On the integration of personality assessment methods: the Rorschach and MMPI

Despite being the most studied and used personality assessment tools, data from the Rorschach and MMPI generally disagree (Archer & Krishnamurthy, 1993a, 1993b). Independence is proposed to result from at least 3 factors: (a) the methods tap unique levels of personality, (b) personality has a complex organization, and (c) response styles generate considerable method variance that must be considered in nomothetic research. These ideas led to 5 hypotheses, each of which received support. Rorschach and MMPI response styles are uncorrelated, although response styles are quite consistent within a method family. MMPI-2 and Rorschach constructs of dysphoria, psychosis, or wariness are uncorrelated when response styles are ignored. However, robust convergent validity is evident when patients have similar response styles on each method (e.g., for dysphoria, M r = .59) and dysphoria is expressed in opposing ways on each method when response styles are discordant (i.e., M r = -.54). Data from the latter analyses were correlated with genuine clinical phenomena and implications were discussed for clinical practice and research.     

The subliminal perception of movement and the course of autokinesis

The course of autokinesis is shown to be sensitive to the real movement of a surrounding stimulus. With the supraliminal presentation of this stimulus, apparent movement in a direction opposite to that of the real movement is induced. With the subliminal presentation of the same stimulus the real movement serves to inhibit autokinesis by inducing brief periods of stationarity between the phases of upward and downward apparent movement. The results confirm previous findings that the movement of a stimulus may be discriminated without there being any perceptual (phenomenal) adjunct.     

Drawing the sexuality card: Teaching, researching, and living bisexuality

This essay utilizes autoethnography to understand the stigma associated with identifying as bisexual in academic contexts. I weave classroom experiences as teacher and student with academic research, social systems, and critical analysis to highlight the importance of multiple approaches to issues of sexuality. While I recognize the logic of withholding one’s sexual identity in the classroom, I also show how denying this information to students and audiences that need it most closes any potential for dialogue that could improve our social and academic understanding of sexuality. Lived experience accommodates our shifting sense of ourselves as subjects and as objects, as acting upon and being acted upon by the world, of living with and without certainty, of belonging and being estranged (Jackson, 1989: 2).     

Words may not be enough! No increased emotional Stroop effect in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Conflicting evidence has been obtained whether or not patients diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) share an attentional bias towards disorder-related stimuli. Some of these inconsistencies can be accounted for by suboptimal stimuli selection. In consideration of the heterogeneity of OCD, we investigated Stroop interference effects for two classes of OCD items (i.e., washing and checking) in 23 OCD patients and 23 healthy controls. In order to cover prevalent OCD concerns, item compilation was based on experts' appraisals. Patients neither displayed greater immediate as well as delayed Stroop interference nor any bias for OCD and subtype-congruent stimuli. On the contrary, for washing-related items, OCD patients, and here especially washers, displayed facilitation relative to healthy controls. Although the present study at first sight refutes the notion of an attentional bias in OCD in contrast to other anxiety disorders, several potential moderators need to be considered before this account is ultimately dismissed. In particular, an attentional bias may only be elicited using visual material that is more attention-grabbing than verbal stimuli. Finally, blockwise instead of random item administration and greater consideration of individual relevance may be crucial prerequisites for the effect to emerge.     

Segmenting dynamic human action via statistical structure

Human social, cognitive, and linguistic functioning depends on skills for rapidly processing action. Identifying distinct acts within the dynamic motion flow is one basic component of action processing; for example, skill at segmenting action is foundational to action categorization, verb learning, and comprehension of novel action sequences. Yet little is currently known about mechanisms that may subserve action segmentation. The present research documents that adults can register statistical regularities providing clues to action segmentation. This finding provides new evidence that structural knowledge gained by mechanisms such as statistical learning can play a role in action segmentation, and highlights a striking parallel between processing of action and processing in other domains, such as language.     

Peace, scholarship and disciplinary limits: Postcolonial problems and potential in the study of religion

Through its explorations of the work of peace in Sri Lanka, Qadri Ismail's Abiding by Sri Lanka offers both a reconceptualization of democracy and a critique of certain academic disciplines as antithetical to peace and opposition to colonialism. This article considers his criticisms of history and anthropology in order to ask whether, in his terms, it would be possible to have a postcolonial, postempiricist analysis of religion. An exploration of the problems that the study of religion, specifically the category of religion and production of religious authority, pose for Ismail's criteria of postcolonial scholarship points toward the limitations of academic disciplinarity.     

