Reliability and validity of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory: a new inventory for the assessment of personality disorders.

This group of studies describes the development of a 200 item, self-report, 4-point true-false inventory (Coolidge Axis II Inventory [CATI]) to assess personality disorders according to the criteria established in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987). The 13 personality disorder scales of the CATI had a mean test-retest reliability of .90 and a median internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) of .76. There was a 50% concordance rate with clinician's diagnosis for 24 personality disordered patients. The median concurrent validity (raw score sums) between the CATI and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II for the 13 personality disorder scales was .58. Preliminary studies also support the reliability and validity of Depression, Anxiety, and Brain Dysfunction scales.     

The effect of hypnotically elicited testimony on jurors' judgments of guilt and innocence.

Survey data from several countries indicate that many people believe that hypnosis may increase the accuracy of an eyewitness's memory; most experimental research, however, suggests that this belief is inaccurate. This study examined whether the belief could influence judgments of guilt and innocence in a simulated criminal trial. The results indicated that British undergraduates were more likely to find a male defendant guilty when told that the testimony against him had been elicited under hypnosis. Results concerning a nonhypnotic memory facilitation technique were found to be inconclusive, and the salience of hypnotically elicited testimony was ruled out as a contributory element.     

Life event categories differentially predict psychopathology symptom levels.

The present study used a prospective design to investigate whether eight categories of daily negative life events or "hassles" differentially predict psychopathology levels, and/or changes in psychopathology levels over 1 month in a mixed-sex, nonclinical sample of undergraduate subjects. Hassles were assessed using the Revised Hassles Scale (HS-R; DeLongis, 1985); psychopathology was assessed using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (SCL-90; Derogatis, Lipman, & Covi, 1973) on two occasions, separated by 1 month. Scores on all eight HS-R subscales predicted Time 2 scores on most or all of the SCL-90 psychopathology scales. However, the magnitudes of these correlations varied widely, indicating that these subscales may be substantially different in their abilities to predict psychopathology levels.     

The Effects of Decision Outcome Dispersion Upon Organizational Decision Making

The effects of varying decision outcome dispersion on organizational decision making were investigated under individual and group decision making conditions. Thirty-six female and pg]36 male subjects made decisions for organizational decision scenarios in which outcomes affected primarily the decision maker, people other than the decision maker, or a group of which the decision maker was a member. Subjects rated their levels of perceived risk and confidence in their decisions and made decisions within a simulated context of either a small or a large organization. Results indicated that subjects perceived significantly less risk and more confidence in their decisions when outcomes affected primarily themselves rather than others regardless of whether the decisions were made individually or by a group. Males perceived their decisions as significantly more risky than females. Induced organizational size did not significantly influence decision making.

     

Choice of medical specialty: analysis of students' needs.

The purposes of this study were to assess the career development needs of entering medical students as measured by the Medical Career Development Inventory and to examine gender differences in responses to the inventory. A total of 115 entering medical students (representing two entering classes) took the inventory two months prior to matriculation. Analysis suggested that this sample of entering students had formed a vocational identity and that they had evaluated the suitability and viability of a commitment to a physician's career. However, the participants had not formed a clear picture of their specialty interest and goals. No significant gender differences were indicated. A recommended career assistance workshop is presented as appropriate for these students' needs.     

Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals.

In this paper we study the acquisition of German noun plurals in relation to the question of how children represent regular and irregular inflection. Pinker and Prince (1992) have demonstrated several dissociations between regular and irregular inflection in the English past tense system. However, in English, the default status of -ed is confounded with its high frequency; therefore inflectional systems other than English past tense formation must be examined. The noun plural system in German is particularly interesting, because most nouns have irregular plurals in German and the regular (default) plural is less frequent than several of the irregular plurals. Thus it is unclear how a language learner determines whether German even has a regular plural, and if so what form it takes. Based on longitudinal data from impaired and unimpaired monolingual German-speaking children, we find a striking, statistically significant correlation: plural affixes that are used in overregularizations, namely -n or -s, are left out within compounds. This correlation shows that even impaired children are sensitive to the distinction between regular and irregular morphology. We propose a linguistic analysis of the correlation in terms of Kiparsky's (1982, 1985) level-ordering model plus an additional ordering condition on affixes: default (regular) affixes cannot serve as input to compounding processes.     

