A model for brief assessment of attachment and its application to women in inpatient treatment for trauma-related psychiatric disorders

We adapted self-report measures of attachment style to the psychological assessment of women in specialized inpatient treatment for trauma-related disorders. The study employed 2 measures of adult attachment style, the Relationship Questionnaire (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) and the Adult Attachment Scale (Collins & Read, 1990) as well as our Current Attachment Relationships questionnaire, which assesses the extent of social support in secure attachments. We administered these measures to 99 patients and to a convenience sample of 154 women in the community. We found modest correspondence between the 2 attachment style measures and substantial relations between attachment styles and range of secure attachment relationships. Women in the trauma sample reported insecure attachment styles and relatively few secure attachment figures. We discuss the implications of these findings for clinical assessment.     

Intensive care units: a systemic perspective

There are no systemic accounts of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) nor is there much to guide the systemic therapist working within these units. This paper attempts to develop an analysis of ICUs and proposes two working models describing the various levels at which the therapist can intervene.     

Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Nature: Theological and Philosophical Reflections

I develop a multilevel, holistic view of persons, emphasizing embodiment, emotions, consciousness, and the social self. In successive sections I draw from six sources: 1. Theology . The biblical understanding of the unitary, embodied, social self gave way in classical Christianity to a body-soul dualism, but it has been recovered by many recent theologians. 2. Neuroscience . Research has shown the localization of mental functions in regions of the brain, the interaction of cognition and emotion, and the importance of social interaction in evolutionary history and child development. 3. Artificial intelligence . Some forms of robotics use embodied systems that learn by interacting with their environment, but the possibilities for emotion, socialization, and consciousness in robots remain problematic. 4. Relations between levels . Concepts that can help us relate studies of neurons and persons include the hierarchy of levels, the communication of information, thebehavior of dynamic systems, and epistemological and ontological emergence. 5. Philosophy of mind . Two-aspect theories of the mind-brain relation offer an alternative between the extremes of eliminative materialism and the thesis that consciousness is irreducible. 6. Process philosophy . I suggest that process thought provides a coherent philosophical framework in which these themes can be brought together. It combines dipolar monism with organizational pluralism, and it emphasizes embodiment, emotions, a hierarchy oflevels, and the social character of selfhood.     

Modelling the Disruptive Effects of Irrelevant Speech on Order Information

The feature model (Nairne, 1990) is extended to include order information by incorporating aspects of Estes' (1972, 1997) perturbation theory. Order information is encoded with other cues in primary memory and precision is gradually lost due to drift along the appropriate dimension. Recall begins with the cue whose positional uncertainty gradient indicates it was in the first position with the highest probability. Order errors occur primarily because cues can “perturb” to adjacent positions: Although the appropriate secondary memory target is sampled, it is sampled out of order. However, cues that have not perturbed can also sample an incorrect secondary memory item, which is then recalled out of order. Thus, both order errors and item errors can give rise to recalling an item from the list in an incorrect position. A simulation shows that with the addition of the perturbation mechanism, the feature model can produce the appropriate order error gradients for short and long words recalled in quiet, accompanied by irrelevant speech, or accompanied by articulatory suppression.     

Reverse causation in activity-cognitive ability associations: the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Active lifestyles might protect cognitive abilities; however, studies rarely consider the reverse causal direction. Activity-cognition associations might reflect stable intelligence differences rather than a protective effect of activity. The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (n = 1091) completed cognitive tests aged 70, having taken an intelligence test aged 11. Activity (assessed by participation in 15 activities that produced a socio-intellectual activity factor, and by physical activity) was positively associated with cognition (r = .08 to .32, p ≤ .05). When age-11 IQ and adult social class were controlled, only physical activity remained significantly associated with general cognitive ability and processing speed.     

Childhood poverty and young adults' allostatic load: the mediating role of childhood cumulative risk exposure

Childhood poverty is linked to a host of physical and psychological disorders during childhood and later in life. In the study reported here, we showed that the proportion of childhood spent in poverty from birth to age 9 was linked to elevated allostatic load, a marker of chronic physiological stress, in 17-year-olds. Furthermore, this prospective longitudinal relationship was mediated by cumulative risk exposure at age 13. The greater the duration of early life spent in poverty, the greater the exposure to cumulative risk. This, in turn, leads to elevated allostatic load. Multiple psychological, biological, and neurological pathways likely account for the social patterning of psychological and physical disease.     

Do personality scale items function differently in people with high and low IQ?

Intelligence differences might contribute to true differences in personality traits. It is also possible that intelligence might contribute to differences in understanding and interpreting personality items. Previous studies have not distinguished clearly between these possibilities. Before it can be accepted that scale score differences actually reflect personality differences, personality items should show measurement invariance. The authors used item response theory to test measurement invariance in the five-factor model scales of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and NEO-Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) across two groups of participants from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 with relatively low and high cognitive abilities. Each group consisted of 320 individuals, with equal numbers of men and women. The mean IQ difference of the groups was 21 points. It was found that the IPIP and NEO-FFI items were measurement invariant across all five scales, making it possible to conclude that any differences in IPIP and NEO-FFI scores between people with low and high cognitive abilities reflected personality trait differences.     

Civilian Response Corps Force Review: The Application of Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis to Prioritize Skills Required for Future Diplomatic Missions

Created by the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, the Civilian Response Corps (CRC) contains a diverse pool of qualified and ready‐to‐deploy civilian professionals that support conflict prevention and response efforts in countries or regions that are at risk of, are currently in, or are transitioning from conflict or civil strife. As such, it is vital to optimize the CRC's skill groupings to maximize adaptability and responsiveness to highly uncertain and trying political conditions and crises across the globe. The nature of the CRC value proposition is such that determining which skill set compositions deliver the greatest benefit requires a multi‐faceted perspective that looks at a number of attributes and factors, both tangible and intangible. To meet these needs, an organizational decision‐making approach utilizing multi‐criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was applied to ensure that skill‐grouping allocations were determined in a logical and robust manner. The MCDA analysis allowed for a wide range of worldviews and perspectives, drawn from select members of academia and partner agencies of the CRC who provided their expert opinions on the expected demand for skill groupings commonly identified as most necessary in a civilian ‘surge’ capacity. These skills were assessed with reference to a values hierarchy of representative country scenarios, missions and sub‐missions identified by the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. Of particular interest was the use of the MCDA method to prioritize CRC skill groupings and to help inform the Department of State's understanding of the ‘ideal’ proportion and types of civilian skills for inclusion in the CRC. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.