Abiding by Sri Lanka Qadri Ismail's way

Qadri Ismail's book, Abiding by Sri Lanka: On Peace, Place, and Postcoloniality (2005) suggests that literary theory might help Sri Lankans re-imagine the colonial social categories and histories that underwrite their long-running conflict. Ismail also argues that the social sciences (particularly anthropology) and history fail Sri Lanka. They fail either because, like anthropology, their colonial origins render them epistemologically unable to ‘abide by’ Sri Lanka (or to see its politics as political); or because, like history, their embrace of an empiricist belief in an objectively real history betrays them into reconfirming nationalism. My article will argue that while the first part of Ismail's thesis is fascinating and useful (if a bit lacking in practical details), his claim that anthropology and history writing as such must be ‘de-authorized’ is too broad. It concludes by arguing for a cease-fire in Sri Lanka.     

Cognitive functioning, behavior, and quality of life after stroke in childhood.

Rationale: To provide a better understanding of cognitive functioning, motor outcome, behavior and quality of life after childhood stroke and to study the relationship between variables expected to influence rehabilitation and outcome (age at stroke, time elapsed since stroke, lateralization, location and size of lesion). Methods: Children who suffered from stroke between birth and their eighteenth year of life underwent an assessment consisting of cognitive tests (WISC-III, WAIS-R, K-ABC, TAP, Rey-Figure, German Version of the CVLT) and questionnaires (Conner's Scales, KIDSCREEN). Results: Twenty-one patients after stroke in childhood (15 males, mean 11;11 years, SD 4;3, range 6;10-21;2) participated in the study. Mean Intelligence Quotients (IQ) were situated within the normal range (mean Full Scale IQ 96.5, range IQ 79-129). However, significantly more patients showed deficits in various cognitive domains than expected from a healthy population (Performance IQ p = .000; Digit Span p = .000, Arithmetic's p = .007, Divided Attention p = .028, Alertness p = .002). Verbal IQ was significantly better than Performance IQ in 13 of 17 patients, independent of the hemispheric side of lesion. Symptoms of ADHD occurred more often in the patients' sample than in a healthy population (learning difficulties/inattention p = .000; impulsivity/hyperactivity p = .006; psychosomatics p = .006). Certain aspects of quality of life were reduced (autonomy p = .003; parents' relation p = .003; social acceptance p = .037). Three patients had a right-sided hemiparesis, mean values of motor functions of the other patients were slightly impaired (sequential finger movements p = .000, hand alternation p = .001, foot tapping p = .043). In patients without hemiparesis, there was no relation between the lateralization of lesion and motor outcome. Lesion that occurred in the midst of childhood (5-10 years) led to better cognitive outcome than lesion in the very early (0-5 years) or late childhood (10-18 years). Other variables such as presence of seizure, elapsed time since stroke and size of lesion had a small to no impact on prognosis. Conclusion: Moderate cognitive and motor deficits, behavioral problems, and impairment in some aspects of quality of life frequently remain after stroke in childhood. Visuospatial functions are more often reduced than verbal functions, independent of the hemispheric side of lesion. This indicates a functional superiority of verbal skills compared to visuospatial skills in the process of recovery after brain injury. Compared to the cognitive outcome following stroke in adults, cognitive sequelae after childhood stroke do indicate neither the lateralization nor the location of the lesion focus. Age at stroke seems to be the only determining factor influencing cognitive outcome.     

Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants

There is converging evidence that infants are sensitive to prosodic cues from birth onwards and use this kind of information in their earliest steps into the acquisition of words and syntactic regularities of their target language. Regarding word segmentation, it has been found that English-learning infants segment trochaic words by 7.5 months of age, and iambic words only by 10.5 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Houston, D. M., & Newsome, M. (1999). The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology, 39, 159–207]. The question remains how to interpret this finding in relation to results showing that English-learning infants develop a preference for trochaic over iambic words between 6 and 9 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A., & Redanz, N. (1993). Preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. Child Development, 64, 675–687]. In the following, we report the results of four experiments using the headturn preference procedure (HPP) to explore the trochaic bias issue in German- and French-learning infants. For German, a trochaic preference was found at 6 but not at 4 months, suggesting an emergence of this preference between both ages (Experiments 1 and 2). For French, 6-month-old infants did not show a preference for either stress pattern (Experiment 3) while they were found to discriminate between the two stress patterns (Experiment 4). Our findings are the first to demonstrate that the trochaic bias is acquired by 6 months of age, is language specific and can be predicted by the rhythmic properties of the language in acquisition. We discuss the implications of this very early acquisition for our understanding of the emergence of segmentation abilities.