Michael Hufford

Pinney Associates

Objective: Cognition is affected by circadian rhythms over the course of a day. Circadian rhythms in cognitive functioning are driven by a variety of both endogenous and exogenous factors. Patients with schizophrenia are known to have disturbed circadian rhythms that can affect their cognitive functioning. We examined the impact of time of day on c...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of milnacipran on body weight in patients with fibromyalgia. ANALYSES WERE CONDUCTED IN THE FOLLOWING GROUPS: patients from three double-blind, placebo-controlled milnacipran trials (3 months, n = 2096; 6 months, n = 1008); 354 patients receiving milnacipran in placebo-controlled trials and doub...

Assessment in clinical psychology typically relies on global retrospective self-reports collected at research or clinic visits, which are limited by recall bias and are not well suited to address how behavior changes over time and across contexts. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) involves repeated sampling of subjects' current behaviors and ex...

Assessment in clinical psychology typically relies on global retrospective self-reports collected at research or clinic visits, which are limited by recall bias and are not well suited to address how behavior changes over time and across contexts. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) involves repeated sampling of subjects' current behaviors and ex...

Alcohol lapses are the modal outcome following treatment for alcohol use disorders, yet many alcohol researchers have encountered limited success in the prediction and prevention of relapse. One hypothesis is that lapses are unpredictable, but another possibility is the complexity of the relapse process is not captured by traditional statistical me...

Increasingly, mobile technologies are used to gather diary data in basic research and clinical studies. This article considers issues relevant to the integration of electronic diary (ED) methods in clinical assessment. EDs can be used to gather rich information regarding clients' day-to-day experiences, aiding diagnosis, treatment planning, treatme...

Despite widespread research, the role of smoking urge in relapse remains unclear. The present study examined the effect of a smoking-urge manipulation on the generation of smoking-related information. During each of 2 experimental sessions, smokers were given 90 s to list as many positive characteristics of smoking, and then 90 s to list as many ne...

The University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) is a widely used measure of readiness to change. To evaluate the URICA's ability to discriminate among alcohol abusers with and without co-occurring major depression, the authors administered it to 193 outpatients court-referred for alcohol treatment. Estimates of internal consistency s...

A growing body of evidence suggests that real-time electronic assessments of pain are preferable to traditional paper-and-pencil measures. We used electronic assessment data derived from a study of patients with fibromyalgia (FM) to examine variability of pain over time and to investigate the implications of pain fluctuation in the context of a cli...

This study was designed to compare 3 commonly used methodologies for assessing clinical pain during trials involving patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome. Baseline characteristics, characteristics over time, and compliance were evaluated for each of the methods. Fourteen patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome were asked to monitor t...

Compliance with a paper diary protocol would be improved by using auditory signaling. Background: Prior research has demonstrated that compliance with the reporting schedule in paper diary protocols is poor. Adults with chronic pain (N = 27) were recruited from the community to participate in a 24-day experience sampling protocol of 3 pain assessme...

Assessing clinical pain is an important task in clinical practice and research. A large empirical literature has documented that patients' pain reports can be systematically biased by a number of methodological factors. This chapter reviews a selection of methodological issues that can affect pain ratings, including: the impact of recall bias, the...

Understanding the relapse process is one of the most important issues in addictive behaviors research. To date, most studies have taken a linear approach toward predicting relapse based on risk factors. Nonlinear dynamical systems theory can be used to describe processes that are not adequately modeled using a linear approach. In particular, the au...

Paper diaries are commonly used in health care and clinical research to assess patient experiences. There is concern that patients do not comply with diary protocols, possibly invalidating the benefit of diary data. Compliance with paper diaries was examined with a paper diary and with an electronic diary that incorporated compliance-enhancing feat...

The methods used to collect information on patient-reported outcomes (PROs) can affect the validity, reliability and sensitivity of the data. This review examines the influence of a variety of methodological issues that occur. In particular, when patients are asked to rely on their memory to aggregate and summarize their experience, a variety of in...

A. A. Stone and S. Shiffman (1994) defined ecological momentary assessment (EMA) as monitoring or sampling strategies that assess phenomena at the moment they occur in natural settings, thus maximizing ecological validity while avoiding retrospective recall. To address the extent to which EMA affects the behaviors and cognitions under observation,...

