The psychometric properties of PSYCHLOPS, an individualized patient-reported outcome measure of personal distress.

OBJECTIVE: Few studies report the psychometric properties of individualized patient-reported outcome measures (I-PROMs) combining traditional analysis and Item Response Theory (IRT). METHODS: Pre- and posttreatment PSYCHLOPS data derived from six clinical samples (n = 939) were analyzed for validity, reliability, and responsiveness; caseness cutoffs and reliable change index were calculated. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to determine whether items represented a unidimensional construct; IRT examined item properties of this construct. RESULTS: Values for internal consistency, construct validity, convergent and discriminant validity, and structural validity were satisfactory. Responsiveness was high: Cohen's d, 1.48. Caseness cutoff and reliable clinical change scores were 6.41 and 4.63, respectively. IRT analysis confirmed that item scores possess strong properties in assessing the underlying trait measured by PSYCHLOPS. CONCLUSION: PSYCHLOPS met the criteria for norm-referenced measurement of patient psychological distress. PSYCHLOPS functioned as a measure of a single latent trait, which we describe as "personal distress."

Idiographic patient reported outcome measures (I-PROMs) for routine outcome monitoring in psychological therapies: Position paper.

Idiographic patient-reported outcome measures (I-PROMs) are a growing set of individualized tools for use in routine outcome monitoring (ROM) in psychological therapies. This paper presents a position statement on their conceptualization, use, and analysis, based on contemporary evidence and clinical practice. Four problem-based, and seven goal-based, I-PROMs, with some evidence of psychometric evaluation and use in psychotherapy, were identified. I-PROMs may be particularly valuable to the evaluation of psychological therapies because of their clinical utility and their alignment with a patient-centered approach. However, there are several challenges for I-PROMs: how to generate items in a robust manner, their measurement model, methods for establishing their reliability and validity, and the meaning of an aggregated I-PROM score. Based on the current state of the literature, we recommend that I-PROMs are used to complement nomothetic measures. Research recommendations are also made regarding the most appropriate methods for analyzing I-PROM data.

Does emotional valence modulate word recognition? A behavioral study manipulating frequency and arousal.

Effects of emotional valence have been observed in lexical decision tasks, suggesting that valence information modulates early word recognition. However, is still unclear the processing advantage of the different valence categories, and how these advantages might be modulated by word frequency and arousal. To clarify this question, a lexical decision task was designed using emotional words as stimuli. Emotional words were divided into three categories: 60 positive, 60 negative, and 60 neutral words. Word frequency was manipulated into low and high conditions and arousal was controlled among experimental conditions (word valence and frequency). In the first experiment, 54 participants performed the task with a maximum stimuli exposure time of 2000 ms. In a follow-up experiment, 42 participants performed the same task with two shorter fixed time exposures (150 ms and 300 ms). The results were similar between experiments: positive words were recognized faster and negative words were recognized slower than neutral ones. Furthermore, this valence effect was modulated by word frequency, affecting only words that take longer to be recognized (low-frequency words). However, the valence by frequency interaction was attenuated for high-arousal words when the pressure to respond was high (short exposure time - 150 ms). Overall, the results confirm that the emotional status of a word can affect word processing at early stages when automatic processes are taking place.

Reading Comprehension Predictors in European Portuguese Adults.

Research on the predictors of reading comprehension has been largely focused on school-aged children and mainly in opaque orthographies, hindering the generalization of the results to adult populations and more transparent orthographies. In the present study, we aim to test two versions of the Simple View of Reading (SVR): the original model and an extended version, including reading fluency and vocabulary. Additional mediation models were analyzed to verify if other reading comprehension predictors (rapid automatized naming, phonological decoding, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and working memory) have direct effects or if they are mediated through word reading and reading fluency. A sample of 67 typical adult Portuguese readers participated in this study. The SVR model accounted for 27% of the variance in reading comprehension, with oral language comprehension displaying a larger contribution than word reading. In the extended SVR model, reading fluency and vocabulary provided an additional and significant contribution of 7% to the explained variance. Moreover, vocabulary influenced reading comprehension directly and indirectly, via oral language comprehension. In the final mediation model, the total mediation hypothesis was rejected, and only morphological awareness showed a direct effect on reading comprehension. These results provide preliminary evidence that the SVR (with the possible addition of vocabulary) might be a reliable model to explain reading comprehension in adult typical readers in a semitransparent orthography. Furthermore, oral language comprehension and vocabulary were the best predictors in the study, suggesting that remediation programs addressing reading comprehension in adults should promote these abilities.

