Psychopathic personality traits and temporal perspective: A test of the short time horizon hypothesis

A number of authors have proposed that psychopathic individuals possess an abnormally constricted time horizon (i.e., foreshortened sense of the future). This hypothesis was tested among 101 undergraduates, who were administered a battery of (1) self-report indices of psychopathic personality traits, antisocial behavior, and normal-range personality traits; (2) self-report indices of time perspective; (3) projective tests of time perspective; and (4) laboratory tasks assessing time estimation and capacity for foresight and impulse control. Measures of psychopathy/antisocial behavior tended to be negatively correlated with several self-report indices assessing preoccupation with the future and with a projective task assessing the frequency of thoughts concerning future events, although only one of the correlations with this latter task was significant. In most cases these correlations were not attributable to the variance shared by measures of psychopathy/antisocial behavior and measures of (low) anxiety-proneness, although several correlations decreased substantially after levels of harmavoidance were controlled. In contrast, measures of psychopathy/antisocial behavior were negligibly correlated with laboratory tasks. These results provide mixed support for the short time horizon hypothesis and suggest that further attention to the role of method factors in investigations of future time perspective is warranted.     

A house divided? Cognitive functioning with callosal agenesis

An anatomical and behavioral review of 29 reported cases of corpus callosum agenesis is presented. This review addresses itself to two questions: (1) Do acallosals manifest split-brain symptoms? (2) Is the corpus callosum necessary for the establishment of lateralization? Unlike the commissurotomy cases, acallosals show few symptoms of hemispheric disconnection. Behavioral strategies, use of noncallosal commissures, elaboration of ipsilateral pathways, and bilateral representation of function are discussed and evaluated as possible mechanisms of compensation. An impairment in spatiomotor functioning often accompanies callosal agenesis. Results of acallosal lateralization testing are examined and problems in interpretation are discussed. Current evidence does not conclusively establish that the corpus callosum is needed for lateralized development of some functions. However, the corpus callosum may play a role in the satisfactory performance of “lateralized” (i.e., spatial, linguistic) functions.     

Construction of new scales for the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List

Factor analyses were used to develop new scales for the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL) measuring anxiety, depression, hostility, positive, and sensation-seeking affects. Anxiety, depression, and hostility scales were moderately intercorrelated and a combined score called “dysphoria” was formed from their addition. Positive and sensation-seeking affects were also correlated and combined in a summary score (PASS). The dysphoric and PASS scores were not highly correlated. The number of items checked correlated highly with the positive affect scale, moderately with sensation seeking, and relatively low with the negative affect scales. Internal reliabilities were high and retest reliabilities were low, in conformance with the model for state scales. The anxiety score increased and the positive affect score and number of items checked decreased just prior to a classroom examination. Further plans for scale development are discussed.     

TRAINING FAMILY THERAPISTS: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

This study implemented and evaluated a training program (a written manual, videotaped models, rehearsal, role plays, and performance feedback) designed to teach five subjects the skills to become effective family therapists. The study examined the therapists' use of three target behaviors: instructing, informing, and praising. The therapists, each paired with a parent and a preschool-aged child (2 1/2–4 1/2 yr old), were trained in the clinic to use, and to teach to the parents, several behavioral skills (e.g., praising, planned ignoring, and time-out) relevant to teaching children compliance to parental instructions. A multiple-baseline design across triads (therapist/parent/child) demonstrated that after the training program was instituted, the therapists increased their rates of instructing, praising, and informing the parents; all parents increased attention to compliance, decreased attention to noncompliance, and increased rates of praise to their children; and all children increased their compliance and decreased their noncompliance.     

Problems and prospects in group psychotherapy research

The scientific basis of psychotherapeutic findings involves a number of difficulties which are above all connected with the insufficient state of basic research in this field. In this situation, significant advances can only be expected on the basis of a systematic long-term investigation and research programme. This applies in particular to the problems of personality and efficiency diagnostics and to group process research. On the basis of some intermediate results, it is shown that by the combined and systematic use of procedures a number of possibilities for the differentiated recording of the complex processes in therapeutic groups can be obtained.     

Memory scanning,introversion-extraversion,and levels of processing

Individual differences in information processing were studied in the form of the hypothesis that arousal, as indexed by a personality measure of introversion-extraversion, affects the speed with which certain kinds of processing are completed. The Sternberg paradigm was used, and the results suggested that introverts and extraverts scanned for physical features equally rapidly, but that introverts were slower than extraverts at scanning for the semantic features of category membership. There was limited support for the hypothesis that introverts, thought to be more aroused than extraverts, are less able to engage in shared or parallel processing. It was concluded that information processing in introverts and extraverts may differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively.     

Children's strategies in producing three-dimensional relationships on a two-dimensional surface

It is a common task to give children a picture containing implicit depth cues and to require them to extract depth information from it. The cues are always selected from the adult repertoire; little is known about children's production of their own cues. In this experiment, 5- to 10-year-old children were required to draw one object behind another in a situation in which adults invariably produce the further object partially occluded by the nearer. The results were an age-related decline in the tendency to segregate the objects and an increase in the tendency to group the objects using partial occlusion, with a cross-over at 8 years. At all ages some children drew one object inside the boundary of the other. It is argued that the results are composed of two tendencies, a gradual mastery of discrete scaling phenomena (e.g., “up” on the page means “further”) within a given style, and a set of decisions to be made between incompatible styles.     

Sex-related effects on clinicians' attributions of parental responsibility for child psychopathology

An attempt was made to reproduce and extend previously reported data suggesting the operation of sex-related bias in clinicians' attributions of parental involvement in children's psychopathologies. More and less sex-role traditional male and female family-oriented practitioners were shown contrived profiles in which a boy or girl was described as masculine or feminine role-deficient, and apportioned maternal versus paternal blame, treatment focus, adjunctive therapy need, and likelihood of sabotage. As in the previous study, mothers were implicated slightly more than fathers and also were viewed as requiring relatively greater therapeutic attention by female than by male clinicians. However, several earlier findings were not replicated. Overall, the results offer only marginal support for the notion of sex-related practitioner bias.