Comorbidity of Personality Disorders and Somatization Disorder: A Meta-analytic Review

Meta-analysis of studies assessing the comorbidity of somatization disorder (SD) with one or more personality disorders (PDs) revealed that-contrary to the assertions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition, text revision)-SD co-occurs with the majority of Axis II PDs. Although comorbidity effect sizes (rs) linking SD with paranoid PD and obsessive-compulsive PD were small, effect sizes for antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, avoidant, and dependent PD yielded rs about or above 0.20. Comorbidity information in future versions of the DSM should be revised to reflect the greater number of PDs empirically linked with SD.

Social Competence in Children with Brain Disorders: A Meta-analytic Review

Social competence, i.e. appropriate or effective social functioning, is an important determinant of quality of life. Social competence consists of social skills, social performance and social adjustment. The current paper reviews social skills, in particular emotion recognition performance and its relationship with social adjustment in children with brain disorders. In this review, normal development and the neuro-anatomical correlates of emotion recognition in both healthy children and adults and in various groups of children with brain disorders, will be discussed. A systematic literature search conducted on PubMed, yielded nine papers. Emotion recognition tasks were categorized on the basis of task design and emotional categories to ensure optimal comparison across studies before an explorative meta-analysis was conducted. This meta-analytic review suggests that children with brain disorders show impaired emotion recognition, with the recognition of sad and fearful expressions being most impaired. Performance did not seem to be related to derivative measures of social adjustment. Despite the limited number of studies on a variety of brain disorders and control groups, outcomes were quite consistent across analyses and corresponded largely with the existing literature on development of emotion recognition in typically developing children. More longitudinal prospective studies on emotion recognition are needed to gain insight into recovery and subsequent development of children with distinct brain disorders. This will aid development, selection and implementation of interventions for improvement of social competence and quality of life in children with a brain disorder.     

Reliability of Pass and Fail Decisions on Tests Employing Cut Scores

The study evaluated the reliability of pass and fail classifications for several teacher certification tests. Since these tests are used in the context of a cut score to classify examinees as pass and fail, evaluating the accuracy and consistency of these classifications is important. The classification accuracy and consistency statistics were estimated using the RELCLASS software. Results indicated the following. (1) The 29 teacher certification tests that were examined had a relatively high classification accuracy (0.827 to 0.999) and consistency (0.760 to 0.999). (2) Both classification accuracy and consistency increased as the difference between the mean and cut score increased. (3) Classification accuracy and consistency was higher for multiple-choice (MC) as compared to tests consisting of only constructed-response (CR) items or a combination of CR and MC items.     

Coherence and Reliability: The Case of Overlapping Testimonies

A measure of coherence is said to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) among testimonies implies a higher probability that the witnesses are reliable. Recently, it has been proved that several coherence measures proposed in the literature are reliability conducive in scenarios of equivalent testimonies (Olsson and Schubert 2007; Schubert, to appear). My aim is to investigate which coherence measures turn out to be reliability conducive in the more general scenario where the testimonies do not have to be equivalent. It is shown that four measures are reliability conducive in the present scenario, all of which are ordinally equivalent to the Shogenji measure. I take that to be an argument for the Shogenji measure being a fruitful explication of coherence.     

Testing Models of Associations Between Depression and Parenting Self-efficacy in Mothers: A Meta-analytic Review

Numerous cross-sectional studies confirm the long-theorized association between mothers’ depression and lower parenting self-efficacy (PSE) beliefs. However, cross-sectional studies leave unanswered the direction of this association: Does depression predict PSE? Does PSE predict depression? Are both true? Does the strength of the association between depression and PSE, regardless of the direction, generalize across participant characteristics and study design features? How stable is PSE over time? And how effective are interventions at enhancing PSE? To answer these questions, we conducted a meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies. With 35 eligible studies (22,698 participants), we found support for both models: there was a significant pooled effect of both depression on PSE and of PSE on depression, with nearly identical effect sizes (d?=?????0.21 and ??0.22, respectively). The association was stronger in samples with mothers’ younger average age and studies that measured PSE among mothers relative to during pregnancy. We found a medium degree of stability in the index of PSE, d?=?0.60. Finally, the estimated pooled effect size between being in an intervention group versus control group and PSE was 0.505. Overall, we found support for (1) bidirectional associations between depression and PSE in mothers, (2) the stability of PSE over time, and (3) the strength of the relationship between PSE and depression with intervention. These results suggest the importance of continuing to develop, test, and disseminate interventions to enhance PSE. We interpret these findings in the context of both depression and low PSE having serious consequences for child outcomes and maladaptive parenting.

