The Effect of Cognitive–Behavioral Play Therapy on Improvements in Expressive Linguistic Disorders of Bilingual Children

The present study attempted to investigate the effect of cognitive-behavioral play therapy (CBPT) on the improvements in the expressive linguistic disorders of bilingual children. The population consists of all bilingual children with expressive linguistic disorders studying in preschools. Considering the study’s objectives, a sample of 60 people, in three groups (experimental, control, and pseudo-control), were selected using WISC, TOLD, and clinical interviews. The experimental group members participated in CBPT training sessions. The training consisted of twelve 90-min sessions, three times per week programs held every other day. The pseudo-control group received training different from play therapy. The experimental group members were subjected to the follow-up test 2 months after the end of the intervention. All three groups sat the TOLD3 test before and after the experiment. Data analysis was carried out using ANCOVA. The results of data analysis suggested that CBPT can improve the expressive language disorders of bilingual children.

Effectiveness of Paradox Therapy on COVID-19 Anxiety in Adult Population in Jahrom, Iran

Background: Since COVID-19 is a new disease with devastating effects worldwide, its emergence and spread aroused confusion, anxiety, and fear among the public. Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of paradox therapy on the COVID-19 anxiety in adult population in Jahrom, Iran. Methods: This research was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and a two-month follow-up. The research population encompassed all individuals willing to participate in the present study who were residing in Jahrom during 2020-2021. According to the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale, 30 participants with high levels of COVID-19 anxiety were selected using the convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned to experimental (n = 15) and control (n = 15) groups. The experimental group received eight sessions of paradox therapy; however, the control group remained on the waiting list. The research tools included structured clinical interviews and the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using Friedman’s statistical method. Results: The results showed that paradox therapy was effective in decreasing COVID-19 anxiety (P = 0.001) and its psychological (P = 0.001) and physical (P = 0.002) symptoms, and the scores of the COVID-19-induced psychological and physical symptoms in the posttest phase were significantly lower in the intervention group than the control group (P < 0.001). The decrease was noticed in the follow-up phase as well. Conclusions: According to the results, paradox therapy can effectively reduce anxiety and its psychological and physical symptoms due to COVID-19.

Alterations in Emotional Diversity Correspond With Increased Severity of Attenuated Positive and Negative Symptoms in the Clinical High-Risk Syndrome

Background: Alterations in emotional functioning are a key feature of psychosis and are present in individuals with a clinical high-risk (CHR) syndrome. However, little is known about alterations in emotional diversity (i.e., the variety and relative abundance of emotions that humans experience) and clinical correlates in this population.Methods: Individuals meeting criteria for a CHR syndrome (N = 47) and matched healthy controls (HC) (N = 58) completed the modified Differential Emotions Scale (used to derive scores of total, positive, and negative emotional diversity) and clinical interviews (i.e., Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk Syndromes).Results: Findings showed that the CHR group experienced lower levels of positive emotional diversity compared to HCs. Among the CHR individuals, lower levels of positive and higher levels of negative emotional diversity were associated with more severe attenuated positive and negative symptoms. Analyses controlled for mean levels of emotion and current antipsychotic medication use.Discussion: Results demonstrate that altered emotional diversity (in particular lower levels of positive and higher levels of negative emotional diversity) is a clinically relevant marker in CHR individuals, above and beyond alterations in mean levels of emotional experiences. Future studies may probe sources, downstream consequences, and potential modifiability of decreased emotional diversity in individuals at CHR.

Drawing, Play-Dough, and Koosh Balls: The Use of Comfort Tools with Children in Forensic and Clinical Interviews

<p>During forensic and clinical interviews, children are often required to discuss difficult topics that may elicit feelings of shame, embarrassment, or reluctance. It is the clinician’s or forensic interviewer’s task to obtain detailed and accurate reports from these children, with many employing the use of comfort tools (e.g. drawing, play-dough, koosh balls) to put children at ease (Hill & Brown, 2017; Poole & Dickinson, 2014). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether three commonly used comfort tools influence children’s reports of a self-selected, emotionally laden event. Ninety-two children aged between 5 and 7 years old were asked to discuss a time when they got into trouble, and a time when they were happy. Some children were questioned without any comfort tools; the remainder were given one of the following: drawing materials, play-dough, or a koosh ball to interact with during the interview. Comfort tools had no impact on the amount of information reported by children. They also had no influence on whether children provided more episodic information (which may be especially relevant in forensic interviews), or evaluative information (which may be more relevant in clinical contexts). Providing comfort tools did not influence children’s ratings of either their interview experience, or the emotional intensity of the events they described. The interviewer asked more questions of children interviewed with drawing materials than those interviewed without comfort tools. The findings raise questions about the efficacy of comfort tools in interviews with children about past events, although more research is needed to establish an evidence-base to guide practitioners in different settings.</p>

Drawing, Play-Dough, and Koosh Balls: The Use of Comfort Tools with Children in Forensic and Clinical Interviews

<p>During forensic and clinical interviews, children are often required to discuss difficult topics that may elicit feelings of shame, embarrassment, or reluctance. It is the clinician’s or forensic interviewer’s task to obtain detailed and accurate reports from these children, with many employing the use of comfort tools (e.g. drawing, play-dough, koosh balls) to put children at ease (Hill & Brown, 2017; Poole & Dickinson, 2014). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether three commonly used comfort tools influence children’s reports of a self-selected, emotionally laden event. Ninety-two children aged between 5 and 7 years old were asked to discuss a time when they got into trouble, and a time when they were happy. Some children were questioned without any comfort tools; the remainder were given one of the following: drawing materials, play-dough, or a koosh ball to interact with during the interview. Comfort tools had no impact on the amount of information reported by children. They also had no influence on whether children provided more episodic information (which may be especially relevant in forensic interviews), or evaluative information (which may be more relevant in clinical contexts). Providing comfort tools did not influence children’s ratings of either their interview experience, or the emotional intensity of the events they described. The interviewer asked more questions of children interviewed with drawing materials than those interviewed without comfort tools. The findings raise questions about the efficacy of comfort tools in interviews with children about past events, although more research is needed to establish an evidence-base to guide practitioners in different settings.</p>

