Measuring socioeconomic status: reliability and preliminary validity for different approaches

This study investigated issues related to commonly used socioeconomic status (SES) measures in 140 participants from three cities (Atlanta, Boston, and Toronto) in two countries (United States and Canada). Measures of SES were two from the United States (four-factor Hollingshead scale, Nakao and Treas scale) and one from Canada (Blishen, Carroll, and Moore scale). Reliability was examined both within (interrater agreement) and across (intermeasure agreement) measures. Interrater reliability and classification agreement was high for the total sample (ranger = .86 to .91), as were intermeasure correlations and classification agreement (range r = .81 to .88). The weakest agreement across measures was found when families had one wage earner who was female. Validity data for these SES measures with academic and intellectual measures also were obtained. Some support for a simplified approach to measuring SES was found. Implications of these findings for the use of SES in social and behavioral science research are discussed.     

Neuropsychological testing: evolution and emerging trends

Neuropsychological (NP) test batteries have evolved as an amalgam of intelligence tests, various individual measures of "biological" cognition, and sensory and motor testing. The early emphasis of NP testing was to identify "organicity" and central nervous system lesion localization. More recent approaches have emphasized the profiling of performance across individual neurocognitive domains (eg, attention, memory, and language) to facilitate diagnosis and treatment planning. However, the field is still hampered by the use of many tests that are antiquated, excessively long, or of dubious psychometric quality. Some of these problems may have contributed to the current under-utilization of NP testing in diagnostic workups of neuropsychiatric disorders. This paper reviews some of the recent changes in the field that hold promise for substantially shortening assessments, improving diagnostic reliability, and making NP testing more cost-effective and practical.     

Acceptance-based treatment for persons with complex, long standing chronic pain: a preliminary analysis of treatment outcome in comparison to a waiting phase

The concept of acceptance is receiving increased attention as an alternate approach to the suffering that is often associated with persistent and disabling pain. This approach differs from established treatments in that it does not principally focus on reducing pain, but on reducing the distressing and disabling influences of pain as they concern important areas in patients' lives. The present analyses represent a preliminary evaluation of an acceptance-based approach to chronic pain within an interdisciplinary treatment program. One hundred and eight patients with complex chronic pain conditions completed treatment and provided data for the current study. Treatment was conducted in a 3- or 4-week residential or hospital-based format. It included a number of exposure-based, experiential, and other behavior change methods focused on increasing (a) engagement in daily activity regardless of pain and (b) willingness to have pain present without responding to it. Significant improvements in emotional, social, and physical functioning, and healthcare use were demonstrated following treatment. The majority of improvements continued at 3-months post-treatment. Improvements in most outcomes during treatment were correlated with increases in acceptance, supporting the proposed process of treatment.     

Moral conviction: another contributor to attitude strength or something more?

Attitudes held with strong moral conviction (moral mandates) were predicted to have different interpersonal consequences than strong but nonmoral attitudes. After controlling for indices of attitude strength, the authors explored the unique effect of moral conviction on the degree that people preferred greater social (Studies 1 and 2) and physical (Study 3) distance from attitudinally dissimilar others and the effects of moral conviction on group interaction and decision making in attitudinally homogeneous versus heterogeneous groups (Study 4). Results supported the moral mandate hypothesis: Stronger moral conviction led to (a) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (b) intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both intimate (e.g., friend) and distant relationships (e.g., owner of a store one frequents), (c) lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups, and (d) a greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements.     

The Impact of Personality and Religion on Attitudes toward Alcohol among 16–18 Year Olds in Northern Ireland

Background: Previous research demonstrates a negative relationship between attitude toward alcohol and religiosity. However, what is less apparent is if this relationship may, at least in part, be a function of individual differences in personality, as previous research has demonstrated a relationship between certain measures of personality and both attitude toward alcohol and attitude toward religiosity. The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of personality and the relative efficacy of different markers of religiosity in predicting attitude toward alcohol among a sample of 16–18 year olds in Northern Ireland. Method: The Francis Scale of Attitude toward Alcohol (Francis, 1992c. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 31, 45–50) was administered alongside the Abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Francis, Brown, & Philipchalk, 1992. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(4), 443–449), the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (Francis & Stubbs, 1987. Personality and Individual Differences, 8, 741–743) and measures of frequency of personal prayer and church attendance among a sample of 243 16- to 18-year-old sixth-form students in Northern Ireland. Results and conclusion: The data demonstrate that a more prohibitive attitude toward alcohol was correlated with lower psychoticism scores (tendermindedness) and a more positive attitude toward Christianity. Multiple-regression analyses confirm the importance of attitude toward religion in predicting individual differences in attitude toward alcohol.     

