Effects of diagnostic classification systems on clinical hypothesis-generation

In this study it was determined whether (a) classification as opposed to absence of classification has an effect on the quality of clinical hypotheses (b) the DSM-III-R and the CBCL have a different effect on the quality of clinical hypotheses, and (c) the potential difference between the DSM-III-R and the CBCL is moderated by the different number of syndromes identified by these systems. To investigate these questions, an experiment was conducted in which 86 clinicians generated hypotheses for six cases. The clinicians were divided into a DSM-III-R, a CBCL, and a control group. Of the six cases, two were classified by both classification systems as one syndrome, two were classified as one syndrome by the DSM-III-R but as two syndromes by the CBCL, and two were classified as two syndromes by the DSM-III-R but as one syndrome by the CBCL. The quality of the hypotheses was determined by means of four dependent variables selected from an overview of qualitative criteria: explanatory value, redundancy, possibility of operationalization, and specificity. No differences between the CBCL and the control groups were found. The DSM group performed better than the control group regarding explanatory value and redundancy. The DSM-III-R group also scored better than the CBCL group regarding explanatory value, particularly when the number of identified syndromes was two for the CBCL and one for the DSM-III-R.     

Factor structure of the basic personality inventory with incarcerated offenders

The item and scale factor structure of the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI) was examined in a sample of 486 offenders incarcerated for violent and sexual crimes. Separate principal-component analyses of the items for each of the 11 clinical scales, critical item scale, and social desirability scale indicated a one-dimensional factor solution for all scales except Depression and Persecutory Ideation. The Depression scale's two factors were Hopelessness and Depressive Affect and the Persecutory Ideation scale's two factors were General Paranoia and Perception of External Control. Although the factors for these two scales may assist in interpretation, the correlations between the factors and the total score of their respective scale were high. Confirmatory factor analysis of the 220 items from the 11 clinical scales supported the factorial logic of the scoring key. Analysis of the 11 clinical scales resulted in two factors: General Psychopathology/Adjustment and Antisocial Orientation. The results suggest that all but two scales can be viewed as unidimensional thereby allowing for a straightforward clinical interpretation. These analyses support the internal structure of the BPI and lend credence to external validity work with forensic populations.     

ELECTROCORTICAL DIFFERENTIATION OF EVALUATIVE AND NONEVALUATIVE CATEGORIZATIONS

Abstract— The evaluative categorizations that underlie affective and attitudinal judgments have often been equated with non-evaluative categorizations despite the central importance of evaluative processes for survival In the present experiment, a late positive potential (LPP) of the event-related brain potential elicited when participants evaluatively categorized food items as positive or nonpositive was compared with the LPP elicited when participants semantically (i e., nonevaluatively) categorized food items as vegetable or nonvegetable Results revealed that evaluative categorizations evoked an LPP that was relatively larger over the right than the left scalp regions compared with the LPP evoked by nonevaluative categorizations. This finding provides evidence regarding the differences in neural and cognitive processes involved in evaluative and nonevaluative categorizations.     

The relationship between rational thinking and intelligence in children

This study ws designed to evaluate the efficacy of a four-session REE curriculum and examine the relationship between intelligence and the endorsement of irrational beliefs in elementary school children. A twotailedt-test administered to examine difference between pre- and post-test scores onThe Idea Inventory was statistically significant,t (1,94)=5.90,p<.0001. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between pre-test scores onThe Idea Inventory and theOtis-Lennon School Ability Test failed to reach significance (r=.15) suggesting higher intelligence did not predict greater endorsement of rational beliefs. The post-test scores using the same two instruments reached a correlation coefficient of r=.51 and was statistically significant at the .01 level. A higher percentage of children who scored below the mean on theOtis-Lennon improved from pre- to post-test than children who scored above the mean.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Comparison of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction in teaching science vocabulary words to high school students with mild disabilities

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction during daily probe sessions in teaching science vocabulary words. The teacher presented the vocabulary word definitions as instructive feedback during training sessions. Five 16–17 year old students with disabilities participated in an adapted alternating treatments design that evaluated the simultaneous prompting strategy, error correction and instructive feedback. Instruction occurred in a group format using choral responding. The results indicate that (a) all students learned to read the vocabulary words, (b) simultaneous prompting with error correction was slightly more efficient for three of the five subjects in learning the targeted words, and four of the five students made fewer errors in this condition, (c) all students preferred simultaneous prompting with error correction over simultaneous prompting without error correction, (d) words mastered in both conditions generalized equally, (e) there were minimal differences between the two conditions in the collected maintenance data, and (e) students experienced only minimal improvement in their ability to define vocabulary words (instructive feedback). Discussion focuses on issues for further research and implications for instructional practice with simultaneous prompting, error correction and instructive feedback.     

Health, fortune, and moral authority in medicine.

The Christian conviction about Divine Providence encourages a novel account of the moral content of health and authority in the health care context. While health can be understood as the disposition of a living body to be able to proceed in the world well, as a species of freedom it is informed by the particular projects and concerns that Christians hold deepest. This is due to the fact that health acquires content, and thus becomes desirable as a particular type of good, only in relation to judgments about the good life. Aquinas' reflections concerning the good of health and its partial slavery to fortune reveal a Christian past that dwelt on the intrinsic and instrumental good of health. A rich Christian tradition in which health as intrinsically good, a good of the body, is ordained to the interests of right Christian virtue. Each of these factors affects the character of the health to be pursued and the authority of the physician as determining the ends and means of medicine.     

Feminism, law, and bioethics

Feminist legal theory provides a healthy skepticism toward legal doctrine and insists that we reexamine even formally gender-neutral rules to uncover problematic assumptions behind them. The article first outlines feminist legal theory from the perspectives of liberal, cultural, and radical feminism. Examples of how each theory influences legal practice, case law, and legislation are highlighted. Each perspective is then applied to a contemporary bioethical issue, egg donation. Following a brief discussion of the common themes shared by feminist jurisprudence, the article incorporates a narrative reflecting on the integration of the common feminist themes in the context of the passage of the Maryland Health Care Decisions Act. The article concludes that gender does matter and that an understanding of feminist legal theory and practice will enrich the analysis of contemporary bioethical issues.     

The effects of task demands on the equivalence of visual and auditory representations of periodic numerical data

The equivalence of visual and auditory graphical displays was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, multidimensional scaling techniques were applied to paired comparison similarity judgments of both auditory and visual displays of simple periodic wave forms. In Experiment 2, a subset of perceptually similar pairs of wave forms was selected as the stimulus set for an AB-X discrimination task in both auditory and visual modalities. Results suggest much greater apparent visual-auditory equivalence for the similarity rating task than for the more difficult discrimination task, implying that one should consider the demands of the task when deciding whether auditory graphic displays are suitable alternatives to more traditional visual displays.