The Influence of Parental Perfectionism and Parenting Styles on Child Perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a significant transdiagnostic process related to the development and maintenance of several psychological disorders. The main models of the development of perfectionism focus on early childhood experiences and postulate that parental relation is an important factor for understanding this construct in children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between child and parental perfectionism, seeking to evaluate the empirical support of the Social Learning Model and the Social Expectations Model and children's perception of parenting styles. The present study included 119 children (51.2% girls, Mage = 11.67 years) and their parents. Data were collected through administration of several self-report measures. The results show a relationship between the majority of the same parent and child perfectionism dimensions, thus providing supportive evidence for the Social Learning Model. Concerning the analysis of the role of gender in the transmission of perfectionism, observed fathers' perfectionism only relates with the sons' perfectionism, and mothers' perfectionism relates with daughters' perfectionism. Our findings allow for a deeper understanding of the role of the perception of an authoritarian parenting style in the development of maladaptive perfectionism. Mother and fathers' perceived parenting styles contribute more to daughter than son perfectionism. The results contribute to expanding the understanding of the role of parental factors in the development of perfectionism.

The use of an Ebola virus reporter cell line in a semi-automated microtitration assay.

A variety of methods have been developed for quantification of infectious Ebola virus in clinical or laboratory samples, but existing methods often require extensive operator involvement, manual assay scoring, or the use of custom reagents. In this study, we utilize a recently developed Ebola-specific reporter cell line that expresses ZsGreen in response to Ebola virus infection, in conjunction with semi-automated processing and quantification techniques, to develop an unbiased, high-throughput microtitration assay for quantification of infectious Ebola virus in vitro. This assay was found to have equivalent sensitivity to a standardized plaque assay for quantifying viral titers. However, the new assay could be implemented with fewer reagents and processing steps, reduced subjectivity, and higher throughput. This assay may be useful for a variety of applications, particularly studies that require the detection or quantification of infectious Ebola virus in large numbers of samples.

Behavioral Inhibition in Childhood: European Portuguese Adaptation of an Observational Measure (Lab-TAB).

The assessment of behaviorally inhibited children is typically based on parent or teacher reports, but this approach has received criticisms, mainly for being prone to bias. Several researchers proposed the additional use of observational methods because they provide a direct and more objective description of the child's functioning in different contexts. The lack of a laboratory assessment of temperament for Portuguese children justifies the adaptation of some episodes of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB) as an observational measure for behavioral inhibition. Method: In our study, we included 124 children aged between 3 and 9 years and their parents. The evaluation of child behavioral inhibition was made by parent report (Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire) and through Lab-TAB episodes. Parental variables with potential influence on parents' reports were also collected using the Social Interaction and Performance Anxiety and Avoidance Scale (SIPAAS) and the Parental Overprotection Measure (POM). Results and Discussion: The psychometric analyses provided evidence that Lab-TAB is a reliable instrument and can be incorporated in a multi-method approach to assess behavioral inhibition in studies involving Portuguese-speaking children. Moderate convergence between observational and parent report measures of behavioral inhibition was obtained. Mothers' characteristics, as well as child age, seem to significantly affect differences between measures, being potential sources of bias in the assessment of child temperament.

Reading and reading-related skills in adults with dyslexia from different orthographic systems: a review and meta-analysis.

