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Evidence suggests that veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have a poorer treatment response than nonveterans.  In this study, we explored heterogeneity in treatment response for 960 veterans in the United Kingdom with PTSD who had been offered a residential intervention consisting of a mixture of group sessions and individual trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). The primary outcome was PTSD score on the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R).  Covariates included depression, anxiety, anger, alcohol misuse, functional impairment, and sociodemographic characteristics.  Follow-up occurred posttreatment at set time points for 12 months.  We present predictors of PTSD severity at posttreatment and follow-up obtained using a latent class growth analysis to identify different treatment trajectories.  Multinomial logistic regression models were used to identify covariates predicting class membership, and five classes were identified. Of participants, 71.3% belonged to three classes showing positive treatment responses, and 1.2% showed initial improvement but later relapsed. Additionally, 27.5% of participants were identified within a treatment-resistant class that showed little change in severity of presentation. Depression, anxiety, and having had a combat role during military service increased the likelihood of membership in the treatment-resistant class, odds ratios (ORs) = 1.12-1.53, 1.16-1.32, and 2.89, respectively. Additionally, participants in the treatment-resistant class had higher pretreatment PTSD scores for reexperiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal symptoms, ORs = 5.24, 2.62, and 3.86, respectively. Findings suggest the importance of triaging individuals and offering interventions tailored to severity of presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The combination of clinical psychologists' therapeutic expertise and research training means that they are in an ideal position to be conducting high-quality research projects. However, despite these skills and the documented benefits of research to services and service users, research activity in practice remains low. This article aims to give an overview of the advantages of, and difficulties in conducting research in clinical practice. Method We reviewed the relevant literature on barriers to research and reflected on our clinical and research experiences in a range of contexts to offer practical recommendations. Results We considered factors involved in the planning, sourcing support, implementation, and dissemination phases of research, and outline suggestions to improve the feasibility of research projects in post-qualification roles. Conclusions We suggest that research leadership is particularly important within clinical psychology to ensure the profession's continued visibility and influence within health settings. Practitioner points Clinical implications Emerging evidence suggests that clinical settings that foster research are associated with better patient outcomes., Suggestions to increase the feasibility of research projects in clinical settings are detailed., Limitations The present recommendations are drawn from the authors' practical experience and may need adaptation to individual practitioners' settings., This study does not attempt to assess the efficacy of the strategies suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Existential isolation refers to an individual's awareness of the unbridgeable gulf between oneself, other people and the world. This kind of isolation has been found to be higher in individuals with nonnormative experiences, such as racial or sexual minorities. Bereaved individuals may experience a stronger sense of existential isolation and feel that no one shares their feelings or perceptions. However, research on bereaved people's experiences of existential isolation and its effects on post‐loss adaptation is scarce. This study aims to validate the German and Chinese versions of the Existential Isolation Scale, investigate cultural and gender differences in existential isolation and explore the associations between existential isolation and prolonged grief symptoms in German‐speaking and Chinese bereaved individuals. Methods: A cross‐sectional study with 267 Chinese and 158 German‐speaking bereaved participants was conducted. The participants completed self‐report questionnaires assessing existential isolation, prolonged grief symptoms, social networks, loneliness and social acknowledgement. Results: The results indicated that the German and Chinese versions of the Existential Isolation Scale demonstrated adequate validity and reliability. No cultural or gender differences (or their interaction) were found for existential isolation. Higher existential isolation was associated with elevated prolonged grief symptoms, which was further moderated by the cultural group. The relationship between existential isolation and prolonged grief symptoms was significant for the German‐speaking bereaved people but not significant for those from China. Conclusion: The findings highlight the role of existential isolation in the adaptation to bereavement and how different cultural backgrounds moderate the effect of existential isolation on post‐loss reactions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these. Moreover, even when such measures do exist, they are not tailored for bilingual children. Aims It was asked whether a cut-off exists in the proportion of exposure to English at which one should expect a bilingual toddler to perform as well as a monolingual on a test standardized for monolingual English-speaking children. Methods & Procedures Thirty-five bilingual 2;6-year-olds exposed to British English plus an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers were assessed on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and an object-naming measure. All parents completed the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Oxford CDI) and an exposure questionnaire that assessed the proportion of English in the language input. Where the CDI existed in the bilingual's additional language, these data were also collected. Outcomes & Results Hierarchical regression analyses found the proportion of exposure to English to be the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers. Bilingual toddlers who received 60% exposure to English or more performed like their monolingual peers on all measures. K-means cluster analyses and Levene variance tests confirmed the estimated English exposure cut-off at 60% for all language measures. Finally, for one additional language for which we had multiple participants, additional language CDI production scores were significantly inversely related to the amount of exposure to English. Conclusions & Implications Typically developing 2;6-year-olds who are bilingual in English and an additional language and who hear English 60% of the time or more, perform equivalently to their typically developing monolingual peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non-prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced-choice pointing paradigm with reversed agent-patient roles. We tested active transitive verbs in study 1. The 2-year olds were better with familiar than novel verbs, while the 2½-year olds pointed correctly for both. In study 2, we tested passives: 2½-year olds were significantly below chance for familiar verbs and at chance for novel verbs, supporting the hypothesis that the entrenchment of the familiar verbs in the active transitive voice was interfering with interpreting them in the passive voice construction. The 3½-year olds were also at chance for novel verbs but above chance with familiar verbs. We interpret this as reflecting a lessening of the verb-in-construction entrenchment as the child develops knowledge that particular verbs can occur in a range of constructions. The 4½-year olds were above chance for both familiar and novel verbs. We discuss our findings in terms of the relative entrenchment of lexical and syntactic information and to interference between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the child-directed speech (CDS) of four Russian-, six German, and six English-speaking mothers to their 2-year-old children. Typologically Russian has considerably less restricted word order than either German or English, with German showing more word-order variants than English. This could lead to the prediction that the lexical restrictiveness previously found in the initial strings of English CDS by Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, and Tomasello (2003 ) would not be found in Russian or German CDS. However, despite differences between the three corpora that clearly derive from typological differences between the languages, the most significant finding of this study is a high degree of lexical restrictiveness at the beginnings of CDS utterances in all three languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case markers) to identify agents and patients in a causative sentence and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with both cues supporting each other--the prototypical form. Five-year-olds were able to use word order by itself but not case markers. Only 7-year-olds behaved like adults by relying on case markers over word order when the two cues conflicted. These findings suggest that prototypical instances of linguistic constructions with redundant grammatical marking play a special role in early acquisition, and only later do children isolate and weigh individual grammatical cues appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a preferential looking methodology with novel verbs, Gertner, Fisher and Eisengart (2006 ) found that 21-month-old English children seemed to understand the syntactic marking of transitive word order in an abstract, verb-general way. In the current study we tested whether young German children of this same age have this same understanding. Following Gertner (2006 ), one group of German children was tested only after they had received a training/practice phase containing transitive sentences with familiar verbs and the exact same nouns as those used at test. A second group was tested after a training/practice phase consisting only of familiar verbs, without the nouns used at test. Only the group of children with the training on full transitive sentences was successful in the test. These findings suggest that for children this young to succeed in this test of syntactic understanding, they must first have some kind of relevant linguistic experience immediately prior to testing – which raises the question of the nature of children's linguistic representations at this early point in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests evidence for and reasons why prior acquisition may either facilitate or inhibit acquisition of a new construction. It investigates acquisition of the German passive and future constructions which contain a lexical verb with either the auxiliary sein "to be" or werden "to become," and are related through these to potential supporting constructions. We predicted that a supported construction should be acquired earlier, faster, and unusually rapidly. An inhibited construction should show an extended depressed usage. We analyzed a dense corpus of a German boy between 2;0 and 5;0. He acquired the sein- before the werden-passive. The former was supported by his prior acquisition of the sein copula, whereas the werden-passive itself supported one werden copula construction. He acquired the werden-future extremely slowly due to the hindrance of a semantically identical construction. These results fit with an emergentist approach in which apparently "sudden" acquisition is still due to gradual learning mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

