Interpretation of the personality inventory for children-revised (PIC-R): Influence of cognitive impairment

The Personality Inventory for Children-Revised (PIC-R) is a parent-report measure of social-emotional adjustment for children 3 to 16 years of age. The present study examined the clinical value of the PIC-R by exploring the impact of age and developmental status on PIC-R profiles, particularly on the Psychosis (PSY) scale, within a sample of preschool and school-age children referred for assessment of suspected cognitive impairment and learning problems. Compared to school-age children, significantly more preschoolers obtained elevated scores on the Psychosis scale; those preschoolers with cognitive impairments were even more likely to obtain significantly elevated Psychosis scale scores, despite the absence of diagnosed childhood psychosis. No significant relationship was found between Psychosis scale elevations and cognitive impairment in the school-age group. The PIC-R was moderately accurate in identifying cognitively impaired preschoolers but only minimally accurate in identifying cognitively impaired school-age children.     

Domains and facets: hierarchical personality assessment using the revised NEO personality inventory

Personality traits are organized hierarchically, with narrow, specific traits combining to define broad, global factors. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992c) assesses personality at both levels, with six specific facet scales in each of five broad domains. This article describes conceptual issues in specifying facets of a domain and reports evidence on the validity of NEO-PI-R facet scales. Facet analysis-the interpretation of a scale in terms of the specific facets with which it correlates-is illustrated using alternative measures of the five-factor model and occupational scales. Finally, the hierarchical interpretation of personality profiles is discussed. Interpretation on the domain level yields a rapid understanding of the individual interpretation of specific facet scales gives a more detailed assessment.     

Assessing young adolescents' personality with the five-factor personality inventory

The Five-Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI) assesses a person's position on the (Dutch) psycholexically based Big Five factors: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Autonomy. FFPI factor scores are reliable and valid if ratings are made by adults. The present study yields preliminary evidence of whether young adolescents provide reliable and valid self-ratings on this instrument or whether this depends on their cognitive ability level. The sample consisted of a large and representative cohort of youngsters with a mean age of 13 years. The adult structure of the FFPI was generally well replicated, across all ability levels represented in the study. The findings further suggest that young adolescents' factor scores are construct-valid and sufficiently reliable to be used in (group) research settings. However, for reports on individual profiles and decision making, an adolescent's cognitive ability level would need to be rather high. Even then, measuring Autonomy seems challenging.     

Cognitive flexibility in preschoolers: the role of representation activation and maintenance

Preschoolers' lack of cognitive flexibility has often been attributed to perseverative processing. This study investigates alternative potential sources of difficulty such as deficits in activating previously ignored information and in maintaining currently relevant information. In Experiment 1, a new task tapping attentional switching was designed to isolate the difficulty of overriding an initial representation, that is, perseverative processing ('Perseveration' version), and the difficulty of activating a previously ignored representation, that is, activation deficit ('Activation-deficit' version). Three-year-olds' performance suggested that inflexibility may primarily stem from an activation deficit. Control experiments confirmed that the difficulty of the 'Activation-deficit' version could not be attributed to the effect of attraction to novelty. In Experiment 2, 'distraction' errors, alleged to reflect a failure to maintain a relevant representation, and 'perseverative' errors were distinguished. The results highlighted the important role of representation maintenance in flexibility. The present study indicates that preschoolers' lack of cognitive flexibility is multi-determined and prompts us to reconsider the role of perseveration.     

Cognitive and emotional aspects of self-regulation in preschoolers

The goal of the present study was to examine the contribution of executive function (EF) and social cognition to individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) in preschool children. Sixty 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were administered a battery of EF tasks, two theory of mind tasks, a measure of verbal ability, and an ER task. In addition, parents completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning—Preschool Version (BRIEF-P). Performance on the theory of mind tasks as well as parental ratings of executive function was not related to performance on the ER task. However, a component of EF (i.e., inhibition) approached significance with children's displays of positive behaviors during the ER task. Verbal ability was related to the regulation of positive but not negative emotions. Parental ratings of shifting accounted for a significant amount of variance in parental ratings of ER, even after controlling for verbal ability. The findings are discussed in the context of different conceptualizations of the developmental relation between ER and EF.     

The depressive personality disorder inventory and current depressive symptoms: implications for the assessment of depressive personality

The Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (DPDI; Huprich, Margrett, Barthelemy, & Fine, 1996; see Appendix) was created to assess Depressive Personality Disorder in clinical and nonclinical samples. Since its creation, the DPDI has been used in multiple studies, and the psychometric properties of the measure have generally supported its reliability, convergent validity, and construct validity; however, evidence for the measure's discriminant validity has been mixed. Specifically, the DPDI tends to correlate highly with measures of current depressive symptoms, which limits its efficacy in differentiating current depressive symptoms from a depressive personality structure. A principal components analysis of 362 individuals who completed both the DPDI and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) found that 49% of the variance was accounted for in two components. Seven items from the DPDI loaded more strongly on the first component composed of many BDI-II items. These items were removed in order to create a measure believed to assess DPD without the confounding influence of current depressive symptomology. Principal components analysis of the revised measure yielded three components, accounting for 46% of the variance. The revised DPDI was used to calculate convergent, discriminant, and construct validity coefficients from measures used in former studies. Virtually no improvement in the validity coefficients was observed. It is concluded that assessing DPD via self-report is limited in its utility.     

