MCMI-II profiles of women with eating disorders: a cluster analytic investigation

A three-factor model of personality pathology was investigated in a clinical sample of 183 female patients in an outpatient eating disorders treatment program. Cluster analysis of MCMI-II personality scales (Millon, 1987) yielded three distinct personality profiles, which were consistent with previous studies. First, 16.9% of the sample comprised a High Functioning cluster, which manifested no clinical elevations on the MCMI-II and had significantly lower scores on the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI; Garner; 1991) scales than the other two clusters. Second, 49.1% of the sample comprised an Undercontrolled/Dysregulated cluster. Finally, the remaining 34% of the sample comprised an Overcontrolled/Avoidant cluster. This final cluster had significantly higher EDI Ineffectiveness scale scores than the Undercontrolled/Dysregulated cluster group. Cluster membership was not associated with eating disorder subtype, suggesting that there is considerable variance in personality pathology within eating disorder diagnostic categories.     

A dynamical systems interpretation of a dimensional model of emotion

The dimensional structure of emotion was investigated using self reports of induced mood and idiographic and nomothetic analyses. Subjects attended four experimental sessions during which an array of affective states was induced via auditory, visual, and imaginal channels. For each of 118 stimulus events, subjects self-rated their response. Factor analysis yielded the predicted bipolar factors of valence and arousal: these were obtained in group-aggregated analysis and subsequently confirmed as change dimensions at the intraindividual level. Controversy over the fundamental dimensions of affective space was considered with respect to methodological issues such as factor rotation and sampling of data space. Valence and arousal are discussed as motivational, driving parameters of affective experience and a dynamical systems conceptualization of emotion is proposed.     

Recollections of childhood bullying and multiple forms of victimization: correlates with psychological functioning among college students

This retrospective investigation examined the association among childhood bullying victimization, multiple forms of victimization, and psychological functioning in a college sample. Four hundred-and-eighty-two undergraduate students participated in the study (M = 19.98 years, SD = 1.82). The sample included 65 % women. For race/ethnicity, 66.4 % were European-American (N = 320), 16.8 % African-American (N = 81). For grade level, 21.6 % were freshmen (N = 104), followed by 38.2 % sophomores (N = 184), 16.2 % juniors (N = 78), and 23.4 % seniors (N = 113). Participants completed a survey packet of measures assessing childhood bullying victimization experiences and current levels of psychological functioning. Findings indicated that bullying victimization significantly predicted greater levels of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress (PTS) after controlling for other childhood victimization experiences. PTS symptoms were predicted by exposure to community violence and child abuse with bullying victimization was found to be the strongest predictor. College-level practitioners need to assess for a wide range of childhood victimization experiences, including bullying victimization.     

Sequence‐specific procedural learning deficits in children with specific language impairment

This study tested the procedural deficit hypothesis of specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing children's performance in two motor procedural learning tasks and an implicit verbal sequence learning task. Participants were 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children with SLI (n = 48), typically developing age‐matched children (n = 20) and younger typically developing children matched for receptive grammar (n = 28). In a serial reaction time task, the children with SLI performed at the same level as the grammar‐matched children, but poorer than age‐matched controls in learning motor sequences. When tested with a motor procedural learning task that did not involve learning sequential relationships between discrete elements (i.e. pursuit rotor), the children with SLI performed comparably with age‐matched children and better than younger grammar‐matched controls. In addition, poor implicit learning of word sequences in a verbal memory task (the Hebb effect) was found in the children with SLI. Together, these findings suggest that SLI might be characterized by deficits in learning sequence‐specific information, rather than generally weak procedural learning.     

Children’s strategy use when playing strategic games

Strategic games require reasoning about other people’s and one’s own beliefs or intentions. Although they have clear commonalities with psychological tests of theory of mind, they are not clearly related to theory of mind tests for children between 9 and 10 years of age “Flobbe et al. J Logic Language Inform 17(4):417–442 (2008)”. We studied children’s (5–12 years of age) individual differences in how they played a strategic game by analyzing the strategies that they applied in a zero, first, and second-order reasoning task. For the zero-order task, we found two subgroups with different accuracy levels. For the first-order task, subgroups of children applied different suboptimal strategies or an optimal strategy. For the second-order task only suboptimal strategies were present. Strategy use for all tasks was related to age. The 5- and 6-year old children were additionally tested on theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. Strategy-use in these children was related to working memory, but not to theory of mind after correction for age, verbal ability and general IQ.     

Comments on Responsibility of and Trust in ISPs

Picking up on the themes of ISP responsibility and trust raised by Raphael Cohen-Almagor, this paper discusses the problem of removing inappropriate content from the Internet. It suggests that an approach based on community involvement such as used by YouTube may be preferable to one that relies on artificial intelligence to detect inappropriate content. The paper also suggests ways in which ISPs could help increase trust in the Internet by strengthening security.