Behavioral Mechanisms and Psychopathology

Whether to enhance theoretical understanding or improve clinical efficacy, behavioral disorders and psychopathologies must be examined in terms of their underlying behavioral mechanisms. Diagnostic approaches focus on the symptomatology of psychopathologies and behavioral disorders, limiting their understanding of aberrant behavior to the presenting symptoms alone. The reliance on behavioral mechanisms to explain psychopathologies, however, affords researchers and clinicians a much broader perspective to assess the causes, course, and treatment of aberrant behavior.

Geared principally toward researchers in the behavioral sciences and clinical specialists, Behavioral Mechanisms and Psychopathology is a survey of quantitative and qualitative research designs to isolate and identify behavioral mechanisms—theoretical and physical entities and pathways that mediate behavior in a variety of psychopathologies and behavioral disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, anxiety and eating disorders, and alcoholism and substance abuse.

Contributors

Introduction: Just What Are Behavioral Mechanisms?
—Kurt Salzinger and Mark R. Serper

1. Endophenotypes in Psychiatric Research: Focus on Schizophrenia
   —Assen Jablensky

2. Context, Goals, and Behavioral Regulation in Schizophrenia: Psychological and Neural Mechanisms
   —Deanna M. Barch and Todd S. Braver

3. Psychosocial Mechanisms in Bipolar Disorder
   —Sheri L. Johnson, Daniel Fulford, and Lori Eisner

4. Vulnerability to Unipolar Depression: Cognitive–Behavioral Mechanisms
   —Lauren B. Alloy, Lyn Y. Abramson, David Grant, and Richard Liu

5. Psychopathological Mechanisms Across Anxiety Disorders
   —Simon A. Rego, Katherine L. Muller, and William C. Sanderson

6. Distinguishing Risk Factors From Symptoms: Are Eating Disorders Simply Disordered Eating?
   —Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman

7. Alcohol and Drug Use Disorders
   —Clara M. Bradizza and Paul R. Stasiewicz

Index

About the Editors

Kurt Salzinger, PhD, is senior scholar in residence at Hofstra University's Department of Psychology in Hempstead, New York, and is current president of the Eastern Psychological Association. Dr. Salzinger was executive director for science at the American Psychological Association (APA), professor of psychology at Hofstra University and Polytechnic University of New York, principal research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, program officer at the National Science Foundation, and president of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the APA Council and Board of Directors, president of APA's Divisions 1 (General Psychology) and 25 (Behavior Analysis), and president of the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology. He is chair of the board of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and a member of the Association of Behavior Analysis Council.

Dr. Salzinger was the recipient of the National Science Foundation's Sustained Superior Performance Award and the American Psychopathological Association's Stratton Award; he is also a recipient of the "Most Meritorious Article" Award from the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

Dr. Salzinger was also Presidential Scholar for the Association for Behavior Analysis and is listed in Who's Who in America. He is a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Association for Behavior Analysis.

He is author or editor of 12 books, more than 140 articles and book chapters, and 24 columns. He has conducted research on the behavior of human beings, dogs, rats, and goldfish; schizophrenia; the verbal behavior of children and adults; and the history of psychology.

Mark R. Serper, PhD, is a professor in the clinical psychology program at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, and a supervisor in the Hofstra Psychology Evaluation and Research Center, where he oversees graduate clinical psychology students. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton and completed a clinical internship and fellowship in neuropsychology at the Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City. Previously, he worked in the New York University/Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Service.

Currently, Dr. Serper and his students are examining the clinical and neurocognitive effects of cocaine on schizophrenia patients presenting for emergency treatment. He is specifically interested in attention and memory dysfunctions in schizophrenia patients who abuse cocaine. Dr. Serper is also interested in the neuropsychopharmacology of schizophrenia and in examining the attentional and cognitive deficits that underlie some types of schizophrenic clinical symptoms. He has examined the effects of classical and atypical antipsychotic medication on schizophrenia patients' clinical symptoms and neurocognition.

Dr. Serper's clinical practice interests center on the neuropsychological assessment and cognitive–behavioral treatment in patients with traumatic brain injury and dementia.