The development of a child assessment interview for research and clinical use

The Child Assessment Schedule (CAS) was developed to address the need for a standardized child interview that could be used for research and clinical purposes. The CAS has several distinguishing characteristics: (1) Questions and responses are standardized, (2) the format was designed to enhance rapport with the child, and (3) information necessary for DSM III childhood diagnoses is explicitly solicited. The CAS was administered to 32 child outpatients, 18 inpatients, and 37 normal controls. Derived scores were obtained for total psychopathology, 11 content areas, and 9 symptom complexes. Interrater reliability for the total CAS score was quite high. The CAS was able to discriminate among the three groups in total score indicating degree of psychopathology, on 9 of the 11 content areas, and on 8 of the 9 symptom complexes. Significant correlations were found between the CAS and maternal report of child behavior and between the CAS and child selfreport of internal affects. It was concluded that the CAS has adequate reliability and validity, although further research is indicated.     

Performance and activity of hyperactive and normal boys as a function of distraction and reward

Twenty-five hyperactive boys and 25 controls matched for age, social class, and race were compared on three performance tasks (coding, tone discrimination, and connecting dots) in two settings (nondistracting and highly distracting). Control Ss performed significantly better than did hyperactives in all conditions, except during tone discrimination and connecting dots in the nondistracting setting. Distraction decreased performance for both groups on the coding task and for hyperactives on the tone discrimination task, but significantly improved performance for controls on the connecting dots task. Distraction, where detrimental, was not significantly more so for hyperactives than for controls. The effect of reward on coding performance was studied in the distracting condition; reward produced the best performance for both groups, but significant differences between groups were not found.This research was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service Training Grant (in Biological Sciences) No. MH07081.The participation of the following people in helping to design this research study and collect data is hereby acknowledged: David Bremer, Ted Goltz, Ruth Rosenthal, and Michael Stern.     

The effects of Δ9 THC on cutaneous sensitivity and its relation to personality

Pain threshold/tolerance and vibration perception were studied in a sample of female frequent and infrequent cannabis users. Interactions with personality characteristics were examined using the EPI. Performance on all measures was investigated after oral administration of either 10mgΔ⁹ THC or 20 mg Δ⁹ THC. Results indicated that while the 10mg dosage produced no consistent changes in cutaneous sensory response, the 20 mg dosage was followed by lowering of the vibration threshold. Frequent and infrequent cannabis users differed in their response to the pain stimulus (pain tolerance scores were higher among infrequent users). They also differed with respect to the personality measure (frequent users had lower E, N and L scores). The findings provide experimental support for cannabis users' reports of enhanced sensory awareness consequent to drug intake. The results also show that frequent and infrequent cannabis users differ in pain response and personality characteristics.     

Clinician-Guided Assessment of Personality Using the Structural Interview and the Structured Interview of Personality Organization (STIPO)

This article demonstrates the utility of a theory-guided psychodynamic approach to the assessment of personality and personality pathology based on the object relations model developed by Kernberg (1984). We describe a clinical interview, the Structural Interview (SI; Kernberg, 1984), and also a semistructured approach, the Structured Interview of Personality Organization (STIPO; Clarkin, Caligor, Stern, & Kernberg, 2004) based on this theoretical model. Both interviews focus on the assessment of consolidated identity versus identity disturbance, the use of adaptive versus lower level defensive operations, and intact versus loss of reality testing. In the context of a more clinically oriented assessment, the SI makes use of tactful confrontation of discrepancies and contradictions in the patient's narrative, and also takes into account transference and countertransference phenomena, whereas the more structured approach of the STIPO incorporates clinical judgment informed by clinical theory into a well-guided interaction with the patient. Both interviews have good interrater reliability and are coherent with the alternative model for personality disorder diagnosis proposed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.), Section III. Finally, they provide the clinician with specific implications for prognosis and treatment planning and can rationally guide clinical decision making.     

Supervaluation-Style Truth Without Supervaluations

Kripke’s theory of truth is arguably the most influential approach to self-referential truth and the semantic paradoxes. The use of a partial evaluation scheme is crucial to the theory and the most prominent schemes that are adopted are the strong Kleene and the supervaluation scheme. The strong Kleene scheme is attractive because it ensures the compositionality of the notion of truth. But under the strong Kleene scheme classical tautologies do not, in general, turn out to be true and, as a consequence, classical reasoning is no longer admissible once the notion of truth is involved. The supervaluation scheme adheres to classical reasoning but violates compositionality. Moreover, it turns Kripke’s theory into a rather complicated affair: to check whether a sentence is true we have to look at all admissible precisification of the interpretation of the truth predicate we are presented with. One consequence of this complicated evaluation condition is that under the supervaluation scheme a more proof-theoretic characterization of Kripke’s theory becomes inherently difficult, if not impossible. In this paper we explore the middle ground between the strong Kleene and the supervaluation scheme and provide an evaluation scheme that adheres to classical reasoning but retains many of the attractive features of the strong Kleene scheme. We supplement our semantic investigation with a novel axiomatic theory of truth that matches the semantic theory we have put forth.     

Psychology and the science of human-environment interactions

Psychology has an indispensable role in understanding environmental problems and finding solutions. To fill this role, psychologists must work within an interdisciplinary effort to build a scientific understanding of human-environment interactions. This article enumerates 8 widely held beliefs about these interactions and assesses the strengths and limitations of each belief. It suggests that psychology can contribute more strongly by counteracting disciplinary biases, focusing research where a behavioral analysis identifies major opportunities, making appropriately modest claims, collaborating with other disciplines, and building on psychology's relative strengths among the human sciences.