A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PERSONALITY: EGYPTIAN AND ENGLISH CHILDREN*

679 Egyptian boys and 696 girls completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, translated into Arabic. Factor comparisons were moderately high for extraversion and social desirability but weak for neuroticism and psychoticism. Suitable item substitution produced a scoring key resulting in adequate reliabilities with the exception of a somewhat low reliability for the boys on extraversion and low reliabilities on psychoticism for both sexes. Sex differences on means of the dimensions were as usual, boys scoring higher than girls on extraversion and psychoticism, but lower on neuroticism and social desirability. Moreover, on comparing Egyptian with English means, using scales of items in common only, the English boys and girls scored higher than their Egyptian counterparts on extraversion but significantly lower on social desirability. British boys scored higher on psychoticism than did Egyptian boys but British girls scored lower than Egyptian girls.     

Cerebral laterality and depression: differences in perceptual asymmetry among diagnostic subtypes

Examined the influence of diagnostic subtype of depression on perceptual asymmetry for dichotic listening and visual tachistoscopic tasks. A total of 65 unmedicated patients with major depressive disorders and 30 normal controls were tested on a verbal and nonverbal task in each modality. Patients diagnosed according to the DSM-III with melancholia had abnormal perceptual asymmetry for dichotic nonsense syllable and complex tone tasks. In contrast, patients having a nonmelancholic "atypical depression" (reactivity of mood with preserved pleasure capacity and associated features) did not differ from normal controls on these tasks, but had an increased incidence of left handedness. Bipolar depression (history of hypomania) differed from unipolar depression in showing abnormal perceptual asymmetry for a tachistoscopic dot enumeration task. Alterations of perceptual asymmetry in melancholia and bipolar depression were consistent with hypothesized right hemisphere dysfunction.     

Sex differences on the revised Beck Depression Inventory for outpatients with affective disorders

The revised Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered to 174 male and 276 female psychiatric outpatients diagnosed with affective disorders. The mean BDI scores, mean number of symptoms claimed, and corrected item-total correlations were comparable for both sexes, and the coefficient alpha for each sex was .88. Principal components analyses found four dimensions of depression underlying both sexes' BDI item-intercorrelation matrices. Although men and women had comparable dimensions with respect to weight loss, self-blame, and somatic-performance symptoms, men had affective and performance symptoms loading on the same factor, whereas women had affective and cognitive symptoms loading on the same dimension.     

Residential density and psychological health: the mediating effects of social support

People report excessive, unwanted social interactions, insufficient privacy, and are observed to be more socially withdrawn under crowded living conditions. If people socially withdraw from one another as a way to cope with crowding, this could lead to an unintended side effect of breakdowns in socially supportive relationships. A breakdown in socially supportive relationships could, in turn, account for some of the pathological consequences of chronic, high density living conditions. An empirical study of 175 male heads of household among inner city residents in India suggests that the adverse effects of residential crowding on psychological health are mediated by a breakdown of social support systems. The study also points to the value of examining social support as an endogenous variable in the stress and health process.     

Relation of sympathy and personal distress to prosocial behavior: a multimethod study

Assessed sympathy and personal distress with facial and physiological indexes (heart rate) as well as self-report indexes and examined the relations of these various indexes to prosocial behavior for children and adults in an easy escape condition. Heart rate deceleration during exposure to the needy others was associated with increased willingness to help. In addition, adults' reports of sympathy, as well as facial sadness and concerned attention, were positively related to their intention to assist. For children, there was some indication that report of positive affect and facial distress were negatively related to prosocial intentions and behavior, whereas facial concern was positively related to the indexes of prosocial behavior. These findings are interpreted as providing additional, convergent support for the notion that sympathy and personal distress are differentially related to prosocial behavior.     

Form and exploration of mechanical stability limits in erect stance

The stability limits of erect stance are described as a geometrical structure in a movement space. Mechanical properties and response latency, a neural property, are determining factors for the stability limits. Standing stability limits of adults and young children are compared, and a simple scheme is suggested by means of which infants can discover the stability limits as they learn to stand. The mechanics of different standing movements are discussed because their spatial temporal properties relate directly to their different stability limits. The combination of the stability limits for different movements gives a total set of stability limits, a different structure for adults than for children.     

The child's perceptions of familial relationships: convergence between two assessment techniques

Children's (N = 28) perceptions of familial relationships were investigated with the Family Environment Scale (FES) and the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI). The FES assesses overall impressions of the family, and the NRI measures perceptions of individual relationships. Because current family systems theory indicates that positive individual relationships within a dyad (e.g., child-mother) should be related to an overall favorable impression of the family system, we hypothesized that these two instruments should demonstrate convergence on selected dimensions. Results indicated that positive or negative relationships with an individual family member were related to how the child perceived the overall family system, supporting our hypothesis.