     

Medical Center Politics and Decisions: A Discussion

Presented as part of a symposium at the 1996 American Psychological Association Convention in Toronto, Canada, this paper reflects an historical overview of the political issues faced by psychologists in academic medical centers. Ivan Mensh, Ph.D., senior psychologist and founding member of the Association of Medical School Psychologists, suggests that those psychologists involved in medical education should learn who the decision makers are and how decisions are made at academic medical centers in order better to assure the continued viability of psychology in those settings.     

单维测验合成信度三种区间估计的比较

已有许多研究建议使用合成信度来估计测验信度, 并报告其置信区间。有三种方法或途径可以计算单维测验合成信度的置信区间, 包括Bootstrap法、Delta法和直接用统计软件(如LISREL)输出的标准误进行计算。本文通过模拟研究进行比较, 发现Delta法与Bootstrap法得到的置信区间相当接近, 但用LISREL输出的标准误计算的与Bootstrap法得到的结果相差很大。推荐用Delta法估计合成信度的置信区间(使用Mplus容易实现), 但不能直接用LISREL输出的标准误来计算。举例说明了如何计算单维测验的合成信度以及用Delta法计算其置信区间。     

A Meta-analytic Review of Components Associated with Parent Training Program Effectiveness

This component analysis used meta-analytic techniques to synthesize the results of 77 published evaluations of parent training programs (i.e., programs that included the active acquisition of parenting skills) to enhance behavior and adjustment in children aged 0-7. Characteristics of program content and delivery method were used to predict effect sizes on measures of parenting behaviors and children's externalizing behavior. After controlling for differences attributable to research design, program components consistently associated with larger effects included increasing positive parent-child interactions and emotional communication skills, teaching parents to use time out and the importance of parenting consistency, and requiring parents to practice new skills with their children during parent training sessions. Program components consistently associated with smaller effects included teaching parents problem solving; teaching parents to promote children's cognitive, academic, or social skills; and providing other, additional services. The results have implications for selection and strengthening of existing parent training programs.     

Athletic Participation, Fraternity Membership, and Sexual Aggression Among College Men: A Meta-analytic Review

A meta-analysis of the data relating either college athletic participation or fraternity membership to attitudes and behaviors associated with sexual aggression was conducted with 29 studies which yielded 57 effect sizes. Membership in each male group was associated to a moderate extent with rape-supportive attitudes, and to a smaller extent with self-report of sexually aggressive behavior. There was much variability in the data that could be partially predicted by variables such as the size of the college, the validity of the study, and the age of the research participants. The involvement of these all-male groups in the perpetuation of hypermasculine attitudes (Mosher and Sirkin 1984) in a patriarchal culture was discussed.     

Psychic Nodules and Therapeutic Impasses: Three Case Studies

I introduce the term “nodule” to call attention to a particular type of irruption into the individual and collective’s psychology. Something happens that punctures ongoing communicative flow, hijacking the individual and group focus. Personal associations and group discourse do not integrate usefully, furthering self-reflection and group work. Rather, a nodule crystallizes: an amalgamation of preoccupying affects and feelings, fantasies, reality statements and suppositions, bodily states, actions, and action-tendencies.

When primarily affecting the individual, nodules become interpersonally consequential: they create therapeutic impasse and may lead to confusion, disorganization, and anarchy in the group and larger social spheres. In this article, I report on the combined individual-group treatment of three individuals struggling with intense and repetitive irruptions, and their impact on their respective groups.     

Reliability and Validity of Three Measures of Multicultural Competency

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of 3 measures of multicultural competency, the Multicultural Counseling Awareness Scale: Form B (MCAS), the Multicultural Awareness‐Knowledge‐and‐Skills Survey (MAKSS), and the Survey of Graduate Students' Experiences with Diversity (GSEDS). Data were collected from 120 master's‐level students from counseling programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs or the equivalent. The findings generally support the psychometric soundness of these surveys, with some important exceptions. Guidelines for their use and directions for additional research are provided.     

