Parental benefits and offspring costs reflect parent-offspring conflict over the age of fledging among songbirds.

Parent-offspring conflict has explained a variety of ecological phenomena across animal taxa, but its role in mediating when songbirds fledge remains controversial. Specifically, ecologists have long debated the influence of songbird parents on the age of fledging: Do parents manipulate offspring into fledging to optimize their own fitness or do offspring choose when to leave? To provide greater insight into parent-offspring conflict over fledging age in songbirds, we compared nesting and postfledging survival rates across 18 species from eight studies in the continental United States. For 12 species (67%), we found that fledging transitions offspring from comparatively safe nesting environments to more dangerous postfledging ones, resulting in a postfledging bottleneck. This raises an important question: as past research shows that offspring would benefit-improve postfledging survival-by staying in the nest longer: Why then do they fledge so early? Our findings suggest that parents manipulate offspring into fledging early for their own benefit, but at the cost of survival for each individual offspring, reflecting parent-offspring conflict. Early fledging incurred, on average, a 13.6% postfledging survival cost for each individual offspring, but parents benefitted through a 14.0% increase in the likelihood of raising at least one offspring to independence. These parental benefits were uneven across species-driven by an interaction between nest mortality risk and brood size-and predicted the age of fledging among species. Collectively, our results suggest that parent-offspring conflict and associated parental benefits explain variation in fledging age among songbird species and why postfledging bottlenecks occur.

Assessing current concerns and goals idiographically: A review of the Motivational Structure Questionnaire family of instruments.

BACKGROUND: There have been two kinds of methods for assessing individuals' motivation and their goal-striving behavior. The idiographic method obtains respondents' individual descriptions of their behavior or inner experiences. The nomothetic approach uses a standardized questionnaire in which respondents select from a set of alternatives. Idiographic responses provide rich, individualized information, but they make comparisons across different individuals difficult. By contrast, the nomothetic approach loses valuable individualized information, but it readily lends itself to cross-individual comparisons. OBJECTIVE: The present authors have developed a family of motivational assessment instruments within the framework of the Goal Theory of Current Concerns and individuals' goal pursuits. Each of these instruments is a hybrid version of the idiographic and nomothetic methods. Each one obtains individualized information about each respondent at the start of the assessment, but it then utilizes rating scales that allow comparisons across different individuals to be made. The objective of the present article is to present this family of hybridized instruments for potential use in routine outcome monitoring. METHOD: The method used in this article was to review the development of this family of hybrid assessments instruments over the preceding decades and the research on their psychometric properties and clinical applications. These hybrid tools include the Interview Questionnaire, Work Concerns Inventory, Motivational Structure Questionnaire, and Personal Concerns Inventory and their variants. The review includes only the idiographic-nomothetic approaches that are based on the Goal Theory of Current Concerns. RESULTS: The review reveals that for each instrument, motivational indices are calculated, which have been shown to be valid and reliable. Analyses have also revealed adaptive and maladaptive motivational factors. CONCLUSIONS: The measures discussed here have proven useful in clinical applications, when, for example, they are used as components of Systematic Motivational Counseling and the Life Enhancement and Advancement Programme for helping individuals improve their motivational structure. Similarly, the measures hold promise for use in routine outcome monitoring.

Neurofeedback Training versus Treatment-as-Usual for Alcohol Dependence: Results of an Early-Phase Randomized Controlled Trial and Neuroimaging Correlates.

