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Neurofeedback treatment has been demonstrated to reduce inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, previous studies did not adequately control confounding variables or did not employ a randomized reinforcer-controlled design. This study addresses those methodological shortcomings by comparing the effects of the following two matched biofeedback training variants on the primary symptoms of ADHD: EEG neurofeedback (NF) aiming at theta/beta ratio reduction and EMG biofeedback (BF) aiming at forehead muscle relaxation. Thirty-five children with ADHD (26 boys, 9 girls; 6-14 years old) were randomly assigned to either the therapy group (NF; n = 18) or the control group (BF; n = 17). Treatment for both groups consisted of 30 sessions. Pre- and post-treatment assessment consisted of psychophysiological measures, behavioural rating scales completed by parents and teachers, as well as psychometric measures. Training effectively reduced theta/beta ratios and EMG levels in the NF and BF groups, respectively. Parents reported significant reductions in primary ADHD symptoms, and inattention improvements in the NF group were higher compared to the control intervention (BF, dcorr = -.94). NF training also improved attention and reaction times on the psychometric measures. The results indicate that NF effectively reduced inattention symptoms on parent rating scales and reaction time in neuropsychological tests. However, regarding hyperactivity and impulsivity symptoms, the results imply that non-specific factors, such as behavioural contingencies, self-efficacy, structured learning environment and feed-forward processes, may also contribute to the positive behavioural effects induced by neurofeedback training.
Neurofeedback treatment has been demonstrated to reduce inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, previous studies did not adequately control confounding variables or did not employ a randomized reinforcer-controlled design. This study addresses those methodological shortcomings by comparing the effects of the following two matched biofeedback training variants on the primary symptoms of ADHD: EEG neurofeedback (NF) aiming at theta/beta ratio reduction and EMG biofeedback (BF) aiming at forehead muscle relaxation. Thirty-five children with ADHD (26 boys, 9 girls; 6-14 years old) were randomly assigned to either the therapy group (NF; n = 18) or the control group (BF; n = 17). Treatment for both groups consisted of 30 sessions. Pre- and post-treatment assessment consisted of psychophysiological measures, behavioural rating scales completed by parents and teachers, as well as psychometric measures. Training effectively reduced theta/beta ratios and EMG levels in the NF and BF groups, respectively. Parents reported significant reductions in primary ADHD symptoms, and inattention improvements in the NF group were higher compared to the control intervention (BF, d(corr) = -.94). NF training also improved attention and reaction times on the psychometric measures. The results indicate that NF effectively reduced inattention symptoms on parent rating scales and reaction time in neuropsychological tests. However, regarding hyperactivity and impulsivity symptoms, the results imply that non-specific factors, such as behavioural contingencies, self-efficacy, structured learning environment and feed-forward processes, may also contribute to the positive behavioural effects induced by neurofeedback training.
Fearful patients are in emergency situation often inattentive, unable to concentrate, agitated or even aroused. They show reduced perception and restricted willingness to cooperate. In severe conditions these patients are strongly tending towards more hazardous behavior: refusal of necessary therapy, break out or even high suicidal risk. Within disaster situations (mass accidents, fires) fearful patients with their agitated and persuasive behavior can influence other victims and with that trigger a situation of mass panic that has to be avoided at any cost. Therefore these patients must be swiftly identified and separated from the event. A diligent diagnosis process including physical-neurological examination is necessary. The recommended treatment within the emergency situation consists of a close continuous personal contact through assuring and encouraging conversations. A sense of security should be created by explaining the planned therapeutic interventions in simple, easy-to-follow and understandable words. If this necessary psycho-therapeutic intervention can not be applied a short-term psychopharmacological treatment is required preferably with Benzodiazepines. Still a long-term specific therapy is highly advised, since these disturbances, if left untreated, will lead to a chronic manifestation and with that to considerable psychosocial impairments.
Research in legal decision making has demonstrated the tendency to blame the victim and exonerate the perpetrator of sexual assault. This study examined the hypothesis of a special leniency bias in rape cases by comparing them to cases of robbery. N = 288 participants received descriptions of rape and robbery of a female victim by a male perpetrator and made ratings of victim and perpetrator blame. Case scenarios varied with respect to the prior relationship (strangers, acquaintances, ex-partners) and coercive strategy (force vs. exploiting victim intoxication). More blame was attributed to the victim and less blame was attributed to the perpetrator for rape than for robbery. Information about a prior relationship between victim and perpetrator increased ratings of victim blame and decreased perceptions of perpetrator blame in the rape cases, but not in the robbery cases. The findings support the notion of a special leniency bias in sexual assault cases.