The validity and value of patient-reported outcomes data are heavily dependent on the methods used to collect the data. This review examines the impact of a variety of methodological issues on the value of patient-reported outcome data. In particular, when patients are asked to self-monitor their experiences, disease episodes and healthcare utiliza...

Background: The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) is a widely used assessment format that allows patients to rate a variety of subjective symptoms on a continuous scale. The typical implementation of a VAS question is a 10cm line anchored on both ends with verbal descriptors representing different extremes of patient experience (e.g., 'Not at all' and 'Ext...

Alcohol expectancies have been found to be related to both alcohol use and abuse. To date, very little research has examined whether state biases known to affect the recall and endorsement of other types of information can influence alcohol expectancies. Mood-congruent memory theory and coping theory are reviewed, and are found to make opposing pre...

Alcohol expectancies have been found to be related to both alcohol use and abuse. To date, very little research has examined whether state biases known to affect the recall and endorsement of other types of information can influence alcohol expectancies. Mood-congruent memory theory and coping theory are reviewed, and are found to make opposing pre...

Alcohol dependence and alcohol intoxication are important risk factors for suicidal behavior. However, the mechanism for the relationship remains unclear. This review presents a conceptual framework relating alcohol to suicidal behavior. Distal risk factors create a statistical potential for suicide. Alcohol dependence, as well as associated comorb...

The collection of real-time, real-world patient experience data that are reliable, valid, and sensitive to drug effects presents many challenges to clinical trial sponsors and investigators. Recent developments in electronic patient experience diary (PED) systems highlight the importance of building a robust, subject-friendly system that can enhanc...

Faced with a large body of contradictory findings, investigators have begun to propose cognitive factors that moderate the effects of alcohol on stress. We tested the hypothesis, stemming from the appraisal-disruption model (ADM), that alcohol would be more likely to reduce stress when consumed prior to exposure to a stressor than when consumed fol...

Describes the rationale for moving away from retrospective measurement of clinical phenomena by reviewing the inaccuracies and biases associated with many types of retrospective reports. The use of diaries, experience sampling methods, and self-monitoring is reviewed as steps in the progression from retrospective to momentary data collection. Next,...

We studied the relationship of self-efficacy expectancies measured during inpatient alcohol treatment and time to first drink and time to relapse following hospitalization. We also examined whether the relationship of in-hospital self-efficacy and posttreatment drinking outcome differed by gender. We measured self-efficacy expectancies using the Si...

Presents two case examples of diagnostic ambiguity and examines the empirical literature to identify appropriate empirically supported treatments (ESTs). The author contends that the examples outlined show the discontinuity between clients with comorbid psychopathology and ESTs. He suggests two agendas for future research and practice: (1) the inev...

Presents two case examples of diagnostic ambiguity and examines the empirical literature to identify appropriate empirically supported treatments (ESTs). The author contends that the examples outlined show the discontinuity between clients with comorbid psychopathology and ESTs. He suggests two agendas for future research and practice: (1) the inev...

Research and treatment assessments often rely on retrospective recall of events. The accuracy of recall was tested using accounts of smoking lapse episodes from 127 participants who had quit smoking, and lapses and temptations were recorded in near-real time using a hand-held computer. These computer records were compared with retrospective account...

Research and treatment assessments often rely on retrospective recall of events. The accuracy of recall was tested using accounts of smoking relapse episodes from 127 participants who had quit smoking, and lapses and temptations were recorded in near-real time using a hand-held computer. These computer records were compared with retrospective accou...

Discusses the use of cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression in the elderly in light of the fact that few such treatments have been applied to this population. The authors describe several models of CBT including one that involves a problem solving technique. It is shown how CBT can offer innovative approaches to the problems of treatment...

Neuropsychologists use a variety of stimuli to investigate semantic memory functioning. Methodological concerns limit interpretation of performance differences between patients and nonpatient controls. The present study describes the development of a brief measure of semantic memory. Results indicate that this measure of semantic priming provides a...

This study used an established facial coding system to assess participants' immediate affective responses during a smoking cue exposure protocol. Current smokers, randomly assigned to either a 12-hr smoking-deprived or a smoking-nondeprived condition, were exposed to both smoking and control cues. During exposure, the authors manipulated participan...

This research examines the effects of manipulations designed to induce an urge to smoke on cognitive resources. Two cue-exposure experiments were conducted in which current smokers' reported urge to smoke and cognitive resources, as measured by a secondary reaction time (RT) probe, were assessed. In each study, subjects came to the laboratory twice...