INTRODUCTION: Alcohol dependence is one of the most common substance use disorders, and novel treatment options are urgently needed. Neurofeedback training (NFT) based on real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtf-MRI) has emerged as an attractive candidate for add-on treatments in psychiatry, but its use in alcohol dependence has not been formally investigated in a clinical trial. We investigated the use of rtfMRI-based NFT to prevent relapse in alcohol dependence. METHODS: Fifty-two alcohol-dependent patients from the UK who had completed a detoxification program were randomly assigned to a treatment group (receiving rtfMRI NFT in addition to standard care) or the control group (receiving standard care only). At baseline, alcohol consumption was assessed as the primary outcome measure and a variety of psychological, behavioral, and neural parameters as secondary outcome measures to determine feasibility and secondary training effects. Participants in the treatment group underwent 6 NFT sessions over 4 months and were trained to downregulate their brain activation in the salience network in the presence of alcohol stimuli and to upregulate frontal activation in response to pictures related to positive goals. Four, 8, and 12 months after baseline assessment, both groups were followed up with a battery of clinical and psychometric tests. RESULTS: Primary outcome measures showed very low relapse rates for both groups. Analysis of neural secondary outcome measures indicated that the majority of patients modulated the salience system in the desired directions, by decreasing activity in response to alcohol stimuli and increasing activation in response to positive goals. The intervention had a good safety and acceptability profile. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that rtfMRI-neurofeedback targeting hyperactivity of the salience network in response to alcohol cues is feasible in currently abstinent patients with alcohol dependence.

Identifying the Main Components of Substance-Related Addiction Recovery Groups.

OBJECTIVES: Mutual-aid groups are a central part of many individuals' recovery journeys from substance addiction, and this research aimed to identify the key ingredients of a diverse range of recovery groups. METHODS: Individuals from 30 different substance addiction recovery groups across the UK (N = 151, 66% male, M age = 42.5 years) completed a survey, which asked participants to provide a narrative about their recovery group experiences. Participants were also asked to rate the extent to which theorized ingredients of addiction recovery groups were offered by their group, and how important each was to them. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. RESULTS: The results indicated that the recovery group components suggested in previous literature were both present and rated as important. Component ratings did not differ depending on the type of group, the length of time the person had been in recovery, nor the length of time they had been involved in the group. The qualitative results identified other important components of recovery groups that had not been identified in the previous literature: presence of like-minded individuals and developing self-awareness and reflection skills. An updated list of recovery group components was thereby created. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the findings provide an in-depth, person-focused perspective on what makes an addiction recovery group successful. Asking group members directly about their experiences allowed us to refine and expand on previously theorized components. The updated components can be used as a template for developing future mutual-aid groups.

An online cognitive bias task: the Rough Estimation Task using Qualtrics.

Measurement of cognitive bias typically relies on laboratory-based tasks. In order for cognitive bias measures to be useful outside of laboratory settings, a simple measure is required which does not rely on precise measurement tools, for example, precise reaction time measurement (which can be done only with specialized software typically running through either dedicated hardware or specifically configured computers). The Rough Estimation Task is a simple reading task which has been previously shown to be an effective measure of alcohol-related cognitive bias. We conducted an online version of the Rough Estimation Task, so that we could measure cognitive bias away from a laboratory environment. We also measured whether baseline Rough Estimation Task scores could predict future drinking and Rough Estimation Task scores. A sample of undergraduate participants completed the study online. We found that the online Rough Estimation Task was associated with both current and future drinking, as measured in a follow-up online task. The results imply that the online Rough Estimation Task could be used as a simple online measure of cognitive bias for both concurrent and future drinking behavior, and so raises hope for employing this measure outside of laboratory settings and possibly even in clinical applications.

Almost winning: induced MEG theta power in insula and orbitofrontal cortex increases during gambling near-misses and is associated with BOLD signal and gambling severity.

