Abnormal Psychology

The pharmaceutical industry, especially the sale of psychiatric drugs, is one of the most profitable businesses in the world. Because of its large profits, these companies find themselves in a position to invest enormous amounts of resources into the sale and marketing of their products. At times, their intense marketing tactics exert an economic influence on the research and practice of psychiatry that threatens to have a deleterious effect on the credibility and validity of psychiatric interventions. The loss of credibility and validity in psychiatric science may undermine public trust in psychiatry’s ability to meet the medical and psychological needs of patients with mental disorders. By investigating the conflicts of interest in the research of psychiatric medications and exploring the recent past in which the efficacy of antidepressants has been called into question, the logic of this analysis leads us to caution psychiatric consumers about the efficacy and safety of atypical
antipsychotic medications, especially when used for psychiatric treatment of vulnerable populations such as children and the
elderly. These cautions extend also to the decision of the DSM-5 task force to consider the inclusion of pediatric bipolar disorder, attenuated psychotic symptoms syndrome (also known as psychotic risk syndrome), and temper dysregulation disorder for the forthcoming fith edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The investigation into conflicts of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and medical research in psychiatry leads us to the tentative conclusion that the DSM-5 task force should place a moratorium on consideration of any new diagnostic category that would promote the prescription of antipsychotic medications to children or other vulnerable populations, such as the elderly.

Objective: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), currently uses a polythetic classification system for defining alcohol use disorders (AUD; alcohol abuse and dependence). This classification results in individuals who are subthreshold for an official AUD diagnosis but still endorse one or two criteria of dependence: so-called "diagnostic orphans." To our knowledge, however, there has been no attention given to diagnostic orphans from a lifetime perspective. The goal of the current article was to compare various diagnostic groups based on lifetime reports of abuse and dependence symptoms on a range of outcomes. Method: Data taken from the National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions study were used to form seven mutually exclusive diagnostic groups based on lifetime abuse and dependence symptomatology. Results: Diagnostic groups that experienced extensive dependence symptoms, regardless of past-12-month clustering (i.e., formal diagnostic criteria), tended to exhibit poorer outcomes compared with participants that met formal lifetime diagnosis for an AUD through abuse alone. It is notable that a significant group of individuals who failed to meet formal lifetime AUD diagnosis, but who endorsed a number of dependence symptoms, consistently demonstrated more problematic outcomes on a range of measures compared with individuals who never reported dependence symptoms but who were formally diagnosed with lifetime AUD through alcohol abuse. Conclusions: DSM-IV lifetime diagnostic criteria may exclude individuals with a history of extensive dependence symptomatology. Implications regarding lifetime diagnosis conceptualization are discussed.

The recovery sleep of a 21-year-old normal woman was assessed after she had endured 11(1/2) days of sleep restriction in a world record-setting film-viewing marathon. An exceptional sleep debt was observed as indicated by an instanteous sleep onset, a high sleep efficiency, and a total sleep duration of over 20 hours. Other striking features of this recovery sleep were very short latencies to stages 3 and 4 sleep, return of Stage 4 sleep after 14.5 h, REM and SWS sleep rebound, and a linear increase in REM sleep efficiency across 14 consecutive REM-NREM episodes. Seven of nine home dreams reported after this recording contained competition themes, but none relating to the marathon films. Comparisons of the present results with those from subjects in previous record-setting events suggest possible explanations for the extremely long recovery sleep. Results also suggest that analyses of multiple consecutive sleep cycles may provide novel ways of assessing hypotheses about regulation of the REM-NREM cycle.

Although there are numerous self-report measures to assess social anxiety in adults, and an increasing number in adolescents, only one scale designed during the last decade, the Social Phobia Inventory (SoPhI; Moore & Gee, 2003) has included an item to tap DSM-IV criterion F of social anxiety disorder (i.e. social anxiety must be present for at least six months). However, questions remain regarding the validity of the SoPhI in other languages and cultures. To address this problem the SoPhI was administered in two studies: firstly, to 457 adolescents from a community sample in order to test the internal consistency and factor analysis of the scale; and secondly, to a clinical sample comprising 114 participants with a principal diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, and a control group consisting of 78 adolescents with no diagnosis of social anxiety disorder. The scale showed good psychometric properties, including test-retest reliability, convergent validity, internal consistency, and a single-factor structure similar to the original study. Together these findings support the use of the SoPhI in a language other than English and for this range of ages.

