Symptom modelling can be influenced by psychiatric categories: choices for research domain criteria (RDoC)

Psychiatric researchers typically assume that the modelling of psychiatric symptoms is not influenced by psychiatric categories; symptoms are modelled and then grouped into a psychiatric category. I highlight this primarily through analysing research domain criteria (RDoC). RDoC’s importance makes it worth scrutinizing, and this assessment also serves as a case study with relevance for other areas of psychiatry. RDoC takes inadequacies of existing psychiatric categories as holding back causal investigation. Consequently, RDoC aims to circumnavigate existing psychiatric categories by directly investigating the causal basis of symptoms. The unique methodological approach of RDoC exploits the supposed lack of influence of psychiatric categories on symptom modelling, taking psychiatric symptoms as the same regardless of which psychiatric category is employed or if no psychiatric category is employed. But this supposition is not always true. I will show how psychiatric categories can influence symptom modelling, whereby identical behaviours can be considered as different symptoms based on an individual’s psychiatric diagnosis. If the modelling of symptoms is influenced by psychiatric categories, then psychiatric categories will still play a role, a situation which RDoC researchers explicitly aim to avoid. I discuss four ways RDoC could address this issue. This issue also has important implications for factor analysis, cluster analysis, modifying psychiatric categories, and symptom based approaches.     

Extending the search for folk personality constructs: the dimensionality of the personality-relevant proverb domain

College students (95 men and 264 women) rated how well 211 familiar proverbs described their behavior and beliefs. A factor analysis of these data yielded 7 major dimensions; many of the factors were similar to recognized lexical personality factors. Big Five Conscientiousness and Neuroticism were each strongly associated with a single proverb dimension (interpreted as Restraint and Enjoys Life, respectively). Big Five Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Intellect/Imagination were all associated with several proverb dimensions. Agreeableness was most strongly associated with proverb dimensions representing Machiavellian behavior and strong Group Ties, and both Extraversion and Intellect showed particularly notable associations with an Achievement Striving dimension. The 2 remaining proverb dimensions, which represented a belief that Life is Fair and an attitude of Cynicism, could not be accounted for by the Big Five.     

A microcomputer-based laboratory for psychopathology research in rural settings

An Apple-based computer system for research use in rural mental health settings is described. Hardware and software modifications are detailed. Techniques to aid in the acceptance of psychopathology research programs in these rural settings are discussed.     

Child and adolescent psychopathology research: Problems and prospects for the 1990s

In November 1990 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) convened a special conference of over 100 scientists and leaders to outline specific strategies and research initiatives that should be developed to implement the recently released National Plan for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders.Participants included journal editors, educators from psychology and psychiatry, representatives from private foundations, and leaders of research program areas in public funding agencies. Critical knowledge gaps were identified in five areas of child and adolescent psychopathology, including depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, the anxiety disorders, and the developmental disorders. For each of these areas, special emphasis was placed on developing new ideas and obtaining critical input from other areas of investigation. This report summarizes the identified research gaps and recommends research initiatives to implement the National Plan, as outlined by the conference participants.     

Dimensional models of psychopathology: research agenda and clinical utility

This commentary emphasizes the implications for a mental health research agenda that stem from the papers in this special section on dimensional models of psychopathology. These include the need to extend dimensional models to a wider range of psychopathology; the relationship of the dimensions described in these papers, largely based on symptom and self-report measures, to findings from current research in genetics, neuroimaging, and other domains of neuroscience; the need for new scales that can assess the entire range of relevant dimensions with modern psychometric techniques; and ways to employ these dimensions in applied clinical situations. It is concluded that hierarchical dimensional models offer powerful ways of organizing our thinking about psychopathology and will serve to guide many promising avenues of future research.     

Implicit measures of association in psychopathology research

Studies obtaining implicit measures of associations in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., Text Revision; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) Axis I psychopathology are organized into three categories: (a) studies comparing groups having a disorder with controls, (b) experimental validity studies, and (c) incremental and predictive validity studies. In the first category, implicit measures of disorder-relevant associations were consistent with explicit beliefs for some disorders (e.g., specific phobia), but for other disorders evidence was either mixed (e.g., panic disorder) or inconsistent with explicit beliefs (e.g., pain disorder). For substance use disorders and overeating, expected positive and unexpected negative associations with craved substances were found consistently. Contrary to expectation, implicit measures of self-esteem were consistently positive for patients with depressive disorder, social phobia, and body dysmorphic disorder. In the second category, short-term manipulations of disorder-relevant states generally affected implicit measures as expected. Therapeutic interventions affected implicit measures for one type of specific phobia, social phobia, and panic disorder, but not for alcohol use disorders or obesity. In the third category, implicit measures had predictive value for certain psychopathological behaviors, sometimes moderated by the availability of cognitive resources (e.g., for alcohol and food, only when cognitive resources were limited). The strengths of implicit measures include (a) converging evidence for dysfunctional beliefs regarding certain disorders and consistent new insights for other disorders and (b) prediction of some psychopathological behaviors that explicit measures cannot explain. Weaknesses include (a) that findings were inconsistent for some disorders, raising doubts about the validity of the measures, and (b) that understanding of the concept "implicit" is incomplete.     

