Construct validity and case validity in assessment

Clinical assessment relies on both construct validity, which focuses on the accuracy of conclusions about a psychological phenomenon drawn from responses to a measure, and case validity, which focuses on the synthesis of the full range of psychological phenomena pertaining to the concern or question at hand. Whereas construct validity is grounded in understanding causal influences of a distinct phenomenon on responses to various measures and life contexts, case validity encompasses the joint influences of multiple phenomena on individuals' responses. Two sets of distinctions essential to understanding psychological phenomena, hence to understanding construct validity, are (a) implicit and explicit versions of personality constructs and (b) ability and personality as versions of constructs measured by performance tests presenting maximal and typical conditions, respectively. Since both implicit and explicit versions of constructs interface with maximal or typical performance conditions, case validity requires systematic inclusion of these distinctions in assessment protocols.     

Simulating murder: the aversion to harmful action

Diverse lines of evidence point to a basic human aversion to physically harming others. First, we demonstrate that unwillingness to endorse harm in a moral dilemma is predicted by individual differences in aversive reactivity, as indexed by peripheral vasoconstriction. Next, we tested the specific factors that elicit the aversive response to harm. Participants performed actions such as discharging a fake gun into the face of the experimenter, fully informed that the actions were pretend and harmless. These simulated harmful actions increased peripheral vasoconstriction significantly more than did witnessing pretend harmful actions or to performing metabolically matched nonharmful actions. This suggests that the aversion to harmful actions extends beyond empathic concern for victim harm. Together, these studies demonstrate a link between the body and moral decision-making processes.     

Assessment of executive functioning in childhood epilepsy: The Tower of London and BRIEF

Children and adolescents with epilepsy are known to demonstrate executive function dysfunction, including working memory deficits and planning deficits. Accordingly, assessing specific executive function skills is important when evaluating these individuals. The present investigation examined the utility of two measures of executive functions—the Tower of London and the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF)—in a pediatric epilepsy sample. Ninety clinically referred children and adolescents with seizures were included. Both the Tower of London and BRIEF identified executive dysfunction in these individuals, but only the Tower of London variables showed significant relations with epilepsy severity variables such as age of epilepsy onset, seizure frequency, number of antiepileptic medications, etc. Further, the Tower of London and BRIEF variables were uncorrelated. Results indicate that objective measures of executive function deficits are more closely related to epilepsy severity but may not predict observable deficits, as reported by parents. Comprehensive evaluation of such deficits, therefore, should include both objective measures as well as subjective ratings from caregivers.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of a Trauma-Oriented Approach to Treating Prostituted Women in a Prison and a Community Exiting Program

Women who have been prostitutes are social work clients in many clinical, correctional, and community settings. Unique programming that addresses the high levels of trauma symptoms reported by prostituted women has yet to be explored. The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of a group trauma and abuse intervention for prostituted women from two settings, prison and a community exiting program. A quasi-experimental research design was used. Twenty-nine women participated in a 12-week psychoeducational trauma and abuse intervention program called Esuba. All participants reported decreases in trauma symptoms, but the prison group showed a greater number of significant changes in trauma symptomology than the community group. Implications for practice and future research implications are discussed.     

Conscious thoughts from reflex-like processes: A new experimental paradigm for consciousness research

The contents of our conscious mind can seem unpredictable, whimsical, and free from external control. When instructed to attend to a stimulus in a work setting, for example, one might find oneself thinking about household chores. Conscious content thus appears different in nature from reflex action. Under the appropriate conditions, reflexes occur predictably, reliably, and via external control. Despite these intuitions, theorists have proposed that, under certain conditions, conscious content resembles reflexes and arises reliably via external control. We introduce the Reflexive Imagery Task, a paradigm in which, as a function of external control, conscious content is triggered reliably and unintentionally: When instructed to not subvocalize the name of a stimulus object, participants reliably failed to suppress the set-related imagery. This stimulus-elicited content is considered ‘high-level’ content and, in terms of stages of processing, occurs late in the processing stream. We discuss the implications of this paradigm for consciousness research.     

Chickadees fail standardized operant tests for octave equivalence

Octave equivalence occurs when an observer judges notes separated by a doubling in frequency perceptually similar. The octave appears to form the basis of pitch change in all human cultures and thus may be of biological origin. Previously, we developed a nonverbal operant conditioning test of octave generalization and transfer in humans. The results of this testing showed that humans with and without musical training perceive the octave relationship between pitches. Our goal in the current study was to determine whether black-capped chickadees, a North American songbird, perceive octave equivalence. We chose these chickadees because of their reliance on pitch in assessing conspecific vocalizations, our strong background knowledge on their pitch height perception (log-linear perception of frequency), and the phylogenetic disparity between them and humans. Compared to humans, songbirds are highly skilled at using pitch height perception to classify pitches into ranges, independent of the octave. Our results suggest that chickadees used that skill, rather than octave equivalence, to transfer the note-range discrimination from one octave to the next. In contrast, there is evidence that at least some mammals, including humans, do perceive octave equivalence.     

Reply to the Comments of Longuenesse and Ginsborg

In this discussion I respond to some of the criticisms raised by Béatrice Longuenesse and Hannah Ginsborg to my account of Kant's aesthetic theory presents in Kant's Theory of Taste.     

The Dynamics of Visual Reweighting in Healthy and Fall-Prone Older Adults

Multisensory reweighting (MSR) is an adaptive process that prioritizes the visual, vestibular, and somatosensory inputs to provide the most reliable information for postural stability when environmental conditions change. This process is thought to degrade with increasing age and to be particularly deficient in fall-prone versus healthy older adults. In the present study, the authors investigate the dynamics of sensory reweighting, which is not well-understood at any age. Postural sway of young, healthy, and fall-prone older adults was measured in response to large changes in the visual motion stimulus amplitude within a trial. Absolute levels of gain, and the rate of adaptive gain change were examined when visual stimulus amplitude changed from high to low and from low to high. Compared with young adults, gains in both older adult groups were higher when the stimulus amplitude was high. Gains in the fall-prone elderly were higher than both other groups when the stimulus amplitude was low. Both older groups demonstrated slowed sensory reweighting over prolonged time periods when the stimulus amplitude was high. The combination of higher vision gains and slower down weighting in older adults suggest deficits that may contribute to postural instability.