A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PERSONALITY: EGYPTIAN AND ENGLISH CHILDREN*

679 Egyptian boys and 696 girls completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, translated into Arabic. Factor comparisons were moderately high for extraversion and social desirability but weak for neuroticism and psychoticism. Suitable item substitution produced a scoring key resulting in adequate reliabilities with the exception of a somewhat low reliability for the boys on extraversion and low reliabilities on psychoticism for both sexes. Sex differences on means of the dimensions were as usual, boys scoring higher than girls on extraversion and psychoticism, but lower on neuroticism and social desirability. Moreover, on comparing Egyptian with English means, using scales of items in common only, the English boys and girls scored higher than their Egyptian counterparts on extraversion but significantly lower on social desirability. British boys scored higher on psychoticism than did Egyptian boys but British girls scored lower than Egyptian girls.     

The 20 questions task with families of schizophrenics: divergent findings

The study attempted to replicate and extend the results of an earlier study by Wild and Shapiro (16), establishing the utility of Mosher and Hornsby's (8) 20 Questions Task as a means of differentiating families with schizophrenic patients from those of psychiatrically hospitalized but nonschizophrenic individuals. In the current study, Wild and Shapiro's original design was expanded and revised by (a) diagnosing patients using Research Diagnostic Criteria rather than hospital diagnoses and (b) including families with schizophrenic daughters and/or one-parent families, in addition to intact families with schizophrenic sons. Families were comparable on age, intelligence, and socioeconomic variables. The results failed to replicate those reported by Wild and Shapiro, and indicated that the 20 Questions Task was sensitive to differences in family constellation and offspring gender as well as offspring diagnosis. The findings suggest that forms of familial communication deviance detected with the 20 Questions Task may not be unique to families of schizophrenics, thus highlighting the need to expand research on family communication deviance in families with schizophrenic offspring to families with varied family constellations and characteristics.     

Group psychotherapy with preadolescent sexual abuse victims: literature review and description of an inner-city group

The demand for therapy groups for child sexual assault victims has risen as detection of abuse has increased, but little has been published about conducting and evaluating such groups. The authors present a comprehensive review of the literature and describe their sixteen-week therapy group with seven eleven- and twelve-year-old girls. Treatment themes, activities, group process issues, and psychometric findings on the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist are discussed. Suggestions for future groups and research are offered.     

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LOGO AMONG BLACK AND WHITE ZIMBABWEAN GIRLS AND BOYS

The cognitive effects of LOGO were examined among 11–12-year-old black and white Zimbabwean girls and boys. Fifty-two experimental group children were exposed to a BBC LOGO programme with a screen turtle. Forty-one control group children received no exposure to computers at school. Pre-tests on four WISC-R subscales were held in January, 1987 and post-tests on the same four WISC-R subscales were held in November/December, 1987. The data were analyzed with multivariate analysis of covariance, using pre-test scores as the covariate. The results suggested that children in the experimental group did better on the WISC-R Arithmetic scale and that black girls exposed to LOGO showed particular gains in spatial reasoning, as measured by the WISC-R Block Design scale. It is concluded that LOGO appears to facilitate cognitive growth. Methodological limitations of the present study are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Cerebral laterality and depression: differences in perceptual asymmetry among diagnostic subtypes

Examined the influence of diagnostic subtype of depression on perceptual asymmetry for dichotic listening and visual tachistoscopic tasks. A total of 65 unmedicated patients with major depressive disorders and 30 normal controls were tested on a verbal and nonverbal task in each modality. Patients diagnosed according to the DSM-III with melancholia had abnormal perceptual asymmetry for dichotic nonsense syllable and complex tone tasks. In contrast, patients having a nonmelancholic "atypical depression" (reactivity of mood with preserved pleasure capacity and associated features) did not differ from normal controls on these tasks, but had an increased incidence of left handedness. Bipolar depression (history of hypomania) differed from unipolar depression in showing abnormal perceptual asymmetry for a tachistoscopic dot enumeration task. Alterations of perceptual asymmetry in melancholia and bipolar depression were consistent with hypothesized right hemisphere dysfunction.     

Relations of sociotropic and autonomous personality characteristics to specific symptoms in depressed patients

A number of writers have suggested that two sets of personality characteristics are associated both with vulnerabilities to depression in response to different classes of events and with different clinical presentations of depression. The present study examined the relations between levels of sociotropic and autonomous personality characteristics and specific, theoretically derived clusters of symptoms in 80 unipolar depressed patients. As was predicted, sociotropy was related to the cluster of symptoms associated with the concept of anxious-reactive depression and was unrelated to the autonomous symptoms cluster. In contrast, the predicted relations of autonomous personality characteristics and symptoms were not found. These results support the idea that the symptom picture in depression may be related to personality characteristics, but they also suggest that the measurement of autonomy may require revision.     

Nonclinical panic in college students: an investigation of prevalence and symptomatology

This article presents data on the prevalence and symptomatology of panic attacks and panic disorder (PD) in a large nonclinical sample (n = 2,375) of college students. Results showed that approximately 12% of the sample had experienced at least one unexpected panic attack and that 2.36% met DSM-III-R criteria for panic disorder. Although there were no sex differences in overall panic attack prevalence, men reported significantly more panic-related worry than women, and women reported a higher panic frequency than men. Compared to subjects who met DSM-III-R criteria for PD, infrequent panickers presented with fewer panic symptoms, fewer panic episodes, less panic-related worry, lower anxiety sensitivity, and less panic-related avoidance. Moreover, compared with PD subjects, the infrequent panickers were much less likely to report fears of dying, going insane, and derealization during a panic attack. The findings provide preliminary support for the role of anxious apprehension as a psychological vulnerability factor in the pathogenesis of panic disorder.     

Family Functioning of Male Alcoholics and Their Female Partners during Periods of Drinking and Abstinence

Family functioning of 20 alcoholic male veterans and their female partners was assessed in relation to drinking (wet) and abstinent (dry) intervals. Repeated measures analyses performed on the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) indicated that on all 7 scales of the FAD, alcoholics and their mates perceived family functioning to be better during dry than wet periods. In contrast to their alcoholic mates, female partners gave healthier ratings to all FAD scales except Roles in the dry condition and Affective Involvement in the wet condition. According to published cutoff scores for healthy and unhealthy family functioning, alcoholics as a group viewed their wet and dry family functioning as unhealthy, although the female group regarded the family's dry Problem Solving and Behavioral Control as healthy. These findings suggest that the family functioning of alcohol-involved couples is biphasic, oscillating between drinking and abstinent periods.     

A paradigm for construction of family therapy tasks

Typically, family therapy task interventions involve direct assignment of specific behaviors, which may or may not encourage client compliance. To enhance the clinician's probability of bringing about progress in treatment, this article broadens the parameters of task intervention to include (a) Direct versus Indirect, (b) Behavioral versus Nonbehavioral, and (c) Paradoxical versus Nonparadoxical dimension alternatives. The resulting 2 x 2 x 2 model, the Family Therapy Task Construction Paradigm, yields eight possible choices for end-of-the-session punctuation. Each option is linked to corresponding treatment contexts and illustrated with examples from productive case vignettes.