A randomized controlled trial of cognitive behavior therapy for borderline personality disorder: rationale for trial, method, and description of sample

This paper describes the rationale for a randomized controlled trial, comparing cognitive behavior therapy in addition to treatment as usual with treatment as usual alone, for borderline personality disorder. Previous pioneering randomized controlled trials of psychotherapies have suffered from methodological weaknesses and have not always been reported clearly to allow adequate evaluation of either the individual study or comparisons across studies to be undertaken. We report on the recruitment and randomization, design, and conduct of an ongoing randomized controlled trial of one hundred and six patients with borderline personality disorder. Primary and secondary hypotheses and their planned analyses are stated. The baseline characteristics of 106 patients meeting diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder are described.     

Dietary restraint, body dissatisfaction, and psychological distress: a prospective analysis

This study uses prospective data from a survey of 1,177 adolescent girls to examine whether emotional eating, binge eating, abnormal attitudes to eating and weight, low self-esteem, stress, and depression are associated with dietary restraint or body dissatisfaction. In analyses that included both restraint and body dissatisfaction as independent predictors, restraint was associated only with more negative attitudes to eating, whereas body dissatisfaction was significantly associated with all the adverse outcomes. These results cast doubt on the proposition that restrained eating is a primary cause of bulimic symptoms, emotional eating, and psychological distress seen in individuals who are trying to control their weight, and rather suggest that body dissatisfaction is the key factor.     

Tool use affects perceived distance, but only when you intend to use it

Recent research demonstrates neurologic and behavioral differences in people's responses to the space that is within and beyond reach. The present studies demonstrated a perceptual difference as well. Reachability was manipulated by having participants reach with and without a tool. Across 2 conditions, in which participants either held a tool or not, targets were presented at the same distances. Perceived distances to targets within reach holding the tool were compressed compared with targets that were beyond reach without it. These results suggest that reachability serves as a metric for perception. The 3rd experiment found that reachability only influenced perceived distance when the perceiver intended to reach. These experiments suggest that the authors perceive the environment in terms of our intentions and abilities to act within it.     

Distances appear different on hills

When walking effort is increased due to manipulations such as wearing heavy backpacks, people perceive hills to be steeper and distances to be farther (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999; Proffitt, Stefanucci, Banton, & Epstein, 2003). On the basis of these findings, we expected people to overestimate distances on steep hills relative to the same distances on flat ground, because of the increased effort required to ascend or descend them. This hypothesis is in contrast to the belief that distances are specified solely by optical and oculomotor information related to the geometry of the environment. To test the hypothesis, we investigated distance estimation on hills and flat terrains in natural and virtual environments. We found that participants judged steep uphill and downhill distances to be farther than the same distances on flat terrain. These results are inconsistent with the idea that spatial layout is perceived solely in terms of geometry, lending partial support to an effort hypothesis.     

Researchers misunderstand confidence intervals and standard error bars

Little is known about researchers' understanding of confidence intervals (CIs) and standard error (SE) bars. Authors of journal articles in psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and medicine were invited to visit a Web site where they adjusted a figure until they judged 2 means, with error bars, to be just statistically significantly different (p < .05). Results from 473 respondents suggest that many leading researchers have severe misconceptions about how error bars relate to statistical significance, do not adequately distinguish CIs and SE bars, and do not appreciate the importance of whether the 2 means are independent or come from a repeated measures design. Better guidelines for researchers and less ambiguous graphical conventions are needed before the advantages of CIs for research communication can be realized.     

Mea culpa: predicting stock prices from organizational attributions

People's causal attributions for events in their lives have been shown to relate to individual and interpersonal outcomes. Groups and organizations also make causal attributions, and this article examines whether their publicly communicated attributions predict organizational-level outcomes. By content analyzing attributions contained in corporate annual reports from 14 companies during a 21-year period, the authors found that organizations that made "self disserving" attributions- internal and controllable attributions for negative events-had higher stock prices 1 year later. The authors argue that claiming personal responsibility for negative events made the organizations appear more in control, leading to more positive impressions.     

Research Report: Students' knowledge of abnormal psychology

The present study aims to compare whether final year psychology students (n = 26) could answer more items on a multiple choice questionnaire (MCQ) correctly on abnormal psychology than prospective psychology candidates (n = 77) and final year engineering students (n = 26). The three groups of students completed MCQs in five different fields of abnormal psychology namely; eating disorders, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and depression, sexual disorders, and personality and compulsive disorders, respectively. They were also asked to indicate their confidence level in relation to the accuracy of the answers they had given. The results showed that final year psychology students scored higher on levels of accuracy, as well as confidence on all measures compared to the two other groups. On the subject of sexual disorders, engineering students scored higher than prospective psychology students. Implications of the present findings are discussed.     

Seeing big things: overestimation of heights is greater for real objects than for objects in pictures

In six experiments we demonstrate that the vertical-horizontal illusion that is evoked when viewing photographs and line drawings is relatively small, whereas the magnitude of this illusion when large objects are viewed is at least twice as great. Furthermore, we show that the illusion is due more to vertical overestimation than horizontal underestimation. The lack of a difference in vertical overestimation between pictures and line drawings suggests that vertical overestimation in pictures depends solely on the perceived physical size of the projection on the picture surface, rather than on what is apparent about an object's represented size. The vertical-horizontal illusion is influenced by perceived physical size. It is greater when viewing large objects than small pictures of these same objects, even when visual angles are equated.     

Visual-motor recalibration in geographical slant perception.

In 4 experiments, it was shown that hills appear steeper to people who are encumbered by wearing a heavy backpack (Experiment 1), are fatigued (Experiment 2), are of low physical fitness (Experiment 3), or are elderly and/or in declining health (Experiment 4). Visually guided actions are unaffected by these manipulations of physiological potential. Although dissociable, the awareness and action systems were also shown to be interconnected. Recalibration of the transformation relating awareness and actions was found to occur over long-term changes in physiological potential (fitness level, age, and health) but not with transitory changes (fatigue and load). Findings are discussed in terms of a time-dependent coordination between the separate systems that control explicit visual awareness and visually guided action.