Background:
Recent evidence from animal experiments and studies in humans suggests that early age at first drink (AFD) may lead to higher stress-induced drinking. The present study aimed to extend these findings by examining whether AFD interacted with stressful life events (SLE) and/or with daily hassles regarding the impact on drinking patterns among young adults.
Method:
In 306 participants of an epidemiological cohort study, AFD was assessed together with SLE during the past 3 years, daily hassles in the last month, and drinking behavior at age 22. As outcome variables, 2 variables were derived, reflecting different aspects of alcohol use: the amount of alcohol consumed in the last month and the drinking frequency, indicated by the number of drinking days in the last month.
Results:
Linear regression models revealed an interaction effect between the continuous measures of AFD and SLE on the amount of alcohol consumed. The earlier young adults had their first alcoholic drink and the higher the levels of SLE they were exposed to, the disproportionately more alcohol they consumed. Drinking frequency was not affected by an interaction of these variables, while daily hassles and their interaction with AFD were unrelated to drinking behavior.
Conclusions:
These findings highlight the importance of early age at drinking onset as a risk factor for later heavy drinking under high load of SLE. Prevention programs should aim to raise age at first contact with alcohol. Additionally, support in stressful life situations and the acquisition of effective coping strategies might prevent heavy drinking in those with earlier drinking onset.
Eye fixation durations during normal reading correlate with processing difficulty, but the specific cognitive mechanisms reflected in these measures are not well understood. This study finds support in German readers' eye fixations for two distinct difficulty metrics: surprisal, which reflects the change in probabilities across syntactic analyses as new words are integrated; and retrieval, which quantifies comprehension difficulty in terms of working memory constraints. We examine the predictions of both metrics using a family of dependency parsers indexed by an upper limit on the number of candidate syntactic analyses they retain at successive words. Surprisal models all fixation measures and regression probability. By contrast, retrieval does not model any measure in serial processing. As more candidate analyses are considered in parallel at each word, retrieval can account for the same measures as surprisal. This pattern suggests an important role for ranked parallelism in theories of sentence comprehension.
Eye fixation durations during normal reading correlate with processing difficulty but the specific cognitive mechanisms reflected in these measures are not well understood. This study finds support in German readers’ eyefixations for two distinct difficulty metrics: surprisal, which reflects the change in probabilities across syntactic analyses as new words are integrated, and retrieval, which quantifies comprehension difficulty in terms of working memory constraints. We examine the predictions of both metrics using a family of dependency parsers indexed by an upper limit on the number of candidate syntactic analyses they retain at successive words. Surprisal models all fixation measures and regression probability. By contrast, retrieval does not model any measure in serial processing. As more candidate analyses are considered in parallel at each word, retrieval can account for the same measures as surprisal. This pattern suggests an important role for ranked parallelism in theories of sentence comprehension.
Objectives: Today, the doping attitudes of athletes can either be measured by asking athletes directly or with the help of indirect attitude measurement procedures as for example the implicit association test (IAT). Using indirect measures may be helpful for example when psychological effects of doping prevention programs shall be evaluated. In the present study we have analyzed and compared measurement properties of two recently published IATs.
Design: The IATs "doping substance vs. tea blend" and "doping substance vs. legal nutritional supplement" were presented to two randomly assigned independent samples of 102 athletes (44 male, 58 female; mean age 23.6 years) from different sports. Both IATs were complemented by a control IAT "word vs. non-word".
Methods: In order to test central measurement properties of both IATs, distributions of measured values, correlations with the control IAT, reliability analyses, and analyses of error rates were performed.
Results: Results pointed to a rather negative doping attitude in most athletes. Especially the fact that in the "doping vs. supplement" IAT error rates (12%) and adaptational learning effects across test blocks were substantial (eta(2) = .22), indicating that participants had difficulties correctly assigning the word stimuli to the respective category, we see slight advantages for the "doping vs. tea" IAT (e.g. satisfactory internal scale consistency Cronbach's-alpha = .78 among athletes reporting to be regularly involved in competitions).
Conclusion: The less satisfactory measurement properties of the "doping vs. supplement" IAT can possibly be explained by the fact that the boundaries between (legal) supplements and (illegal) doping substances have been shifted from time to time so that athletes were not sure whether substances were legal or not.