Progress and innovation: personality disorders and the vanguard of psychopathology research

Important progress in our understanding of the natural course of personality disorders (PDs) is documented in the articles for this special section. This progress could set the stage for ideas developed in the study of PDs to play a central role in research on psychopathology more broadly conceived. The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (Skodol et al., this issue), the Children in the Community Study (Cohen, Crawford, Johnson, & Kasen, this issue), and the McLean Study of Adult Development (Zanarini, Frankenburg, Hennen, Reich, & Silk, this issue) reveal the importance of personality in understanding psychopathology, and point toward a dimensional approach to conceptualizing psychopathology that could also frame categorical clinical decision making processes.     

Planned missing-data designs in experience-sampling research: Monte Carlo simulations of efficient designs for assessing within-person constructs

Experience-sampling research involves trade-offs between the number of questions asked per signal, the number of signals per day, and the number of days. By combining planned missing-data designs and multilevel latent variable modeling, we show how to reduce the items per signal without reducing the number of items. After illustrating different designs using real data, we present two Monte Carlo studies that explored the performance of planned missing-data designs across different within-person and between-person sample sizes and across different patterns of response rates. The missing-data designs yielded unbiased parameter estimates but slightly higher standard errors. With realistic sample sizes, even designs with extensive missingness performed well, so these methods are promising additions to an experience-sampler’s toolbox.     

Effectiveness of NEO-PI-R research validity scales for discriminating analog malingering and genuine psychopathology

We investigated the research validity scales for the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) proposed by Schinka, Kinder, and Kremer (1997): Positive Presentation Management (PPM) and Negative Presentation Management (NPM). Additionally, an experimental analog to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2's (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) F-K index was calculated by subtracting the raw score on PPM from the raw score on NPM (NPM-PPM). In 2 studies, all indexes showed significant between-group differences when samples of analog malingerers (n = 97) were contrasted with psychiatric outpatients (n = 272). The sensitivity and specificity of these validity indexes indicated that although none performed well in extremely low base rate environments, the NPM and NPM-PPM indexes showed promise when the base rate of faking bad rose to higher levels.     

The use of latent trajectory models in psychopathology research

Despite the recent surge in the development of powerful modeling strategies to test questions about individual differences in stability and change over time, these methods are not currently widely used in psychopathology research. In an attempt to further the dissemination of these new methods, the authors present a pedagogical introduction to the structural equation modeling based latent trajectory model, or LTM. They review several different types of LTMs, discuss matching an optimal LTM to a given question of interest, and highlight several issues that might be particularly salient for research in psychopathology. The authors augment each section with a review of published applications of these methods in psychopathology-related research to demonstrate the implementation and interpretation of LTMs in practice.     

Life stress and psychopathology: Progress on research begun with Barbara Snell Dohrenwend

This is a progress report on some of the research that was planned and begun with Barbara Dohrenwend before she died in 1982. The main focus is on two of the studies. One was conducted in New York City; the other is still underway in Israel. The New York study is a retrospective case/control study of social and psychological factors that may put people at risk for developing schizophrenic episodes and episodes of major depression. The Israel research consists of epidemiological, case/control, and family studies of these two disorders together with other types of psychopathology that are inversely related to social class. Preliminary findings from both studies are reported, and their implications for primary prevention are discussed.     

The problem of empirical redundancy of constructs in organizational research: An empirical investigation

Construct empirical redundancy may be a major problem in organizational research today. In this paper, we explain and empirically illustrate a method for investigating this potential problem. We applied the method to examine the empirical redundancy of job satisfaction (JS) and organizational commitment (OC), two well-established organizational constructs. Analysis based on responses from a sample of 292 employees collected at two occasions showed that: (a) the construct-level correlation between JS and OC was very high (.91) and (b) both JS and OC are similarly related to positive affectivity and negative affectivity. These results suggest that the constructs may be empirically indistinguishable, despite their well-established conceptual distinction. These findings illustrate the problem of empirical redundancy of organizational constructs and provide a basis for a possible movement towards parsimony in the realm of constructs that could open the way to more rapid advances in knowledge in organizational research.     

