Parental and professional beliefs on the treatment and management of ADHD

OBJECTIVE

This study examined parental and professional beliefs about the efficacy of various treatment strategies for ADHD.

METHOD

Parents of children with and without ADHD and seven medical and nonmedical professional groups (N = 673) completed a questionnaire examining their beliefs about the efficacy of various treatment regimes.

RESULTS

Principle component analysis identified four factors-school-based interventions, medical and allied health interventions, parent interventions, and nontraditional interventions. Although there were some group differences in the level of endorsement for these factors, there was a high degree of concordance between the groups. The school-based interventions factor was the most highly endorsed, whereas the nontraditional interventions factor was the least endorsed by the sample as a whole.

CONCLUSION

The results suggest that the low level of interdisciplinary interaction that has been reported in the literature is not due to differences in beliefs about the efficacy of various treatment strategies for ADHD.

The Effects of Diagnostic Labelling on the Implicit Theories of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Held by Health Professionals

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most recent diagnostic label used to describe a behavioural condition of which the essential features are developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, impulsivity and overactivity. ADHD has attracted both controversy and attention from the professional and scientific community. However, little is known regarding the explanatory models (implicit theories) of health professionals or of their beliefs regarding the treatment of this condition, specifically the impact of diagnostic labelling on their decisions concerning treatment. This study manipulated the presence versus absence of the diagnostic label ‘ADHD’ in a vignette study describing the symptoms of this condition. The vignette was presented to professionals in the educational, mental health and allied health fields. After reading the vignette, participants were required to complete a questionnaire examining implicit beliefs concerning ADHD. The results confirmed that the presence of the diagnostic label (ADHD) changed the causal explanations by professional groups. However, the presence of the diagnostic label did not significantly change the beliefs about the optimal treatment strategy for this condition.

Bulimic symptoms in adolescent girls and boys

OBJECTIVE

The factor structure of the Bulimic Investigatory Test (BITE) was examined in adolescent girls and boys.

METHOD

Seven hundred and seventy seven adolescents (427 girls and 350 boys) completed the BITE.

RESULTS

Consistent with the original scale, one factor describing overall bulimic symptoms was found for the girls. However, two factors were required to summarize the boys' symptoms: "Emotional and Rigid/Disruptive Eating Style" and "Food Preoccupation and Binging."

DISCUSSION

The results are discussed in relation to Fairburn's (Fairburn. (1995). Overcoming Binge Eating. New York: Guilford) distinction which separates problem from nonproblem binge eating. Further studies are now needed to examine the mechanisms underlying the development of bulimic eating in boys and young men.

Relation of drinking and eating to masculinity and femininity

The relationship between desirable and undesirable aspects of masculinity and femininity and drinking and eating was investigated. A sample of 144 university women in Australia completed questionnaires that assessed masculinity and femininity, reported drinking, alcohol dependence, eating restraint, frequency of dieting, and overeating. Evidence of a common underlying dimension linking aspects of problem drinking and overeating to undesirable masculine characteristics was found. The results are consistent with the view that women engage in excessive consummatory behaviors such as binging to deal with their gender-role conflict.

Effects of retention interval on latent inhibition and perceptual learning

Repeated, non-reinforced preexposure to a context slowed development of conditioned freezing to that context when it was subsequently paired with footshock (latent inhibition) and enhanced discriminability of that context from a similar context (perceptual learning) whether assessed by a generalization test or by explicit discrimination training. Latent inhibition was eliminated by a delay between conditioning sessions and test (Experiments 1a and 1b) and reduced by a delay between preexposure and conditioning (Experiment 2). However, perceptual learning was unaffected by either of these intervals (Experiments 1b and 2). These results are discussed in terms their impact on theories that have latent inhibition as a possible mechanism of perceptual learning, and on theories of latent inhibition that consider the retardation of conditioned responding to be the result of an acquisition failure.