found that training 21/2-year-olds on the English transitive construction greatly improves their performance on a post-test in which they must use novel verbs in that construction. In the current study, we replicated Childers and Tomasello's finding, but using a much lower frequency of transitive verbs and models in training. We also used novel verbs that were of a different semantic class to our training verbs, demonstrating that semantic homogeneity is not crucial for generalization. We also replicated the finding that 4-year-olds are significantly more productive than 21/2-year-olds with the transitive construction, with the new finding that this is also true for verbs of emission. In addition, ‘shared syntactic distribution’ of novel verb and training verbs was found to have no observable effect on the number of 21/2-year-olds who were productive in the post-test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To explore the impact of diabetes on sexual relationships among men and women living with type 2 diabetes People living with type 2 diabetes (PLWD) and their partners in Cape Town, South Africa. Methods: As part of a larger study developing an intervention to improve type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) self management, we conducted in‐depth individual interviews with 10 PLWD and their partners without diabetes about experiences living with T2DM, between July 2020 and January 2021. We used inductive thematic analysis. Results: Both PLWD and partners felt that their sexual relationships and desires changed post‐diagnosis, in ways beyond biomedical issues. Although couples' reports on the quality of their sexual relationships were concordant, most participants had not communicated their sexual desires and concerns with each other, causing unhappiness and fears of disappointing or losing their partner. Participants felt uninformed about sexual dysfunction but had not discussed this with their healthcare provider, leading to increased anxiety. Conclusion: PLWD and their partners need more informational support to increase their understanding of diabetes‐associated sexual dysfunction and to decrease fears and anxiety. Strengthening communication within couples on sexual issues may empower them to find solutions to problems experienced. This may improve couples' relationships and quality of life, and indirectly result in better self management of T2DM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at a study that estimates the effect of linguistic distance on vocabulary development. Study highlights include a preliminary selection of significant predictors from analysis of covariance, the use of test language or TestLang as a repeated measures factor to examine the differential impact of predictors on English and Additional Language, and strong associations between Language Community and predictor variables.

