Can neurocognitive performance account for dimensional paranoid ideation?

Objective: Paranoid ideation underlies numerous psychological disorders and has debilitating effects on daily life. Deficits in neurocognition are highlighted as a contributing factor to paranoid-related disorders, but the impact on the symptom-level experience of paranoid ideation is unclear. This study aimed to employ a dimensional approach to understand the association between neurocognition and the severity and presence of paranoid ideation.

Protocol for the Development and Initial Validation of the COG-IMPACT Tool: A Purpose-Built Unmet Needs Assessment for Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment.

(1) : A significant proportion of cancer survivors report experiencing a cognitive 'fog' that affects their ability to think coherently and quickly, and reason with clarity. This has been referred to as cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI). CRCI has extensive impacts on the daily lives of people living with or beyond cancer, including occupational, social, and psychological functioning.

It's about time: mitigating cancer-related cognitive impairments through findings from computational models of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task.

Background: Many cancer survivors experience cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI), often with significant negative consequences across various life domains. Emerging evidence suggests that allowing additional time to process information before acting may be a useful strategy for those with CRCI to mitigate some of its impacts. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), a measure of general cognition, has shown that for some cancer survivors, longer task completion time facilitates similar task performance outcomes to control populations concerning perseveration errors; a key performance metric of the WCST.

Reconceptualizing mental health in cancer survivorship.

Mental health for cancer survivors in both research and clinical applications has strongly adopted a traditional nosological approach, involving the classification of psychopathology into discrete disorders. However, this approach has recently faced considerable criticism due to issues such as high comorbidity and within-disorder symptom heterogeneity across populations. Moreover, there are additional specific issues impacting the validity of traditional approaches in cancer survivorship populations, including the physiological effects of cancer and its treatments.

"Is My Brain Ever Going to Work Fully Again?": Challenges and Needs of Cancer Survivors with Persistent Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment.

Many cancer survivors experience cognitive impairments that impact memory, concentration, speed of information processing, and decision making. These impairments, collectively known as cancer-related cognitive impairments (CRCIs), are a key domain of unmet needs and can significantly impact a cancer survivor's identity and quality of life. However, there are no purpose-built, multi-domain, needs assessment tools specifically for CRCI.

Research Directions for Leveraging and Supporting the Lived Experience of Mental Illness within Psychology.

This paper explores the lived experience of mental illness within the field of psychology across higher education and the mental health workforce. There is a high prevalence of mental health issues among psychology students and practitioners, and it is critical not only to provide support for these populations, but also to acknowledge the value of leveraging their lived experience within their education and practice. There has been increased interest in and advocacy for the involvement of those with lived experience of mental illness within mental healthcare service provision to improve patient experiences and outcomes.

Do Dimensional Measures of Mental Health Symptoms Predict Level of Alcohol Involvement in the General Population?

: There is a limited understanding of what specific mental health symptoms are associated to alcohol involvement. It is important to understand how the severity of different mental health dimensions may differ, and distinguish between, levels of alcohol involvement. : (a) explore for differences in severity of mental health symptoms between those with lower, and moderate/high alcohol involvement, (b) assess the degree to which mental health dimensions can distinguish between those with lower, and moderate/high alcohol involvement, and (c) examine what mental health dimensions are related to the highest risk of moderate/high alcohol involvement.

Neurocognitive Artificial Neural Network Models Are Superior to Linear Models at Accounting for Dimensional Psychopathology.

In recent years, there has been debate about the optimal conceptualisation of psychopathology. Structural models of psychopathology have been developed to counter issues, including comorbidity and poor diagnostic stability prevalent within the traditional nosological approach. Regardless of the conceptualisation of psychological dysfunction, deficits in neurocognitive abilities have been claimed to be an aetiological feature of psychopathology.

What Accounts for the Factors of Psychopathology? An Investigation of the Neurocognitive Correlates of Internalising, Externalising, and the -Factor.

Neurocognitive deficits have been consistently associated with a wide range of psychopathology and are proposed to not only be a consequence of the development of psychopathology but also directly involved in its aetiology. However, there is no clear understanding of what neurocognitive processes are particularly important to mental health. In this paper, we explored the association between neurocognitive abilities and the factors derived from structural models of psychopathology.

Going "Up" to Move Forward: S-1 Bifactor Models and the Study of Neurocognitive Abilities in Psychopathology.

Recently, structural models of psychopathology, that address the diagnostic stability and comorbidity issues of the traditional nosological approach, have dominated much of the psychopathology literature. Structural approaches have given rise to the -factor, which is claimed to reflect an individual's propensity toward all common psychopathological symptoms. Neurocognitive abilities are argued to be important to the development and maintenance of a wide range of disorders, and have been suggested as an important driver of the -factor.

One -Factor for All? Exploring the Applicability of Structural Models of Psychopathology within Subgroups of a Population.

Structural models of psychopathology have emerged as an alternative to traditional categorical approaches. The bifactor model, which incorporates a general -factor, has become the preferred structure. The -factor is claimed to represent a substantive construct or property of the system; however, recent evidence suggests that it may be without substantive meaning.

A Conceptual Model of Long-Term Weight Loss Maintenance: The Importance of Cognitive, Empirical and Computational Approaches.

Living with obesity is related to numerous negative health outcomes, including various cancers, type II diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Although much is known about the factors associated with obesity, and a range of weight loss interventions have been established, changing health-related behaviours to positively affect obesity outcomes has proven difficult. In this paper, we first draw together major factors that have emerged within the literature on weight loss to describe a new conceptual framework of long-term weight loss maintenance.

Introducing StatHand: A Cross-Platform Mobile Application to Support Students' Statistical Decision Making.

Although essential to professional competence in psychology, quantitative research methods are a known area of weakness for many undergraduate psychology students. Students find selecting appropriate statistical tests and procedures for different types of research questions, hypotheses and data types particularly challenging, and these skills are not often practiced in class. Decision trees (a type of graphic organizer) are known to facilitate this decision making process, but extant trees have a number of limitations.

Active Learning in Research Methods Classes Is Associated with Higher Knowledge and Confidence, Though not Evaluations or Satisfaction.

Research methods and statistics are regarded as difficult subjects to teach, fueling investigations into techniques that increase student engagement. Students enjoy active learning opportunities like hands-on demonstrations, authentic research participation, and working with real data. However, enhanced enjoyment does not always correspond with enhanced learning and performance.

The impact of transcranial direct current stimulation on inhibitory control in young adults.

Background: There is increasing evidence that the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region related to reward and motivational processes, is involved in effective response inhibition and that decreased activity in this region coincides with reduced inhibitory capacity. Using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to manipulate cortical activation, this study examined whether cross-hemispheric tDCS over the DLPFC affected performance on an inhibitory control task.

Methods: Neurologically intact participants performed a modified Stroop color-word matching task before and after completing one of two tDCS conditions; (1) anodal stimulation over the left DLPFC or (2) sham tDCS.

The ethics of informed parental consent to psychiatric drugging of children.

That so many children are taking prescribed psychiatric drugs means that millions of parents have agreed to this recommendation for their children. Most pertinent to this fact is the question whether these parents have been given the opportunity to make their decisions in accordance with the legal standard of informed consent which requires a physician to disclose sufficient information for a patient to make an "informed" decision about a proposed treatment. At the least, such legitimate consent entails an opportunity to evaluate knowledgeably the options available and the risks attendant upon each, without coercion.