Prevalence of DSM-IV borderline personality disorder in two community samples: 6,330 English 11-year-olds and 34,653 American adults

This study had two main objectives. The first was to assess the prevalence of DSM-IV borderline personality disorder and its constituent symptoms in a community sample of late-latency children. The second was to compare these rates to those found in a community sample of American adults. A birth cohort of 6,330 11-year-old children in Bristol, England, was interviewed concerning borderline psychopathology in 2002-2004. A community sample of 34,653 American adults was interviewed about borderline psychopathology in 2004-2005. Rates of chronic emptiness, physically self-damaging acts, and stormy relationships were very similar in both samples (<2% difference). However, a significantly higher percentage of children than adults reported being angry and moody. In contrast, a significantly higher percentage of adults than children reported being paranoid/dissociated, having a serious identity disturbance, being impulsive, and making frantic efforts to avoid abandonment. In addition, a significantly higher percentage of adults than children met DSM-IV criteria for BPD (5.9% vs. 3.2%). Statistically significant but clinically minor gender differences were also found between girls and boys as well as men and women. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that late-latency children are about half as likely as adults to meet DSM-IV criteria for BPD. They also suggest that gender does not play a defining role in symptom expression.     

Reevaluation of Piaget’s concept of egocentrism: New perspectives on a misunderstood idea

The paper states the goal of this special issue and briefly summarizes the topics of the papers addressed in this issue.     

So what do you think of the organization? A contextual priming explanation for recruitment Web site characteristics as antecedents of job seekers’ organizational image perceptions

Although job seekers’ organizational image perceptions can influence attraction to recruiting organizations, little is known about how these perceptions are formed or modified. To address this research gap, the authors drew from research in social cognition theory and demonstrated that recruitment Web site characteristics influenced the development and modification of organizational image perceptions via a priming mechanism. Results of two studies showed that having technologically advanced Web site features and depicting racially diverse organizational members served as contextual primers and influenced participants’ organizational image perceptions. Results also revealed that participants’ familiarity with recruiting organizations moderated the effects of these Web site characteristics on several dimensions of organizational image such that effects were weaker for more familiar organizations. These findings suggest that organizations can manage job seekers’ organizational image perceptions through strategic recruitment Web site design; however, such attempts may be tempered by job seekers’ familiarity with the organization.     

编者导言(英文)

This special issue of the journal‘Studies in Logic’ results from an international workshopon‘TheHistory of Logic in China’held in Amsterdam,The Netherlands,on November 24-26, 2010 (http://www.sciencehistory.asia/history-logic-china).This event brought together,     

Perceived burdensomeness, familism, and suicidal ideation among Mexican women: enhancing understanding of risk and protective factors

The interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide and a culturally-relevant construct, familism, was used to examine predictors of suicidal ideation among Mexican and Mexican American women in the United States. A sense of perceived burdensomeness toward others was expected to significantly predict suicidal ideation, especially among women who endorsed high levels of familism. Mexican and Mexican American outpatient women (N = 73) completed self-report measures and an interview measure of suicidal ideation. Main and interactive effects of perceived burdensomeness and familism were examined. Perceived burdensomeness, but not familism, significantly predicted suicidal ideation. The interaction hypothesis was not supported. These findings highlight perceived burdensomeness as a risk factor for suicidal behavior in Mexican and Mexican American women.     

The Role of the Cerebellum in Cognition and Emotion: Personal Reflections Since 1982 on the Dysmetria of Thought Hypothesis,and Its Historical Evolution from Theory to Therapy

The cognitive neuroscience of the cerebellum is now an established multidisciplinary field of investigation. This essay traces the historical evolution of this line of inquiry from an emerging field to its current status, with personal reflections over almost three decades on this journey of discovery. It pays tribute to early investigators who recognized the wider role of the cerebellum beyond motor control, traces the origins of new terms and concepts including the dysmetria of thought theory, the universal cerebellar transform, and the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome, and places these developments within the broader context of the scientific efforts of a growing community of cerebellar cognitive neuroscientists. This account considers the converging evidence from theoretical, anatomical, physiological, clinical, and functional neuroimaging approaches that have resulted in the transition from recognizing the cerebellar incorporation into the distributed neural circuits subserving cognition and emotion, to a hopeful new era of treatment of neurocognitive and neuropsychiatric manifestations of cerebellar diseases, and to cerebellar-based interventions for psychiatric disorders.     

Psychophysics of perceiving eye-gaze and head direction with peripheral vision: implications for the dynamics of eye-gaze behavior

Two psychophysical experiments are reported, one dealing with the visual perception of the head orientation of another person (the 'looker') and the other dealing with the perception of the looker's direction of eye gaze. The participant viewed the looker with different retinal eccentricities, ranging from foveal to far-peripheral viewing. On average, judgments of head orientation were reliable even out to the extremes of peripheral vision (90 degrees eccentricity), with better performance at the extremes when the participant was able to view the looker changing head orientation from one trial to the next. In sharp contrast, judgments of eye-gaze direction were reliable only out to 4 degrees eccentricity, signifying that the eye-gaze social signal is available to people only when they fixate near the looker's eyes. While not unexpected, this vast difference in availability of information about head direction and eye direction, both of which can serve as indicators of the looker's focus of attention, is important for understanding the dynamics of eye-gaze behavior.     

Auditory event perception: The source—perception loop for posture in human gait

There is a small but growing literature on the perception of natural acoustic events, but few attempts have been made to investigate complex sounds not systematically controlled within a laboratory setting. The present study investigates listeners’ ability to make judgments about the posture (upright—stooped) of the walker who generated acoustic stimuli contrasted on each trial. We use a comprehensive three-stage approach to event perception, in which we develop a solid understanding of the source event and its sound properties, as well as the relationships between these two event stages. Developing this understanding helps both to identify the limitations of common statistical procedures and to develop effective new procedures for investigating not only the two information stages above, but also the decision strategies employed by listeners in making source judgments from sound. The result is a comprehensive, ultimately logical, but not necessarily expected picture of both the source—sound—perception loop and the utility of alternative research tools.     

The role of interdependence and perceived similarity in depressed affect contagion

This study hypothesized that perceived similarity significantly impacts depressed affect contagion only for individuals with highly interdependent self-construals. Baseline self-construal and affect were measured. Then, after reading a vignette about a depressed or nondepressed target, affect and perceived similarity were assessed. Participants reading the depressed vignette reported higher negative affect than participants reading the nondepressed vignette. Positive affect did not differ between the two conditions. For participants exposed to the depressed vignette, the hypothesized interaction between perceived similarity and interdependence significantly predicted positive affect. It appears that participants with more interdependent self-construals were more likely to "catch" the low positive affect displayed by the depressed target only if they perceived themselves as highly similar to the target.