Predicting sex offender institutional adjustment and treatment compliance using the personality assessment inventory

This study examined the utility of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) to identify prison inmates in a mandatory sex offender treatment program prone to engage in institutional misconduct. Archival PAI and institutional disciplinary data were coded for 137 inmates in treatment for an average of 1.59 years. The Antisocial Features scale predicted various forms of general and major infractions (e.g., verbal aggression), with no other scales providing any incremental validity beyond this measure. The Treatment Rejection scale was uniquely but modestly correlated (r=.14) with treatment noncompliance, even though such infractions were rare in this sample.     

Further validation of the psychopathic personality inventory among offenders: personality and behavioral correlates.

The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) is a relatively new self-report measure that has shown considerable promise as an index of psychopathic traits in both nonoffender and offender samples. The present study examined the construct validity and predictive utility of the PPI by examining its association with theoretically relevant scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) among 60 male prison inmates, and its ability to predict institutional misbehavior in an expanded sample (n = 89). As expected, correlations with the PAI scales were highest for the Antisocial Features (ANT) and Aggression (AGG) scales (rs = .68 and .57, respectively). The PPI also predicted various forms of nonviolent and physically aggressive disciplinary infractions significantly better than chance (point biserial correlations ranging from .26 to .37).     

Screening for malingering in a criminal-forensic sample with the personality assessment inventory

In this study, the authors examined how overreporting of psychopathology indices on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; L. C. Morey, 1991) performed as screening measures for malingering in a sample of 166 defendants undergoing pretrial court-ordered evaluations in the federal criminal justice system. Using results from the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS; R. Rogers, R. M. Bagby, & S. E. Dickens, 1992) as the criterion measure of malingering, the authors found that the Negative Impression scale (NIM) was the most effective PAI screening measure (cut score > or = 81 T). NIM performed as well as an established comparison measure from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989; Infrequency [F] cut score > or = 95 T), supporting the use of either of these indices as reasonable screening measures to identify potential malingerers for subsequent evaluation.     

Psychometric evaluation of the depressive personality disorder inventory

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (DPDI; Huprich, Margrett, Barthelemy, & Fine, 1996). The DPDI was found to have strong internal consistency in both an undergraduate and a veteran, psychiatric outpatient population. The DPDI had significant, positive correlations with other measures of depressive personality, supporting its convergent validity. These relationships remained even after controlling for state-like depression, suggesting that the DPDI has incremental validity. The DPDI also significantly predicted scores on measures of interpersonal loss, even after controlling for state-like depression, suggesting that the DPDI has good construct validity. In support of discriminant validity, the DPDI was more correlated with another measure of depressive personality than it was with measures of other personality disorders. Finally, the DPDI had strong diagnostic efficiency statistics: (a) Sensitivity = .82, (b) Specificity = .80, (c) Positive Predictive Power = .75, (d) Negative Predictive Power = .86, and (e) Overall Diagnostic Power = .81. It appears that the DPDI has good psychometric properties.     

Cognitive associations of bimanual haptico-visual recognition in preschoolers.

We have investigated the relation between haptico-visual recognition of objects and cognitive tasks in two large samples of preschoolers (n = 534; n = 750). Children aged 6 years completed a cross-modal task in which they have first to haptically explore an object and second to visually recognize it; they also performed phonological, verbal semantic, and visual tasks. For two consecutive years, bimanual haptico-visual recognition was significantly correlated to performance at all the cognitive tasks. The meaning of this relationship is discussed. The study supports the view that haptico-visual recognition tasks should be used as screening tools for early identification of children at risk of learning difficulties.     

Factor structure of the psychopathic personality inventory: validity and implications for clinical assessment

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by impulsive antisocial deviance in the context of emotional and interpersonal detachment. A factor analysis of the subscales of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) yielded evidence for 2 factors. One factor showed relations with external criteria mirroring those of the emotional-interpersonal facet of psychopathy, including high dominance, low anxiety, and venturesomeness. The other factor showed relations paralleling those of the social deviance facet of psychopathy, including positive correlations with antisocial behavior and substance abuse, negative correlations with socioeconomic status and verbal ability, and personality characteristics including high negative emotionally and low behavioral constraint. Findings support using the PPI to assess these facets of psychopathy in community samples and to explore their behavioral correlates and genetic-neurobiological underpinnings.