Loss of latent inhibition of contextual conditioning following non-reinforced context exposure in rats

Three experiments with rats demonstrated that preexposure to an experimental environment retarded the level of conditioned freezing observed on a test in that environment after it had been paired with mild footshock. Furthermore, Experiment 1 demonstrated that this latent inhibition effect could be abolished if preexposed rats were exposed to a second experimental environment following conditioning to the preexposed environment. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that this second environment had to be similar, but not identical, to the preexposed environment, and that the influence of exposure to the second environment on latent inhibition could be abolished by exposure to that environment prior to footshock conditioning. These results are considered in terms of the Dickinson-Burke (1996) theory of retrospective revaluation, and their implications for experiments demonstrating a loss of latent inhibition across a delay are considered.

Microinjection of morphine into the nucleus accumbens impairs contextual learning in rats

A unilateral microinjection of morphine into the amygdala impaired fear conditioning to both a conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with shock and the context where shock occurred, whereas a microinjection of morphine into the nucleus accumbens (NA) spared fear conditioning to the CS but impaired, in a dose-dependent and receptor-specific manner, fear conditioning to the context. Morphine in the NA also spared extinction and latent inhibition of a CS but abolished the context specificity of these effects and eliminated the increase in discriminability that results from preexposure to a to-be-shocked context. The results identify a role for the NA in the processes by which rats learn about a context and are discussed in terms of an opioid disruption of either within-context associations or of attentional processes that contribute to such associations.

Microinjection of morphine into the nucleus accumbens impairs contextual learning in rats

A unilateral microinjection of morphine into the amygdala impaired fear conditioning to both a conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with shock and the context where shock occurred, whereas a microinjection of morphine into the nucleus accumbens (NA) spared fear conditioning to the CS but impaired, in a dose-dependent and receptor-specific manner, fear conditioning to the context. Morphine in the NA also spared extinction and latent inhibition of a CS but abolished the context specificity of these effects and eliminated the increase in discriminability that results from preexposure to a to-be-shocked context. The results identify a role for the NA in the processes by which rats learn about a context and are discussed in terms of an opioid disruption of either within-context associations or of attentional processes that contribute to such associations.

Effects of the interval between exposure to a novel environment and the occurrence of shock on the freezing responses of rats

Rats were exposed to a novel environment (E1) at time T1, given a footshock at time T2, and tested for freezing in E1 or in a second environment (E2). The function relating freezing to the T1-T2 interval among rats tested in E1 was an inverted U-shape. Rats exposed to short T1-T2 intervals displayed just as much freezing in E2 as in E1, whereas rats exposed to longer intervals froze less in E2 than in E1. These differences between the freezing responses in E1 and in E2 were obtained when the T1-T2 intervals were varied, but time spent in the shocked E1 was equated. Rats given two shocks in E1 differentiated between E1 and E2 when the initial shock occurred some time after exposure to E1, but not when the initial shock was presented shortly after that exposure. Rats shocked some time after exposure to E1 on Day 1 and shortly after exposure to that environment on Day 2 differentiated between E1 and E2 more than did rats exposed to the reverse sequence of T1-T2 intervals. The results were attributed to the formation of a network of connections among the E1 cues in rats exposed to moderate or long T1-T2 intervals, and to an impairment in the formation of this network as a result of the conditioning of a subset of cues in rats exposed to short T1-T2 intervals.

Effects of exposure to a to-be-shocked environment upon the rat's freezing response: evidence for facilitation, latent inhibition, and perceptual learning

Three experiments used the freezing response of rats to examine the effects of pre-exposure to an environment upon (1) its associability with shock and (2) its discriminability from a second environment. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that freezing was proportional to the interval between exposure to the environment at time T1 and the occurrence of shock at T2. This function was shifted by pre-exposure to the to-be-shocked environment, with brief pre-exposures increasing (facilitation) and extended pre-exposures decreasing (latent inhibition) the impact of a given T1-T2 interval on freezing. Experiment 3 provided evidence that the facilitatory and latent inhibitory effects resulting from brief and extended exposures to the to-be-shocked environment were accompanied by an increase in discriminability. The results were taken to have supported the claim that pre-exposure changes associability as well as discriminability (Hall & Honey, 1989) and were discussed in terms of the model for perceptual learning proposed by McLaren, Kaye, and Mackintosh (1990).