Patient adherence to cognitive behavioural therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Whilst cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is the treatment of choice for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), around half of the participants do not experience remission following treatment. As yet, there is no comprehensive systematic review of the extent to which patient non-adherence presents a challenge to the overall benefit of CBT for OCD. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to identify the magnitude, moderators and reasons for poor patient adherence to CBT for OCD in terms of: (1) treatment refusal, (2) treatment dropout, (3) session at- tendance/module completion, and (4) between-session CBT task adherence. Sociodemographic and clinical variables, treatment and study design characteristics were examined as moderators of adherence. The systematic search identified 123 studies including 5627 participants taking part in CBT or control conditions. A pooled rate of 15.6% of eligible patients refused CBT and a further 15.9% of treatment starters dropped out from treatment. Group CBT had significantly lower dropout rates than individually-delivered CBT. No other significant moderators were found. Most studies reported moderate to good adherence to between-session CBT tasks, which had a significant medium to large association with post-treatment OCD symptom reduction. Recommendations for enhanced measurement and re- porting of patient adherence to CBT for OCD are made along with clinical implications of findings

Cross-discipline investigation of the relationship between academic performance and online resource access by distance education students

Educational technology implementation often owes more to the technical proficiency of the teaching staff and/or the capacity of the institution than to a student outcome-centred design process. Creation of online resources takes considerable time and involves significant cost to both the institution, for devices and platforms, and to students for devices and Internet connectivity charges. Here, we present a cross-discipline investigation of student engagement with a range of simple resources. Our aim was to determining if the provision of such resources had an impact on student academic performance regardless of the students’ level of academic proficiency. This research focused on students studying first-year introductory subjects at a distance (off campus) from two different faculties, Arts and Science. Analysis of the web access data from the learning management system (Sakai) demonstrated that students who accessed the most resources in terms of diversity and percentage of available resources achieved higher grades. We postulate that the resources prompted students to spend more “time-on-task” and facilitate more active styles of learning. We suggest, however, that students need to be made aware of the value of the resources and how they are best used to enhance academic performance

Memory-guided saccades show effect of a perceptual illusion whereas visually guided saccades do not

The double-drift stimulus (a drifting Gabor with orthogonal internal motion) generates a large discrepancy between its physical and perceived path. Surprisingly, saccades directed to the double-drift stimulus land along the physical, and not perceived, path (Lisi M, Cavanagh P. Curr Biol 25: 2535−2540, 2015). We asked whether memory-guided saccades exhibited the same dissociation from perception. Participants were asked to keep their gaze centered on a fixation dot while the double-drift stimulus moved back and forth on a linear path in the periphery. The offset of the fixation was the go signal to make a saccade to the target. In the visually guided saccade condition, the Gabor kept moving on its trajectory after the go signal but was removed once the saccade began. In the memory conditions, the Gabor disappeared before or at the same time as the go-signal (0- to 1,000-ms delay) and participants made a saccade to its remembered location. The results showed that visually guided saccades again targeted the physical rather than the perceived location. However, memory saccades, even with 0-ms delay, had landing positions shifted toward the perceived location. Our result shows that memory- and visually guided saccades are based on different spatial information. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We compared the effect of a perceptual illusion on two types of saccades, visually guided vs. memory-guided saccades, and found that whereas visually guided saccades were almost unaffected by the perceptual illusion, memory-guided saccades exhibited a strong effect of the illusion. Our result is the first evidence in the literature to show that visually and memory-guided saccades use different spatial representations

High-resolution photoelectron spectroscopy of linear ← bent polyatomic photodetachment transitions: The electron affinity of CS₂

A combination of high-resolution velocity-map-imaging photoelectron spectroscopy and isotopic substitution is used to show that precise electron affinities can be obtained from polyatomic photodetachment spectra, even for cases involving significant changes in equilibrium geometry between the molecular neutral and anion.This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (Grant Nos. DP0666267 and DP0880850)

Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) Project: Development of the TTF TPACK survey instrument

This paper presents a summary of the key findings of the TTF TPACK Survey developed and administered for the Teaching the Teachers for the Future (TTF) Project implemented in 2011. The TTF Project, funded by an Australian Government ICT Innovation Fund grant, involved all 39 Australian Higher Education Institutions which provide initial teacher education. TTF data collections were undertaken at the end of Semester 1 (T1) and at the end of Semester 2 (T2) in 2011. A total of 12881 participants completed the first survey (T1) and 5809 participants completed the second survey (T2). Groups of like-named items from the T1 survey were subject to a battery of complementary data analysis techniques. The psychometric properties of the four scales: Confidence - teacher items; Usefulness - teacher items; Confidence - student items; Usefulness- student items, were confirmed both at T1 and T2. Among the key findings summarised, at the national level, the scale: Confidence to use ICT as a teacher showed measurable growth across the whole scale from T1 to T2, and the scale: Confidence to facilitate student use of ICT also showed measurable growth across the whole scale from T1 to T2. Additional key TTF TPACK Survey findings are summarised

The blinking spotlight of attention

Increasing evidence suggests that attention can concurrently select multiple locations; yet it is not clear whether this ability relies on continuous allocation of attention to the different targets (a "parallel" strategy) or whether attention switches rapidly between the targets (a periodic "sampling" strategy). Here, we propose a method to distinguish between these two alternatives. The human psychometric function for detection of a single target as a function of its duration can be used to predict the corresponding function for two or more attended targets. Importantly, the predicted curves differ, depending on whether a parallel or sampling strategy is assumed. For a challenging detection task, we found that human performance was best reflected by a sampling model, indicating that multiple items of interest were processed in series at a rate of approximately seven items per second. Surprisingly, the data suggested that attention operated in this periodic regime, even when it was focused on a single target. That is, attention might rely on an intrinsically periodic process

Hemispheric bases for emotion and memory

The goal of this Research Topic was to bring together diverse scientific perspectives on lateralized brain mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and memory. The Topic resulted in eight articles, three of which report original research and five of which review and synthesize past research with the aim of developing new hypotheses and theory. A range of international experts with diverse backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and experimental methods contributed to the Topic. Contributions strongly reflect this diversity, ranging from examining pupil dilation in response to viewing Rembrandt portraits to understanding how caffeine supplementation influences levels of spatial processing. In all cases, the authors developed strong, empirically guided insights into the lateralized brain mechanisms underlying behavioral effects. Two primary themes emerge to guide and constrain continuing research

Hemispheric bases for emotion and memory

The goal of this Research Topic was to bring together diverse scientific perspectives on lateralized brain mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and memory. The Topic resulted in eight articles, three of which report original research and five of which review and synthesize past research with the aim of developing new hypotheses and theory. A range of international experts with diverse backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and experimental methods contributed to the Topic. Contributions strongly reflect this diversity, ranging from examining pupil dilation in response to viewing Rembrandt portraits to understanding how caffeine supplementation influences levels of spatial processing. In all cases, the authors developed strong, empirically guided insights into the lateralized brain mechanisms underlying behavioral effects. Two primary themes emerge to guide and constrain continuing research