In slot machine gambling, the "near-miss effect" (when a losing display physically resembles an actual win display) has been implicated in pathological gambling (PG). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with PG and non-PG participants shows that near-misses recruit reward-related circuitry, but little is known about the temporal dynamics and oscillatory changes underlying near-misses. The present multi-modal imaging study investigated the near-miss effect by combining the spatial resolution of blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD)-fMRI with the spatial and temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a slot machine task in PG and non-PG groups. Given previous findings on outcome (win and near-miss) processing, functional overlap was hypothesized between induced changes in temporal oscillations and BOLD response to wins and near-misses in PG. We first validated our task in a sample of varying gambling severity using BOLD-fMRI and then compared PG and non-PG participants using MEG to investigate changes in induced oscillatory power associated with win and near-miss, relative to loss, outcomes. Across both modalities, near-misses recruited similar brain regions to wins, including right inferior frontal gyrus and insula. Using MEG, increased theta-band (4-7Hz) oscillations to near-misses were observed in the insula and right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Furthermore, this theta-band activity was positively associated with gambling severity. These findings demonstrate that the near-miss effect in insula and OFC is associated with induced theta oscillations. The significance of these findings for theories of PG and the development of potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets is discussed.

Attentional bias modification for addictive behaviors: clinical implications.

When a person has a goal of drinking alcohol or using another addictive substance, the person appears to be automatically distracted by stimuli related to the goal. Because the attentional bias might propel the person to use the substance, an intervention might help modify it. In this article, we discuss techniques that have been developed to help people overcome their attentional bias for alcohol, smoking-related stimuli, drugs, or unhealthy food. We also discuss how these techniques are being adapted for use on mobile devices. The latter would allow people with an addictive behavior to use the attentional training in privacy and as frequently as needed. The attentional training techniques discussed here appear to have several advantages. They are inexpensive, can be fun to use, and have flexibility in when, where, and how often they are used. The evidence so far also suggests that they are effective.

Evaluating Two Brief Motivational Interventions for Excessive-Drinking University Students.

OBJECTIVE: Two brief computerized motivational interventions for excessive-drinking university students were evaluated. METHOD: Participants (N = 88, females = 61.5%, mean age = 21.05 years) were randomly assigned to a control group or one of two experimental groups: Computerized Brief Intervention (CBI) or Computerized Brief Intervention-Enhanced (CBI-E). CBI followed the principles of Motivational Interviewing to motivate participants to change their drinking behavior. CBI-E additionally used the principles of Systematic Motivational Counseling to identify and discuss with participants their dysfunctional motivational patterns that were interfering with their attainment of emotional satisfaction. At baseline and a three-month follow-up, the participants completed a battery of measures of alcohol consumption and related problems. RESULTS: At baseline, the participants were confirmed to be heavy drinkers with many drink-related negative consequences. Males and females responded differently to the interventions. During follow-up, males' alcohol use was ordered: CBI-E < CBI < Controls. The females in all three groups reduced their alcohol use, but there were no significant group differences. CONCLUSIONS: Males responded to the interventions as expected. For females, the assessment itself seemed to serve as an effective intervention, and there were no post-intervention differences among the three groups. Suggestions for future research using CBI and CBI-E are discussed.

Impulsivity, self-regulation, and response withholding in university-student drinkers.

This study was designed to determine how impulsivity, self-regulation, and response withholding are related to one another and to university students' drinking behavior. Participants (N = 108) completed measures of impulsivity, self-regulation, and alcohol consumption. In addition, a computerized Go/No Go task and a backward memory task were used to measure participants' behavioral impulsivity and their memory capacity. The aim was to determine whether (a) light/moderate and heavy drinkers would respond differently when the task stimuli were alcohol-related compared to when they were alcohol-unrelated and (b) whether the accuracy of participants' responses was related to their cognitive ability. Compared to light/moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers were low in self-regulation and high in impulsivity. Heavy drinkers and those with lower memory capacity were also poorer at withholding responses on No Go trials. These findings point to personality/cognitive characteristics that influence university students' alcohol consumption.

A pilot study of the Moving On In My Recovery program for people in recovery from substance use.