Aim: Early-onset schizophrenia (onset before adulthood) is a rare and severe form of the disorder that shows phenotypic and neurobiological continuity with adult-onset schizophrenia. Here, we provide a synthesis of keynote findings in this enriched population to understand better the neurobiology and pathophysiology of early-onset schizophrenia. Methods: A synthetic and integrative approach is applied to review studies stemming from epidemiology, phenomenology, cognition, genetics and neuroimaging data. We provide conclusions and future directions of research on early-onset schizophrenia. Results: Childhood and adolescent-onset schizophrenia is associated with severe clinical course, greater rates of premorbid abnormalities, poor psychosocial functioning and increased severity of brain abnormalities. Early-onset cases show similar neurobiological correlates and phenotypic deficits to adult-onset schizophrenia, but show worse long-term psychopathological outcome. Emerging technological advances have provided important insights into the genomic architecture of early-onset schizophrenia, suggesting that some genetic variations may occur more frequently and at a higher rate in young-onset than adult-onset cases. Conclusions: Clinical, cognitive, genetic and imaging data suggest increased severity in early-onset schizophrenia. Studying younger-onset cases can provide useful insights into the neurobiological mechanisms of schizophrenia and the complexity of gene-environment interactions leading to the emergence of this debilitating disorder.

Positron emission tomography (PET) offers a strategic imaging platform to provide a map of functional neural correlates associated with the underlying cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. It enables regional cerebral glucose metabolism and dopaminergic and serotonergic receptor function to be studied. PET neuroimaging can therefore be used in drug development and to study putative treatments. Recent PET studies of the first-generation antipsychotics flupentixol and haloperidol, and of the second-generation antipsychotics risperidone, aripiprazole, quetiapine, sertindole, ziprasidone, paliperidone and olanzapine, have been carried out; modulation of limbic circuitry has been found to be a predictor of treatment response. PET can also be used to predict and monitor likely extrapyramidal side effects from antipsychotic treatment. PET and neuropsychological testing can together also allow the study of putative molecular genetic changes associated with schizophrenia. Advances in the imaging, cognition and molecular genetics are likely to lead to the development of future diagnostics, treatments and novel pharmacological agents.

The validity of the abuse–dependence distinction within alcohol use disorders (AUDs) has been increasingly questioned on psychometric and conceptual grounds. Two types of findings are often cited as support for the validity of this distinction: (a) Dependence is more persistent than abuse, and (b) dependence is more highly comorbid with other Axis I and Axis II disorders than is abuse. Using data from the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), we examined the extent to which the current diagnostic algorithm (3 of 7 dependence criteria for a diagnosis of dependence; 1 of 4 abuse criteria for a diagnosis of abuse if dependence criteria are not met) produces this pattern of findings independent of item set. Analyses in which all 330 permutations of the 11 AUD criteria were partitioned into a 4-item abuse set and a 7-item dependence set were conducted to examine the relevance of the criteria sets to estimates of persistence and comorbidity independent of criteria. Regardless of the criteria used, the dependence set (i.e., 3/7 criteria) always and substantially outperformed the abuse set (1/4) with respect to both persistence and comorbidity. These data indicate that chronicity and comorbidity are flawed indicators for the abuse–dependence distinction (and likely other conditions in which hierarchical decision rules are used). In addition, our analyses show that the current set of criteria defining alcohol dependence and abuse are not optimal.