An individual diagnosed with dyslexia in childhood typically remains dyslexic throughout his/her life. However, the cognitive profile of adults with dyslexia has been less explored than that of children. This meta-analytic study is intended to clarify three questions: (1) To what extent, and in what manner, do adults with reading difficulties (dyslexia) differ from typical adult readers in measures of reading and writing competence and related cognitive skills?; (2) To what extent do speed measures pose a greater challenge than accuracy measures in an adult population that has already had years of print exposure?; and (3) To what extent does orthographic transparency modulate the reading profile of adults with dyslexia? A total of 178 studies comparing adults with dyslexia and matched controls were reviewed. The results showed that adults with dyslexia exhibited poor performance on almost all reading and writing tasks expressed by very large effect sizes (range 1.735 ≤ d ≤ 2.034), except for reading comprehension (d = 0.729). Deficits in reading- and writing-related variables are also present but with a lower expression (range 0.591 ≤ d ≤ 1.295). These difficulties are exacerbated for speed measures, especially for word and pseudoword reading, phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. Orthographic transparency proved to be a significant moderator of dyslexic deficits in word and pseudoword reading, reading comprehension, spelling and phonological awareness, with the expression of the deficits being weaker on transparent-as opposed to intermediate and opaque-orthographies. Overall, the meta-analysis shows that reading and writing difficulties persist in adulthood and are more pronounced in speed measures. Moreover, symptoms are more severe for reading and writing than they are for measures tapping into the cognitive processes underlying reading skills. Orthographic transparency has a significant effect on the manifestation of dyslexia, with dyslexia symptoms being less marked on transparent orthographies. In addition, phonological awareness seems to be a minor problem in adulthood, especially for transparent orthographies.

Early Brain Sensitivity to Word Frequency and Lexicality During Reading Aloud and Implicit Reading.

The present study investigated the influence of lexical word properties on the early stages of visual word processing (<250 ms) and how the dynamics of lexical access interact with task-driven top-down processes. We compared the brain's electrical response (event-related potentials, ERPs) of 39 proficient adult readers for the effects of word frequency and word lexicality during an explicit reading task versus a visual immediate-repetition detection task where no linguistic intention is required. In general, we observed that left-lateralized processes linked to perceptual expertise for reading are task independent. Moreover, there was no hint of a word frequency effect in early ERPs, while there was a lexicality effect which was modulated by task demands: during implicit reading, we observed larger N1 negativity in the ERP to real words compared to pseudowords, but in contrast, this modulation by stimulus type was absent for the explicit reading aloud task (where words yielded the same activation as pseudowords). Thus, data indicate that the brain's response to lexical properties of a word is open to influences from top-down processes according to the representations that are relevant for the task, and this occurs from the earliest stages of visual recognition (within ~200 ms). We conjectured that the loci of these early top-down influences identified for implicit reading are probably restricted to lower levels of processing (such as whole word orthography) rather than the process of lexical access itself.

Emotional Recognition and Empathy both in Deaf and Blind Adults.

Studies addressing the recognition of emotions in blind or deaf participants have been carried out only with children and adolescents. Due to these age limits, such studies do not clarify the long-term effects of vision and hearing disabilities on emotion recognition in adults. We assessed the ability to recognize basic emotions in 15 deaf adults (aged 32.4 ± 8.1 yrs) and in 15 blind adults (48.3 ± 10.5 yrs). Auditory and visual stimuli expressing six basic emotional states were presented to participants (Florida Affect Battery). Participants also performed an empathy test. Deaf participants showed difficulties in emotion recognition tasks compared to the typical hearing participants; however, differences were only statistically reliable for Facial Emotion Discrimination and Naming tasks (specifically, naming expressions of fear). Deaf participants also revealed inferior levels of cognitive empathy. Concerning blind participants, their performance was lower than the controls' only when the task required the evaluation of emotional prosody while ignoring the semantic content of the sentence. Overall, although deaf and blind participants performed reasonably well on tasks requiring recognition of basic emotions, sensory loss may hinder their social perception skills when processing subtle emotions or when the extraction of simultaneous prosodic and semantic information is required.

