Objective The study tested whether associations of parenting styles with internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and academic achievement vary between ethnic groups in western countries, between different regions of the globe, and by level of collectivism/individualism of individual countries. Method A systematic search in electronic databases and cross referencing identified 428 studies that were included in the random-effects meta-analysis. Results More ethnic and regional similarities than differences were identified. In western countries, associations of authoritative parenting with academic achievement were stronger in non-Hispanic, White families than in Asian minorities. In these countries, associations of authoritarian parenting with academic achievement were less negative in Hispanic families than in non-Hispanic, White families. Authoritative parenting was associated with at least 1 positive child outcome and authoritarian parenting was associated with at least 1 negative outcome in all regions of the globe, with some regional variation. Finally, associations of authoritarian parenting with child outcomes were weaker in countries with a higher individualism score, as were associations of authoritative parenting with academic performance. Conclusions Parents across the globe could be recommended to behave authoritatively, although authoritarian and permissive parenting is, to some extent, tolerable in a few cultural contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record

Do the associations of parenting styles with behavior problems and academic achievement vary by culture? Results from a meta-analysis.

The authors of this book beautifully describe the hierarchical order of emotions, how to identify specific emotions, and ultimately how to work and restructure the client's relationship to powerful and damaging maladaptive emotions. Greenberg and Paivio reviewed a large number of taped interviews of emotionally focused therapies that were successful. The clients had a wide range of complaints, including depression, anxiety, and problems of living. The authors discovered through this research three important steps in successful treatment: 1) bonding, 2) evoking and exploring emotional experiences, and 3) restructuring the emotional schema. These steps are synonymous with the working alliance; the development of the transference and its past components; and the working-through and resolution phase of classical psychoanalytic treatment.

The first part of the book sets forth the theoretical framework for emotions and the idea of core maladaptive emotion schemas. The authors discuss the role of emotion not as an irrational feeling state, but instead as an organizer of past interactive experiences, memories, hopes, fears, and dreams that are specific for each person and arise from relationships past and present. These schemas are organizers not only of emotion, but of identity and of the subjectively felt meaning of one's self. I think this is the most important piece of their work. The notion that “bad fits” organize emotions and hence organize one's identity is a major component of my clinical experience. These authors do not specifically talk of bad fits in early life, particularly preverbal life, but the concept is inherent in their work and their book. The passion of the bad fit or the emotions that are aroused by a bad fit help to organize and concretize the emotions in the identity.

The authors' experience is that if the maladaptive emotional schemas can be restructured, clients will develop a different relationship to these emotions that have plagued them. They will also develop a different sense of themselves, in terms of how they deal with emotions generated through their relationships. In this section, emotions are broken down according to their adaptive and maladaptive functions and are differentiated as primary, secondary, or instrumental emotions. This classification is useful to all therapists; we work with emotions every day but may not have realized the importance of differentiating them as to their origins, effects, and functions.

The second section deals with the types of interventions that occur in Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT.) Emphasis is placed on the specific moment-to-moment intervention of the therapist as he or she stays attuned to the slightest changes and shifts in the emotional makeup of the client. Through this attunement the therapist and client build a working alliance, and the resultant bonding accentuates a validation of the client's feelings. Emotional evocation, which is central to their EFT, relies heavily on the “empty chair dialogue.” This dialogue is Gestalt in origin and is not meant to be just a cathartic emotional experience: restructuring and validation of the new self follows.

In the third section, the authors describe in great detail the working of EFT with different emotions, and they present a clear picture of how the therapist attempts to deal with clients in this modality. They end with a brief chapter on research and supervision.

This book carries some important assumptions that need to be examined. Is it possible for the therapist to achieve such carefully fine attunement with the client as they suggest? I doubt it, and what is not talked about is the rupture in attunement and how that affects the process and transference issues in EFT. There should be a whole chapter focused on this issue alone. The whole issue of transference and countertransference is not addressed, and it is not clear how long the clients have to be in treatment for the EFT to be effective. I think it is dangerous to assume that a therapist can stay attuned to moment-to-moment changes in a person's emotional schema, since that assumption sets up an unrealistic expectation for both parties. It makes ruptures more difficult to heal because of the mutual narcissistic injuries. And is it difficult to train new therapists to do what clearly the authors do with a long-standing natural ease?

For people who are interested in cognitive and experiential work with emotions, this book is invaluable. For those with an analytic bent, the chapters on the emotional schema will only help them to formulate what they have already been doing every day in their offices; even so, such readers will find these chapters interesting and important.

Working With Emotions in Psychotherapy

The adverse effects of early-life stress are pervasive, with well-established mental and physical health consequences for exposed individuals. The impact of early adverse experiences is also highly persistent, with documented increases in risk for mental illness across the life span that are accompanied by stable alterations in neural function and hormonal responses to stress. Here, we review some of these 'stress phenotypes', with a focus on intermediary factors that may signal risk for long-term mental health outcomes, such as altered development of the fear regulation system. Intriguingly, recent research suggests that such stress phenotypes may persist even beyond the life span of the individuals, with consequences for their offspring and grand-offspring. Phenotypic characteristics may be transmitted to future generations via either the matriline or the patriline, a phenomenon that has been demonstrated in both human and animal studies. In this review, we highlight behavioral and epigenetic factors that may contribute to this multigenerational transmission and discuss the potential of various treatment approaches that may halt the cycle of stress phenotypes.

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gbb.12263

The lasting impact of early-life adversity on individuals and their descendants: potential mechanisms and hope for intervention.