The majority of the world's children grow up learning two or more languages. The study of early bilingualism is central to current psycholinguistics, offering insights into issues such as transfer and interference in development. From an applied perspective, it poses a universal challenge to language assessment practices throughout childhood, as typically developing bilingual children usually underperform relative to monolingual norms when assessed in one language only. We measured vocabulary with Communicative Development Inventories for 372 24-month-old toddlers learning British English and one Additional Language out of a diverse set of 13 (Bengali, Cantonese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi-Urdu, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Welsh). We furthered theoretical understanding of bilingual development by showing, for the first time, that linguistic distance between the child's two languages predicts vocabulary outcome, with phonological overlap related to expressive vocabulary, and word order typology and morphological complexity related to receptive vocabulary, in the Additional Language. Our study also has crucial clinical implications: we have developed the first bilingual norms for expressive and receptive vocabulary for 24-month-olds learning British English and an Additional Language. These norms were derived from factors identified as uniquely predicting CDI vocabulary measures: the relative amount of English versus the Additional Language in child-directed input and parental overheard speech, and infant gender. The resulting UKBTAT tool was able to accurately predict the English vocabulary of an additional group of 58 bilinguals learning an Additional Language outside our target range. This offers a pragmatic method for the assessment of children in the majority language when no tool exists in the Additional Language. Our findings also suggest that the effect of linguistic distance might extend beyond bilinguals' acquisition of early vocabulary to encompass broader cognitive processes, and could constitute a key factor in the study of the debated bilingual advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at a study that measures the relative contribution of linguistic distance to the acquisition of a bilingual toddler's two languages. Study highlights include phonological overlap between Additional Languages and British English, development of bilingual norms specified for the proportion of a particular language that a child hears in the input, and the feasibility of assessing bilingual toddlers in the majority language only.

The article looks at a study that establishes the reliability of UK Bilingual Toddlers Assessment Tool for bilingual children learning British English and its application to non-target additional language learners. Topics covered include the Plymouth Language Exposure Questionnaire, requirement for predictors to reach significance in the analysis of covariances and the subsequent linear mixed models, and the difference between a child's predicted and observed scores as a percentile.

The article describes the methods used in a study on the norms and effects of linguistic distance in a sample of 430 bilingual toddlers learning British English and additional languages. Study highlights include measurement of four parent-assessed outcome variables at 24 months, collection of data for 430 children between February 2014 and July 2016, and a list of all variables and predictors used in the analyses.

BACKGROUND: Social networks may influence screening behaviors. We assessed whether screening for breast, prostate, or colorectal cancer is influenced by the actual screening behaviors of siblings, friends, spouses, and coworkers. METHODS: We conducted an observational study using Framingham Heart Study data to assess screening for eligible individuals during the late 1990s. We used logistic regression to determine whether the probability of screening for breast, prostate, or colorectal cancer was influenced by the proportion of siblings, friends, and coworkers who had the same screening, as well as spouse's screening for colorectal cancer, adjusting for other factors that might influence screening rates. RESULTS: Among 1660 women aged 41-70 years, 71.7% reported mammography in the previous year; among 1217 men aged 51-70 years, 43.3% reported prostate-specific antigen testing in the previous year; and among 1426 men and women aged 51-80 years, 46.9% reported stool blood testing and/or sigmoidoscopy in the previous year. An increasing proportion of sisters who had mammography in the previous year was associated with mammography screening in the ego (odds ratio [OR], 1.034; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.000-1.065 for each 10% increase). A spouse with recent screening was associated with more colorectal cancer screening (OR, 1.65; 95% CI, 1.39-1.98 vs unmarried). Otherwise, screening behaviors of siblings, friends, and coworkers were not associated with screening in the ego. CONCLUSIONS: Aside from a slight increase in breast cancer screening among women whose sisters were screened and colorectal cancer screening if spouses were screened, the screening behavior of siblings, friends, or coworkers did not influence cancer screening behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]