Assessing young adolescents' personality with the five-factor personality inventory

The Five-Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI) assesses a person's position on the (Dutch) psycholexically based Big Five factors: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Autonomy. FFPI factor scores are reliable and valid if ratings are made by adults. The present study yields preliminary evidence of whether young adolescents provide reliable and valid self-ratings on this instrument or whether this depends on their cognitive ability level. The sample consisted of a large and representative cohort of youngsters with a mean age of 13 years. The adult structure of the FFPI was generally well replicated, across all ability levels represented in the study. The findings further suggest that young adolescents' factor scores are construct-valid and sufficiently reliable to be used in (group) research settings. However, for reports on individual profiles and decision making, an adolescent's cognitive ability level would need to be rather high. Even then, measuring Autonomy seems challenging.     

Processing the noun phrase versus sentence coordination ambiguity: thematic information does not completely eliminate processing difficulty

When faced with the noun phrase (NP) versus sentence (S) coordination ambiguity as in, for example, The thief shot the jeweller and the cop ..., readers prefer the reading with NP-coordination (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop yesterday") over one with two conjoined sentences (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop panicked"). A corpus study is presented showing that NP-coordinations are produced far more often than S-coordinations, which in frequency-based accounts of parsing might be taken to explain the NP-coordination preference. In addition, we describe an eye-tracking experiment investigating S-coordinated sentences such as Jasper sanded the board and the carpenter laughed, where the poor thematic fit between carpenter and sanded argues against NP-coordination. Our results indicate that information regarding poor thematic fit was used rapidly, but not without leaving some residual processing difficulty. This is compatible with claims that thematic information can reduce but not completely eliminate garden-path effects.     

The locus of adaptation to altered gain in aimed movements

Altered gain settings cause a mismatch between the actual movement amplitude across the surface and the distance covered on a real time visual display. The present study pursued three objectives of how adaptation to altered gain affects aimed motor behavior. First, we replicated findings of an earlier study reporting a negative linear relation between gain and both target acquisition time and end-point variability. This means that our data do not agree with the classic U-shaped relation between gain and acquisition time. Second, our results proved to be robust when we manipulated movement difficulty by varying target distance. And third, dividing a movement into four successive sections on the basis of key kinematic events revealed the locus of the adaptation to altered gain within movement execution. Time differences between gain conditions proved to start at a very early part of the movement, but appeared to be absent in the final movement section. In contrast, differences between gain conditions regarding the use of online feedback were also present in the last part of the movement during which the final target approach takes place.     

Avoidant personality disorder and implicit schema-congruent information processing bias: a pilot study with a pragmatic inference task.

Cognitive theory of personality disorders hypothesizes that each personality disorder is characterized by typical maladaptive schemes and that these schemas direct the processing of information resulting in schema-congruent biases. With regard to the avoidant personality disorder, these hypotheses were put to an initial test in a pilot study, using a self-report questionnaire to asses DSM-III-R personality pathology, a belief questionnaire to assess avoidant schemas and a pragmatic inference task to assess schema-congruent implicit attributional bias. Participants were students (n = 57) who scored high or low on DSM-III-R avoidant personality pathology. As predicted from cognitive theory, DSM-III-R avoidant personality pathology was associated with avoidant beliefs (t(45.1) = 4.68, p < 0.001) and avoidant beliefs were associated with schema-congruent information processing bias (t(55) = 2.17, p = 0.02, one-tailed test). However, DSM-III-R avoidant personality pathology was not associated with schema-congruent information processing bias (t(55) = 0.17, p = 0.43, one-tailed test). In addition to avoidant beliefs, low self-esteem was also related to the information processing bias. Social phobia and general personality pathology, two other control variables, were not. The findings warrant further study using the pragmatic inference task in a clinical group.     

Minority Dissent in Organizations: Factors Influencing Willingness to Dissent1

Minority dissent disrupts stability but also stimulates individual creativity, the quality of group decision making, and organizational adaptiveness. It is argued that we know little about antecedents of minority dissent in organizations. To fill this void, managers (N= 108) were asked about their willingness to take up a minority position within their team or work unit. Results showed that willingness to dissent was predicted by the manager's extraversion, as well as by group factors, including possibility for communication, goal clarity, and past neglect of disagreements. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Holy Apparition or Hyper-Religiosity: Prevalence of Explanatory Models for Religious and Spiritual Experiences in Patients with Bipolar Disorder and Their Associations with Religiousness

Pastoral Psychology - One point that emerges from qualitative research on religion and bipolar disorder (BD) is the problem patients with BD experience in distinguishing between genuine religious...     

Assessing Deictic Relational Responding in Individuals With Social Anxiety Disorder: Evidence of Perspective-Taking Difficulties

The Psychological Record - The present study uses a relational frame approach (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche, 2001) to perspective taking for individuals suffering from social anxiety disorder...     

The Effect of Social Network Site Use on Appearance Investment and Desire for Cosmetic Surgery Among Adolescent Boys and Girls

Although adolescents frequently use social network sites, little is known about whether the highly visual and self-presentation-centered character of such sites affects body-related outcomes such as investment in appearance and appearance-changing strategies. Due to gender differences in appearance pressures and appearance ideals, these effects of social network sites on body-related outcomes may differ between boys and girls. The aim of the current study was therefore to investigate the relationships between social network site use, appearance investment, and desire for cosmetic surgery among adolescents and to compare the experiences of boys and girls. We used data from a two-wave panel study among 604 Dutch adolescents (aged 11–18). Structural equation modeling showed that social network site use positively predicted adolescents’ desire to undergo cosmetic surgery indirectly through increased appearance investment. The relationships found between social network site use, investment in appearance, and cosmetic surgery desire applied to boys and girls and were not moderated by gender.     

A Validation Study of the Brief Irrational Thoughts Inventory

This study examines the reliability and validity of the “Brief Irrational Thoughts Inventory” (BITI) in a sample of 256 justice-involved youths. The BITI is a questionnaire used to determine the nature and severity of irrational thoughts related to aggressive (externalizing), sub-assertive (internalizing), and distrust-related behavior in adolescents with conduct problems. The results of this study demonstrated adequate internal consistency reliability and supported validity of the BITI in terms of construct, convergent, concurrent and divergent validity. Construct validity was assessed using a confirmatory factor analysis. The BITI proved to be measurement invariant for sex and ethnic origin, i.e., the results indicated that items were interpreted in a similar way by boys and girls as well as native and non-native Dutch respondents. The BITI also proved to be insensitive to intelligence, education, and age (divergent validity). However, weak to moderate correlations were found between the degree of social desirability and irrational thoughts related to aggressive (externalizing) and distrust-related behavior (BITI). Finally, concurrent validity was satisfactory, with the exception of thoughts related to sub-assertive (internalizing) behavior.     

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy Targeting Fear of Progression in an Interdisciplinary Care Program: A Case Study in Systemic Sclerosis

People living with chronic illness often report uncertainty about the future, fear of disease progression, fear of becoming physically disabled, and a reduced life expectancy as important sources of stress. However, little is known about psychological interventions targeting these concerns. The aim of this study is to illustrate an intervention to reduce emotional distress and concerns about the future in a patient with systemic sclerosis (SSc), a rare chronic rheumatic disease with serious consequences for most patients, and to present a preliminary report on its effectiveness using a single-case study design. Because of the complexity of symptoms and complaints due to SSc, the psychological intervention was embedded in an interdisciplinary care program also consisting of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and specialized nurse care.