Background: This study pilot tested Moving On In My Recovery (MOIMR), a 12-session, acceptance-based, cognitive-behavioral, manual-guided group program for individuals in recovery from substance use. MOIMR aims to bridge the gap between formal treatment and sustained recovery. Method: Participants were 61 people in recovery from substance use and in the catchment area of the Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board, North Wales, United Kingdom. Using a variety of questionnaires, participants' psychological flexibility and wellbeing were assessed at baseline, post-treatment, and a three-month follow-up. Participants who dropped out were contacted at the follow-up and interviewed about their experience. Results: The study successfully recruited participants from real-world treatment services. During the study, significant improvements were observed in participants' social functioning, experiential avoidance, recovery capital, low mood, and anxiety. The proportion of participants who achieved abstinence also improved. Qualitative feedback confirmed the benefits that participants derived from attending the MOIMR groups. Conclusion: The program offered significant benefits for the participants despite many of them having apprehensions about undertaking a group-based approach. The gains established by quantitative analysis appeared to be supported by the qualitative findings. These findings suggest that a full randomized controlled trial of MOIMR would be feasible.

Scary in the eye of the beholder: Attentional bias and attentional retraining for social anxiety.

Consistent with cognitive models of social anxiety, socially anxious individuals show cognitive biases that magnify their perceived level of threat in the environment. OBJECTIVES: The first objective was to determine whether attentional bias for socially threatening stimuli occurs after concomitant depression has been controlled. The second objective was to test the effectiveness of the Attention Control Training Program for Social Anxiety (ACTP-SA) for reducing social anxiety attentional bias and improving therapeutic indices in people with social anxiety. METHOD: In the first study, socially anxious (N = 30) and non-anxious individuals (N = 30) completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II, Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Conner's Social Phobia Inventory, a social-anxiety Stroop test, and a clinical interview. In the second study, individuals with social anxiety (N = 30) were randomly assigned to an experimental group that received 4 sessions of ACTP-SA, or to a sham-intervention control condition. At the post-test and a 3-month follow-up, both groups completed the same measures as in Study 1. RESULTS: In Study 1, socially anxious individuals showed higher attentional bias for threatening stimuli than the controls, after depression had been controlled for. In Study 2, participants in the experimental group, compared with the controls, showed greater reductions in attentional bias, social anxiety, and trait anxiety at post-test and follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: The results underscore the importance of information processing biases in social anxiety and the benefits of attentional bias training as a complementary intervention for modifying symptoms of social anxiety.

Cognitive training and remediation interventions for substance use disorders: a Delphi consensus study.

AIMS: Substance use disorders (SUD) are associated with cognitive deficits that are not always addressed in current treatments, and this hampers recovery. Cognitive training and remediation interventions are well suited to fill the gap for managing cognitive deficits in SUD. We aimed to reach consensus on recommendations for developing and applying these interventions. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: We used a Delphi approach with two sequential phases: survey development and iterative surveying of experts. This was an on-line study. During survey development, we engaged a group of 15 experts from a working group of the International Society of Addiction Medicine (Steering Committee). During the surveying process, we engaged a larger pool of experts (n = 54) identified via recommendations from the Steering Committee and a systematic review. MEASUREMENTS: Survey with 67 items covering four key areas of intervention development: targets, intervention approaches, active ingredients and modes of delivery. FINDINGS: Across two iterative rounds (98% retention rate), the experts reached a consensus on 50 items including: (i) implicit biases, positive affect, arousal, executive functions and social processing as key targets of interventions; (ii) cognitive bias modification, contingency management, emotion regulation training and cognitive remediation as preferred approaches; (iii) practice, feedback, difficulty-titration, bias modification, goal-setting, strategy learning and meta-awareness as active ingredients; and (iv) both addiction treatment work-force and specialized neuropsychologists facilitating delivery, together with novel digital-based delivery modalities. CONCLUSIONS: Expert recommendations on cognitive training and remediation for substance use disorders highlight the relevance of targeting implicit biases, reward, emotion regulation and higher-order cognitive skills via well-validated intervention approaches qualified with mechanistic techniques and flexible delivery options.

Differentiating heavy from light drinkers by neural responses to visual alcohol cues and other motivational stimuli.

