The Brazilian standardization of the MATRICS consensus cognitive battery (MCCB): Psychometric study.

OBJECTIVE: Translate, adapt, and validate the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) in Brazil. METHOD: The present study followed three steps: 1) translation to Portuguese, cultural adaptation, and back translation to English; 2) completion of a pilot study (N=30) conducted with the purpose of assessing whether the general comprehension of the items was clear and all participants adequately responded to the battery; 3) completion of a Reliability and Validation Study of the Brazilian version of the MCCB with 99 individuals with schizophrenia and 99 healthy subjects. All participants were administered the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and patients were also rated on the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Scale and the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS). RESULTS: The results showed adequate to high levels of baseline and 4-week retest reliability, except the MSCEIT-ME; adequate internal consistency for the MSCEIT-ME for the total sample and patients group, and moderate Alpha for the health control sample; as well as evidence of convergent validity and sensitivity to differentiate performance between the groups. All the 10 MCCB measures showed the lowest learning effects. CONCLUSION: Overall the Brazilian version of the MCCB showed similar results to the original North American version. Our findings provides reassurance that the MCCB is a reliable and valid measure of cognition across different countries and cultures, which is especially important to the ongoing work in attempting to discover cognition-enhancing drugs and the effects of cognitive interventions for the treatment of schizophrenia.

Mothers with depression, school-age children with depression? A systematic review.

PURPOSE: To carry out a systematic review of the association between maternal and school-age children depression and covariate factors. DESIGN AND METHODS: The key words maternal depression, depressed children, and school-age key words were searched in Medline, Lilacs, Scielo, IndexPsi, and PsycInfo (2004-2010). Clinical and community cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were included. A qualitative checklist was used. FINDINGS: Thirty studies were included (21.926 dyads). The results supported the association, showing several modulators: family environment, marital adjustment, social support, depression symptoms, and children-related variables. Limitations were nonrandom samples, single informants, and nondepression diagnosis. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Identifying mothers with depression may be useful for prevention and early detection of school-age children's depression.

Facial affect processing in social anxiety: tasks and stimuli.

Social anxiety (SA) has as its main feature the fear of social situations, being characterized as social phobia or social anxiety disorder when functional impairment emerges as a result of that fear. Although the recognition of the condition has increased in recent years, it is believed that many patients and physicians still take the symptoms of the disorder for personality traits with no need for treatment. There is evidence that people with SA display abnormal patterns of facial emotion processing that could account for the onset and maintenance of the disorder. The objective of this review is to describe, compare, and discuss the methods used to study facial emotion processing in SA with an emphasis on the tasks and stimuli employed. Articles were searched for on online scientific databases. Forty research articles were selected according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria established. The articles were read and information from them was gathered on a comparative table for analysis. Evidence available to date suggests that SA individuals have abnormal patterns of facial information processing characterized by a bias for negative emotions. The results of the articles analyzed have a high degree of concordance, in spite of the variety of tasks and stimuli employed. The similarity between results from non-clinical samples with SA and patients affected by social phobia speaks in favor of the current view that SA occurs as a continuum of severity, rather than a clearly circumscribed nosological entity.

Psychometric qualities of the Brazilian versions of the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence and the Heaviness of Smoking Index.

INTRODUCTION: This study examined the psychometric properties of the Brazilian versions of the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) and the Heaviness of Smoking Index (HSI). METHODS: The test-retest reliability of the FTND was assessed in a sample of 61 smoking university students, with a 15-day interval between assessments. The interrater reliability was examined in 30 smoking patients of a psychosocial care center for alcohol and drug users (PCC-AD). The reliability coefficient was estimated by the kappa and intraclass correlation coefficients. The predictive validity, internal consistency, and factor structure of the FTND and the HSI were evaluated by factor analysis in 271 smokers treated at an emergency unit and at the PCC-AD. The gold standard was the nicotine dependence criteria of DSM-IV, as assessed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. RESULTS: The FTND showed high reliability, with correlation coefficients of .92 for test-retest reliability and .99 for interrater reliability. Both the FTND and the HSI presented high levels of sensitivity and specificity. The internal consistency evaluation yielded a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .83 for the FTND and of .56 for the HSI. An exploratory factor analysis found 2 factors in the FTND, which were validated by a confirmatory factor analysis. DISCUSSION: The results obtained in this study confirm the validity and reliability of the Brazilian versions of the FTND and the HSI.