Evidence has accumulated to show that schizophrenia is characterized by lexical-semantic difficulties; however, questions remain about whether schizophrenics have problems in accessing intact representations or a loss of the representations themselves. Both access and storage types of disorder have been reported and it has been speculated that this may reflect a transition from the former to latter with increasing length of illness. This study investigated whether illness duration, age or estimated premorbid IQ predict the size and accessibility of the lexical store. Fifty-six schizophrenic
patients (chosen to represent a wide range of illness duration from 3–40 years) and 24 matched healthy controls were asked to name 120 pictures on two occasions. Estimates of store size and retrieval probability were derived from a two parameter stochastic Markov chain model. This revealed that even early in the course of illness, schizophrenics appear to have suffered a reduction in lexical store size and that those with longer length of illness show deficits in both their store size and their ability to retrieve names from that store

Much evidence indicates that schizophrenic patients exhibit deficits on tests of executive functioning. It is therefore hypothesized that individuals with high schizotypal personality traits that may have a predisposition to schizophrenia, are also likely to exhibit impairments in neuropsychological tests of executive function. The sample consisted of 65 healthy controls that were divided into high and low scorers on the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-B: Raine et al., 1995). Participants completed a battery of executive tasks (category and letter fluency, the Hayling test, Zoo map); however, a MANOVA revealed no significant differences
between high and low SPQ scorers. Nevertheless, high SPQ scorers scored significantly higher on the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX) self-rating scale of everyday executive problems; and these self-ratings correlated significantly with the disorganisation and cognitive–perceptual features of the SPQ-B, but not with the interpersonal features. This suggests that perceived executive dysfunction is pre-morbidly present and may become evident in test performance only with the onset of schizophrenia itself.

Background. Interest in the neuro-cognitive profile of patients with schizophrenia and co-morbid obsessive compulsive disorder (schizo-OCD) is rising in response to reports of high co-morbidity rates. Whereas schizophrenia has been associated with global impairment in a wide range of neuro-cognitive domains, OCD is associated with specific deficits featuring impaired performance on tasks of motor and cognitive inhibition involving frontostriatal neurocircuitry.
Method. We compared cognitive function using the CANTAB battery in patients with schizo-OCD (n=12) and a schizophrenia group without OCD symptoms (n=16). The groups were matched for IQ, gender, age, medication, and duration of illness.
Results. The schizo-OCD patients made significantly more errors on a task of attentional set-shifting (ID-ED set-shift task). By contrast, no significant differences emerged on the Stockings of Cambridge task, the Cambridge Gamble Task or the Affective Go/NoGo tasks. No correlation emerged between ID-ED performance and severity of schizophrenia, OCD or depressive symptoms, consistent with neurocognitive impairment holding trait rather than statemarker status. Schizo-obsessives also exhibited a trend toward more motor tics emphasizing a neurological contribution to the disorder.
Conclusion. Our findings reveal a more severe attentional set-shifting deficit and neurological abnormality that may be fundamental to the neuro-cognitive profile of schizo-OCD. The clinical implications of these impairments merit further exploration in larger studies.

Objective: Hypofrontality is not a well-replicated finding in
schizophrenia either at rest or under conditions of task activation.
Method: Studies comparing whole brain and frontal blood flow/
metabolism in schizophrenic patients and normal controls were
pooled.Voxel-based studies were also combined to examine the pattern of prefrontal activation in schizophrenia.
Results: Whole brain flow/metabolism was reduced in schizophrenia to only a small extent. Resting and activation frontal flow/metabolism were both reduced with a medium effect size.Duration of illness significantly moderated resting hypofrontality, but the moderating effects of neuroleptic treatment were consistent with an influence on global flow/metabolism only.Pooling of voxel-based studies did not
suggest an abnormal pattern of activation in schizophrenia.
Conclusion: Meta-analysis supports resting hypofrontality in
schizophrenia.Task-activated hypofrontality is also supported, but there is little from voxel-based studies to suggest that this is associated with an altered pattern of regional functional architecture.