The course to alcohol dependence often starts with a preclinical period of heavy drinking. The present article reports functional magnetic resonance imaging data showing that even this pattern of alcohol consumption is associated with maladaptive neural responses to alcohol and other stimuli. When participants were confronted with visual cues related to alcohol, heavy drinkers showed amplified blood oxygen level-dependent signal responses in specific emotional areas (insular cortex) and in parts of the brain's reward circuitry (ventral striatum). This neuronal amplification was not present in light drinkers. Crucially, at the same time heavy drinkers showed reduced responses in frontal areas to pictures related to higher order life goals and in the cingulate cortex to appetitive food stimuli, suggesting that they have difficulty finding alternative, socially desirable goals. Using discriminant function analysis, we demonstrate that the combination of alcohol-related overactivation and underactivation to alternative goals allows heavy and light drinkers to be differentiated with a high degree of precision. Our findings highlight the diagnostic value of functional brain mapping of cue reactivity. Imaging measures may help to identify addictive dispositions in preclinical stages and to clarify the mechanisms that underlie the development and maintenance of alcohol dependence.

Do I Really Want to Change? The Effectiveness of Goal Ambivalence Feedback on Dieters' Motivation.

Becoming committed to a new health-related goal and pursuing it is difficult for many people. The present study (a) developed and tested the psychometric properties of a brief Goal Ambivalence Scale (GAS) in a sample of dieters and (b) tested the effectiveness of providing dieters with feedback on their scores on the GAS. In Study 1, dieters (n = 334, 74% females) completed the GAS and a measure of Health-Related Concerns and Actions (HRCA). The standardization of the GAS was supported by CVR and CVI, the results of a PCA, and strong reliability and validity statistics. In Study 2, the experimental group of dieters (n = 107; 67.50% female) received feedback on their GAS scores, but the control group did not (n = 111; 62.30% female). Compared with the control group, the experimental group reported a greater need for information, greater readiness to change, and higher perceived situational confidence in resisting food that was inconsistent with their dieting goals. To conclude, the GAS could be used in health settings to provide clients and providers with an objective, fast measure of commitment to achieving health-related goals. Moreover, immediate feedback on health-related goals may improve change motivation.

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Attentional Control Training for Treating Alcohol Use Disorder.

Background: There is consistent evidence that community and clinical samples of individuals with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) have attentional biases toward alcohol cues. The alcohol attentional control training program (AACTP) has shown promise for retraining these biases and decreasing alcohol consumption in community samples of excessive drinkers. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of ACTP in clinical AUD samples. The main aim of the present study is to investigate whether primary pharmacological and psychological, evidence-based alcohol treatment can be enhanced by the addition of a gamified AACTP smartphone application for patients with an AUD. Design and Methods: The study will be implemented as a randomized controlled trial. A total of 317 consecutively enrolled patients with AUD will be recruited from alcohol outpatient clinics in Denmark. Patients will be randomized to one of three groups upon initiation of primary alcohol treatment: Group A: a gamified AACTP smartphone application + treatment as usual (TAU); Group B: a gamified AACTP sham-control application + TAU; or Group C: only TAU. Treatment outcomes will be assessed at baseline, post-treatment, and at 3- and 6-month follow-ups. Repeated measures MANOVA will be used to compare the trajectories of the groups over time on alcohol attentional bias, alcohol craving, and drinking reductions. It is hypothesized that Group A will achieve better treatment outcomes than either Group B or Group C. Perspectives: Because attentional bias for alcohol cues is proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed, and these biases are not addressed within current evidence-based treatment programs, this study is expected to provide new evidence regarding the effectiveness of the gamified AACTP in a clinical population. Furthermore, due to promising results found using AACTP in community samples of excessive drinkers, there is a high probability that the AACTP treatment in this study will also be effective, thereby allowing AACTP to be readily implemented in clinical settings. Finally, we expect that this study will increase the effectiveness of evidence-based AUD treatment and introduce a new, low-cost gamified treatment targeting patients with an AUD. Overall, this study is likely to have an impact at the scientific, clinical, and societal levels. Clinical Trial Registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05102942?term=NCT05102942&draw=2&rank=1, identifier: NCT05102942.