Implicit sequence learning is preserved in dyslexic children.

This study investigates the implicit sequence learning abilities of dyslexic children using an artificial grammar learning task with an extended exposure period. Twenty children with developmental dyslexia participated in the study and were matched with two control groups-one matched for age and other for reading skills. During 3 days, all participants performed an acquisition task, where they were exposed to colored geometrical forms sequences with an underlying grammatical structure. On the last day, after the acquisition task, participants were tested in a grammaticality classification task. Implicit sequence learning was present in dyslexic children, as well as in both control groups, and no differences between groups were observed. These results suggest that implicit learning deficits per se cannot explain the characteristic reading difficulties of the dyslexics.

Eye-Tracking Evidence of a Maintenance Bias in Social Anxiety.

BACKGROUND: The mechanisms and triggers of the attentional bias in social anxiety are not yet fully determined, and the modulating role of personality traits is being increasingly acknowledged. AIMS: Our main purpose was to test whether social anxiety is associated with mechanisms of hypervigilance, avoidance (static biases), vigilance-avoidance or the maintenance of attention (dynamic biases). Our secondary goal was to explore the role of personality structure in shaping the attention bias. METHOD: Participants with high vs low social anxiety and different personality structures viewed pairs of faces (free-viewing eye-tracking task) representing different emotions (anger, happiness and neutrality). Their eye movements were registered and analysed for both whole-trial (static) and time-dependent (dynamic) measures. RESULTS: Comparisons between participants with high and low social anxiety levels did not yield evidence of differences in eye-tracking measures for the whole trial (latency of first fixation, first fixation direction, total dwell time), but the two groups differed in the time course of overt attention during the trial (dwell time across three successive time segments): participants with high social anxiety were slower in disengaging their attention from happy faces. Similar results were obtained using a full-sample, regression-based analysis. CONCLUSION: Our results speak in favour of a maintenance bias in social anxiety. Preliminary results indicated that personality structure may not affect the maintenance (dynamic) bias of socially anxious individuals, although depressive personality structures may favour manifestations of a (static) hypervigilance bias.

When the Eyes No Longer Lead: Familiarity and Length Effects on Eye-Voice Span.

During oral reading, the eyes tend to be ahead of the voice (eye-voice span, EVS). It has been hypothesized that the extent to which this happens depends on the automaticity of reading processes, namely on the speed of print-to-sound conversion. We tested whether EVS is affected by another automaticity component - immunity from interference. To that end, we manipulated word familiarity (high-frequency, low-frequency, and pseudowords, PW) and word length as proxies of immunity from interference, and we used linear mixed effects models to measure the effects of both variables on the time interval at which readers do parallel processing by gazing at word N + 1 while not having articulated word N yet (offset EVS). Parallel processing was enhanced by automaticity, as shown by familiarity × length interactions on offset EVS, and it was impeded by lack of automaticity, as shown by the transformation of offset EVS into voice-eye span (voice ahead of the offset of the eyes) in PWs. The relation between parallel processing and automaticity was strengthened by the fact that offset EVS predicted reading velocity. Our findings contribute to understand how the offset EVS, an index that is obtained in oral reading, may tap into different components of automaticity that underlie reading ability, oral or silent. In addition, we compared the duration of the offset EVS with the average reference duration of stages in word production, and we saw that the offset EVS may accommodate for more than the articulatory programming stage of word N.

Visual naming deficits in dyslexia: An ERP investigation of different processing domains.

