Personality disorders and dimensions in pathological gambling

Comorbid DSM-IV Axis II personality disorders appear to be common in pathological gambling (PG) and may contribute to the chronic problems often associated with the disorder. This study sought to examine the relationship between PG, personality disorders, and impulsivity in a sample of pathological gamblers. Personality assessments included the SCID-II, Eysenck Impulsiveness Questionnaire, Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. A total of 77 individuals with DSM-IV PG were included in this study, of which 35 (45.5%) met criteria for at least one personality disorder. Specific aspects of impulsivity were associated with certain personality disorders in PG when grouped by cluster, yet the presence of a personality disorder was not positively correlated with gambling severity. It remains unclear how the presence of a personality disorder and aspects of impulsivity may affect treatment outcome. Further exploration of these disorders and dimensions of personality may encourage a more inclusively global treatment approach.     

Decision-Making in Mental Healthcare: A Phenomenological Investigation of Service User Perspectives

As Victorian asylums closed down in the United Kingdom, community mental health services were set up to support patients in exercising choice and freedom; in finding a place in society. The success of these services has been questioned, so further policies have been introduced in an effort to protect rights and improve social inclusion. However, capacity to make decisions has been interpreted as no more than a process of rational mental calculation. This article reports on a phenomenological study that explores the decision-making experiences of three men who have endured psychosis. It is not only associated with choice and freedom but also with responsibility, blame, and social exclusion. These men appear to have faced common existential dilemmas, but have sought to express emotional will in conflict with other people and have, perhaps, been placed under more social pressure and become more isolated as individuals, while enduring experiences that are difficult to make meaningful for others. It seems that, paradoxically, efforts have been made to empower these men by controlling them, and medication has been imposed on them so as to regulate thoughts and moods, in attempts to serve their best interests.     

Challenges in Transforming Military Training: Research and Application of Advanced Simulation and Training Technologies and Methods

This study addresses the need to validate estimates of cross-job retraining times against measures of actual retraining success. Specialty-level cross-job retraining time estimates were computed for 43 U.S. Air Force (USAF) enlisted specialties. The estimates were based on profiles of mean subject- matter-expert ratings of months to proficiency across 26 task categories. Individual-level criteria indicating previous job skill utilization, current skills and abilities, and current job performance were obtained from a separate study conducted 10 years earlier. Results were supportive: Correlations between retraining time estimates and performance criteria were negative and statistically significant. Future research needs and potential applications of retraining time estimates are discussed.     

The Use of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy With Older Adults in Mexico: A Preliminary Study

This preliminary study investigated the use of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) with older adults in Mexico. The three session SFBT treatment focused on a self-defined problem, such as relationship issues or psychological well-being. Compared with a waiting list control group, the treatment group showed significant posttest improvements as indicated by the Outcome Questionnaire, the participant and an independent assessor. There was a significant difference between groups on participants' perception of goal achievement and in pre-post change during therapy on the Outcome Questionnaire. This study provides preliminary tentative support for the use of SFBT with the geriatric population in Mexico.     

Posttraumatic Growth, Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Mental Health Among Coronary Heart Disease Survivors

The present study aimed to estimate posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) among heart disease survivors and examine whether PTG moderates the association between PTSS and mental health. Data from 82 myocardial infarction and acute coronary artery bypass graft survivors (aged 46–82) was obtained at admission to a cardiac rehabilitation unit. Mental status was assessed by the PTSD Inventory, Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), Mental Health Inventory and Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL). 17.1 % of the participants suffered significantly from PTSS and most of the study sample (71.2 %) reported PTG. PTSS were positively associated with PTG and psychological distress and negatively with well-being and HRQOL. PTG moderated the association between PTSS and most mental health outcomes. We conclude that posttraumatic growth may attenuate the negative effect of posttraumatic stress symptoms on mental health.     

Combining disparate views of objects: Viewpoint costs are reduced by stereopsis

An issue of central concern in the object recognition literature is whether changes in the viewpoint from which an object is depicted produces systematic costs in performance, or whether performance is (largely) unaffected by such changes. This issue has generated a vigorous and lengthy debate because viewpoint-dependent or viewpoint-independent performance has been seen as a reflection of the underlying object representations. The current experiment shows that the effect of viewpoint differences between objects is strongly affected by whether or not they are depicted with stereoscopic depth, a result that is predicted by neither of the main approaches to object recognition. Instead, it is proposed that viewpoint costs in object recognition experiments are a function of the extent to which the information a subject is provided with generalizes across views, without this holding any necessary implications for the nature of the underlying object representations.     

The role of attention in processing configural and shape information in 3-D novel objects

Recent research suggests that there is an advantage for processing configural information in scenes and objects. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which attention may account for this configural advantage. In Experiment 1, we found that cueing the location of change in single object displays improved detection performance for both configural and shape changes, yet cueing attention away from the location of change was detrimental only for shape change detection. A configural advantage was present for each cueing condition. Experiments 2A and 2B examined whether the configural advantage persisted in conditions where attention was distributed more widely, using a visual search paradigm. Although searches for configural changes were faster than those for shape changes across all set sizes, both types of information appeared to be processed with similar efficiency. Overall, these results suggest that the configural advantage is independent of the location or distribution of visual attention.     

Measuring category intuitiveness in unconstrained categorization tasks

What makes a category seem natural or intuitive? In this paper, an unsupervised categorization task was employed to examine observer agreement concerning the categorization of nine different stimulus sets. The stimulus sets were designed to capture different intuitions about classification structure. The main empirical index of category intuitiveness was the frequency of the preferred classification, for different stimulus sets. With 169 participants, and a within participants design, with some stimulus sets the most frequent classification was produced over 50 times and with others not more than two or three times. The main empirical finding was that cluster tightness was more important in determining category intuitiveness, than cluster separation. The results were considered in relation to the following models of unsupervised categorization: DIVA, the rational model, the simplicity model, SUSTAIN, an Unsupervised version of the Generalized Context Model (UGCM), and a simple geometric model based on similarity. DIVA, the geometric approach, SUSTAIN, and the UGCM provided good, though not perfect, fits. Overall, the present work highlights several theoretical and practical issues regarding unsupervised categorization and reveals weaknesses in some of the corresponding formal models.