Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Current Views

Obsessive-compulsive disorder has been of central interest to psychoanalysis since Freud's early papers, most particularly in the “Rat Man” case. This early literature spelled out with great clarity the presumed development, psychodynamics, and meaning of obsessional and compulsive symptoms. Unfortunately, since Anna Freud's 1969 review of the subject, virtually nothing has appeared in the psychoanalytic literature that has added to our understanding of the disorder or enhanced the very limited therapeutic influence of psychoanalysis in such cases. Meanwhile, there has been an avalanche of contributions from biological psychiatry and behavioral psychology that have propounded different theories of pathogenesis and have laid claim to significant therapeutic effectiveness. If psychoanalysis is to have credibility in this field, it will have to enlist itself in multidisciplinary research efforts directed toward enriching our knowledge about the psychodynamics and the biological substrate of this illness (more common than once believed) and the efficacy of our efforts to treat it.     

Why so confident? The influence of outcome desirability on selective exposure and likelihood judgment

Previous studies that have directly manipulated outcome desirability have often found little effect on likelihood judgments (i.e., no desirability bias or wishful thinking). The present studies tested whether selections of new information about outcomes would be impacted by outcome desirability, thereby biasing likelihood judgments. In Study 1, participants made predictions about novel outcomes and then selected additional information to read from a buffet. They favored information supporting their prediction, and this fueled an increase in confidence. Studies 2 and 3 directly manipulated outcome desirability through monetary means. If a target outcome (randomly preselected) was made especially desirable, then participants tended to select information that supported the outcome. If made undesirable, less supporting information was selected. Selection bias was again linked to subsequent likelihood judgments. These results constitute novel evidence for the role of selective exposure in cases of overconfidence and desirability bias in likelihood judgments.     

Addressing Parent–Child Conflict: Attachment‐Based Interventions With Parents

This article describes the use of attachment theory to address parent–child conflict. The authors propose that parent–child conflict is attributable to the unmet attachment needs of both children and parents and that attachment insecurity results in problematic patterns of attachment in parent–child relationships. Three conversational frames are presented as a model for applying attachment theory to assist parents in resolving parent–child conflict.     

Explanation of Two Anomalous Results in Statistical Mediation Analysis

Previous studies of different methods of testing mediation models have consistently found two anomalous results. The first result is elevated Type I error rates for the bias-corrected and accelerated bias-corrected bootstrap tests not found in nonresampling tests or in resampling tests that did not include a bias correction. This is of special concern as the bias-corrected bootstrap is often recommended and used due to its higher statistical power compared with other tests. The second result is statistical power reaching an asymptote far below 1.0 and in some conditions even declining slightly as the size of the relationship between X and M, a, increased. Two computer simulations were conducted to examine these findings in greater detail. Results from the first simulation found that the increased Type I error rates for the bias-corrected and accelerated bias-corrected bootstrap are a function of an interaction between the size of the individual paths making up the mediated effect and the sample size, such that elevated Type I error rates occur when the sample size is small and the effect size of the nonzero path is medium or larger. Results from the second simulation found that stagnation and decreases in statistical power as a function of the effect size of the a path occurred primarily when the path between M and Y, b, was small. Two empirical mediation examples are provided using data from a steroid prevention and health promotion program aimed at high school football players (Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids; Goldberg et al., 1996), one to illustrate a possible Type I error for the bias-corrected bootstrap test and a second to illustrate a loss in power related to the size of a. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Same faces, different labels: Generating the cross-race effect in face memory with social category information

Recognition of own-race faces is superior to recognition of other-race faces. In the present experiments, we explored the role of top-down social information in the encoding and recognition of racially ambiguous faces. Hispanic and African American participants studied and were tested on computer-generated ambiguous-race faces (composed of 50 % Hispanic and 50 % African American features; MacLin & Malpass, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 7:98–118, 2001). In Experiment 1, the faces were randomly assigned to two study blocks. In each block, a group label was provided that indicated that those faces belonged to African American or to Hispanic individuals. Both participant groups exhibited superior memory for faces studied in the block with their own-race label. In Experiment 2, the faces were studied in a single block with no labels, but tested in two blocks in which labels were provided. Recognition performance was not influenced by the labeled race at test. Taken together, these results confirm the claim that purely top-down information can yield the well-documented cross-race effect in recognition, and additionally they suggest that the bias takes place at encoding rather than testing.     

