Civic engagement patterns and transitions over 8 years: the AmeriCorps national study

Latent transition analysis was used to examine civic engagement transitions across 2 waves spanning 8 years in a sample of AmeriCorps participants and a comparison group (N = 1,344; 77% female). Latent indicators of civic engagement included volunteering, community participation, civic organizational involvement, local and national voting, civic consciousness, and perceptions of civic knowledge. Three latent statuses were identified; inactive, voting involved, and highly committed. Consistent with life cycle theories of political engagement, the inactive status was most prevalent at Wave 1 and the voting-involved status most prevalent at Wave 4. AmeriCorps members were less involved in voting at Wave 1 but, among voters, were more likely to become highly committed by Wave 4. Compared with those who did not attend college, those who did had higher levels of civic engagement initially and over time. Young participants and Asian youths demonstrated lower levels of involvement initially compared with older participants or White youths. Findings suggest that national service programs geared toward young people who are not in college may hold promise for addressing gaps in civic engagement.     

Longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling analyses of California Psychological Inventory data from age 33 to 75: an examination of stability and change in adult personality

Twenty aspects of personality assessed via the California Psychological Inventory (CPI; Gough & Bradley, 1996) from age 33 to 75 were examined in a sample of 279 individuals. Oakland Growth Study and Berkeley Guidance Study members completed the CPI a maximum of 4 times. We used longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to ask the following: Which personality characteristics change and which do not? Five CPI scales showed uniform lack of change, 2 showed heterogeneous change giving an averaged lack of change, 4 showed linear increases with age, 2 showed linear decreases with age, 4 showed gender or sample differences in linear change, 1 showed a quadratic peak, and 2 showed a quadratic nadir. The utility of HLM becomes apparent in portraying the complexity of personality change and stability.     

Juvenile offenders' Miranda rights comprehension and self-reported likelihood of offering false confessions

This study examined whether age, IQ, and history of special education predicted Miranda rights comprehension and the self-reported tendency to falsely confess to a crime among 55 delinquent boys. The Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments-II, a revised version of Grisso's Instruments for Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of Miranda Rights, were developed for this study and are described in detail in this article. Results revealed that age, IQ, and special education were related to comprehension of Miranda rights. When Miranda comprehension, age, and IQ were simultaneously tested as predictor variables of the self-reported likelihood of false confessions, only age served as an independent predictor. Research and policy implications of this study are presented, and recommendations for use of the original and revised instruments are reviewed.     

Individualized assessment moderates the impact of HIPAA privacy rules

In this comment, I express appreciation of Erard's (this issue) review, and urge psychologists to continue to protect test security. I disagree with Erard's belief that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is salient for nonhealth forensic issues. I then review some ways in which individualized assessment practices can moderate the negative impact of the HIPPA privacy rules. Assessors can use tests as a ground forjoint exploration of the client's experience, behavior, and their contexts. Clients may later ask for a review of test data and collaborative life findings, but they rarely are interested in acquiring test records. Attorneys, after discovering that assessment conclusions are based largely on events/contexts provided by the client and others, are less interested in acquiring test records that the psychologist used as tools rather than as evidence for conclusions.     

Parental Anxiety Disorders, Child Anxiety Disorders, and the Perceived Parent–Child Relationship in an Australian High-Risk Sample

This study was designed to explore the role of perceived parenting behavior in the relationship between parent and offspring anxiety disorders in a high-risk sample of adolescents. We examined the relationship between parental and child anxiety disorders and tested whether perceived parenting behavior acted as a mediator between these variables. Analyses were performed on a high-risk sample of 816 fifteen-year-olds drawn from a birth cohort in Queensland, Australia. Parental depression and income were covaried. Maternal anxiety disorder significantly predicted the presence of anxiety disorders in children; the association between paternal anxiety disorder and child anxiety disorder was not significant. There was no evidence that perceived parenting played a mediating role in the association between mother and child anxiety disorders. These results replicate earlier studies' findings of elevated rates of anxiety disorders among the offspring of anxious parents, but only when the child's mother is the anxious parent.     

Defense mechanisms predict differential lifespan change in Self-control and Self-acceptance

Individual differences in the direction of personality change over a period of 40 years for two scales of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI: Gough & Bradley, 1996) - Self-control (Sc) and Self-acceptance (Sa) - as previously identified through the use of longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling (Jones, Livson & Peskin, 2003), were studied in a sample of men and women from the Institute of Human Development Intergenerational Studies. It was hypothesized that the use of defense mechanisms, as assessed by the Defense Mechanism Manual (DMM: Cramer, 1991a), would be differentially related to change in Sc and Sa, depending on whether participants were increasing or decreasing in that trait over time. Results indicated that for participants who decreased in Sa, the use of Denial was associated with less decrease. For participants who increased in Sc, the use of Identification was associated with less increase.     

Somnambulism induced by quetiapine: two case reports and a review of the literature

Somnambulism, a previously unreported side effect of quetiapine, is described in two cases. Both cases involved individuals who had no prior or family history of somnambulism and had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The possible significance of this will also be discussed. Somnambulism is a common parasomnia that reflects an impairment in the normal mechanisms of arousal from sleep in which motor behaviors are activated without full consciousness. Motor behaviors are initiated during deep non-rapid eye movement or slow-wave sleep (stages 3-4), and may be limited to relatively simple manifestations, such as sitting up, fumbling with objects or bedclothes, or mumbling.     

Evaluation of the evidence for the trauma and fantasy models of dissociation

The relationship between a reported history of trauma and dissociative symptoms has been explained in 2 conflicting ways. Pathological dissociation has been conceptualized as a response to antecedent traumatic stress and/or severe psychological adversity. Others have proposed that dissociation makes individuals prone to fantasy, thereby engendering confabulated memories of trauma. We examine data related to a series of 8 contrasting predictions based on the trauma model and the fantasy model of dissociation. In keeping with the trauma model, the relationship between trauma and dissociation was consistent and moderate in strength, and remained significant when objective measures of trauma were used. Dissociation was temporally related to trauma and trauma treatment, and was predictive of trauma history when fantasy proneness was controlled. Dissociation was not reliably associated with suggestibility, nor was there evidence for the fantasy model prediction of greater inaccuracy of recovered memory. Instead, dissociation was positively related to a history of trauma memory recovery and negatively related to the more general measures of narrative cohesion. Research also supports the trauma theory of dissociation as a regulatory response to fear or other extreme emotion with measurable biological correlates. We conclude, on the basis of evidence related to these 8 predictions, that there is strong empirical support for the hypothesis that trauma causes dissociation, and that dissociation remains related to trauma history when fantasy proneness is controlled. We find little support for the hypothesis that the dissociation-trauma relationship is due to fantasy proneness or confabulated memories of trauma.