Evaluation of Potential Kidney Donors with the Personality Assessment Inventory: Normative Data for a Unique Population

Many transplant centers require personality assessment and/or psychiatric clearance prior to allowing an individual to donate a kidney. This is a unique cohort for personality assessment, and there is no normative information available for this population on standardized self-report measures such as the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). We evaluated a prospective sample of 434 kidney donor candidates with development of normative T-scores relevant to this specific comparison group. Compared to the original normative group from the PAI manual, potential kidney donors are 5–7 T-score points above the mean on PIM, RXR, DOM, and WRM and 4–6 points below the mean on the majority of the remaining scales. Raw score/T score conversion tables are provided. The normative data provided here is meant to supplement the original normative information and aid psychologists in evaluation of this unique medical population.     

Sensation seeking, recognition memory, and autonomic arousal

Substantial evidence shows that sensation seeking impacts memory; however, research has not examined how sensation seeking impacts automatic familiarity and conscious-controlled recollection memory systems. The present study (N = 80) examined high and low sensation seekers’ familiarity and recollection of high and low arousal images with negative valence using behavioral and skin conductance measures. Low sensation seekers had more accurate familiarity judgments to high than low arousal images, reflecting a heightened aversive motivational system. High sensation seekers showed an opposite pattern with memory enhancement for low arousal images, regardless of old-new status. The lack of any sensation seeking effects in relation to recollection judgments suggests that this personality trait is more influential on automatic than conscious controlled memory systems.     

Anorexia Nervosa in Adolescence and Maudsley Family‐Based Treatment

Anorexia nervosa is a serious psychiatric disorder that usually occurs in adolescence. The course of the illness can be protracted. Current empirical evidence suggests that the Maudsley Family‐Based Treatment (MFBT) is efficacious for adolescents. MFBT empowers parents as a crucial treatment resource to assist in their child's recovery. The authors review the diagnostic criteria and course of anorexia in adolescence, present empirical evidence and key theoretical concepts of MFBT, and provide a case study.     

Combined therapy with borderline and narcissistic inpatients at the cassel hospital

An account is given here of a rather unorthodox approach to psychodynamic therapy with Borderline patients in part of the therapeutic community at the Cassel Hospital. ‘Combined therapy’ here refers to the setting in which one therapist sees patients in groups and individual sessions concurrently. The paper demonstrates the manner in which this approach brings to the fore the massive destructiveness and rage which so often lies at the core of these patients' difficulties. This is done by describing the development of the group over its first nine months. The therapist comes to be split in the patient's perception, the group sessions representing separation in all its most hated aspects rather than as a prerequisite for differentiation and growth. The resultant rage and destructiveness threaten to render the group unworkable and dangerous. The individual sessions, by contrast, represent a fantasy of being regressed and at one with the ideal mother. It is my belief that these difficulties can be contained only within a therapeutic community. The strength of this approach lies in the vivid reconstruction of a central conflict for these patients and corresponding potential for working through difficulties in the area of separation and individuation. It is also particularly effective in bringing the therapeutic community alive within the therapy. The discussion attempts to address some of the complex theoretical issues raised by the transformation of the transference in both settings which occurs when they are used together and with the same therapist.     

Perceived Sexism, Self-Silencing, and Psychological Distress in College Women

The current study aimed to increase knowledge related to the role of a restrictive relational strategy in the well-established link between women’s experiences of sexism and psychological distress. Utilizing self-report data, this study examined whether self-silencing mediated the relationship between perceived sexism and psychological distress in a sample of U.S. college women (n?=?143) from a large, Midwestern university. It was hypothesized that recent sexist events, lifetime sexist events, and self-silencing would predict increased psychological distress and that self-silencing would mediate the relationship between perceived sexism and distress. Higher recalled sexist events both within the past year and over a lifetime predicted increased psychological distress and self-silencing, while self-silencing predicted increased distress. Results from hierarchical multivariate regression analyses and bootstrapping supported the mediating role of self-silencing between lifetime sexist events and distress and between recent (i.e., occurring in the past year) sexist events and distress. Findings support that the adoption of a restrictive relational strategy partially explains the negative psychological consequences of perceived sexism for college women.     

A modified DBT skills training program for oppositional defiant adolescents: promising preliminary findings

A modified skills training component of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) was implemented in a group therapy format for non-suicidal outpatient young adolescents who met criteria for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Thirty-two youths completed the 16-week program, as well as pre- and post-treatment measures. The treatment was effective not only in decreasing negative behaviors, but also in increasing positive behaviors, per caregiver report. The youths reported a significant reduction in externalizing and internalizing symptoms and in depression. Reliable change indices indicated that far more participants were in the improved category than in the deteriorated category on the measures of interest. Despite the absence of control groups but consistent with the treatment outcome research literature for DBT-based treatments for other disorders, this study demonstrated that DBT skills training is feasible and shows promise in improving the behavior of ODD young adolescents.     

Assessing the impact of group treatment for aggressive inpatients

The purpose of this research was to determine if psychodynamic group psychotherapy decreases the occurrence of physical assault by male group members. The design of the study was a randomized clinical trial. Patients assigned to the control group received the customary clinical care. Patients assigned to the Group Therapy attended a psychodynamic psychotherapy group to help them cope with their aggressive impulses. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were used. Group members showed decreased expression of anger at followup, increased effort to control anger at followup, and decline in aggressive behavior. Control subjects demonstrated no change in level of angry feelings, increased expression of anger at follow-up, decrease in effort to control anger at follow-up, and no change in aggressive behavior. A model for conducting a psychodynamic psychotherapy group for assaultive men was developed which describes process and content aspects as well as leader interventions by group phase.     

Talking about proportion: Fraction labels impact numerical interference in non‐symbolic proportional reasoning

Across two experiments, we investigated how verbal labels impact the way young children attend to proportional information, well before the introduction of formal fraction education. Five‐ to seven‐year‐old children were introduced to equivalent non‐symbolic proportions labeled in one of three ways: (a) a single, categorical label for multiple fractions (both 3/4 and 6/8 referred to as “blick”), (b) labels that focused on the numerator [e.g., 3/4 labeled as “three blicks” (Experiment 1) or “three‐fourths” (Experiment 2)], or (c) labels that had a complete part‐whole structure (“three‐out‐of‐four”). Children then completed measures of non‐symbolic proportional reasoning that pitted whole‐number information against proportional information for novel proportions. Across both experiments, children who heard the categorical labels were more likely to match non‐symbolic displays based on proportion than children in any of the other conditions, who demonstrated higher levels of numerical interference. These findings suggest that fraction labels have the potential to shape children's attention to proportional information even in the context of non‐symbolic part‐whole displays and for children who are not familiar with formal fraction symbols. We discuss these findings in terms of children's developing understanding of proportional reasoning and its implications for fraction education.