John C. Kircher

Children and adolescents with neurofibromatosis 1 : A behavioral phenotype

Twenty 6− to 17-year-old children with neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1) were compared to 20 age-and sex-matched siblings on a wide range of neuropsychological and behavioral dimensions. In familial cases, diagnostic status was confirmed by gene linkage with greater than 98% accuracy. Visual examinations that included assessments of visual evoked responses (VER) were performed on subjects with NF1. Forty-two percent of NF1 subjects had abnormal VER and underwent magnetic resonance imagery or computed tomography scans of the brain. On a variety of skills, subjects with NF1 performed more poorly than unaffected siblings. Children with NF1 were found to be less competent on measures of cognitive, language, and motor development, visual-spatial judgment, visual-motor integration, and academic achievement. Learning disabilities were common in children with NF1. Parents and teachers reported that NF1 subjects had internalizing problems and difficulty interacting with peers. A behavioral phenotype for NF1 and recommendations for preventative interventions are proposed.

Benchmarking the Effectiveness of Psychotherapy Treatment for Adult Depression in a Managed Care Environment : A Preliminary Study

This preliminary study evaluated the effectiveness of psychotherapy treatment for adult clinical depression provided in a natural setting by benchmarking the clinical outcomes in a managed care environment against effect size estimates observed in published clinical trials. Overall results suggest that effect size estimates of effectiveness in a managed care context were comparable to effect size estimates of efficacy observed in clinical trials. Relative to the 1-tailed 95th-percentile critical effect size estimates, effectiveness of treatment provided in this setting was observed to be between 80% (patients with comorbidity and without antidepressants) and 112% (patients without comorbidity concurrently on antidepressants) as compared to the benchmarks. Because the nature of the treatments delivered in the managed care environment were unknown, it was not possible to make conclusions about treatments. However, while replications are warranted, concerns that psychotherapy delivered in a naturalistic setting is inferior to treatments delivered in clinical trials appear unjustified.

Benchmarks for Psychotherapy Efficacy in Adult Major Depression

This study estimates pretreatment-posttreatment effect size benchmarks for the treatment of major depression in adults that may be useful in evaluating psychotherapy effectiveness in clinical practice. Treatment efficacy benchmarks for major depression were derived for 3 different types of outcome measures: the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (M. A. Hamilton, 1960, 1967), the Beck Depression Inventory (A. T. Beck, 1978; A. T. Beck & R. A. Steer, 1987), and an aggregation of low reactivity-low specificity measures. These benchmarks were further refined for 3 conditions: treatment completers, intent-to-treat samples, and natural history (wait-list) conditions. The study confirmed significant effects of outcome measure reactivity and specificity on the pretreatment-posttreatment effect sizes. The authors provide practical guidance in using these benchmarks to assess treatment effectiveness in clinical settings.

Mental and Physical Countermeasures Reduce the Accuracy of Polygraph Tests

Effects of countermeasures on the control-question polygraph test were examined in an experiment with 120 Ss recruited from the general community. Ss were given polygraph tests by an examiner who used field techniques. Twenty Ss were innocent, and of the 100 guilty Ss, 80 were trained in the use of either a physical countermeasure (biting the tongue or pressing the toes to the floor) or a mental countermeasure (counting backward by 7) to be applied while control questions were being presented during their examinations. The mental and physical countermeasures were equally effective: Each enabled approximately 50% of the Ss to defeat the polygraph test. The strongest countermeasure effects were observed in the cardiovascular measures. Moreover, the countermeasures were difficult to detect either instrumentally or through observation.

The psychophysiological nature of premature ejaculation

The hypothesis that premature ejaculators (PEs) are less able than nonpremature ejaculators (NPEs) to evaluate accurately their level of physiologically determined sexual arousal was tested. Twenty-six men (13 PEs and 13 NPEs) viewed a variety of videotaped vignettes, some of which were excerpts from sexually explicit films. Concurrent subjective (selfreport) and objective (plethysmograph) ratings of sexual arousal were taken. Data revealed that both the PEs and NPEs were equally accurate in assessing their level of physiological sexual arousal. These results and those from a sexual history questionnaire were used to evaluate several hypotheses regarding the nature and etiology of premature ejaculation.

The effects of social context and defensiveness on the physiological responses of repressive copers.

