The Pittsburgh Initial Neuropsychological Testing System (PINTS): A neuropsychological screening battery for psychiatric patients

This paper presents a new neuropsychological screening battery for psychiatric patients. It takes 1.5 to 2 hr to administer and briefly assesses general level of performance, memory, language skills, attention, and spatial-constructional abilities. Scoring and profiling are computerized. Initial validation based on discriminant analysis of a group of brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged psychiatric patients yielded a diagnostic accuracy level of 84.51%. Cross-validation on a different population led to a substantial attrition of classificatory accuracy, but cross-validation based on a comparison between two samples drawn from a homogeneous population yielded substantially less attrition. It was concluded that while the battery discriminates accurately in a homogeneous population, it is necessary to develop separate norms for populations varying in level of impairment.     

Homemaking as an occupational plan: Evidence from a national longitudinal study

While several guidelines for avoiding sexist language in career materials have been published, little empirical evidence exists to support the assumption that sexist language in career information has deleterious effects on clients. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of sex-biased language in occupational information on subject interest and attitudes regarding gender appropriateness of occupations. Eighth-grade students read occupational briefs on two occupations presented in either neutral, female-biased, or male-biased language. Results showed a nonsignificant language effect and a significant sex difference in interest in the occupations. A significant three-way interaction (language by subject sex by occupation) was found for gender-appropriateness ratings. The findings, together with previous research, suggest that language may have little impact on specific occupational interests, but may affect other career attitudes related to interests.     

The Mediational Role of Perceived Competence in Psychological Adjustment to Rheumatoid Arthritis1

Chronic illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have been linked to poor psychological adjustment, although individual differences in this relationship have been observed. This study examines the role of perceived competence as a mediator between RA and adjustment. Persons with RA (N= 208) were surveyed three times at 6-month intervals concerning several potential antecedents of adjustment (pain, psychosocial impairment, social support, and control beliefs), self-perceived level of competence, and level of adjustment (life satisfaction and depressive symptomatology). Within each observational period strong evidence was obtained for perceived competence as a mediator of adjustment. Longitudinally (across the year) the data were consistent with a mediational model, but strong evidence establishing mediation was not obtained. Implications of these findings, and the importance of examining the role of perceived competence in adaptation to chronic illness, are discussed.     

A COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION OF REINFORCER IDENTIFICATION PROCESSES FOR PERSONS WITH PROFOUND MULTIPLE HANDICAPS

We evaluated comprehensively a preference assessment for identifying reinforcers for persons with profound multiple handicaps. Four experiments were conducted involving 18 individuals. Results of Experiment 1 replicated previous findings in that the assessment identified student preferences for respective stimuli, and caregiver opinion of preferences did not coincide with the systematic assessment. Results of Experiment 2 indicated highly preferred stimuli were likely to function as reinforcers in training programs, whereas stimuli not highly preferred did not function as reinforcers. Results of Experiment 3 suggested the 12 stimuli used in the assessment represented a comprehensive stimulus set for identifying preferences, although the utility of the set sometimes could be enhanced by caregiver opinion. Results of Experiment 4 indicated the assessment identified preferences likely to be maintained over time. Overall, results are discussed in terms of identifying limits and alternatives to a behavioral teaching technology when applied to persons with profound multiple handicaps.     

Early lexical development in children with focal brain injury

Early lexical development in 27 children with focal brain injury was studied cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Data were obtained from children between 12 and 35 months of age who acquired their lesion prenatally or within the first 6 months of life. Results for the group as a whole provide clear evidence for delays in lexical comprehension and production, and for a larger number of comprehension/production dissociations than would be expected by chance. In addition, a significant number of children were observed having unusual difficulty mastering predication and/or using an atypically high proportion of closed class words (suggesting reliance on holistic/formulaic speech). Analyses by lesion type revealed no effect of lesion size. Analyses according to side of lesion revealed that children with right-hemisphere damage produced a higher proportion of closed class words, suggesting heavy reliance on well-practiced but under-analyzed speech formulae. Children with left-hemisphere damage were slightly better in comprehension than children with right-hemisphere damage. In addition, left posterior lesions were associated with greater delays in expressive language, and delays were more protracted in children with left posterior damage. No differential effects of left posterior damage were found for lexical comprehension.     

A crosslinguistic study of grammaticality judgments in Broca's aphasia

Crosslinguistic studies of sentence comprehension and production in Broca's aphasia have yielded two complementary findings: (1) grammatical morphology appears to be more impaired than word order principles in every language studied, but (2) the degree to which grammatical morphology is retained by aphasic patients depends upon the "strength" or importance of those morphemes in the patient's premorbid language. In an earlier study comparing violations of word order and agreement, we found that English-speaking Broca's aphasics showed greater sensitivity to errors of ordering than to errors of agreement, providing further evidence for the selective vulnerability of morphology. However, because English is a rigid word order language with a relatively weak inflectional system, it could be argued that word order is resilient to brain damage because it is the strongest source of information in this language. The present study compared the performance of English-speaking Broca's aphasics and normal controls with their Italian counterparts in the same grammaticality judgment experiment. Four predictions relating to our previous work were confirmed. (1) Italian aphasics, like their English-speaking counterparts, showed general preservation of grammatical knowledge and (2) they were able to use this knowledge in an "on-line" fashion. (3) Within each language, Broca's aphasics showed greater impairment in their ability to recognize errors of morphological selection (i.e., agreement) compared with errors made by moving the same words to an incorrect position downstream. Nevertheless (4), crosslinguistic differences observed in previous studies of comprehension and production were also observed in this grammaticality judgment task: a processing advantage for agreement errors in Italian normals and aphasics, and a processing advantage for ordering errors in English normals and aphasics.     

Gender-deviant boys compared with normal and clinical control boys

The physical movement and social characteristics of effeminate behavior-problem, referred boys (N=13)were compared with those of normal boys (N=25)and boys (N=12)referred for nongender problems. Parent reports, observer ratings, and videotapes were collected in a series of structured tasks. As expected, mothers described gender-problem sons as much more feminine than the other two groups in interests, activities, and mannerisms. Gender-problem sons were also seen as relatively inactive and introverted. Further, they were non-significantly lower than the clinical control boys in perceived behavior problems, but both groups had marginally more problems than the normal boys. Gender-problem and clinical control boys both showed more body constriction than normal boys in ratings of a videotaped interview. They also both showed less ideal ball-throw form than normal boys on a set of variables scored with slow-motion video. However, in a set of behaviors directly rated in the various tasks, the gender-problem boys gave a uniquely general impression of uncoordination. The groups did not differ on seven additional variables.The research was supported in part by USPHS Grant MH17072. The authors are indebted to the more than two dozen research staff members who contributed many essential services at various stages of the project, to the families who generously participated, to the clinicians who referred their clients to our project, and to Marion Hee for computational assistance.