Browsing by master's degree program "Psykologian maisteriohjelma"

Objective. The FRIENDS programme is a group cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) programme, developed for the prevention and treatment of child and adolescent anxiety and depression. In the context of prevention, FRIENDS has been extensively researched; however, little research has been conducted on FRIENDS in a treatment setting and with different populations. To help fill this gap, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Finnish version of FRIENDS in reducing internalising symptoms in children diagnosed with psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disorders. Methods. The present study was conducted at Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) Child Psychiatry outpatient clinics in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. The participating children (n = 99, mean age = 9.45 years, range 6–13 years, 68.7 % boys) were randomly assigned to either FRIENDS (n = 52) or a waitlist control group (n = 47), which received treatment as usual for a period of 3 months before the intervention. The children’s internalising symptoms were assessed using parent- and teacher-report questionnaires (Child Behavior Checklist and Teacher’s Report Form) at referral to treatment, pre-treatment, post-treatment, and six-month follow-up. Results and conclusions. In both groups, there was a medium-sized statistically significant decrease in parent-reported internalising symptoms immediately after the intervention; however, these improvements were not retained at six-month follow-up. Teacher-reported internalising symptoms followed a similar pattern of decrease during the intervention and increase during follow-up; however, these changes were smaller in magnitude and did not reach statistical significance, possibly due to loss of statistical power caused by missing data. Neither parent- or teacher-reports showed an intervention effect, with children’s internalising symptoms exhibiting similar changes regardless of whether they belonged to the intervention group or the waitlist control group, which received treatment as usual during the wait period. These results raise questions on the durability of treatment effects and the superiority of FRIENDS over active waitlist control conditions or treatment as usual when treating children diagnosed with diverse psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disorders in a community setting where treatment adherence and integrity may not be ideal.

Objectives – Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia (HB), also referred to as neonatal jaundice, can alter child’s neurodevelopment, and thus significantly increase infant’s risk for severe neurological disability. Although the majority of neonatal HB cases benign, there are several cases where bilirubin levels grow alarmingly and remain elevated, eventually causing permanent physical harm and frequently altering the development of central nervous system. Research on the long-term effects of HB has been lacking: the follow-ups have been relative short, and there are not many studies focusing on how neonatal HB might influence neurocognition in later adulthood (> 30 year of age). The aim of this study is to further investigate the association between neonatal HB and later cognitive performance in adulthood by using data from over 40-year-long Finnish follow-up study. Methods – In a longitudinal prospective study, data were collected from 125 subject who had experienced neonatal HB and from 77 controls. Cognitive performance was assessed at age of 40 by using various previously validated methods designed to assess executive function and attention, memory, verbal functions, and visuo-perceptual functions. Four factors were formed for neuropsychological variables: Cognitive flexibility, Visual memory and perception, Verbal memory, and Reading. In addition, all subjects had performed WAIS-IV assessments. Data from these assessments were used to create four new factors – Verbal comprehension, Working Memory, Perceptual Reasoning, and Processing Speed – reflecting different cognitive areas. Also, Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ) was included. Linear regression analyses were used to assess the relation between HB-classification and neuropsychological variables. Differences between the groups were further studied by pair-wise comparisons using t-test, after which Mann–Whitney-U test was used to take into account moderate to highly skewed distributions of the variables. Effects of different HB levels on later neurocognition was studied by using linear regression, where sex, mother’s age at birth, and mother’s education level were controlled. Results – Neonatal HB was associated with slower performance in Cognitive Flexibility, and with lower performance in Perceptual Reasoning and in FSIQ. Highest measured neonatal bilirubin levels within HB group had a linear effect on Verbal Comprehension at age of 40; however, the effect was not found in other cognitive domains. Conclusions – Neonatal HB has effect on performance in FSIQ at age of 40 years. In addition, it was associated with both poorer Perceptual Reasoning and slower Cognitive Flexibility. Results might be due to perceptual reasoning’s high vulnerability to neuronal damage and to difficulty of compensating perceptual biological limitations with learning. Since the measured neonatal bilirubin levels within HB group was associated only with lower performance in Verbal Reasoning in this study, it could be concluded that after reaching the inclusion criteria the excess level of bilirubin was no longer significant influence on severity of the outcome.