In previous research (T.L. Newton & R.J. Contrada, 1992), social context was found to moderate exaggerated physiological reactivity among individuals identified as using a repressive coping style. In this experiment, 119 undergraduates were classified into low-anxious, high-anxious, repressor, and defensive high-anxious coping categories. All participants completed a stressful speech task under either a public or private social context condition. The experimental social context was related to physiological reactivity and self-reported affect but did not moderate reactivity among repressive copers. Additionally, reactivity among repressive copers was not attributable to high defensiveness alone. Consistent with a theory of emotional inhibition, nonspecific skin conductance responses, but not heart rate, discriminated between repressors and nonrepressors.

Cardiovascular and electrodermal responses to support and provocation: Interpersonal methods in the study of psychophysiological reactivity

This study examined the joint and independent effects of experimentally manipulated social contexts and individual differences in hostility and perceived social support on physiological responses to a social stressor, while illustrating the use of the interpersonal circumplex for integrative social psychophysiological research. Undergraduate women completed a speech task in a supportive, neutral, or provoking context and completed measures of hostility and perceived social support. The provoking context evoked the largest blood pressure and heart rate (HR) responses, followed by the neutral and the supportive context. Social context also influenced HR and electrodermal reactivity during task preparation. Hostility elicited higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity during preparation, speech, and recovery. Perceived social support interacted with context to affect SBP and HR during speech and preparation. The roles of interpersonal characteristics and contexts in the physiological stress response and the utility of interpersonal methods in studying these associations are discussed.

Meta-analysis of Mock Crime Studies of the Control Question Polygraph Technique

A review of results obtained from standard guilty and innocent treatment conditions in 14 mock crime studies of the control question polygraph technique revealed accuracies ranging from chance to 100% correct. The present study examined several factors that may have contributed to the observed variability in detection rates across studies. Those included sampling error, differences in the populations from which subjects were drawn (Subjects), differences in the nature of incentives provided to subjects for passing the polygraph test (Incentives), and differences in the methods for diagnosing truth or deception (Decision Policy). A meta-analysis revealed that approximately 24% of the variance in detection rates could be attributed to sampling error, and detection rates were correlated with types of Subjects (r=.61). Incentives (r=.73), and Decision Policies (r=.67). The highest diagnostic accuracies were obtained from nonstudent subject samples, when both guilty and innocent subjects were offered monetary incentives to convince the examiner of their innocence, and when conventional field methods were used for interpreting the physiological recordings and diagnosing truth and deception. Together, differences in Subjects, Incentives, and Decision Policies may account for as much as 65% of the observed variance in detection rates. The present findings highlight the importance of conducting mock crime experiments that closely approximate field conditions.

Varying influences of the built environment on household travel in 15 diverse regions of the United States

This study pools household travel and built environment data from 15 diverse US regions to produce travel models with more external validity than any to date. It uses a large number of consistently defined built environmental variables to predict five household travel outcomes – car trips, walk trips, bike trips, transit trips and vehicle miles travelled (VMT). It employs multilevel modelling to account for the dependence of households in the same region on shared regional characteristics and estimates ‘hurdle’ models to account for the excess number of zero values in the distributions of dependent variables such as household transit trips. It tests built environment variables for three different buffer widths around household locations to see which scale best explains travel behaviour. The resulting models are appropriate for post-processing outputs of conventional travel demand models, and for sketch planning applications in traffic impact analysis, climate action planning and health impact assessment.

The Association of Therapist Empathy and Synchrony in Vocally Encoded Arousal

Empathy is a critical ingredient in motivational interviewing (MI) and in psychotherapy generally. It is typically defined as the ability to experience and understand the feelings of another. Basic science indicates that empathy is related to the development of synchrony in dyads. However, in clinical research, empathy has proved difficult to operationalize and measure, and has mostly relied on the felt sense of observers, clients, or therapists. We extracted estimates of therapist and standardized patient (SP) vocally encoded arousal (mean fundamental frequency; mean f₀) in 89 MI sessions with high and low empathy ratings from independent observers. We hypothesized (a) therapist and SP mean f₀ would be correlated and (b) the correlation of therapist and SP mean f₀ would be greater in sessions with high empathy as compared with low. On the basis of a multivariate mixed model, the correlation between therapist and SP mean f₀ was large (r = .71) and close to 0 in randomly assigned therapist-SP dyads (r = -.08). The association was higher in sessions with high empathy ratings (r = .80) than in sessions with low ratings (r = .36). There was strong evidence for vocal synchrony in clinical dyads as well as for the association of synchrony with empathy ratings, illustrating the relevance of basic psychological processes to clinical interactions. These findings provide initial evidence for an objective and nonobtrusive method for assessing therapist performance. Novel indicators of therapist empathy may have implications for the study of MI process as well as the training of therapists generally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).