Adjustment, social skills, and self-esteem in college students with symptoms of ADHD

Many studies of ADHD have shown that the problems associated with the disorder continue into adolescence and beyond for 10% to 60% of patients. The present study assesses several aspects of college adjustment, social skills, and self-esteem in a nonreferred sample of college students meeting criteria for a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) diagnosis of ADHD. Twenty-one undergraduate students with symptoms of ADHD are compared to 20 students without significant ADHD symptoms, who match the ADHD students on age, gender, and grade point average. Students with ADHD symptoms show decreased functioning in several areas of college adjustment as well as lower levels of self-reported social skills and self-esteem. The results also suggest that the relation between ADHD and college adjustment is partially mediated by self-reported levels of self-esteem.     

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO REFEREES

Acknowledgement to Referees

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO REFEREES     

Genetic Cancer Risk Assessment and Counseling: Recommendations of the National Society of Genetic Counselors

These cancer genetic counseling recommendations describe the medical, psychosocial, and ethical ramifications of identifying at-risk individuals through cancer risk assessment with or without genetic testing. They were developed by members of the Practice Issues Subcommittee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors Cancer Genetic Counseling Special Interest Group. The information contained in this document is derived from extensive review of the current literature on cancer genetic risk assessment and counseling as well as the personal expertise of genetic counselors specializing in cancer genetics. The recommendations are intended to provide information about the process of genetic counseling and risk assessment for hereditary cancer disorders rather than specific information about individual syndromes. Key components include the intake (medical and family histories), psychosocial assessment (assessment of risk perception), cancer risk assessment (determination and communication of risk), molecular testing for hereditary cancer syndromes (regulations, informed consent, and counseling process), and follow-up considerations. These recommendations should not be construed as dictating an exclusive course of management, nor does use of such recommendations guarantee a particular outcome. These recommendations do not displace a health care provider's professional judgment based on the clinical circumstances of a client.     

Contributions of striatal subregions to place and response learning

The involvement of different subregions of the striatum in place and response learning was examined using a T-maze. Rats were given NMDA lesions of the dorsolateral striatum (DLS), anterior dorsomedial striatum (ADMS), posterior dorsomedial striatum (PDMS), or sham surgery. They were then trained to retrieve food from the west arm of the maze, starting from the south arm, by turning left at the choice point. After 7 d of training, with four trials a day, a probe test was given in which the starting arm is inserted as the north arm, at the opposite side of the maze. A left turn would indicate a "response" strategy; a right turn, a "place" strategy. The rats were then trained for 7 more days, followed by a second probe test. Unlike rats in the other groups, most of the rats in the PDMS group turned left, using the response strategy on both probe tests. These results suggest that the PDMS plays a role in spatially guided behavior.     

An evaluation of the incremental validity of the MMPI-2 Superlative (S) scale in an inpatient psychiatric sample

The MMPI-2 Superlative (S) scale was developed by Butcher and Han (1995) to assess individuals' tendencies to present themselves in an unrealistically positive light. The current study examined the performance of the L, K, and S scales in accurately distinguishing the MMPI-2 profiles of 379 psychiatric inpatients who produced one or more elevations on the basic scale profiles, from 82 psychiatric inpatients who produced no clinical range elevation on any of the eight basic clinical scales (excluding scales 5 and 0). The findings from the present study indicate that the S scale appears to be effective in the identification of defensiveness among psychiatric inpatients, with mean effect sizes in the moderate to large range. The optimal T-score cutoff for identifying defensive responders was 70 for both men and women. Further, results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that the S scale added incrementally to the prediction levels achieved by the optimal combination of the L and K scales.     

Marital conflict and acculturation among Mexican American husbands and wives

This study examined the relationship between acculturation and multiple dimensions of marital conflict among Mexican American husbands and wives. Participants were 151 husbands and wives who were recruited from a health maintenance organization in northern California and individually interviewed. More acculturated husbands and wives engaged in less avoidance of conflict and were more expressive of their feelings in an argument. Husbands who were more acculturated reported more conflict concerning sex and consideration for the other. Bicultural and more acculturated husbands reported that their wives were more verbally and physically aggressive, compared with mono-Mexican husbands. The findings provide evidence that more acculturated husbands and wives are involved in more direct expressions of conflict in their marriages, compared with less acculturated husbands and wives.     

Raters who pursue different goals give different ratings

J. N. Cleveland and K. R. Murphy (1992) suggested that phenomena such as rater errors and interrater disagreements could be understood in terms of differences in the goals pursued by various raters. We measured 19 rating goals of students at the beginning of a semester, grouped them into scales, and correlated these with teacher evaluations collected at the end of the semester. We found significant multiple correlations, both within classes and in an analysis of the pooled sample (adjusting for instructor mean differences, incremental R2 =.08). Measures of rating goals obtained after raters had observed a significant proportion of ratee performance accounted for variance (incremental R2 =.07) not accounted for by measures of goals obtained at the beginning of the semester.     

Age differences in rereading

Younger and older adults read a series of expository and narrative passages twice in order to answer comprehension questions. Reading time was used to index attentional allocation to word, textbase, and situation model processing and to assess shifts in the allocation policy from the first to the second reading. Older readers' comprehension was at least as good as that of younger readers. Analysis of reading times suggested that for both genres, older adults allocated more attention to situation model features than younger adults did on the first reading, whereas young and old allocated attention similarly to this level of representation on the second reading, suggesting that mature readers may give greater priority to situation model construction when first encountering text. Also, for both genres, older adults showed relatively less facilitation than the young in word-level processing in rereading, suggesting that representation at this level is not as firmly established during reading or decays more quickly for older readers. For narrative texts only, this pattern also obtained for textbase processing. Collectively, these data show that age equivalence in text comprehension at the molar level may be accomplished through different processing routes at the molecular level.