Objectives. Formal musical training has shown promising effects on auditory discrimination in children, but it is not within reach of every family as it is time-consuming and costly. This study aimed to determine whether at-home musical intervention and activities enhance neural auditory speech sound discrimination accuracy in children with or without a familial dyslexia risk. Methods. A follow-up sample of 113 children with or without risk of dyslexia participated. During the first six months of infancy, 57 of the children with a familial risk participated in at-home music listening intervention, including vocal or instrumental music. Musical activities at home were assessed with a questionnaire at 24 months of age. Speech sound discrimination accuracy was assessed at 28 months, with change-elicited responses derived from EEG. Linear mixed-effects (LME) models were applied to study the association between neural responses and musical enrichment. Results. The LME models showed that the association between speech sound discrimination accuracy and musical activities differed between the groups. In post-hoc comparisons, this association differed between the vocal intervention group and the other risk groups. The group without the familial risk did not differ from the risk groups. Conclusions. The observed bidirectional associations of musical activities and vocal listening intervention with change-related cortical processing potentially reflect two separate mechanisms of neural maturation and compensatory activation. Hence, vocal intervention and musical activities might promote specific aspects of auditory neural development. Understanding these associations is relevant in both guiding future research and in preventing language disorders.

Objectives: Executive function skills are essential in goal-directed behaviour. The assessment of these skills has been based on specific performance-based tasks or subjective questionnaires that measure everyday skills. The EPELI method uses gamification elements, and it has been developed to assess children’s goal-directed behaviour. The method includes both a VR and a computer version, both of which may have their individual benefits. Therefore, it is important to understand the differences between the versions. The aim of the current study was to examine irrelevant actions during EPELI and the differences in actions between the two versions as well as between two separate sessions. The hypothesis was that the number of irrelevant actions does not differ between the versions. Furthermore, the correlation between actions during EPELI and executive function skills in everyday life was examined. It was expected that a high score in BRIEF-questionnaire, which measures challenges in everyday executive functions, would be linked to worse task efficiency and more irrelevant actions. Methods: Participants of the current study were 72 typically developing 9-13 years old children. All participants played EPELI with both VR equipment and a computer. On average there were seven months between the sessions. Half of the participants began with the VR version and the other half began with the computer version. Before the meeting the participants’ guardians filled the BRIEF questionnaire. Irrelevant actions were analysed with generalized linear mixed models. The connection of everyday executive functions skills and EPELI were analysed with correlations. Results and Conclusions: As hypothesised there was no difference in the number of irrelevant actions between the EPELI versions. Instead, the session affected the number of irrelevant actions. During the second session, players had more actions on average than during the first session. The questionnaire that was filled before the first session correlated with the task efficacy and irrelevant actions during EPELI. On the contrary, the correlation was insignificant in the second session. In addition, task efficacy during the computer based EPELI correlated with the questionnaire. Regarding the irrelevant actions, VR equipment did not provide additional insight on top of the computer version. These results suggest that both EPELI versions may complement existing assessment methods. However, the change in the number of irrelevant actions between the two sessions as well as the reasons behind the change should be examined further.