Introduction. Recent reports of lexical-semantic deficits in patients with schizophrenia (Laws, Al-Uzri, & Mortimer, 2000; Laws, McKenna, & Kondel, 1998) suggest that younger patients have problems accessing intact memories and older patients show apparent “loss” of the lexical-semantic memory representations themselves. Methods. Picture naming for everyday items was examined in a unique series of elderly patients with schizophrenia (n = 10) with a mean illness duration of 45.5 years; and compared with that in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and elderly healthy controls (n = 27). Naming consistency across time was used as an indicator of whether the schizophrenic patients had difficulty accessing representations or a loss of the representations themselves. Finally, we examined the ability of the schizophrenic patients to relearn the names of unnamed items across four weekly retraining sessions and to retain them at a one month follow-up. Results. The elderly schizophrenic patients were as anomic as patients with probable Alzheimer's disease. Consistency analysis revealed that the patients had storage deficits. Analysis of patient error types was consistent with a semantic deficit. Finally, the schizophrenic patients showed significant improvement with relearning, but this was not maintained at follow-up. Conclusions. Elderly patients with schizophrenia show a profound and stable anomia. Although name relearning induced some significant gains in naming, these were short-term and reflect episodic rather than semantic reinstatement of representations. Implications for cognitive remediation are discussed.

This study documents a severe face naming impairment in schizophrenic patients. A series of twelve patients was examined further to determine whether this deficit conformed to either an access or store disorder as described originally by Warrington and Shallice. This analysis of consistency across time, effects of cueing and familiarity effects revealed heterogeneous performance patterns; pointing to access disorders in some patients and store disorders in others. However, the difference between access-like and store-like patterns of performance was strongly correlated with quantitative differences in patient deficit-severity. Hence, the notion of dichotomous access and store disorders, in schizophrenic patients, may be deceptive; with the naming performance of schizophrenics varying according to the extent of their stored knowledge, rather than any qualitative differences between patients. These findings have implications for our understanding of: cognitive deficits in both schizophrenic and neurological patients; the relationship between psychotic and neurological disorders and perhaps for the underlying neurophysiological dysfunction.

Patients with schizophrenia have deficits in executive function that involve attentional set-shifting and planning ability. It is unclear, however, whether such deficits are stable during the course of the illness or if they fluctuate in response to medication effects or symptom changes. Patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia (n=28) and healthy control subjects (n=17) were tested on computerised measures of attentional set-shifting and planning at baseline and 9-month follow-up. The measures used were the Intra/Extradimensional Shift test (ID/ED) and the Stockings of Cambridge test (SoC) from the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Testing Battery (CANTAB). On both tests, the patients were poorer than controls at baseline; however, there was no evidence of change over the 9-month follow-up. Additionally, there was little evidence of a relationship between executive test performance and medication or length of illness. This study accords with the presence of executive
processing deficits in schizophrenia that are stable across time.

Recent studies have proposed that difficulty with accessing the lexical–semantic memory store may underpin some of the specific linguistic problems associated with formal thought disorder (FTD). We examined the consistency of name retrieval as an indicator of the ability to access lexical-semantic knowledge in patients with and without marked FTD to see if problems are specific to the former or common to schizophrenic patients in general. A graded naming test was administered on two separate occasions 8–16 weeks apart to 48 participants in three groups: 16 schizophrenic patients with high ratings of FTD, 16 schizophrenic patients with low ratings of FTD and 16 healthy controls. We compared the groups for naming consistency across time and the relationship between naming consistency and specific symptoms of FTD. Both patient groups had impaired naming and this was significantly greater in high than low FTD patients. The high FTD patients showed a profile that differed from both low FTD patients and healthy controls insofar as their naming was inconsistent across time, characteristic of an access disorder. Specifically, the FTD symptoms of derailment, tangentality and incoherence were related to the ability to access the lexical–semantic store. In conclusion, most patients with schizophrenia show an impaired semantic memory store. Nevertheless, FTD is associated with additional lexical–semantic difficulties that are quantitatively different to those seen in patients without FTD, and which may reflect disorganized semantic access.