Naming speed deficits are well documented in developmental dyslexia, expressed by slower naming times and more errors in response to familiar items. Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine at what processing level the deficits in dyslexia emerge during a discrete-naming task. Dyslexic and skilled adult control readers performed a primed object-naming task, in which the relationship between the prime and the target was manipulated along perceptual, semantic and phonological dimensions. A 3×2 design that crossed Relationship Type (Visual, Phonemic Onset, and Semantic) with Relatedness (Related and Unrelated) was used. An attenuated N/P190 - indexing early visual processing - and N300 - which index late visual processing - was observed to pictures preceded by perceptually related (vs. unrelated) primes in the control but not in the dyslexic group. These findings suggest suboptimal processing in early stages of object processing in dyslexia, when integration and mapping of perceptual information to a more form-specific percept in memory take place. On the other hand, both groups showed an N400 effect associated with semantically related pictures (vs. unrelated), taken to reflect intact integration of semantic similarities in both dyslexic and control readers. We also found an electrophysiological effect of phonological priming in the N400 range - that is, an attenuated N400 to objects preceded by phonemic related primes vs. unrelated - while it showed a more widespread distributed and more pronounced over the right hemisphere in the dyslexics. Topographic differences between groups might have originated from a word form encoding process with different characteristics in dyslexics compared to control readers.

Portuguese Adaptation of a Faux Pas Test and a Theory of Mind Picture Stories Task.

BACKGROUND: Developmental concepts of 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) suggest that this cognitive domain is an innate human capacity requiring input from the social environment to mature. Research suggests substantial individual differences in ToM, depending on childhood experiences, genetics, and the presence or absence of a neuropsychiatric disorder. None of the existing ToM tests for adult populations have been made available in Portuguese. Accordingly, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Portuguese versions of the Faux Pas (FP) Recognition Test and the ToM Picture Stories Task. SAMPLING AND METHODS: Both tests were given to a sample of 200 Portuguese adults (125 women and 75 men) aged between 18 and 60 years. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The psychometric analyses of the results indicate that the Portuguese version of the FP Recognition Test is appropriate for use in research and clinical settings, providing a composite score that reliably measures the ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others in a 'faux pas' situation (Cronbach's α = 0.82). However, the ToM Picture Stories Task did not show acceptable psychometric qualities.

Too little or too much? Parafoveal preview benefits and parafoveal load costs in dyslexic adults.

Two different forms of parafoveal dysfunction have been hypothesized as core deficits of dyslexic individuals: reduced parafoveal preview benefits ("too little parafovea") and increased costs of parafoveal load ("too much parafovea"). We tested both hypotheses in a single eye-tracking experiment using a modified serial rapid automatized naming (RAN) task. Comparisons between dyslexic and non-dyslexic adults showed reduced parafoveal preview benefits in dyslexics, without increased costs of parafoveal load. Reduced parafoveal preview benefits were observed in a naming task, but not in a silent letter-finding task, indicating that the parafoveal dysfunction may be consequent to the overload with extracting phonological information from orthographic input. Our results suggest that dyslexics' parafoveal dysfunction is not based on strict visuo-attentional factors, but nevertheless they stress the importance of extra-phonological processing. Furthermore, evidence of reduced parafoveal preview benefits in dyslexia may help understand why serial RAN is an important reading predictor in adulthood.

Psychosocial adversity, delinquent pathway and internalizing psychopathology in juvenile male offenders.

The main aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of a set of risk factors relating to childhood life events and other psychosocial factors that may be associated with criminal indicators and with the prevalence of internalizing psychopathology in a sample of adolescent offenders. Fifty male adolescents in the custody of the Portuguese Juvenile Justice System participated in the study (M=15.8 years of age). The Adolescent Psychopathology Scale - Short Form (APS-SF) was administered in a structured interview format, and the sociodemographic, family and criminal data questionnaire was filled in by the justice professional after consulting the adolescent's file. Forty-six percent of all subjects had previous delinquent behavior. About 32% of the boys had committed violent offenses and 88% acted with peers. Also, the persistence of the delinquent behavior (50% of the offenders), coupled with the increase in the severity of the crimes committed (38% of the sample), suggests that these adolescents were at risk for serious and chronic delinquency at the time of the intervention. About 32% of the participants reported posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, 20% had suicide ideation, and a lower percentage reported other internalizing problems. Institutionalization, maltreatment and conduct problems in childhood, and family risk factors (parental conflict, absence of a father figure, lack of parental control and family substance addiction) were related with the report of internalizing problems. Moreover, the increase in the severity of criminal offenses and living in a correctional facility were associated with higher levels of posttraumatic stress, interpersonal problems, anxiety and depression. This study draws attention to the importance of assessing indicators of psychopathology and of psychosocial risk in intervention programs with young offenders, but also to the need of family focused interventions in order to help prevent recidivism.

