Body Image Alterations in Adults Due to Cerebrovascular Insufficiency

Changes in body image boundary were investigated in eighty-one patients with cerebrovascular insufficiency having varying degrees and sites of impairment. Barrier and Penetration scores were derived from the Rorschach according to the Fisher and Cleveland technique and were correlated with several indices of impairment and analyzed for changes over a two year period. Penetration scores were associated with three measures of intellectual ability. Barrier scores were correlated with verbal ability and vertebrobasilar angiogram. Barrier changed over time with a quadratic trend while Penetration did not change.     

A multigroup item response theory analysis of the psychopathy checklist--revised

Item response theory was used to investigate the functioning of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991, 2003) in several offender populations. With male criminal offenders (N=3,847) as a reference group, differential item functioning analyses were performed for 3 comparison groups: female criminal offenders (N=1,219), male forensic psychiatric patients (N=1,246), and male criminal offenders scored from file reviews (N=2,626). Results are discussed in the context of the 2-factor, 4-facet model for the PCL-R (R. D. Hare, 2003; J. Parker, G. Sitarenios, & R. D. Hare, 2003). Application of a multigroup graded response model to all 4 groups suggests scalar equivalence may hold at least approximately for each population, although the PCL-R provided slightly greater information about the latent trait of psychopathy for male criminal offenders scored from the standard procedure.     

Assessing emotion sensitivity in female offenders with borderline personality symptoms: results from a fear-potentiated startle paradigm

An instructed fear-conditioning paradigm was used to measure fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in a sample of 80 Caucasian, female offenders assessed using the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features Scale (Morey, 1991). As predicted, women with higher levels of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) symptoms showed significantly greater FPS than women with lower levels when required to focus attention on the threat-relevant dimension of the experimental stimuli. However, FPS was not greater for women with higher levels of BPD symptoms in the two conditions that required participants to direct attention away from the threat-relevant dimension. These results highlight the importance of attention for moderating the association between BPD symptoms and exaggerated responses to threat-relevant information and may, therefore, help to resolve the inconsistent evidence on emotional reactivity in BPD. Moreover, the potential importance of attentional factors in BPD may shed new light on prominent symptoms of the disorder and existing theoretical perspectives on BPD.     

Degrees of belief in god: a measure of belief for use in cross culture

Belief scales with good psychometric properties are relatively rare. Several scales that claim to measure levels of belief use behavioural indicators that do not necessarily reflect belief, and others refer to specific religions and do not consider ethnic factors or cultural differences. This paper introduces a 6-item multicultural belief scale (the Degrees of Belief in God Scale), based on the results of previous exploratory factor analyses. 2124 Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swiss, Turkish and ex-Yugoslavian subjects including Atheists, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Moslems and Protestants contributed to the development of the new instrument. Principal component analysis (PCA) followed by varimax-standardized rotation was used to identify (first order) dimensions of belief. In order to identify the shared or common variance in all groups defined by religion and culture of origin a hierarchical analysis of oblique factors was computed for each group. The paper also reports test–retest reliability as well as face, criterion and construct validity data. The resulting Degrees of Belief in God Scale has exceptional psychometric properties and the measurements are equivalent across the sampled cultures and religions.     

An analysis of adolescent suicidal ideation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the predominant variables (i.e., hopelessness, depression, anxiety, negative life stress, family social climate, coping behaviors) theorized to be etiologically significant in the production of adolescent suicidal ideation. Subjects were 433 normal, midwestern high school students. ANOVAs revealed significant sex differences in level of suicidal ideation over the past year. Therefore, separate path analyses were conducted for males and females. Various statistical tests revealed that assumptions of path analysis were upheld by the male and female models that emerged. For males, levels of depression and family cohesiveness were found to have direct effects on the criterion. For females, levels of depression and trait anxiety were found to have direct effects on the criterion. The remaining significant variables in both models only indirectly affected the criterion. This paper is based on the dissertation research completed by the first author. Portions of the paper were presented at the 98th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (Boston, MA), August 1990. This study was funded in part by a University of South Dakota General Research Fund grant awarded to the second author.     

Facilitating Responding in Accordance with the Relational Frame of Comparison: Systematic Empirical Analyses

The Psychological Record - The current article examines patterns of adult responding to different types of more-than and less-than relations, as well as procedures for facilitating responding in...     

Forebrain mechanisms related to internal inhibition and sleep

In experiments performed on cats and monkeys over the past nine years a “forebrain inhibitory system” has been investigated through recording of neurophysiologic, behavioral, reflexive and intracellular parameters. This forebrain system is capable of expressing its inhibitory influences widely throughout the body, and on both somatic and visceral mechanisms. Electrical stimulation within this system has been shown to: a) suppress ongoing behavior, synchronize the EEG and induce the initial stages of sleep. These behavioral effects could be conditioned to indifferent stimuli. Other studies have shown that lesions within this system result in marked alterations in sleep patterns and in behavioral hyperactivity,b) Inhibit remarkably monosynaptic and polysynaptic reflexes in the brain stem and at cervical and lumbosacral levels of the spinal cord.c) Induce hyperpolarizing potentials within motoneurons of the final common path. Cl infusion caused the hyperpolarization to change to depolarization. Studies of the “forebrain inhibitory system” indicate that at least in part it is a descending system involving both multisynaptic (loop) pathways and direct pathways. It is felt that descending circuits from the forebrain to inhibitory centers in the medulla are responsible for the effects observed at the final common paths from stimulation in the forebrain. It has been found that behaviorally, reflexively and intracellularly, the “forebrain inhibitory system” acts generally in opposition to the reticular activating system of the brain stem, and that the achievement of an organism’s overt behavioral patterns depends on the functional state of both systems.