A majority of studies show that schizophrenics perform poorly on so-called tests of
executive or frontal lobe functionÐ the paradigmatic case being the Wisconsin
Card Sort Test (WCST). Nevertheless, the specific character of this deficit in
schizophrenia remains underspecified. In particular, it seems premature to assume
that schizophrenia is characterised by an executive dysfunction and/or a disorder of
frontal lobe function before determining whether any deficit is: selective;
disproportionate to the general level of intellectual functioning; or qualitatively
comparable with that of frontal lobe patients. A meta-analysis was conducted on 29
studies comparing the performance of schizophrenics and normal controls on the
WCST. This showed that the mean weighted effect size was large for categories
achieved (d = 0.91), medium for absolute level of perseveration (d = 0.53), but only
small for the proportion of perseverative errors (d = 0.18). By contrast, the effect
size for Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Intelligence Quotient (WAIS IQ) in a
subset of these studies (d = 1.23) was significantly larger than for any WCST
measures. This pattern of findings challenges notions that schizophrenia is
characterised by an executive dysfunction that is: selective; disproportionate to IQ
level; and analogous to that found in frontal lobe patients. Rather, the poor WCST
performance of schizophrenics appears to reflect a generalised intellectual deficit.

Individual patterns of performance on tests of: visual perception, language, executive function, memory, and face-processing, were examined in 10 schizophrenic patients who were preselected for having current WAIS IQ and premorbid NART IQ scores in the normal range. Although the patients showed some heterogeneity in the type, pervasiveness, and degree of cognitive impairment, a majority had severely impaired verbal recall and familiar face-naming. This contrasted with the low incidence and severity of impairment on tests of executive function, visual recall, recognition memory, naming, and unfamiliar faceprocessing. Contrasts between individual patients indicated that verbal recall and executive performance are independent in some patients and that memory appears to be the core deficit. The profile of impaired and preserved cognitive function revealed some important dissimilarities from the pattern that has emerged from group studies. Finally, face-naming correlated highly with the learning of unrelated paired associates, confirming a similarity with neurological patients who have person name anomia. It is suggested that both deficits might reflect a problem with learning ''meaninglessness'' associations; this interpretation is discussed with reference to a deficit at the level of the Supervisory Attentional System (Shallice, 1988).

A debate persists about whether IQ declines during the duration of schizophrenia or whether an early deficit remains static across the lifespan. To examine this, we measured estimated current IQ (Quick Test Revised: QTR) and estimated premorbid IQ (National Adult Reading Test: NART) in schizophrenic patients (n ¼ 110) and matched healthy controls (n ¼ 71) across a wide age range (20–88). Age correlated negatively with NARTand QTR IQ for schizophrenic patients, but not for controls. A subset of 23 schizophrenic patients was also retested on the NART after 4 years to determine NART stability and they showed no significant change. We propose that the lower NART IQ in older patients reflects a lower ‘starting point’ and that this may be related to lower educational opportunities in older patients.

Introduction. Semantic memory impairment is now a well-documented phenomenon in patients with schizophrenia. Nevertheless, the characteristics of this deficit and any early markers remain contentious.

Methods. In this preliminary study, 12 schizophrenic patients underwent longitudinal assessment using a battery of semantic memory tests. Patient performance was compared to 12 matched controls. Using set criteria (derived from Warrington & Shallice, 1979), we examined whether the patients had a disorder affecting access to intact representations, or a degradation/loss of the representations themselves. The criteria were: consistency across time and modality, level of attribute information, and responsiveness to cueing. Finally, we compared patient naming for the same items across two naming tests (naming-to-description and picture naming) to determine cross-modality consistency.

Results. As expected, normal controls outperformed the patients on all tests. Naming-to-description was the most significant differentiator between patients and controls. Patients were inconsistent across both time and modality, showed minimal attributional knowledge impairment, and improved significantly with cueing on two naming tests.

