Effective components of TORDIA cognitive–behavioral therapy for adolescent depression: Preliminary findings.

In this report, we conducted a secondary analysis of the Treatment of SSRI-Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA) study to explore the impact of specific cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment components on outcome. In TORDIA, 334 youths (ages 12 to 18 years) with major depressive disorder who had failed to respond to an adequate course of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medication were randomized to a medication switch (either to an alternative SSRI or venlafaxine) with or without 12 weeks of adjunctive CBT. Participants who had more than 9 CBT sessions were 2.5 times more likely to have adequate treatment response than those who had 9 or fewer sessions. CBT participants who received problem-solving and social skills treatment components, controlling for number of sessions and other confounding variables, were 2.3 and 2.6 times, respectively, more likely to have a positive response. These preliminary findings underscore the importance of receiving an adequate number of sessions to attain an adequate clinical response. Finally, social skills and problem solving may be active elements in CBT for adolescent depression and should be considered in treatment by those working with seriously depressed youths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An attentional assessment of foster children at risk for schizophrenia.

Investigated whether processes observed in adult schizophrenics could be detected in children who were not schizophrenic but were at heightened risk for the disorder. A battery of 8 attention-demanding tasks was administered to (a) 9 foster children at heightened risk for schizophrenia by virtue of having a schizophrenic biological mother, (b) 10 foster children without a family history of psychiatric disorder, and (c) 10 children living with their biological parents, none of whom had a history of psychiatric disorder. The tasks included in the battery had been demonstrated in previous research to be sensitive discriminators of adult schizophrenic pathology. Results indicate the presence of attentional dysfunction in high-risk children prior to the onset of clinical symptoms. The high-risk group showed significantly lower levels of performance on certain tasks, notably the complex versions of the span-of-apprehension and Spokes tests from the Halstead-Reitan Test Battery, and the simple conditions of the concept attainment task. Examination of low-scoring Ss, intercorrelations between tasks, and the results of a cluster analysis revealed that within the high-risk group there was a subset of Ss who showed impairment across these tasks to produce the overall low group means. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The science of prevention: A conceptual framework and some directions for a national research program.

A conceptual framework for studying the prevention of human dysfunction is offered. On the basis of recent advances in research on the development of psychological disorders and methods of preventive intervention, generalizations about the relation of risk and protective factors to disorder are put forward, along with a set of principles for what may be identified as the science of prevention. Emerging themes from the study of human devlopment, in general, need to be incorporated in the models for explaining and preventing serious problems of human adaptation. The article concludes with a set of recommendations for a national prevention research agenda. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dual-task performance operating characteristics, resource limitations, and automatic processing in schizophrenia.

Performance on a multiple-frame search task (MFST) was investigated in 18 schizophrenia patients and 19 nonpsychiatric controls. Three of 4 indices indicated automation of visual detection responses in both groups on the MFST. In dual-task conditions (MFST during reaction time tasks), the schizophrenia patients showed greater dual-task RT slowing than controls, suggesting reduced resource availability in schizophrenia patients. Performance operating characteristic representations also indicated greater resource limitations in schizophrenia patients but showed similar allocation policy in both groups. The results suggest that schizophrenia patients have reduced availability of processing resources, which is not likely to be due to faulty resource allocation. However, these data do not confidently resolve whether schizophrenia patients reach a normal level of automation. Implications for frontal-subcortical models of schizophrenia are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Span of apprehension deficits in children vulnerable to psychopathology: A failure to replicate": Comment.

Discusses the differences in task and sample characteristics that might explain why significant group differences in span of apprehension performance were found by the present 1st author and colleagues (see record 1978-05788-001) and those found by P. D. Harvey et al (see record 1985-01308-001). It is suggested that the procedure used in the latter study (Procedure A) places greater demands on sustained attention and/or orientation to the stimuli than did the former procedure (Procedure B). Procedure B (particularly on complex arrays) appears to make greater demands on those processes involved in visual search than did Procedure A. Possible differences in the characteristics of the schizophrenic parents of the high-risk children and in the characteristics of the normal control children studied in the 2 projects are also discussed. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gerald Rosenbaum (1922–2009).

