People who expect to enter psychotherapy are prone to believing that they have forgotten memories of childhood trauma and abuse.

We asked 1004 undergraduates to estimate both the probability that they would enter therapy and the probability that they experienced but could not remember incidents of potentially life-threatening childhood traumas or physical and sexual abuse. We found a linear relation between the expectation of entering therapy and the belief that one had, but cannot now remember, childhood trauma and abuse. Thus individuals who are prone to seek psychotherapy are also prone to accept a suggested memory of childhood trauma or abuse as fitting their expectations. In multiple regressions predicting the probability of forgotten memories of childhood traumas and abuse, the expectation of entering therapy remained as a substantial predictor when self-report measures of mood, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder symptom severity, and trauma exposure were included.

Adolescent weight status and self-reported school performance in South Korea.

Using a nationally representative sample of 142 783 middle school (13-15 years old) and high school (16-18 years old) students in South Korea, this study examined whether (1) overweight and obesity are more likely to be associated with lower self-reported school performance; (2) overweight and obese students are more likely to enrol in a vocational high school as opposed to a general high school; (3) the association between obesity and poorer self-reported school performance is mediated through body image stress and health status. We found that excess weight was negatively associated with self-reported school performance among middle and general high school students, and that obese students had a higher probability of being enrolled in a vocational over a general high school. We did not find strong evidence on the mediating role of body image stress and health status.

Comparison of dynamic balance in adolescent male soccer players from rwanda and the United States.

PURPOSE/BACKGROUND: Dynamic balance is an important component of motor skill development. Poor dynamic balance has previously been associated with sport related injury. However, the vast majority of dynamic balance studies as they relate to sport injury have occurred in developed North American or European countries. Thus, the purpose of this study was to compare dynamic balance in adolescent male soccer players from Rwanda to a matched group from the United States. METHODS: Twenty-six adolescent male soccer players from Rwanda and 26 age- and gender-matched control subjects from the United States were screened using the Lower Quarter Y Balance Test during their pre-participation physical. Reach asymmetry (cm) between limbs was examined for all reach directions. In addition, reach distance in each direction (normalized to limb length, %LL) and the composite reach score (also normalized to %LL) were examined. Dependent samples t-tests were performed with significant differences identified at p<0.05. RESULTS: Twenty-six male soccer players from Rwanda (R) were matched to twenty-six male soccer players from the United States (US). The Rwandan soccer players performed better in the anterior (R: 83.9 ± 3.2 %LL; US: 76.5 ± 6.6 %LL, p<0.01), posterolateral (R: 114.4 ± 8.3 %LL ; US: 106.5 ± 8.2 %LL, p<0.01) and composite (R: 105.6 ± 1.3 %LL; US: 97.8 ± 6.2 %LL, p<0.01) reach scores. No significant differences between groups were observed for reach asymmetry. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescent soccer players from Rwanda exhibit superior performance on a standardized dynamic balance test as comparison to similar athletes from the United States. The examination of movement abilities of athletes from countries of various origins may allow for a greater understanding of the range of true normative values for dynamic balance. LEVELS OF EVIDENCE: 3b.

People believe it is plausible to have forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Pezdek, Blandon-Gitlin, and Gabbay (2006) found that perceptions of the plausibility of events increase the likelihood that imagination may induce false memories of those events. Using a survey conducted by Gallup, we asked a large sample of the general population how plausible it would be for a person with longstanding emotional problems and a need for psychotherapy to be a victim of childhood sexual abuse, even though the person could not remember the abuse. Only 18% indicated that it was implausible or very implausible, whereas 67% indicated that such an occurrence was either plausible or very plausible. Combined with Pezdek et al.s' findings, and counter to their conclusions, our findings imply that there is a substantial danger of inducing false memories of childhood sexual abuse through imagination in psychotherapy.

The Rational Adolescent: Strategic Information Processing during Decision Making Revealed by Eye Tracking.

Adolescence is often viewed as a time of irrational, risky decision-making - despite adolescents' competence in other cognitive domains. In this study, we examined the strategies used by adolescents (N=30) and young adults (N=47) to resolve complex, multi-outcome economic gambles. Compared to adults, adolescents were more likely to make conservative, loss-minimizing choices consistent with economic models. Eye-tracking data showed that prior to decisions, adolescents acquired more information in a more thorough manner; that is, they engaged in a more analytic processing strategy indicative of trade-offs between decision variables. In contrast, young adults' decisions were more consistent with heuristics that simplified the decision problem, at the expense of analytic precision. Collectively, these results demonstrate a counter-intuitive developmental transition in economic decision making: adolescents' decisions are more consistent with rational-choice models, while young adults more readily engage task-appropriate heuristics.

Challenges in the diagnosis and treatment of depression in autism spectrum disorders across the lifespan.

Diagnosis and treatment of comorbid neuropsychiatric illness is often a secondary focus of treatment in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), given that substantial impairment may be caused by core symptoms of ASD itself. However, psychiatric comorbidities, including depressive disorders, are common and frequently result in additional functional impairment, treatment costs, and burden on caregivers. Clinicians may struggle to appropriately diagnose depression in ASD due to communication deficits, atypical presentation of depression in ASD, and lack of standardized diagnostic tools. Specific risk and resilience factors for depression in ASD across the lifespan, including level of functioning, age, family history, and coping style, have been suggested, but require further study. Treatment with medications or psychotherapy may be beneficial, though more research is required to establish guidelines for management of symptoms. This review will describe typical presentations of depression in individuals with ASD, review current information on the prevalence, assessment, and treatment of comorbid depression in individuals with ASD, and identify important research gaps.