The goal of the present study was to assess 3 attentional control processes--divided attention, manipulation capacities, and inhibition--in persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Manipulation capacities were tested by comparing immediate serial recall with alphabetical-order recall of words. Divided attention was tested with the Brown-Peterson procedure, in which participants divide their attention between simple addition tasks and consonant trigrams over delays. Inhibition was tested with the Hayling procedure, in which participants complete sentences with words irrelevant to their context. Persons with AD showed severe impairment on the 3 attentional control components. Persons with MCI exhibited impaired performance on the Brown-Peterson procedure but normal performance on the other 2 tasks. With AD and MCI participants, there was a negative correlation between general cognitive deficits and impairment on attentional control tasks, indicating that attentional control deficits increase in the MCI/AD continuum. When separating MCI with and without significant subsequent decline, those with subsequent decline showed impaired performance on both the Brown-Peterson procedure and manipulation task. These data suggest that control of attention tasks can track AD at a preclinical stage and that impairment increases gradually during the preclinical phase of AD.

Working memory and control of attention in persons with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment

Bilingualism has been associated with successful aging. In particular, research on the cognitive advantages of bilingualism suggests that it can enhance control over interference and help delay the onset of dementia signs. However, the evidence on the so-called cognitive advantage is not unanimous; furthermore, little is known about the neural basis of this supposed cognitive advantage in bilingual as opposed to monolingual elderly populations. In this study, elderly bilingual and monolingual participants performed a visuospatial interference control task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Response times and accuracy rates were calculated for congruent and incongruent conditions of the Simon task, and the neurofunctional correlates of performance on the Simon task were examined. The results showed equivalent performance on the Simon task across groups but different underlying neural substrates in the two groups. With incongruent trials, monolinguals activated the right middle frontal gyrus, whereas bilinguals relied upon the left inferior parietal lobule. These results show that elderly bilinguals and monolinguals have equivalent interference control abilities, but relay on different neural substrates. Thus, while monolinguals show a classical PASA (posterior-anterior shift in aging) effect, recruiting frontal areas, bilinguals activate visuospatial processing alone and thus do not show this posterior-anterior shift. Moreover, a modulation of frontal activity with task-dynamic control of interference, observed in the elderly bilingual group alone, suggests that elderly bilinguals deal with interference control without recruiting a circuit that is particularly vulnerable to aging.

Interference Control In Elderly Bilinguals: Appearances Can Be Misleading.

INTRODUCTION This study aimed to investigate and compare the executive functions of students with depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms with those functions in healthy ones. METHODS This study was a comparative and non-clinical analysis. The study population comprised all students of Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. A total of 448 students were recruited using convenience sampling method. They were also screened using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) test comprising 21 items. Of study participants, 30 people were depressed, 27 had anxiety, and 15 suffered from stress. Then, 50 control people were matched with them. Next, both groups were compared using the Stroop test, Wisconsin card sorting, and cognitive ability test. RESULTS Using MANOVA test, data analysis revealed no significant differences among 4 groups with regard to selective attention and shifting attention. Depressed group reacted rapidly as opposed to the anxiety group with regard to measures of shifting attention and cognitive abilities; it was observed that the memory, inhibition control, planning, and flexibility of the healthy group were better than those of the 3 other groups. CONCLUSION The findings of this research raised specific issues in relation to the role of depression, anxiety, and stress in the disruption of the executive functions of sufferers. Selective and shifting attention and cognitive abilities are specifically affected in this regard. Meanwhile, the role of stress in impairing decision making and the major role of anxiety in impairing sustained attention was shown to be considerable.

/pdf/research-paper-executive-functions-in-students-with-x9r1uqzu2h.pdf

Research Paper: Executive Functions in Students With Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Symptoms

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:bdaf5e3/UQbdaf5e3_OA.pdf

A systematic review and meta-analysis of mindfulness based interventions and yoga in inflammatory bowel disease.

Objectives:Mindfulness is a proven treatment in clinical settings. Our objective was to examine the feasibility and effect of a mindfulness-training program on the mental resilience and emotional i...

Applying mindfulness training to enhance the mental toughness and emotional intelligence of amateur basketball players.

Purpose: The aim of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation on improving selective attention in patients with mild cognitive impairment. Methods: It was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test. The population in this study was all individuals referred to a neurology clinic in Tehran in 2012. The group was comprised of 40 patients with mild cognitive impairment who were evaluated with early detection and assessment by a medical psychologist (MMSE score lower than 25 and Wechsler memory test) and were selected by available sampling. They were also older than 55 years and had a minimum education at degree level, together with a lack of neurological and psychiatric comorbidities and impaired sensory and motor retardation, according to their nursing history and medical records. They were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (20 patients in each group). The experimental group was given 12 sessions (two hours each section) of cognitive rehabilitation with Neurocognitive Joyful Attentive Training Intervention (NEJATI). The control group, as expected with this group, did not receive any trial period. The selective attention of both groups was evaluated, before and after receiving intervention, by a Strop computer programme. Data were analysed using the covariance statistical test, MANCOVA. Results: The results show an increase in selective attention scores in the experimental group compared with the control group. Therefore, we can conclude that cognitive rehabilitation leads to improvement in the performance of selective attention (F = 4/97; sig

https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JBBS_2013101616093745.pdf

The Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation on Improving the Selective Attention in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment

/pdf/the-impact-of-a-parenting-skills-training-program-on-5e8hzin6sx.pdf

Bita Ajilchi

Papers

Research Paper: Executive Functions in Students With Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Symptoms

A systematic review and meta-analysis of mindfulness based interventions and yoga in inflammatory bowel disease.

Applying mindfulness training to enhance the mental toughness and emotional intelligence of amateur basketball players.

The Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation on Improving the Selective Attention in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment

The Impact of a Parenting Skills Training Program on Stressed Mothers and Their Children's Self-Esteem Level