Psychiatric Symptom Impairment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The general aim of this study was to examine the relation of psychiatric symptom-induced impairment with other common parameters of mental health in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Prevalence rates are used to illustrate the implications of different criteria for caseness. Parents/teachers completed DSM-IV-referenced rating scales for 6–12 year old children with ASD (N?=?115), the majority of whom were boys (86 %). Most children were rated by parents (81 %) or teachers (86 %) as being socially or academically impaired by symptoms of at least one psychiatric disorder. The most common impairing conditions (parent/teacher) were attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (67 %/71 %), oppositional defiant disorder (35 %/33 %), and anxiety disorder (47 %/34 %), and the combined rates based on either informant were generally much higher. Agreement between symptom cutoff and impairment cutoff was acceptable for most disorders. A larger percentage of youth were impaired by psychiatric symptoms than met symptom cutoff criteria, and the discrepancy between impairment cutoff and clinical cutoff (impairment cutoff plus symptom cutoff) was even greater. Impairment was moderately to highly correlated with both number and severity of symptoms. Parents’ and teachers’ ratings indicated little agreement as to whether a child was impaired. Findings for youth with ASD were similar to non ASD child psychiatry outpatient referrals, but clearly different in several ways from comparable studies of community-based samples.     

Heterosexuals’ Attitudes Toward Transgender People: Findings from a National Probability Sample of U.S. Adults

Using data from a national probability sample of heterosexual U.S. adults (N?=?2,281), the present study describes the distribution and correlates of men’s and women’s attitudes toward transgender people. Feeling thermometer ratings of transgender people were strongly correlated with attitudes toward gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals, but were significantly less favorable. Attitudes toward transgender people were more negative among heterosexual men than women. Negative attitudes were associated with endorsement of a binary conception of gender; higher levels of psychological authoritarianism, political conservatism, and anti-egalitarianism, and (for women) religiosity; and lack of personal contact with sexual minorities. In regression analysis, sexual prejudice accounted for much of the variance in transgender attitudes, but respondent gender, educational level, authoritarianism, anti-egalitarianism, and (for women) religiosity remained significant predictors with sexual prejudice statistically controlled. Implications and directions for future research on attitudes toward transgender people are discussed.     

Parenting Practices and Prospective Levels of Hyperactivity/Inattention Across Early- and Middle-Childhood

This study examined specific parenting practices as predictors of prospective levels of children’s hyperactivity/inattention across early- and middle-childhood. Participants were a mixed-sex community cohort (N?=?976; 52 % boys) aged 4–10 years (M?=?6.5, SD?=?1.3). Measures of parenting practices, hyperactivity/inattention, conduct problems, and maternal education were collected at baseline, and hyperactivity/inattention re-assessed at 12-month follow-up. Analyses examined predictors of 12-month hyperactivity/inattention while controlling for levels at baseline. High levels of parental involvement were associated with reduced levels of hyperactivity/inattention, but only across early childhood. Conversely, increases in child age were associated with increased levels of hyperactivity/inattention across middle-childhood, but only among children exposed to high levels of inconsistent discipline. Inconsistent discipline and parental involvement appear to be uniquely associated with prospective hyperactivity/inattention across childhood, independent of associated conduct problems. Our results further suggest some developmental specificity with regard to the effects of these distinct dimensions of parenting on hyperactivity/inattention at different points in childhood.     

A Compendium of Sales-Related Literature in Customer Relationship Management: Processes and Technologies with Managerial Implications

This paper presents the first comprehensive and systematic review of the sales-related customer relationship management (CRM) literature. Specifically, from a narrowed sample of 253 CRM-related articles, 38 were qualified as the juxtaposition of CRM strategies and technologies with sales relevance. Themes found within this literature include the evolving nature of channel functioning and interfirm relationships, the strategic organizational processes involving the sales function, the evolving nature of the sales role, and both salesperson and customer adoption of CRM technology. Contributions were derived from the extant literature for both theory and practice. The meager number of published works with direct relevance to sales management along with the practicality of the topic suggests that additional CRM research, both conceptual and empirical, would be beneficial.     

Cronbach's Alpha: Review of Limitations and Associated Recommendations

This paper discusses the limitations of Cronbach's alpha as a sole index of reliability, showing how Cronbach's alpha is analytically handicapped to capture important measurement errors and scale dimensionality, and how it is not invariant under variations of scale length, interitem correlation, and sample characteristics. In addition, the limitations and strengths of several recommendations on how to ameliorate these problems were critically reviewed. It was shown that the reliance on Cronbach's alpha as a sole index of reliability is no longer sufficiently warranted. This requires that other indices of internal consistency be reported along with alpha coefficient, and that when a scale is composed of large number of items, factor analysis should be performed, and appropriate internal consistency estimation method applied. This approach, if adopted, will largely minimize and guard against uncritical use of Cronbach's alpha coefficient.