Effects of alcohol cue exposure on response inhibition in detoxified alcohol-dependent patients.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that exerting self-control during alcohol craving can diminish performance on subsequent tasks that require self-control. Based on the resource depletion model (Muraven and Baumeister, 2000), we examined the influence of alcohol cue exposure on detoxified alcohol-dependent patients' ability to inhibit ongoing responses. METHODS: Twenty alcohol-dependent patients were randomly assigned to an alcohol-cue exposure and a control-cue exposure condition and thereafter had to perform an inhibition task (i.e., stop-signal task). RESULTS: Participants who sniffed alcohol before performing the inhibition task reported a stronger urge to drink alcohol than the control group that sniffed water. Participants who sniffed alcohol were also impaired in their inhibitory performance but not in their noninhibitory performance on the stop-signal task. CONCLUSIONS: The urge to drink presumably reduced participants' self-control, and this interfered with their ability to inhibit responding.

An investigation to ascertain whether or not time pressure influences the accuracy of final year student radiographers in abnormality detection when interpreting conventional appendicular trauma radiographs: A pilot study.

INTRODUCTION: There is an increasing demand on diagnostic imaging departments, a shortage of radiologists, and a backlog of images requiring a report across several trusts in the UK. A negative impact on performance can result in significant outcomes for the patient. The aim of this study is to ascertain whether decisions made under time pressure will affect the accuracy of the interpretation of conventional radiographs. METHODS: Final year undergraduate diagnostic radiography students were recruited [n = 21] and separated into three groups of seven at random, assigning time limits per image for a set of normal and abnormal conventional appendicular radiographs; 15 s (high pressure), 30 s (moderate pressure) and unlimited time (low pressure). Each image was assessed, and answers were recorded as normal or abnormal with an approximate location of the pathology. RESULTS: The ANOVA test revealed no statistical significance amongst results. The mean accuracy was highest in the 15 s group (82.86%) and lowest in the unlimited time group (74.52%). The results also demonstrated a decrease in accuracy with increased image review times within the unlimited time group; with the quickest participant achieving 88.33% and the slowest, 56.67%. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrated no statistical significance. However, it is recommended to conduct a similar study using sufficient reporting practitioners to enable direct parallels to be drawn with statistical significance. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The results signify an importance for imaging departments to manage the number of staff and their workload. Subsequently, this aims to ensure reporting practitioners work at their optimum stress level for efficient work performance.

Avian encephalomyelitis virus in reared pheasants: a case study.

An outbreak of neurological disease occurred in pheasant chicks on a game farm in 2007. The disease was first seen in the 10th hatching of chicks on the farm. Affected chicks showed trembling and incoordination from the time of hatching, and subsequently blindness and cataract formation was seen in some of the affected chicks at 3 weeks of age. The peak mortality and culling figure was 21.0% in the worst affected hatch, compared with a maximum of 11.7% in the first nine hatches. No further cases were evident by 7.5 weeks of age. Histopathological examination showed a moderate acute encephalomyelitis in some, but not all, of the chicks with neurological signs. The clinical presentation and histopathological findings were typical of vertically transmitted avian encephalomyelitis as seen in chickens, although avian encephalomyelitis virus could not be detected in inoculated embryonated chicken eggs. However, serological testing by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for antibodies to the virus was positive in four of five affected 3-week-old birds and in 23 out of 29 adult breeding birds, and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction testing of RNA extracted from brain and pancreas tissue of affected chicks yielded nucleotide sequences aligned 82% and 83% with three avian encephalomyelitis sequences in a sequence database. The evidence suggested that the neurological disease was attributable to infection with a strain of avian encephalomyelitis virus that appeared to have entered the flock at the start of the breeding season, and was possibly introduced by carrier pheasants brought on to the farm early in the season.