Conclusion. The profile of results indicates an access-type semantic deficit in this cohort of patients with schizophrenic. Finally, on a naming-to-description task, the patients failed to name up to 20% of items that they could name to picture. This suggests that naming-to-definition may act as an early marker of semantic memory

Studies have reported substantial mnestic deficits in patients with schizophrenia. Most of this research, however, has focussed on errors of omission (poor recall/recognition) rather than commission (such as false recall/recognition). Nevertheless, recent studies report that schizophrenics show increased false recognition and speculate that this may underpin delusional ideation (Moritz et al., 2004). No previous study has examined whether such memory problems exist in normal individuals who may be prone to delusional thinking.
Using the Roediger and McDermott (1995) paradigm, we investigated memory functioning in 105 normal healthy subjects divided according to performance on a measure of delusional ideation (Peters et al. Delusional Inventory: PDI Peters et al., 1999). We found significantly poorer recall in the high than low PDI group. Moreover, high PDI scorers also made more false-alarm memory recalls than low PDI scorers.
In a recognition test, high and low PDI subjects did not differ in the confidence they attached to recognition of studied items, but high PDI subjects gave greater confidence for falsely accepting unseen items. This suggests that healthy subjects scoring high on a measure of delusional thinking do show an increased tendency to make false positives, but not to make false negative memory judgements.

Research indicates that some patients with schizophrenia display aberrant inhibition of semantic memory, which may underpin formal thought disorder (FTD). We administered a novel Stroop-like paradigm to three groups of participants: 15 schizophrenic patients with formal thought disorder (FTD), 16 with low FTD ratings, and 15 healthy matched controls. They were required to inhibit a prepotent response for a (previously instructed) required response. Four conditions examined the effect of executive demands by manipulating the relatedness between prepotent and required responses (i.e., identical, semantically related, or unrelated). Two further conditions examining executive function working memory demands required the naming of real or abstract pictures that did and did not necessitate inhibition, respectively. Patients with and without FTD experienced increased difficulty when executive function working memory was required. Moreover, those with FTD also showed increased executive inhibition, but the pattern of errors suggested that the result of this was an automatic activation of semantically related representations. The findings support the notion that increased inhibition underpins the disorganised access to semantic memory in patients with FTD.

Although atypical antipsychotics have been associated with improvements in cognitive function in schizophrenia, the neurochemical basis for such effects is not well understood. Candidate neurotransmitter systems primarily involve dopamine and serotonin. The current study explored this issue by examining the cognitive abilities, social function and quality of life in patients with schizophrenia who were medicated with atypical antipsychotics. Comparisons were done for matched schizophrenia patients who were on antipsychotics with (i) an affinity for multiple receptors (olanzapine, clozapine, quetiapine) versus those that have preferential affinity for dopamine receptors (risperidone, amisulpride); and patients on medication with (ii) a high affinity for serotonin (5HT-2A) receptors (risperidone, olanzapine, clozapine) versus those with a low (or no) affinity for 5HT-2A receptors (quetiapine, amisulpride). No differences emerged between groups on any cognitive or social variable when the groups were compared for the dopaminergic properties of antipsychotic medication. By contrast, differences did emerge when patients were compared on the 5HT-2A affinity of their antipsychotic medications. Patients on low 5HT-2A-affinity antipsychotics exhibited a better performance on a measure of selective attention and adjustment to living. These findings accord with the notion that serotonergic mechanisms are important determinants of both the cognitive and the social effects of the atypical antipsychotics.

Résumé
Le but de la présente étude est d’évaluer la prévalence de l’intimidation chez des élèves chypriotes du primaire et du secondaire. L’échantillon comprend 1 645 élèves des deux niveaux qui ont rempli le « Revised Bullying and Victimization Questionnaire ». Les résultats montrent que 5.4% les élèves interrogés sont impliqués dans de tels incidents en tant qu’intimidateurs seulement, 7.4% en tant que victimes seulement et 4.2% en tant qu’intimidateurs-victimes. Au total, 17% des jeunes chypriotes grecs sont impliqués dans une forme quelconque d’intimidation et de victimation. Bien que le pourcentage des élèves qui s’impliquent dans des comportements d’intimidation soit significativement plus élevé chez les garçons que chez les filles, il n’existe pas de différence significative entre les deux sexes en ce qui concerne la victimation. Des comparaisons par tranche d’âge indiquent que les garçons plus âgés s’impliquent davantage dans des comportements d’intimidation alors qu’il n’existe pas de différence significative entre les groupes d’âge étudiés en ce qui concerne la victimation.

Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of bullying among Cyprus elementary and high school students. The participants were 1645 students of both levels that completed the Revised Bullying and Victimization Questionnaire. The results show that 5.4% of the children are involved in such incidents as uniquely bullies, 7.4% of the children as uniquely victims, and 4.2% as bully/victims. In total, 17% of the Greek-Cypriot children are involved in some form of bullying and victimization. While boys are significantly more involved in bullying there are no significant differences in victimization. Age comparisons show that older boys are also more significantly involved in bullying but there are no age differences in victimization.

Little isknownaboutthefactorialinvarianceacrossgenderandageforself-reportmeasuresofsocial
anxiety inadolescence.Thisstudyexaminedthefactorialinvarianceandlatentmeandifferencesofthe
Social AnxietyScaleforAdolescents (SAS-A) acrossgenderandagegroupsin1570Spanishadolescents
(54% girls),ranginginagefrom14to17years.Equalityoffactorstructureswascomparedusingmulti-
group confirmatoryfactoranalyses.Measurementinvarianceforthecorrelatedthree-factormodelof
the SAS-Awasfoundacrossgenderandagesamples.Analysesoflatentmeandifferencesrevealedthat
girls exhibitedhighermeansthanboysontwoSAS-Asubscales,FearofNegativeEvaluationandSocial
Avoidance andDistress-New(SAD-New).Inaddition,ontheSAD-Newsubscale,thestructuredmeans
significantly diminishedfrom14-yearoldsto16-and17-yearoldsandfrom15-yearoldsto17-yearolds.
Findings arediscussedintermsoftheuseoftheSAS-AwithSpanishadolescents.

Schizophrenia involves dysregulation in dopaminergic
transmission. Studies show heightened presynaptic striatal
dopaminergic function and elevated striatal D2/D3 receptor
density in the brain. Cognitive impairments result from
hypostimulation of D1 receptors and are associated with
dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex. Here we discuss
relevant positron emissions tomography (PET) studies and
provide future directions.

The light/dark box test, traditionally used to quantify rodent anxiety-like behavior, has recently been applied to the adult zebrafish (Danio rerio). Utilizing the fish‟s scototaxis – aversion to bright areas and natural preference for the dark – this paradigm can be used to assess levels of anxiety in adult zebrafish. The light/dark box is a simple and time-efficient one-trial test that does not require pre-training the animals. Importantly, this novelty-based paradigm may also represent a useful tool for studying the pharmacological modulation of zebrafish behavior. Summarizing the experience with this model in several laboratories, here we outline a protocol for the neurophenoptyping of zebrafish anxiety-like behavior using the light-dark paradigm.

In this paper, I analyze documentary evidence from a pharmaceutical company’s strategic marketing campaign to expand the sale of an antipsychotic medication beyond its conventional market. I focus on the role of the managerial function known as channel marketing, the task of which is to minimize friction, achieve coordination and add value in the distribution of the company’s products. However, the path to achieving these objectives is challenged because members of the marketing channel, or intermediaries, may not be contractual members of the channel; in fact they may have widely divergent goals or may even be hostile to the manufacturer’s efforts at control. This can be construed to be the case for physicians and others who are in the pharmaceutical manufacturer’s distribution channel but not of it. Their views and actions must somehow be brought into alignment with the manufacturer’s goals. This paper seeks to show part of the process from the manufacturer’s strategic standpoint, in which potential dissenters are incorporated into the pharmaceutical company distribution channel. The routinization of this incorporation results in the diminishment of psychiatry’s professional autonomy by means of what is—paradoxically to them, but not to a student of marketing—a competitive threat. The paper concludes with a discussion of corporate power.

