Effects of Directed Thinking on Intentions to Engage in Beneficial Activities: Actions Versus Reasons1

An important application of psychological principles involves increasing intentions to engage in activities that, although admittedly beneficial, are often not initially appealing (e.g., studying, quitting smoking, dieting). The present study tests the utility of directed thinking as a tool for eliciting intentions to engage in such activities. Undergraduate students were directed to think either about the reasons why people should find studying enjoyable or about the actions that people might take to make studying enjoyable. Regardless of whether they thought as individuals or in cooperating dyads, students who thought about actions later reported greater intentions to spend time studying than did students who thought about reasons. The results have both theoretical and practical significance.     

Relearning movements: modification of an incorrectly timed reversal movement.

The main purpose of this study was to examine if an inaccurately acquired motor response can be relearned through the provision of a limited number of correct KR trials. 26 subjects were assigned to one of three experimental groups: a no-KR group, an erroneous KR group, and a relearning group who were given correct KR after 125 trials of erroneous KR. Analysis showed a significant temporal correction of the reversal movement when the erroneous KR was replaced by valid verbal information during acquisition. This adaptation, however, was attenuated during retention, indicating that the limited number of correct KR trials did not wash out the effect of the invalid information provided during the first phase of acquisition.     

A developmental study of handedness in Down syndrome pupils.

Assessed hand preference in 7- to 9-yr.-old and 13- to 15-yr.-old pupils with Down syndrome (n = 41) was compared with control schoolchildren (n = 50) of the same ages. A significant increase in left-handedness and mixed-handedness was noted in Down syndrome groups compared with the normal population. Younger Down syndrome pupils were less consistent in their hand preference than the older pupils and the normal controls.     

Borderline Personality Disorder and childhood sexual abuse: a meta-analytic study.

A meta-analysis of the published literature was performed to evaluate the common effect size (r) of the association between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). An online search from 1980 to 1995 was used to gather published papers. r coefficient was used as an effect size measure, and 21 studies were retrieved. A moderate pooled r (.279) for the association between CSA and BPD was observed. Pooled effect size estimates were also obtained for CSA parameters. No significant effect of moderators was evidenced. The results of this study did not support the hypothesis that CSA is a major psychological risk factor or a causal antecedent of BPD.     

The clinical utility of the MMPI-2 Antisocial Practices Content Scale

This study explored the ability of the MMPI-2 Antisocial Practices Content Scale (ASP) to correctly classify DSM-IV Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD). ASP scores and scores on the MMPI-2 Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale were compared in an APD group (n = 10), a Borderline Personality Disorder group (n = 16), a Narcissistic Personality Disorder group (n = 9), an Other Personality Disorder group (representing personality disorders from Clusters A and C; n = 14), and a nonclinical population (NC; n = 67). The ASP exhibited an ability to differentiate APD from other personality disorders and was significantly correlated to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for APD while the Pd was not. Diagnostic efficiency statistics (sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive power, negative predictive power, overall correct classification rate, and kappa) were calculated under four different conditions in a clinically relevant manner (Kessel & Zimmerman, 1993. Psychological Assessment, 53, 395-399). The results of this study illustrate the usefulness of the ASP as a tool for the assessment of antisocial attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in individuals suspected of having APD. This information may be valuable to clinicians who are planning treatment or assessing treatment outcome for clients with APD.     

Object-based attentional selection and aging

The authors conducted 2 studies to examine potential age-related differences in object-based attentional selection. Participants were briefly presented with pairs of wrenches and were asked to make 1 response if both target properties (i.e., an open end and a hexagonal end) were present and another response if only a single target property was present in the display. The critical manipulation was whether the target properties were present on 1 wrench or distributed between 2 wrenches. Space-based models of selective attention predict no difference in performance between these conditions. However, object-based attentional selection models predict better performance when both target properties appear on a single object. The results from both of the studies were consistent with object-based models of attentional selection. Furthermore, both young and old adults showed similar performance effects, suggesting the object-based attentional selection is insensitive to normal aging.     

Religiousness, Health, and Health Behavior in Public-Use Data of the National Center for Health Statistics

Studies of religiousness and health-related variables in large, population-based cross-sectional or, preferably, longitudinal studies, which are often prohibitively expensive, are important to complement findings from the more commonly performed studies. Inadequately known among social science researchers, the national health surveys of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) offer large, high-quality data sets to the public at no or nominal cost and hence offer important opportunities for research in the area of religion and health, religion and reproductive behavior, sociology of religion and psychology of religion. This report provides an overview of the data sets and a bibliography of prior research using these data, which is intended to suggest how the data of NCHS may be further exploited by researchers of religiousness and health.

Common and Unique Factors Associated with DSM-IV-TR Internalizing Disorders in Children

With the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders DSM-IV Fourth Edition-Text Revision. Author, Washington, DC. 2000) ahead, decisions will be made about the future of taxonomic conceptualizations. This study examined the factor structure of items from three internalizing disorders (Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Depression) on the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV-Child Version (Silverman, W. K., & Albano, A. M. Anxiety disorders interview schedule for children for DSM-IV, child and parent versions. Psychological Corporation, San Antonio, 1996). Two-, three-, and four-factor models emerged in an exploratory factor analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis provided additional empirical support for the four-factor model over the two- or three-factor models. Implications for the structure of the DSM-V taxonomy in children and adolescents are discussed.