A Review of MMPI and Rorschach interrelationships in adult samples

The MMPI and Rorschach are consistently ranked among the most widely used psychological assessment instruments across adolescent and adult clinical settings. Although there is an extensive research literature available on each instrument individually, relatively little research attention has been focused on the interrelationships between these measures. This article reviews the literature derived from 37 studies that have reported interrelationships between MMPI and Rorschach variables in adult populations. The results of these studies generally indicate limited or minimal relationships between the MMPI and Rorschach. A number of methodological issues, however, prevent drawing firm conclusions from the literature at this time. Directions for future research are discussed, including consideration of issues related to sources of alpha and beta error and the need for studies examining the incremental validity of combinations of Rorschach and MMPI data in prediction to relevant external criteria.     

Small Wins: Perceptual Focus,Efficacy, and Cooperation in a Stage-Conjunctive Social Dilemma1

A multi-stage social dilemma was used to explore the notion that focusing on part rather than all of a complex problem would affect self-efficacy and action. In two experiments subjects considered a multi-stage game asking them to invest an initial sum of money in hopes of earning a larger bonus to be paid if provision points were met at all stages (a “stage-conjunctive” task). Results indicated that under most conditions considered, presentation of the whole problem encouraged cooperation. The opposite pattern occurred when group members were asked to complete very demanding stages first. We suggest that these results depend strongly on the stage-conjunctive nature of our task.     

Ignorance is not a victimless crime: The case of the caring teacher,part 2

Confusion about the mandated reporting of child abuse was discovered in a case study to be widespread, including at the state level. Such extensive confusion serves to keep citizens from both seeing the depth of suffering to which children are subjected and responding appropriately to their suffering; and it serves to keep society dissociated from the impact violence has on us.     

Linking qualitative and quantitative methods in cross-cultural survey research: Techniques from cognitive science

Survey research with diverse cultural and ethnic minority groups is a complex and challenging endeavor that confronts the researcher with problems related to linguistic and conceptual equivalence and measurement as well as problems related to difficulties that respondents have with the sociocultural dimensions of the survey/interview process. One way to improve the quality of cross-cultural surveys and to insure that the findings are culturally relevant and accurate is to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper proposes that certain qualitative techniques from cognitive science, specifically cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology, are particularly well suited to being combined with survey research. These techniques provide information corresponding to the underlying thought processes of respondents and enable researchers to better understand how different cultural and ethnic groups construe the world. The information obtained can be used improve the formulation of survey questions, design and structure questionnaire formats to coincide with the way particular groups organize concepts, and help researchers understand difficulties respondents may have with the survey/interview process. In addition, the techniques produce data that are easily codifiable and more manageable than traditional qualitative techniques including participant observation and in-depth interviews.     

Comprehension and expression of affect in language-impaired children

Eight children with developmental language impairment (LI) and eight age-, sex-, socioeconomic-status-, and I.Q.-matched controls were given tests of comprehension and expression of affective intent in spoken language and through facial expression. The LI children performed significantly more poorly than did controls in both comprehension and spontaneous expression of vocal affect. On tasks involving emotional facial expression, the opposite results were observed: The LI children were more dramatic in their expression of facial affect than were the controls. Children with language impairment appear to have a deficit in affective comprehension and expression that is modality-specific, i.e., limited to vocal affect. The heightened range of affective facial expression that they demonstrate may be a compensatory mechanism to offset their difficulties with vocal affect.This work was supported by grant 12-203 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, and by NINDS grant NS22343 for the Center for the Study of the Neurological Basis of Language.     

Sex Roles, Interpersonal Control, and Depression: Who Can Get Their Way?

This study is one of a series of investigations examining the contribution of sex roles to the development of depression within a learned helplessness framework. Utilizing 143 pairs of undergraduate female participants, the present study explored subjects′ abilities to gain and maintain control in an interpersonal context. Interpersonal control was operationalized as successful persuasion in a two-person discussion task, wherein one participant had hidden instructions to be maximally persuasive in discussing a questionnaire about social behavior. The results indicated that less successful persuasion was associated with increases in depressed mood. Furthermore, women with high masculinity and low femininity were able to gain interpersonal control regardless of the sex role of their partner. The results also suggested that high femininity is associated both with giving up control in interpersonal tasks and with increases in depressed mood when one is faced with the task of exerting interpersonal control. The findings were interpreted in terms of the importance of sex role characteristics in learned helplessness and depression.     

The effect of maternal depression on maternal ratings of child behavior

There have been continuing concerns about the extent to which maternal depression may influence maternal reports of child behavior. To examine this issue, a series of structural equation models of the relationships between maternal depression and errors in maternal reports of child behavior was proposed and tested. These models assumed that (a) maternal depression was unrelated to maternal reporting behavior; (b) maternal depression causally influenced maternal reporting accuracy; (c) maternal depression was correlated with reporting accuracy. These models were fitted to data on maternal depression and multipleinformant (mother, teacher, child) reports of conduct disorder and attention deficit behaviors for a birth cohort of 12 and 13yearold New Zealand children. The results of model fitting suggested the presence of small to moderate correlations (@#@ r=+.13 to+.40) between maternal depression and maternal reporting errors, indicating the presence of a tendency for increasing maternal depression to be associated with a tendency for mothers to overreport child behavior problems. However, independently of any effects of maternal depression on maternal reporting errors there was evidence of small but significant associations (r=.10 to .17; p<.05)between maternal depression and child conduct disorder and attention deficit behaviors.This research was funded by grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.     

Articulatory rehearsal and phonological storage in working memory

The theoretical distinction between an articulatory control process and a short-term phonological store was supported in five experiments on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the word length effect but not the phonemic similarity effect. In Experiment 2, the two latter effects were found to be independent with auditory presentation. In Experiment 3, the effects of irrelevant speech and word length were found to be independent with visual presentation. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the phonemic similarity effect with a slow presentation rate. Nevertheless, in Experiment 5, articulatory suppression with a conventional presentation rate did not reduce the effect of phonemic similarity, even when a 10-sec interval was interposed between presentation and recall. These results indicate that the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spoken material within the phonological store do not depend on a process of articulatory rehearsal.