Effectiveness of a Behavioral Activation Intervention for Peripartum Women with Opioid Use Disorder.

Pregnant women with opioid use disorder show elevated rates of comorbid mental health problems, both of which are associated with negative health outcomes for mothers and children. There is substantial evidence supporting the benefits of treatment of perinatal opioid use disorder, as well as perinatal depression and anxiety, but there are gaps in knowledge about the effectiveness of perinatal behavioral health interventions in the context of co-occurring substance use disorder. The current study seeks to address this gap by examining outcomes of a behavioral activation treatment in a group of peripartum women with opioid use disorder (N = 68).

Approach behavior can mitigate predominately univalent negative attitudes: evidence regarding insects and spiders.

Three experiments tested whether disliking of predominately univalently negative attitude objects could be reduced by a procedure pairing approach behaviors with subliminally presented images of the objects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants who approached images of insects rated insects less negatively than participants who did not approach insect pictures. Experiment 2 extended this effect to spiders and used an implicit measure of spider attitudes.

It was as big as my head, I swear! Biased spider size estimation in spider phobia.

The current study tested the association between fear and perception in spider phobic individuals (n=57) within the context of a treatment outcome study. Participants completed 5 post-treatment Behavioral Approach Tasks (BATs) in which they encountered a live spider and were asked to provide spider size estimates. Consistent with predictions, results indicated that high levels of fear were associated with magnified perception of phobic stimuli.