Human evaluative conditioning: acquisition trials, presentation schedule, evaluative style and contingency awareness.

Two different processes may be operative in human Pavlovian conditioning: signal learning and evaluative learning. Whereas most studies on evaluative conditioning focused on a mere demonstration of the phenomenon or on a theoretical analysis of the underlying processes, some basic parameters of evaluative learning are still unexplored. Hence, using the standard neutral picture--(dis)liked picture pairing paradigm (Baeyens, Eelen & Van den Bergh, 1990), in this study the effect of two parameters of evaluative conditioning was assessed on a between-subjects base, namely the Number of Acquisition Trials (2/5/10/20) and the Presentation Schedule of the stimulus pairs (blockwise or random). Additionally, the study included an exploratory analysis of the potential effects of the Evaluative Style of subjects (Feelers vs Thinkers, operationalized in terms of speed of emitting evaluations). Finally, the relationship between contingency awareness and evaluative learning was reassessed. Neutral-liked conditioning was found to be quadratically related to the number of acquisition trials (increase in effect up to 10 trials, decrease from 10 to 20 trials), whereas neutral-disliked conditioning linearly increased with increasing numbers of trials. Randomized vs blockwise presentation schedules of the stimulus pairs did differentially affect the overall pattern of conditioning, but in a way which was both unexpected and difficult to account for theoretically. Both the Evaluative Style of subjects and contingency awareness were demonstrated to be generally orthogonal to conditioned shifts in CS valence. Based on these findings, some practical suggestions are provided for the application of evaluating conditioning based therapeutical interventions to affective-behavioral disorders which are centred around inappropriate (dis)likes.     

A variation on Freud's theme in "A child is being beaten"--mother's role: some implications for superego development in women.

Clinical material is presented leading to a discussion of beating fantasies which varies from Freud's model. Analysis shows that the fantasied role girls assign to mother as the punisher in the oedipal drama is equivalent to the fantasied role boys ascribe to father as castrator. For both sexes, castration anxiety spurs the internalization of parental prohibitions, the repression of oedipal wishes, and the subsequent structuralization of the superego. Mother establishes the "oedipal law" for the girl analogously to father's doing the same for the boy. The role that such fantasies play in the formation of the female superego is examined.     

Psychological factors in abortion. A review.

Psychological research is increasingly involved in debates regarding abortion. While recognizing the diversity of ethical and moral issues intertwined with abortion, the American Psychological Association (APA) has focused its involvement on psychological factors, most recently by appointing an expert panel to review the literature on psychological effects. This article notes the history of APA involvement and reports on the panel's conclusions. It presents evidence that abortion is not likely to be followed by severe psychological responses and that psychological aspects can best be understood within a framework of normal stress and coping rather than a model of psychopathology. Correlates of more negative responses following abortion are also discussed.     

Are insomniacs sleepy during the day? A pupillometric assessment.

A biodevelopmental model of insomnia is articulated specifying coordinated nighttime (disturbed sleep pattern) and daytime (no excessive daytime sleepiness) characteristics defining an insomnoid classification in at-risk groups: short sleepers and older adults. Pupillometry is proposed as a useful means of discriminating degree of daytime sleepiness to aid in the differential diagnosis of insomnia and insomnoid states, and the present study tested the discriminative validity of this approach. Noninsomniac (n = 34) and insomniac (n = 29) college students submitted to four 10 min pupillometry sessions tracking daytime sleepiness from morning arising to bedtime. Pupil diameter proved to be an able discriminator of these two groups though substantial overlap of the two distributions was also noted. The results supported the sensitivity of pupillometry in detecting daytime sleepiness, but yielded alternative interpretations. We observed statistical differentiation in insomniac and noninsomniac daytime sleepiness, but substantial, functional overlap between these groups. Assessment and treatment implications arising from the biodevelopmental model were hypothesized.