Modeling Stability and Change in Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms Using the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales–Big Five (IASR–B5)

In order to test the hypothesis that anal character traits would be reflected in taking a tough stance in regard to the behavior of teenagers and social welfare recipients, two scales measuring anality and social severity, respectively, were developed. An adult nonstudent sample of 562 respondents was administered both instruments in person to person interviews. Modest support for the hypothesis was revealed in the correlation of anality with severity.     

Background beliefs and evidence interpretation

In this paper we argue that it is often adaptive to use one's background beliefs when interpreting information that, from a normative point of view, is incomplete. In both of the experiments reported here participants were presented with an item possessing two features and were asked to judge, in the light of some evidence concerning the features, to which of two categories it was more likely that the item belonged. It was found that when participants received evidence relevant to just one of these hypothesised categories (i.e. evidence that did not form a Bayesian likelihood ratio) they used their background beliefs to interpret this information. In Experiment 2, on the other hand, participants behaved in a broadly Bayesian manner when the evidence they received constituted a completed likelihood ratio. We discuss the circumstances under which participants, when making their judgements, consider the alternative hypothesis. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for an understanding of hypothesis testing, belief revision, and categorisation.     

Central and peripheral vision in early infancy

The size of the effective visual field during the first weeks of life is found to depend on two factors: It increases with age, but it contracts in the face of competition from ongoing activity such as fixation of a central stimulus or non-nutritive sucking.     

Book reviews

SILVERSTEIN, A. (Ed.). Human Communication: Theoretical Explorations. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1975. £ 7.00.

NEWTON, G. and Riesen, A. H. (Eds.). Advances in Psychobiology. Vol. 2. New York: john Wiley & Sons. 1974. Pp 330. £ 12.00

FELDMAN,C. F. et at. The Development of Adaptive Intelligence. San Francisco: Jossey Boss. 1974. Pp. 142 £ 8.75

YARROW, L. J.,Rubinstein, J. L. and Pedersen, F. A. Infant and Environment. New York: Halstead Press. 1974. Pp255. £ 8.65

FREEDMAN, D. G. Human Infancy: an Evolutionary Perpective. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1974. Pp. 212. £ 7.00

FOSS, B. (Ed.0. New Perspectives in Child Development. Harmondsworth: Penguin Education. 1974. Pp. 265. £ 1.00

LEWIS, M. and Rosenblum, L. (Eds.). The Origins of Behaviour,vol. 2, The Origins of fear. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1975. £ 9.70

PIAGET, J. and Inhelder, B. The Origin of the Idea of Chance in Children. London: Routledge & kegan Paul. 1975. Pp. 249. £ 5.25

INHELDER, B. Sinclair,H. and Bovet, M. Learning and the Development of Cognition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1974. Pp308. £ 4.95.

PEILL, E. J. Invention and Discovery of Reality. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. 1975. Pp. 203. £ 6.50

ALCOCK, J. Animal Behaviour: An evolutionary approach. Sunderland, Mass.: sinauer Associaters. 1975. Pp547. £ 6.60

GREGORY, R. L. Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception. duckworth & Co. Ltd. 1974. Ppxi+669. £ 18.00

MANIS, M. An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. Belmont: Broks/Cole. 1971. Pp. vii+318. £ 4.75

KOGAN, A. B. (Ed.). Current Problems in Neurocybernetics. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons 1975. Pp. 147. £ 8.35     

The suppression of q card selections: Evidence for deductive inference in Wason's Selection Task

The results of three experiments investigating the role of deductive inference in Wason's selection task are reported. In Experiment 1, participants received either a standard one-rule problem or a task containing a second rule, which specified an alternative antecedent. Both groups of participants were asked to select those cards that they considered were necessary to test whether the rule common to both problems was true or false. The results showed a significant suppression of q card selections in the two-rule condition. In addition there was weak evidence for both decreased p selection and increased not-q selection. In Experiment 2 we again manipulated number of rules and found suppression of q card selections only. Finally, in Experiment 3 we compared one- and two-rule conditions with a two-rule condition where the second rule specified two alternative antecedents in the form of a disjunction. The q card selections were suppressed in both of the two-rule conditions but there was no effect of whether the second rule contained one or two alternative antecedents. We argue that our results support the claimthat people make inferences about the unseen side of the cards when engaging with the indicative selection task.     

Lexical-rule predicativism about names

Predicativists hold that proper names have predicate-type semantic values. They face an obvious challenge: in many languages (English among them) names normally occur as, what appear to be, grammatical arguments (call these bare occurrences). The standard version of predicativism answers this challenge by positing an unpronounced determiner in bare occurrences. I argue that this is a mistake. Predicativists should draw a distinction between two kinds of semantic type—underived semantic type and derived semantic type. The predicativist thesis concerns the underived semantic type of proper names and underdetermines a view about the semantic type of bare occurrences. I’ll argue that predicativists should hold that bare names are derived individual-denoting expressions. I end by considering what this result means for the relationship between predicativism and other metalinguistic theories of names.     

Connecting DSM-5 Personality Traits and Pathological Beliefs: Toward a Unifying Model

Dissatisfaction with the DSM-IV model of personality disorders has led to the development of alternative conceptualizations, including pathological trait models and models linked to particular theoretical approaches, such as Beck and Freeman’s (1990) cognitive framework. An important issue involves the potential to interweave such models into a single, parsimonious system that combines their distinct advantages. In this study, pathological trait and dysfunctional belief data from 616 individuals in a non-clinical sample were evaluated for commensurability using structural equation modeling. These models can be integrated via five higher-order factors, and that specific dimensions of dysfunctional beliefs can be differentiated based on features of the DSM-5 trait model. Overall, these results suggest that traits provide scaffolding for individual differences in pathological personality, within which dysfunctional beliefs offer specific vectors for clinical intervention in a cognitive framework. Implications of the empirical commensurability of trait and cognitive models are discussed.     

Qualitative and quantitative distinctions in personality disorder

The categorical-dimensional debate has catalyzed a wealth of empirical advances in the study of personality pathology. However, this debate is merely one articulation of a broader conceptual question regarding whether to define and describe psychopathology as a quantitatively extreme expression of normal functioning or as qualitatively distinct in its process. In this article I argue that dynamic models of personality (e.g., object relations, cognitive-affective processing system) offer the conceptual scaffolding to reconcile these seemingly incompatible approaches to characterizing the relationship between normal and pathological personality. I propose that advances in personality assessment that sample behavior and experiences intensively provide the empirical techniques, whereas interpersonal theory offers an integrative theoretical framework, for accomplishing this goal.