Neurological Disorder Detection of Brain Abnormal Activities Using a New Enhanced Computer-aided Model

In the field of neurodevelopmental disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are recognized as one of the dramatically increased etiologically and clinically heterogeneous diseases. Although, increasing the number of children who have difficulties in communication or suffer from sudden malfunction of the brain, the current diagnostic approaches for those kind of disease are time-consuming and are mainly based on clinical interviews. In this paper, a new enhanced diagnostic model is introduced addressing many of the challenges which threats the analysis of Electroencephalography (EEG) signals. A preprocessing stage is proposed to choose the key segment of EEG channel and remove the artifacts in the EEG signals to enhance their quality. The proposed model uses a set of discriminative features based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) such as skewness, standard division, shannon entropy and relative wave energy. Also, extracting cross correction between brain regions to detect abnormal connectivity and synchronization. Two EEG datasets are used to verify the accuracy of the proposed model. The fusion of two EEG dataset helps in building a more generalized mode to diagnose epilepsy and ASD. In the fused dataset, the combination of the mentioned features and Random Forest have produced a very promising diagnosis result with minimum diagnostic time, with an average accuracy equals to 96.78%. The proposed model obtained better classification accuracy compared to the existing methods.

Correlates of real-world goal-directed behavior in schizophrenia

Background Deficits in goal-directed behavior (i.e. behavior conducted to achieve a specific goal or outcome) are core to schizophrenia, difficult to treat, and associated with poor functional outcomes. Factors such as negative symptoms, effort-cost decision-making, cognition, and functional skills have all been associated with goal-directed behavior in schizophrenia as indexed by clinical interviews or laboratory-based tasks. However, little work has examined whether these factors relate to the real-world pursuit of goal-directed activities in this population. Methods This study aimed to fill this gap by using Ecological Momentary Assessment (four survey prompts per day for 1 week) to test hypotheses about symptom, effort allocation, cognitive, and functional measures associated with planned and completed goal-directed behavior in the daily lives of 63 individuals with schizophrenia. Results Individuals with schizophrenia completed more goal-directed activities than they planned [t(62) = −4.01, p < 0.001]. Motivation and pleasure (i.e. experiential) negative symptoms, controlling for depressive symptoms, negatively related to planned goal-directed behavior [odds ratio (OR) 0.92, p = 0.005]. Increased effort expenditure for high probability rewards (planned: OR 1.01, p = 0.034, completed: OR 1.01, p = 0.034) along with performance on a daily functional skills task (planned: OR 1.04, p = 0.002, completed: OR 1.03, p = 0.047) negatively related to both planned and completed goal-directed activity. Conclusions Our results present correlates of real-world goal-directed behavior that largely align with impaired ability to make future estimations in schizophrenia. This insight could help identify targeted treatments for the elusive motivated behavior deficits in this population.

“Perrotta Psychotherapeutic Protocol for Disorders of the Neurotic Area” (PPP-DNA): Proposal of protocol, profiles and clinical applications. Research

Purpose: This research addresses the topic of anxiety, phobic and obsessive disorders. In this research, the theme is addressed to the psychopathological investigation of personalities, according to the PICI-2TA model (Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interviews, version 2-TA), the PAD-Q (Perrotta Affective Dependency Questionnaire), the PSM (Perrotta Sexual Matrix), the PDM-Q (Perrotta Defence Mechanisms Questionnaire) and the PHEM model (Perrotta Human Emotions Model), in order to design a direct and functional psychotherapeutic protocol to manage the psychopathological process in the shortest time possible, according to the principles of efficiency, effectiveness and economy, trying to reduce the symptomatology until the total regression by the fifth-tenth session. Methods: Clinical interview and administration of the PICI-2, the PAD-Q, the PSM, and the PDM-Q. Results: In the male group, aged 18-36 years, there were 8 people, of whom 6 (75%) reacted to the total resolution of the neurotic symptomatology described between the fifth and ninth sessions, while only 2 (25%) said they felt their neurotic symptoms had subsided. In the male group, aged 37-54 years, there are 5 people, of whom 4 (80%) reacted to the total resolution of neurotic symptomatology described between the fifth and ninth sessions. In the male group, aged 55-72 years, there were 6 people, of whom 4 (66.6%) reacted to the total resolution of neurotic symptoms described between the ninth and tenth sessions. In the female group, aged 18-36 years, there were 22 people, of whom 18 (82%) reacted to the total resolution of neurotic symptoms described between the fifth and ninth sessions. In the female group, aged 37-54 years, there were 13 people, of whom 9 (69.2%) reacted to the total resolution of neurotic symptoms described between the fifth and ninth session. In the female group, aged 55-72 years, there were 11 people, of whom 8 (72.7%) reacted to the total resolution of neurotic symptoms described between the fifth and ninth sessions. Conclusions: The research showed that the PPP-DNA protocol, for neurotic disorders, was effective in the total population sample for 74.36%, for the fractionated male population sample for 73.86% and for the fractionated female population sample for 74.86%, with resistance to change identified in adverse conditions of family, environmental, socio-cultural and temporal type (of duration of neurotic symptomatology), however able to promote an attenuation of the symptomatology suffered by at least 50%.