“一个包裹三封信”——马尔库塞与海德格尔之间的一段公案

1947年马尔库塞访德期间拜访了自己的昔日导师,并在回美国后不顾友人劝阻给身陷困境的海德格尔寄去了一个包裹。收到包裹后,海德格尔把其中的东西全部分给了从前的学生,自己却丝毫未动。这中间透出几分蹊跷。包裹寄发前后的三封通信,对此事的来龙去脉有所交待。于是,“一个包裹三封信”便引出了20世纪哲学史上一段令人深思的公案。     

Word matching and Lexical Decisions: A Visual Half-Field study

In unilateral Visual Half-Field tasks visuospatial and linguistic processing were compared. In a Word Matching task subjects judged the physical identity of simultaneously presented pairs of three-letter words or legal nonwords. No mainfield effects were found, but word pairs were recognized better and faster as "same" than nonword pairs. Latencies and errors in "different" pairs increased monotonically with position of letter change in the left but not in the right visual field (RVF), suggesting a serial, letter-by-letter way of processing for the right hemisphere and a whole word approach for the left. At this perceptual level the ability to store lexical information from the icon is stressed as a hemisphere-specific factor. In a Lexical Decision task the same subjects judged the same items on the word/nonword dimension. A RVF advantage associated with words as compared to nonwords occurred, as expected. Additional analysis suggests that order and difficulty of tasks may influence females' laterality, as compared to that of males.     

Explaining Murder in Maine: Three Case Studies

Research suggests that popular depictions of crime and criminals are influenced by a dominant ideology that explains crime in terms of the individual failings of criminals, while ignoring social contributions to crime rates. The research reported here, based on an ethnographic content analysis of newspaper depictions of 108 murderers, identifies and describes three case studies of criminal homicide which challenge the dominant ideology by highlighting social contributions to crime. These cases suggest that an alternative ideology which explains crime with reference to institutional processes and collective responsibility may be identified in newspaper accounts of murder in Maine.     

Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Men and Anger: Three Single Case Studies

The treatment of men with anger problems presents significant challenges for practitioners. This article discusses a cognitive-behavioral, individual therapy, approach within the framework of three single case studies involving men. Treatment challenges and methodology are presented. Key treatment issues included: establishing a therapeutic relationship; facilitating understanding of the cognitive basis of anger; and addressing male-role socialization messages and male-identity schema that contributed to the experience and expression of anger in these men. Limitations relative to the small sample (n = 3) and the lack of a randomized control group preclude any definitive statements regarding the effectiveness or generalizability of the intervention. Nevertheless, the study highlights important theoretical and practical concerns for practitioners and future researchers to consider when working with men and anger.     

Meta-analytic connections between forgiveness and health: the moderating effects of forgiveness-related distinctions

Objective: We explore meta-analytic associations between health and forgiveness, testing a number of potential theoretical and methodological factors that could alter that association, including the type of forgiveness measure (e.g. state vs. trait), the type of health measure (i.e. physical vs. psychological) and the target of forgiveness (e.g. self- vs. other-forgiveness).

Design: Our findings below reflect the meta-analysis of 103 independent samples consisting of 606 correlations with a total sample of 26,043 participants. The final sample included papers from 17 countries. The included samples were diverse including students, older adults, divorced mothers, combat veterans and others.

Main Outcome Measures: Various health measures, including physical health outcomes (e.g., blood pressure, cortisol levels, bodily pain) and psychological health outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, PTSD).

Results: We found a reliable overall association between forgiveness and health outcomes. The association was stronger for psychological health than for physical health, though associations with cardiovascular health indicators (i.e. heart-rate and blood pressure) were robust.

Conclusion: The findings provided considerable support to current theorizing about the health benefits of forgiveness. It is plausible that forgiveness might improve psychological health and reduce cardiovascular stress.     

A Meta-analytic Review of the Role of Child Anxiety Sensitivity in Child Anxiety

Conflicting findings exist regarding (1) whether anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a construct distinct from anxiety in children and (2) the specific nature of the role of AS in child anxiety. This study uses meta-analytic techniques to (1) determine whether youth (ages 6–18 years) have been reported to experience AS, (2) examine whether AS differentiates anxiety disordered youth from youth without diagnoses, and (3) ascertain whether AS distinguishes youth with panic disorder from those with other anxiety disorders. The weighted mean effect size analyses included 15 studies and 6,579 participants. Results suggested positive correlational relationships between AS and anxiety for children (r = 0.26) and adolescents (r = 0.36) and higher levels of AS for anxiety disordered youth than non-clinical youth (d = 0.64). Findings tentatively suggested higher levels of AS for youth with panic disorder than youth diagnosed with other anxiety disorders. Implications and future directions in the research of child AS are discussed.