False recognition across meaning,language, and stimulus format: Conceptual relatedness and the feeling of familiarity

Four experiments examined contributions of conceptual relatedness and feelings of familiarity to false recognition. Participants first studied lists of unrelated items (e.g., table, lock) followed by a recognition test with three types of items: (1) studied items (e.g., table), (2) semantically related lures (e.g., key), and (3) unrelated lures (e.g., cup). Participants falsely recognized more related than unrelated lures when the stimuli were words (Experiment 1A) and pictures (Experiment 1B), when the studied items and related lures differed in language (Experiment 2), and when they differed in perceptual format (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, an attribution manipulation, designed to make feelings of familiarity nondiagnostic for memory judgments, eliminated the false-recognition effect obtained in Experiment 3. Overall, the study suggests that conceptual relatedness produces false recognition even in the absence of shared perceptual surface features between study and test items, and it does so by generating feelings of familiarity.     

Does selective attention influence the octave illusion?

The octave illusion occurs when each ear receives a sequence of tones alternating by one octave, but with different frequencies in each ear. Most listeners report a high pitch in one ear alternating with a low pitch in the opposite ear. Deutsch and Roll proposed an influential suppression model of the illusion in which the pitch is determined by ear dominance, while the location of this pitch is determined by high-frequency dominance. Deutsch later suggested that this unusual division between 'what' and 'where' mechanisms is facilitated by sequential interactions within the eliciting sequence. A recent study has raised doubts about the suppression model and the role of sequential interactions in the illusion (Chambers et al, 2002 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 28 1288-1302). Here, we examined whether this previous null effect of sequential interactions may have arisen because of uncontrolled influences of selective attention. The results reveal no evidence of a link between selective attention and sequential interactions, thus consolidating doubts about the validity of the suppression model.     

Selective Mutism in Children: Comparison to Youths With and Without Anxiety Disorders

Fifteen children with selective mutism (SM), 15 children with anxiety disorders (AD) without selective mutism, and 15 children without anxiety disorders or selective mutism (CN) were compared to examine the relationship between selective mutism and anxiety. Data were collected from children (age 4–10 years), parents, teachers, and clinicians. Results indicated that children with SM closely resemble children with AD. All children with SM received a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder and 53% received a diagnosis for an additional anxiety disorder. In addition, the SM and AD groups differed substantially from controls with respect to parent- and teacher-rated internalizing behavior problems. No differences among the groups were found with respect to parent-and teacher-reported externalizing behavior problems. The results are consistent with prior research emphasizing the association between selective mutism and anxiety disorders, and suggest that selective mutism may be conceptualized, assessed, and treated as an anxiety-related problem.     

Graduate student WAIS-III scoring accuracy is a function of full scale IQ and complexity of examiner tasks

Research on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) suggests that practicing clinical psychologists and graduate students make item-level scoring errors that affect IQ, index, and subtest scores. Studies have been limited in that Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ) and examiner administration, recording, and scoring tasks have not been systematically varied. In this study, graduate student participants score a high (FSIQ = 112) and low (FSIQ = 85) IQ record form in one of two stimulus conditions: digitized film clips (N = 13) or partially completed record forms (N = 11). Results demonstrate that examiners are less accurate in the high IQ condition, and that recording examinee responses from scoring video clips results in more scoring errors. Obtained FSIQs are significantly higher than criterion IQ scores in the high IQ condition (8.46 for video condition, 2.55 for record form condition). Self-reported proficiency in WAIS-III administration and scoring is positively related to number of scoring errors.