Cameron M. Clark

Conceptual and Pragmatic Considerations in the Use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy with Muslim Clients

Islam is one of the leading religions of the world. Its adherents, who number approximately one billion, are present in all parts of the world and can be found in all ethnic and racial categories. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most prominent and empirically-supported of all psychological treatments. In light of such facts, a discussion of the relationship between the philosophical underpinnings of CBT and the Islamic worldview is in order. In this paper, some of the philosophical and theoretical tenets of both Islam and CBT are first discussed. Secondly, and as to heighten clinical awareness, several points of concordance and dissonance between these systems are discussed and highlighted through an illustrative case study. Finally, the authors conclude by offering a number of suggestions for future research.

Working memory training in healthy young adults: Support for the null from a randomized comparison to active and passive control groups

Training of working memory as a method of increasing working memory capacity and fluid intelligence has received much attention in recent years. This burgeoning field remains highly controversial with empirically-backed disagreements at all levels of evidence, including individual studies, systematic reviews, and even meta-analyses. The current study investigated the effect of a randomized six week online working memory intervention on untrained cognitive abilities in a community-recruited sample of healthy young adults, in relation to both a processing speed training active control condition, as well as a no-contact control condition. Results of traditional null hypothesis significance testing, as well as Bayesian factor analyses, revealed support for the null hypothesis across all cognitive tests administered before and after training. Importantly, all three groups were similar at pre-training for a variety of individual variables purported to moderate transfer of training to fluid intelligence, including personality traits, motivation to train, and expectations of cognitive improvement from training. Because these results are consistent with experimental trials of equal or greater methodological rigor, we suggest that future research re-focus on: 1) other promising interventions known to increase memory performance in healthy young adults, and; 2) examining sub-populations or alternative populations in which working memory training may be efficacious.

A qualitative analysis of the effects of a comorbid disordered gambling diagnosis with schizophrenia

Little research has examined the association between disordered gambling and psychosis. In addition, clinicians treating schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders rarely screen for or treat comorbid gambling problems due to diagnostic overshadowing. Thus, the effects of disordered gambling on symptoms of schizophrenia and vice versa remain largely unexplored and unidentified in research and clinical practice. The goal of the present study was to explore qualitatively the reciprocal associations between schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder and disordered gambling through content and functional analyses from the perspective of the affected individual. Eight participants who met DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and disordered gambling participated in a qualitative interview examining key antecedents associated with their gambling, as well as perceived functional consequences of gambling. Content analysis revealed unique patterns of responses specific to individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder that are not typically observed in individuals with disordered gambling alone. Specifically, gambling as filling a need for activity, and gambling as a means of connecting with society/world were the notable reasons for engaging in problematic gambling. Furthermore, some, but not all participants described a direct exacerbation of their psychosis by gambling and a greater involvement in gambling due to their symptoms of schizophrenia.

The Flynn Effect: A Quantitative Commentary on Modernity and Human Intelligence

ABSTRACT Average intelligence quotient (IQ) scores have been rising throughout the 20th century and likely before—a pattern now known as the Flynn effect. The central thesis of this paper is that the Flynn effect does not represent genuine increases in general intelligence but rather an increasing aptitude for the types of modern thinking that modern life requires and that IQ tests measure. Several lines of evidence are discussed in favor of this view. Implications for the theory of intelligence, recent history, and the human mind, more generally, are discussed.

Functional brain activation associated with working memory training and transfer

&NA; While behavioural trials of working memory (WM) training have received much attention in recent years, a lesser explored parallel approach is functional neuroimaging. A small literature has suggested a complex time course for functional activation pattern changes following WM training (i.e. not simply increasing or decreasing due to training); however, no study to date has examined such neuroplastic effects in both the training task (dual n‐back) and the fluid intelligence transfer task to which the training is purported to transfer (Ravens Matrices). This study investigated neural correlates of WM training in healthy young adults randomized to six weeks of WM training, or an active control condition (processing speed training) with a pre‐ and post‐training fMRI design. Results indicated significant reductions in activation for the WM trained group in key WM‐task related areas for trained WM tasks after training compared to the processing speed active control group. The same pattern of training related decreases in activation for the WM trained group was not observed for the transfer task, which is consistent with null results for all cognitive outcomes of the present trial. The observed pattern of results suggests that repetitive practice with a complex task does indeed lead to neuroplastic processes that very likely represent the reduced demand for attentional control while sub‐components of the task become more routinized with practice. We suggest that future research investigate neural correlates of WM training in populations for which WM itself is impaired and/or behavioural trials of WM training have returned more promising results

Intact anger recognition in depression despite aberrant visual facial information usage.

BACKGROUND Previous literature has indicated abnormalities in facial emotion recognition abilities, as well as deficits in basic visual processes in major depression. However, the literature is unclear on a number of important factors including whether or not these abnormalities represent deficient or enhanced emotion recognition abilities compared to control populations, and the degree to which basic visual deficits might impact this process. METHODS The present study investigated emotion recognition abilities for angry versus neutral facial expressions in a sample of undergraduate students with Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) scores indicative of moderate depression (i.e., ≥20), compared to matched low-BDI-II score (i.e., ≤2) controls via the Bubbles Facial Emotion Perception Task. RESULTS Results indicated unimpaired behavioural performance in discriminating angry from neutral expressions in the high depressive symptoms group relative to the minimal depressive symptoms group, despite evidence of an abnormal pattern of visual facial information usage. LIMITATIONS The generalizability of the current findings is limited by the highly structured nature of the facial emotion recognition task used, as well as the use of an analog sample undergraduates scoring high in self-rated symptoms of depression rather than a clinical sample. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that basic visual processes are involved in emotion recognition abnormalities in depression, demonstrating consistency with the emotion recognition literature in other psychopathologies (e.g., schizophrenia, autism, social anxiety). Future research should seek to replicate these findings in clinical populations with major depression, and assess the association between aberrant face gaze behaviours and symptom severity and social functioning.