Tavoitteet: Ikääntyneiden kokema yksinäisyys on noussut keskusteluun ja moninaisen tutkimuskentän kohteeksi erityisesti viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana. Ikääntymiseen liittyviä teemoja sekä yksilön että yhteiskunnan näkökulmasta on tärkeä tarkastella väestön ikääntyessä. Pandemiaa vastaan taisteltiin fyysisen eristämisen keinoin, ja tämä kohdistui erityisesti ikääntyneisiin. Tämä on entisestään nostanut huolta ikääntyneiden pärjäämisestä. Keskeistä on miettiä, että oliko pandemian aiheuttamat sivuvahingot, kuten koettu yksinäisyys, suurempi ongelma kuin suorat viruksen riskit terveydelle. Tässä tutkimuksessa kuvataan suomalaisten vanhuspalvelujen asiakkaiden kokemaa yksinäisyyttä korona-aikana. Tutkimuksella tarkastellaan sitä, että minkälaisia vaikutuksia korona-ajan rajoitustoimilla on ikääntyneiden koettuun yksinäisyyteen ja mitä tekijöitä yksinäisyyden kokemisen taustalla on. Tutkimuksessa oletetaan aiempien tutkimusten pohjalta, että korona-ajan rajoitustoimet lisäsivät yksinäisyyden kokemista sekä myös, että yksinäisyyden taustalla on erinäisiä sosiaaliseen vähyyteen liittyviä tekijöitä. Menetelmät: Tämä tutkimus on toteutettu osana Terveyden & hyvinvoinnin laitoksen (THL) ”Vanhus-palveluiden tila” (Vanpal) -tutkimushanketta. Tutkimuksen aineistot koostuvat suomalaisille ympäri-vuorokautisen hoidon ja kotihoidon toimintayksiköille (Vanpal) sekä vanhuspalveluiden asiakkaille (VANKO) toteutetuista sähköisistä kyselyistä, jotka yhdistettiin tämän tutkimuksen analyysejä varten. Poikkileikkausaineistot on kerätty marraskuu 2020 – tammikuu 2021 välisenä aikana. Tämän tutkimuksen tilastolliset analyysit suoritettiin huhtikuussa 2022. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset: Tämän tutkimuksen perusteella voidaan todeta, että vanhuspalvelujen asiakkaat ovat olleet yksinäisiä korona-aikana, sillä sekä kotihoidossa että ympärivuorokautisessa hoidossa lähes 40 % ikääntyneistä kokivat olevansa yksinäisiä korona-aikana eikä palvelumuotojen välillä ollut eroa yksinäisyyden kokemisen määrässä. Yksinäisyyden taustalla olevat tekijät tämän tutkimuksen perusteella voidaan jakaa hoitajiin, läheisiin ja ystäviin sekä yksilöön liittyviin tekijöihin. Tämän tutkimuksen mukaan riittämättömäksi koettu hoitajien aika oli suurin riskitekijä yksinäiseksi itsensä kokemisen taustalla. Tutkimuksen perusteella voidaan todeta, ettei fyysinen eristäminen ei ole ongelmaton rajoitustoimenpide pandemiasta turvautumisessa. Yksinäisyyskriisi on todellinen ja on tärkeää, että asia otetaan vakavasti. Yksinäisyyden kokemiseen voidaan puuttua keskittymällä sosiaalisten tekijöiden määrän sekä laadun parantamiseen sekä vuorovaikutuksen palauttamiseen.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to test if the new phonemic awareness intervention affected the reading skills of Finnish-speaking children in grades 3 to 5 who had had challenges in learning to read or write. The control group attended to a rapid naming intervention. The effects of the interventions were measured with phonological processing, reading and writing tests. In addition, we were interested in what kind of children benefit from the phonemic awareness intervention the most. Because the study and interventions were conducted remotely, we also got some evidence of how children’s reading difficulties can be assessed and rehabilitated remotely. Methods: This study involved 34 Finnish-speaking children who had not learned to read or write as expected. The children were from grades 3rd to 5th and located across Finland. Twenty of them took part in a new phonemic awareness intervention and fourteen in a naming intervention. The groups had congruent background information and reading skills. The phonemic awareness intervention was adapted to the skills of each child. The whole study, including interventions, was done remotely using Zoom. Both interventions lasted four weeks, consisting of twelve 10 to 15 minutes long exercise sessions. Children’s reading and writing skills and some other skills relevant to literacy like phonological awareness, working memory and rapid naming were assessed before and after the intervention. Results and Conclusions: Intervention groups did not significantly differ from each other in the development of phonological processing, reading and writing. Both groups progressed in phonological processing and reading during the intervention. The benefits of the exercises were also separately assessed among children who performed below average in the measured tasks. Even then there were no statistically significant differences between the groups. Neither age nor prior reading skills predicted the magnitude of benefit from phonological awareness intervention. However, this study indicates that literacy skills can be assessed and practiced remotely.

Objectives. This study sought to investigate factors related to the elicitation of music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) in healthy aging to improve overall understanding of the phenomenon and to enhance the selection of optimal musical stimuli to be used for the neurological rehabilitation and care of elderly individuals. The characteristic contents of MEAMs of healthy older individuals were also explored. Methods. 113 healthy senior subjects (aged 60 – 86 years) listened to 70 preselected song excerpts and rated each on a 5-point Likert scale in five domains: valence, emotional intensity, arousal, familiarity and autobiographical salience. Correlational and linear mixed model analyses were conducted to discover the relationship between the rated variables. Eighty-one participants additionally chose to verbally describe their MEAMs in further detail. These submitted inserts (n = 2790) were manually categorized and labelled into non-mutually exclusive groups and sub-groups. Results and conclusions. The analyses revealed that all rating variables had statistically significant positive relationships with one another. Valence, emotional intensity, arousal and familiarity all had significant positive effects on the dependent variable autobiographical salience. Thus, in order to maximally evoke MEAMs in healthy elderly individuals, the chosen musical stimuli should be regarded by the listener as being pleasant, emotionally intense, physiologically arousing and familiar. The contents of elderly individuals’ MEAMs often involved music-related activity, such as singing, dancing or listening to music. They also frequently contained details of specific people or locations. Lastly, they often weren’t very temporally specific and memories from adolescence were more common than other life periods.

