Links Between Early Personal Characteristics,Longitudinal Profiles of Peer Victimization in School and Victimization in College or at Work

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - This study used a longitudinal design from age six through age 19 (N?=?1206 (603 girls)) to examine the associations between...     

Atom Exchangeability and Instantial Relevance

We give an account of some relationships between the principles of Constant and Atom Exchangeability and various generalizations of the Principle of Instantial Relevance within the framework of Inductive Logic. In particular we demonstrate some surprising and somewhat counterintuitive dependencies of these relationships on ostensibly unimportant parameters, such as the number of predicates in the overlying language. Supported by a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Research Studentship.     

A five-year follow-up of patients with borderline pathology of childhood

Borderline pathology of childhood (BPC) may be a precursor of personality disorders. There is a lack of data concerning outcome in adolescence. A group of 59 adolescents, who had been treated as children in a Child Psychiatry Day Hospital five to seven years earlier, was evaluated. Using the child version of the Retrospective Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines, 28 participants had been diagnosed with BPC while the remaining 31 participants who did not have a history of BPC served as the comparison group. The youth and their parents were given a battery of measures assessing current psychopathology and functional status. The group with a history of BPC was more likely than the comparison group to exhibit a combination of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Adolescents with a history of BPC were more impaired than the comparison group on a global measure of functional status. Compared to children with no history of BPC, children diagnosed with BPC are more likely to display poorer functioning as adolescents and continue to be at risk for psychopathology during adolescence. Future directions for research are discussed.     

The nature of borderline personality disorder: multiple dimensions, multiple symptoms, but one category

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a multidimensional syndrome that is not rooted in a single diathesis. Each of its features (affective instability, impulsivity, unstable relationships, and cognitive defects) reflects different diatheses. BPD differs from other Axis II disorders in its high level of symptoms, but is not a variant of an Axis I disorder and is difficult to describe through dimensional traits. This review suggests that BPD needs to be diagnosed with a narrower set of criteria that cover all of its domains. In the long run, the disorder will need to be redefined on the basis of its etiology and pathogenesis.     

Adolescent perception of mothers' parenting strengths and needs: a cross-cultural approach to curriculum development for parent education

Black, Hispanic, and White American early adolescents (N = 573) were administered the Parent Success Indicator. The performance of their mothers was rated for 60 items, included within six subscales, that consider Communication, Use of Time, Teaching, Frustration, Satisfaction, and Information Needs. Each racial group described favorable attributes of mothers and noted realms of learning where further growth seemed warranted. Statistically significant main effects for race, time spent together, and presence of an adult at home when the adolescent returned from school were reported. No significant main effects for child gender were reported. Based on perceptions of the participants, topics were identified for a common parent curriculum that can serve mothers of each racial group. Additional topics, based on the ratings within each race, were recommended to meet the distinctive learning needs of Black, Hispanic, and White mothers of early adolescents.     

Stability and variability of affective experience and interpersonal behavior in borderline personality disorder

This study examined both mean levels and intraindividual variability in the mood and interpersonal behavior of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and nonclinical control participants over a 20-day event-contingent recording period. Individuals in the BPD group experienced more unpleasantly valenced affect and were less dominant, more submissive, more quarrelsome, and more extreme in overall levels of behavior than control participants. In addition to these mean-level differences, individuals with BPD also reported more intraindividual variability in overall affect valence and in pleasantly valenced affect; displayed greater variability in dominant, quarrelsome, and agreeable behaviors; and exhibited an increased tendency to "spin" among interpersonal behaviors relative to nonclinical control participants. The findings document behavioral and affective manifestations of BPD in the context of naturally occurring interpersonal situations.     

Some Aspects of Polyadic Inductive Logic

We give a brief account of some de Finetti style representation theorems for probability functions satisfying Spectrum Exchangeability in Polyadic Inductive Logic, together with applications to Non-splitting, Language Invariance, extensions with Equality and Instantial Relevance.     

DAPP-BQ: factor structure in French Canadians

Personality traits may be involved in predisposition to a range of clinical and behavioral phenotypes. Given their importance, it is necessary to establish the extent to which different levels of personality traits are applicable to and reproducible across cultures and sexes. In a well-characterized, longitudinal sample of young French Canadians, we examined structural equivalence of broad personality traits using the Diagnostic Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ). We also investigated sex-based patterns of item-endorsement, scale reliabilities, and factor solutions. Our four-factor solution closely resembles the structure reported in the source population of British Columbians, especially in terms of Factors I through III. In contrast to the original study, however, together with compulsivity, rejection rather than passive aggression, defined Factor IV. We, furthermore, observed sex-based differences in item endorsement and both broad and narrow personality trait scores. Subtle differences notwithstanding, our results offer additional evidence for structural stability of broad DAPP-BQ personality traits across sociodemographic and cultural contexts.     

Delineating beauty: On form and the boundaries of the aesthetic

Philosophical aesthetics has recently been expanding its purview—with exciting work on everyday aesthetics, somaesthetics, gustatory aesthetics, and the aesthetics of imperceptibilia like mathematics and human character—reclaiming territory that was lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the discipline begun concentrating almost exclusively on the philosophy of art and restricted the aesthetic realm to the distally perceptible. Yet there remains considerable reluctance towards acknowledging the aesthetic character of many of these objects. This raises an important question—partly made salient again by the ongoing expansion of the aesthetic domain, and partly by the fact that many still seem resistant to this aesthetic diversification—which aestheticians seem to avoid: what, if anything, constrains the scope of beauty or the aesthetic? I argue that form, construed as comprising a degree, however minimal, of experienceable complexity, is necessary and sufficient for an object's candidature for the possession of aesthetic properties. Such a condition serves to discriminate between attempts to expand the scope of the aesthetic that are legitimate and those that are not. If correct, my view suggests that the aesthetic realm, though not limitless, is very broad indeed—but this, I think, is as it should be.