Generalization of pain-related avoidance behavior based on de novo categorical knowledge.

People with chronic pain often fear and avoid movements and activities that were never paired with pain. Safe movements may be avoided if they share some semantic relationship with an actual pain-associated movement. This study investigated whether pain-associated operant responses (movements) can become categorically associated with perceptually dissimilar responses, thus motivating avoidance of new classes of safe movements-a phenomenon known as category-based avoidance generalization.

Inconsistencies between Subjective Reports of Cognitive Difficulties and Performance on Cognitive Tests are Associated with Elevated Internalising and Externalising Symptoms in Children with Learning-related Problems.

Children with learning difficulties are commonly assumed to have underlying cognitive deficits by health and educational professionals. However, not all children referred for psycho-educational assessment will be found to have deficits when their abilities are measured by performance on cognitive tasks. The primary aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of this inconsistent cognitive profile (ICP) in a transdiagnostic sample of children referred by health and education service providers for problems related to attention, learning and memory (N = 715).

Protocol for a randomised controlled trial investigating an intervention to boost decentering in response to distressing mental experiences during adolescence: the decentering in adolescence study (DECADES).

Introduction: Decentering describes the ability to voluntarily adopt an objective self-perspective from which to notice internal, typically distressing, stressors (eg, difficult thoughts, memories and feelings). The reinforcement of this skill may be an active ingredient through which different psychological interventions accrue reductions in anxiety and/or depression. However, it is unclear if decentering can be selectively trained at a young age and if this might reduce psychological distress.

Higher-order dimensions of psychopathology in a neurodevelopmental transdiagnostic sample.

Hierarchical dimensional models of psychopathology derived for adult and child community populations offer more informative and efficient methods for assessing and treating symptoms of mental ill health than traditional diagnostic approaches. It is not yet clear how many dimensions should be included in models for youth with neurodevelopmental conditions. The aim of this study was to delineate the hierarchical dimensional structure of psychopathology in a transdiagnostic sample of children and adolescents with learning-related problems, and to test the concurrent predictive value of the model for clinically, socially, and educationally relevant outcomes.

Decentering as a core component in the psychological treatment and prevention of youth anxiety and depression: a narrative review and insight report.

Decentering is a ubiquitous therapeutic concept featuring in multiple schools of psychological intervention and science. It describes an ability to notice to day-to-day psychological stressors (negative thoughts, feelings, and memories) from an objective self-perspective and without perseverating on the themes they represent. Thus, decentering dampens the impact and distress associated with psychological stressors that can otherwise increase mental ill health in vulnerable individuals.

Transitions from avoidance: Reinforcing competing behaviours reduces generalised avoidance in new contexts.

Generalised avoidance behaviours are a common diagnostic feature of anxiety-related disorders and a barrier to affecting changes in anxiety during therapy. However, strategies to mitigate generalised avoidance are under-investigated. Even less attention is given to reducing the category-based generalisation of avoidance.

The Concept of Contexts in Pain: Generalization of Contextual Pain-Related Fear Within a de Novo Category of Unique Contexts.

Unlabelled: The experience of unpredictable pain fluctuations can trigger anticipatory pain-related fear. When discrete predictors for pain are lacking, fear typically accrues to the broader environmental context: a phenomenon referred to as contextual pain-related fear. We examined whether conceptual similarity between discrete contexts facilitates pain-related fear generalization; this mechanism is known as category-level fear generalization.

One for all: The effect of extinction stimulus typicality on return of fear.

Background And Objectives: During exposure therapy, patients are encouraged to approach the feared stimulus, so they can experience that this stimulus is not followed by the anticipated aversive outcome. However, patients might treat the absence of the aversive outcome as an 'exception to the rule'. This could hamper the generalization of fear reduction when the patient is confronted with similar stimuli not used in therapy.

Bending rules: the shape of the perceptual generalisation gradient is sensitive to inference rules.

Generalising what is learned about one stimulus to other but perceptually related stimuli is a basic behavioural phenomenon. We evaluated whether a rule learning mechanism may serve to explain such generalisation. To this end, we assessed whether inference rules communicated through verbal instructions affect generalisation.

Words putting pain in motion: the generalization of pain-related fear within an artificial stimulus category.

Patients with chronic pain are often fearful of movements that never featured in painful episodes. This study examined whether a neutral movement's conceptual relationship with pain-relevant stimuli could precipitate pain-related fear; a process known as symbolic generalization. As a secondary objective, we also compared experiential and verbal fear learning in the generalization of pain-related fear.