Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis refers to procedures that evaluate whether an item's characteristic differs for different groups of persons after controlling for overall differences in performance. DIF is routinely evaluated as a screening step to ensure items behavior the same across groups. Currently, the majority DIF studies focus…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and pilot a novel treatment framework called "BEARS" (Balancing Effort, Accuracy, and Response Speed). People with aphasia (PWA) have been shown to maladaptively balance speed and accuracy during language tasks. BEARS is designed to train PWA to balance speed-accuracy trade-offs and…

Objective: To discover differences between student and nonstudent substance abuse treatment demographics, treatment characteristics, and outcomes. Participants: Conducted February 2014, clients without prior treatment admissions, aged 18-24, not in methadone maintenance therapy, and in nonintensive and ambulatory intensive outpatient treatment…

The purpose of this study is two-fold: to explore the differences in online medical information searching behaviors, including evaluative standards and search strategies, of the general public (general group) and those of hospital patients and their relatives (hospital group); and to compare the predictive relationship between the evaluative…

Background: To describe the characteristics of those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) treated within a forensic intellectual disability hospital and to compare them with those without ASD. Method: Service evaluation of a cohort of 138 patients treated over a 6-year period. Results: Of the 138, 42 had an ASD. Personality disorders and harmful…

The neural correlates of "working memory" (WM) in schizophrenia (SZ) have been extensively studied using the multisite fMRI data acquired by the Functional Biomedical Informatics Research Network (fBIRN) consortium. Although univariate and multivariate analysis methods have been variously employed to localize brain responses under differing task…

Defining fall risk factors and predicting fall risk status among patients in acute care has been a topic of research for decades. With increasing pressure on hospitals to provide quality care and prevent hospital-acquired conditions, the search for effective fall prevention interventions continues. Hundreds of risk factors for falls in acute care…

Forward predictions are crucial in motor action (e.g., catching a ball, or being tickled) but may also apply to sensory or cognitive processes (e.g., listening to distorted speech or to a foreign accent). According to the "internal forward model," the cerebellum generates predictions about somatosensory consequences of movements. These predictions…

Learning to select optimal behavior in new and uncertain situations is a crucial aspect of living and requires the ability to quickly associate stimuli with actions that lead to rewarding outcomes. Mathematical models of reinforcement-based learning to select rewarding actions distinguish between (1) the formation of stimulus-action-reward…

Objective: Understanding for whom, and under what conditions, treatments exert their greatest effects is essential for developing personalized medicine. Research investigating moderators of outcome among evidence-based treatments for anxiety disorders is lacking. The current study examined several theory-driven and atheoretical putative moderators…

As we learn new information about the social and moral behaviors of other people, we form and update character judgments of them, and this can profoundly influence how we regard and act towards others. In the study reported here, we capitalized on two interesting neurological patient populations where this process of complex "moral…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to empirically derive eating disorder phenotypes in a clinical sample of children and adolescents using latent profile analysis (LPA), and to compare these latent profile (LP) groups to the DSM-IV-TR eating disorder categories. Method: Eating disorder symptom data collected from 401 youth (aged 7 through 19…

The Referential Thinking (REF) scale was designed to be a comprehensive self-report measure of both simple and guilty ideas of reference in the general population. One aim of the present study was to test the proposed interpretations of REF scores by comparing REF scores with ratings of delusions among psychotic patients. A 2nd aim was to test…

We employed a triadic comparison task in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy controls to contrast (a) multidimensional scaling (MDS) and accuracy-based assessments of semantic memory, and (b) degraded-store versus degraded-access accounts of semantic impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Similar to other studies using triadic…

Suicide assessment and prediction are important functions performed by psychiatrists. Although the specificity and sensitivity of assessment instruments are poor, trainees are instructed to become proficient in their application. The occurrence of suicides during training confronts trainees with personal and professional limitations. The charts of…