimethylthiazoline.

Contextual fear conditioning is the learning of a fear response in a specific context in response to repeated application of aversive stimuli (e.g., foot shocks) or danger-related stimuli (predator odors) within that context. Cat odor, a danger-related stimulus common in laboratory studies of fear in the past, has often been replaced recently with trimethylthiazoline (TMT), a component of fox feces. No contextual fear conditioning in response to TMT has been reported so far, whereas cat odor has often been shown to induce such fear conditioning in rats. Using TMT in both a 1-compartment and a 2-compartment setup, the authors found conditioned fear behavior (expressed as avoidance behavior) in the 2-compartment setup but not--as reported by others--in the 1-compartment setup. Detailed analysis revealed 2 different coping strategies in the 2-compartment setup: Half of the rats showed pronounced avoidance behavior, whereas the other half showed intense risk assessment behavior. These results indicate that expression of conditioned fear behavior in response to a TMT-paired context is dependent on the experimental setup used, as well as the strategy of the individual rat. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)