Clinical and research diagnostic criteria for developmental coordination disorder: a review and discussion

The aim of this review was to investigate the selection criteria used in the past in studies of children with developmental motor problems (excluding those suffering from neurological dysfunctions such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, etc.). We therefore conducted an extensive analysis of 176 publications. First, an overview of the main characteristics of these studies (terminology, population, type and purpose) and the selection criteria that are reported in these publications are presented. Following this, the DSM-IV selection criteria for developmental coordination disorder (DCD) are contrasted with the selection criteria reported in 41 publications that have used this terminology to classify the children. The results of this comparison show that the inclusion criteria are largely followed, albeit with little consistency concerning selection instruments and quantitative cut-offs, while adherence to the exclusion criteria is not common practice. Strengths and weaknesses of the DSM-IV criteria, complementary to the previous discussion by Henderson and Barnett in the HMS special issue on DCD in 1998 on this same topic, are discussed. The results of the review also show that many studies have used additional selection criteria related to the specific research questions of the study concerned. In the broader context of clinical practice as well as basic research, the latter result suggests the usefulness of a distinction between Clinical Diagnostic Criteria and Research Diagnostic Criteria. This distinction helps to develop a unifying view on the use of diagnostic criteria for research and clinical practice. We conclude with a number of recommendations concerning the selection criteria for children with DCD.     

Developmental psychopathology. Current research, issues, and directions

Developmental psychopathology refers to the study of clinical dysfunction in the context of maturational and developmental processes. Although the field encompasses the entire life span, the present focus is on childhood. Special characteristics make the study of childhood dysfunction somewhat unique, including the emergence, evolution, and attenuation of seemingly problematic behaviors over the course of development; the manner in which children are referred for clinical evaluation; and complexities in identifying the appropriate foci for clinical intervention. Notwithstanding these obstacles, recent work has advanced considerably in diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of childhood disorders. The present article highlights recent advances in these areas and promising extensions in current research. Many advances have relied heavily on the extension of paradigms developed in research with adults. Additional research is needed that draws on and integrates conceptual and empirical work from developmental psychology.     

Developing clinical effectiveness in psychotherapy training: Action research

This study is an evaluation of a new approach to clinical training in Transactional Analysis using the methodology of action research. The evaluation focuses on the second year of training and placement‐based clinical practice at the Metanoia Institute, UK. The design of the training year was research‐based and used the concept of an ‘internship’ year. The design aimed to close the gaps between clinical practice, supervision and formal training; facilitate translation of theory into practice; and integrate findings from the ‘common factors’ research into effectiveness of psychotherapy. Training and supervision methods were linked and focused on emerging issues in clinical practice and the development of students’ capacity for critical reflection and a research attitude to practice. The evaluation was a naturalistic study which used quantitative and qualitative methodology within the action research framework to reflect on the impact of the training on the participants, the organisation and the clinical practice. The quantitative outcomes show that the project developed the effectiveness of students’ clinical practice and reflexivity. Qualitative analysis gives insight into the experiences of the participants and the emotional impact of the research process.     

Medication status of participants in psychopathology research: selective review of current reporting practices.

The majority of Ss included in studies of psychopathology are typically receiving psychoactive medication. In view of concerns regarding the confounding effects of psychoactive medication, it appears that researchers should provide information regarding at least the drug status of the Ss studied. A review of the articles on adult psychopathology that appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology during a 5-year period, however, revealed that nearly 50% of reports on Ss presumably receiving psychoactive medications failed to specify the medication status of those Ss. Few studies (15%) provided adequate information regarding the types and dosages of psychoactive drugs received by the Ss. It is argued that researchers should provide a full report of the psychoactive drugs received by research participants and, when participants are unmedicated, to indicate the reasons for drug-free status.     

Developing ecological research in judo

Discussions and exchanges identify axes of research. From an example in physiology and perspectives in biomechanics, experimental judo situations nearer real ones may yield complementary data from applied and laboratory research.     

Understanding youth antisocial behavior using neuroscience through a developmental psychopathology lens: Review,integration, and directions for research

Youth antisocial behavior (AB) is an important public health concern impacting perpetrators, victims, and society. Functional neuroimaging is becoming a more common and useful modality for understanding neural correlates of youth AB. Although there has been a recent increase in neuroimaging studies of youth AB and corresponding theoretical articles on the neurobiology of AB, there has been little work critically examining the strengths and weaknesses of individual studies and using this knowledge to inform the design of future studies. Additionally, research on neuroimaging and youth AB has not been integrated within the broader framework of developmental psychopathology. Thus, this paper provides an in-depth review of the youth AB functional neuroimaging literature with the following goals: (1) to evaluate how this literature has informed our understanding of youth AB, (2) to evaluate current neuroimaging studies of youth AB from a developmental psychopathology perspective with a focus on integrating research from neuroscience and developmental psychopathology, as well as placing this research in the context of other related areas (e.g., psychopathy, molecular genetics), and (3) to examine strengths and weaknesses of neuroimaging and behavioral studies of youth AB to suggest how future studies can develop a more informed and integrated understanding of youth AB.