This study aimed at examining the differences between bullies, victims, bully-victims and students that are non involved in peer violence in terms of their temperament, their degree of deviation from the typical in appearance or behaviour and the degree of their peer acceptance. Furthermore, the study compared the attributions used by the members of the above groups to explain the causes of peer violence. The participants were 377 Greek Cypriot early adolescents (mean age 11.6). It was found that bully-victims were more temperamental, more different than the typical student and more isolated socially than the other three groups to a statistically significant level (p < 0.05). Also, the same group members tended to use external attributions for explaining the causes of peer violence

Previous results from research on individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) suggest a diminished ability for recalling episodic autobiographical memory (AM). The primary aim of this study was to explore autobiographical memory in individuals with Asperger syndrome and specifically to investigate whether memories in those with AS are characterised by fewer episodic ‘remembered’ events (due to a deficit in autonoetic consciousness). A further aim was to examine whether such changes in AM might also be related to changes in identity, due to the close relationship between memory and the self and to the established differences in self-referential processes in AS. Eleven adults with AS and fifteen matched comparison participants were asked to recall autobiographical memories from three lifetime periods and for each memory to give either a Remember response (autonoetic consciousness) or a Know response (noetic consciousness). The pattern of results shows that AS participants recalled fewer memories and that these memories were more often rated as Known, compared to the comparison group. AS participants also showed differences in reported identity, generating fewer social identity statements and more abstract, trait-linked identities. The data support the view that differences in both memory and reported personal identity in AS are characterized by a lack of specificity.

This article endeavours to develop a conceptual perspective of moral values and societal norms, and how they impact on emotion regulation within employment contexts. The paper draws on social psychology and emotional labour literature to explore the concept of contextual emotional labour. I argue that the conflicting requirements of one’s societal and employment contexts may require one to transgress one’s moral values to fulfil job requirements. I also argue that it is important to examine the aversive state(s) that may follow one’s transgression and how this is managed in the workplace.

ABSTRACT. This instrumental study presents the first validity and reliability data for
the Trait subscale (T-DEP) of the Chilean experimental version of the State and Trait
Depression Inventory (ST-DEP): Euthymia and Dysthymia. The data were obtained
from a sample of 300 university students. The internal consistency values for the TDEP
were high (.90). The test-retest values from eight weeks time interval (fifty six
days) were elevated (.78). A factorial analysis of the principal components revealed a
principal factor for all of the constructed items in this experimental version of the TDEP.
The last, promax rotation showed two clear main factors similar in size: negative
affectivity (Dysthymia) and positive affectivity (Euthymia). The convergent validity
indexes for the Beck Depression Inventory and the Zung Self Rating Depression Scale,
were also high, with indexes ranging from .64 to .71. The correlation between State-
Trait Anxiety Inventory and the depression scales used in this study was high (between
.63 and .78), once again indicating the usual overlapping between anxiety and depression
seen in most depression inventories.

Some therapists, as well as other commentators, have suggested that memories of horrific trauma are buried in the subconscious by some special process, such as repression, and are later reliably recovered. We find that the evidence provided to support this claim is flawed. Where, then, might these memory reports come from? We discuss several research paradigms that have shown that various manipulations can be used to implant false memories—including false memories for traumatic events. These false memories can be quite compelling for those who develop them and can include details that make them seem credible to others. The fact that a memory report describes a traumatic event does not ensure that the memory is authentic.

Although social phobia is one of the most common mental disorders in adolescents, information on the need for normative data is missing. For this reason, this cross-sectional study aims at determining if there is a need to have normative data according to age and gender in socially anxious adolescents. Furthermore, this study analyzes if boys and girls differ in the nature of their social fears. The study population comprised 2,543 Spanish-speaking adolescents randomly recruited from 10 schools. The results point out that there is no need for different normative data based on age and gender. Moreover, our data indicate that even though there are quantitative differences between boys and girls, i.e. the girls reporting a higher percentage, a qualitative analysis reveals that boys and girls experience the same social fears and, therefore, the nature of the social anxiety-provoking situations is the same across gender. Implications for developmental theories and assessment are discussed.