Lexical and sublexical orthographic processing: an ERP study with skilled and dyslexic adult readers.

This ERP study investigated the cognitive nature of the P1-N1 components during orthographic processing. We used an implicit reading task with various types of stimuli involving different amounts of sublexical or lexical orthographic processing (words, pseudohomophones, pseudowords, nonwords, and symbols), and tested average and dyslexic readers. An orthographic regularity effect (pseudowords-nonwords contrast) was observed in the average but not in the dyslexic group. This suggests an early sensitivity to the dependencies among letters in word-forms that reflect orthographic structure, while the dyslexic brain apparently fails to be appropriately sensitive to these complex features. Moreover, in the adults the N1-response may already reflect lexical access: (i) the N1 was sensitive to the familiar vs. less familiar orthographic sequence contrast; (ii) and early effects of the phonological form (words-pseudohomophones contrast) were also found. Finally, the later N320 component was attenuated in the dyslexics, suggesting suboptimal processing in later stages of phonological analysis.

Lexical and phonological processes in dyslexic readers: evidence from a visual lexical decision task.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether reading failure in the context of an orthography of intermediate consistency is linked to inefficient use of the lexical orthographic reading procedure. The performance of typically developing and dyslexic Portuguese-speaking children was examined in a lexical decision task, where the stimulus lexicality, word frequency and length were manipulated. Both lexicality and length effects were larger in the dyslexic group than in controls, although the interaction between group and frequency disappeared when the data were transformed to control for general performance factors. Children with dyslexia were influenced in lexical decision making by the stimulus length of words and pseudowords, whereas age-matched controls were influenced by the length of pseudowords only. These findings suggest that non-impaired readers rely mainly on lexical orthographic information, but children with dyslexia preferentially use the phonological decoding procedure--albeit poorly--most likely because they struggle to process orthographic inputs as a whole such as controls do. Accordingly, dyslexic children showed significantly poorer performance than controls for all types of stimuli, including words that could be considered over-learned, such as high-frequency words. This suggests that their orthographic lexical entries are less established in the orthographic lexicon.

Electrophysiological correlates of impaired reading in dyslexic pre-adolescent children.

In this study, event related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the extent to which dyslexics (aged 9-13 years) differ from normally reading controls in early ERPs, which reflect prelexical orthographic processing, and in late ERPs, which reflect implicit phonological processing. The participants performed an implicit reading task, which was manipulated in terms of letter-specific processing, orthographic familiarity, and phonological structure. Comparing consonant- and symbol sequences, the results showed significant differences in the P1 and N1 waveforms in the control but not in the dyslexic group. The reduced P1 and N1 effects in pre-adolescent children with dyslexia suggest a lack of visual specialization for letter-processing. The P1 and N1 components were not sensitive to the familiar vs. less familiar orthographic sequence contrast. The amplitude of the later N320 component was larger for phonologically legal (pseudowords) compared to illegal (consonant sequences) items in both controls and dyslexics. However, the topographic differences showed that the controls were more left-lateralized than the dyslexics. We suggest that the development of the mechanisms that support literacy skills in dyslexics is both delayed and follows a non-normal developmental path. This contributes to the hemispheric differences observed and might reflect a compensatory mechanism in dyslexics.