Gerald Rosenbaum was born December 18, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York, to Manny and Pauline Rosenbaum. Gerry passed away on September 8, 2009, at age 86, in San Diego after a valiant battle with cancer. In academe, individual contributions are often the metric of achievement. Gerald Rosenbaum made substantial contributions to the psychological literature on a host of topics, including important papers on anxiety, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and neuropsychological dysfunction. It has been said, however, that the best measure of a life is one’s impact on others. In this regard, Gerry had few peers. As an academic advisor, he mentored many students who became major contributors in psychology. As director of two prominent clinical psychology programs, Gerry created an atmosphere that infused a dedication to excellence into everyone around him. The careers of his students became an extension of these values, and their impact can be found across academe and the world of clinical service. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neurocognitive outcomes and recovery after pediatric TBI: Meta-analytic review of the literature.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) continues to be one of the leading causes of death and disability in the pediatric population. Although the literature on neurocognitive outcomes is relatively rich, studies vary significantly in the methods used to group subjects on several moderating variables, including age at injury, injury severity, and time since injury, making it difficult to combine and summarize the data for comparison. Further complicating this effort is the wide range of measures used to document functional outcomes in key neurocognitive domains. In this meta-analytic review, 28 publications (1988 to 2007) that met inclusion criteria were summarized based on three distinct injury severity and time post injury groups for 14 key neurocognitive domains. Effect sizes were calculated to reflect the extent to which the above groups differed in case-control and case-case studies, as well as address recovery based on longitudinal studies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first published quantitative summary of the literature on neurocognitive outcomes after pediatric TBI. Limitations of the current state of the literature as well as recommendations for future studies are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpersonal and impersonal problem-solving skills in mildly and clinically depressed university students.

Administered the Beck Depression Inventory and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to 20 nondepressed and 20 depressed university students and 8 nondepressed and 10 depressed university students being treated at a university counseling service. Ss were then tested on the Means–Ends Problem-Solving Procedure (a measure of interpersonal problem-solving ability) and the anagram task used in the investigations of learned helplessness (a measure of impersonal problem-solving ability). All Ss were administered the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry version of the Vocabulary subscale of the WAIS. A significant negative correlation was found between depression and interpersonal problem-solving ability, while only anxiety was correlated with anagram performance. Differences between groups were found only in interpersonal problem-solving performance. Nondepressed Ss performed significantly better than the other 3 groups, while depressed counselees obtained the lowest scores on the interpersonal measures. No relationship was found between performance on the anagram task and performance on the Means–Ends Problem-Solving Procedure. Results are consistent with predictions generated by interpersonal theories of depression, but they raise questions about the validity of the learned helplessness model as an analog of clinical depression. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pupillary responses index overload of working memory resources in schizophrenia.

The authors examined the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients have reduced availability of working memory resources by using pupillary responses as an index of resource overload. Pupillary responses were recorded during a verbal working memory task (digit recall) in 24 schizophrenia patients and 32 normal controls. Pupil size increased with increased processing load (digit-span length) but changed little or declined when processing demands exceeded available resources (overload). The schizophrenia patients showed impaired digit recall and abnormally small pupillary responses during digit presentation only in the higher processing load conditions, but they showed abnormally small pupillary responses during digit retrieval in all processing load conditions. The results suggest reduced availability of slave store and central executive working memory resources in schizophrenia. This study serves as an example of how pupillography methods can be used to test current hypotheses regarding overload of cognitive capacities in schizophrenia patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental outcomes in children receiving resection surgery for medically intractable infantile spasms

Two-year postsurgical developmental outcomes were assessed in 24 children with infantile spasms who underwent resective surgery. The mean age of onset of infantile spasms was 12.0 weeks and the mean age at surgery was 20.8 months. Developmental outcomes were assessed using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS). There was a significant increase in developmental level at 2 years postsurgery compared with presurgical levels. At 2 years postsurgery only one of the children in this series was severely retarded. The developmental outcomes of patients in the series were better than those in prior studies of symptomatic patients receiving medical treatment for infantile spasms. It is surprising that the children in the UCLA series frequently had developmental outcomes equal to and sometimes superior to other groups of children with infantile spasms, since all the UCLA patients were symptomatic, had neurologic deficits and had failed to respond to adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) and antiepileptic drugs. The 2-year postsurgery developmental outcomes were best for the children who received surgery when they were relatively young and who had the highest level of developmental attainments presurgically.