Objectives. Motivational contexts exert a profound influence on behavior biasing actions in sometimes detrimental ways. In Pavlovian bias, reward-predicting conditioned cues elicit approach behavior while aversively associated cues elicit withdrawal, with capacity to impact instrumental goal-driven behavior. Similar bias has been suggested to be produced by instrumental learning. Motivational biases have been linked to dopaminergic system but the precise role of dopamine in their modulation is unclear. The present study investigated genetically driven variation in Pavlovian and instrumental learning biases by comparing task performance in subjects carrying different variants of two dopaminergic SNPs, COMT Val108/158Met and DRD2/ANKK1Taq1A. Associations with BMI, diet, age and gender were studied. All subjects were expected to show motivational bias while no direct hypotheses were made concerning genotypic or lifestyle-mediated effects due to exploratory nature of the study. Methods. 160 subjects completed a probabilistic Go/NoGo learning task in an experimental within-subject design. Generalized mixed-model logistic regressions were used to predict differences by genotype in Go responding with and without covariants. Differences by genotype in computationally modelled latent bias estimates were studied with linear regression. Results and Conclusions. Confirming expectations, an overall effect of motivational bias and a general bias towards active responding were found. Relative to Val/Met and A1+, carriers of COMT Val/Val and Taq1A A1- variants showed superior learning of correct Go responses, indicating enhanced instrumental bias. BMI was inversely associated with learning rate while diet, age and gender did not explain variance. Results partly contradict previous findings and highlight the mixed nature of research regarding associations between dopaminergic SNPs and motivational biases.

Objective: Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent psychiatric disorders, but their genetic architecture remains largely unknown. The main objective of this study is to increase the number of known loci through novel phenotyping. The subsequent results are followed with validating analyses, polygenic risk score (PRS) and linkage-disequilibrium score regression (LDSC). Methods: The participants were part of the FinnGen data release 7, totaling 309,136 individuals. First, a network model of non-organic, non-congenital psychiatric disorders was constructed to determine their comorbidity structure by utilizing community detection. Second, diagnoses were scored according to their network loading to the resulting anxiety community. Third, weighted sum scores were computed for the whole sample so that each different diagnosis added to the score by their network loading and this was used as the phenotype for GWAS. Fourth, case-control GWASs of core anxiety disorders and a broader anxiety related disorders were conducted with 10,289 and 33,865 cases, respectively. 186,192 individuals without a history of psychiatric disorders served as controls. Fifth, LDSCs were performed to obtain SNP-heritability estimates. Finally, a PRS of the anxiety sum score was computed and used to predict anxiety disorders in an independent sample of 12,584 individuals from FinnGen data release 9. Results: The network model revealed a comorbidity structure that resembles the current classification according to ICD-10. A community including all core anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) diagnoses, and nothing else, emerged. Anxiety sum score GWAS discovered two genome-wide significant loci in intergenic regions of the genome. The core anxiety one detected one such locus in the gene SORCS3 and the broad anxiety GWAS identified four, one intergenic and three within genes, SEMA6D, RAB27B and CCDC36/KLHDC8B/CCDC71. Heritability estimates for anxiety sum score, core and broad anxiety were 1.98%, 13.1% and 9.5%, respectively. The PRS predicted anxiety disorders in the independent sample (OR = 1.42, p < .001). Conclusions: The network model suggests anxiety disorders tend to co-occur with each other, which includes OCDs. The anxiety sum score phenotype did not prove superior to traditional case-control approaches but did provide complementary findings that would have been otherwise missed. The anxiety sum score PRS performed comparably to other PRSs from other large GWASs, lending support to its validity.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Objective: Safe driving requires several cognitive skills from the driver, the main role of which is to detect, identify and predict risks. Especially inexperienced drivers have problems while identifying risks, but also aging and illness can weaken human feelings and functions. This affects the person's risk perception and impairs the ability to move safely in traffic. However, it is a challenge to spot the deterioration of the driver's driving ability. A simple method for estimating the driving ability will be a great support in detecting problems related to driving ability. Methods: In this study conducted on Hazard Perception method based test called Ajoarvio, which fits to the Finnish transport culture. The test implied the ability to detect risk situations in traffic. The Ajoarvio -test is a computer-assisted program that shows videos about real driving situations. These videos contain an event that represents potential danger to participants or others. There are also videos where there is no danger. The person should react when he/she detects a risk by clicking on the mouse button. The study included 62 people aged 18 - 68. Results: According to the study, the test was able to distinguish the subjects, and the testing experience significantly improved the results. Negative correlation was also observed between age and test result. So the driving experience improved performance, but ageing may weaken it. The test videos also demonstrated a structure related to the videos, where the videos were interpreted as focusing on three areas: 1. reaction and handling speed; 2. vigilance and situational awareness; and, 3. prediction and dynamic vision. Conclusions: The study shows that the test can detect discrepancies in the ability of the subjects to detect risks in traffic