The Iowa Personality Disorder Screen: development and preliminary validation of a brief screening interview

The length and expense of comprehensive personality disorder interviews makes them unwieldy for routine use. A brief but sensitive screen could eliminate administration of longer instruments in many instances. We describe the development of the Iowa Personality Disorder Screen (IPDS)--a mini-structured interview which can be completed in less than 5 minutes. Retrospective analyses using 1,203 SIDP-R interviews suggested that the IPDS items should provide good sensitivity and specificity. We present results from a prospective validation study, using a mixed group of 52 nonpsychotic inpatients and outpatients who were diagnosed using the SIDP-IV. Blind administration of the IPDS yielded excellent sensitivity (92%) and good specificity (79%), using a subset of five screening items. Addition of two more items leads to an estimated sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 86%. The IPDS shows promise as a quick personality disorder screen for use in research settings or standard clinical interviews.     

Parents’ Influence on Infants’ Gender-Typed Toy Preferences

Gender socialization influences children at early ages, shaping their developing identities. The toys provided by parents deliver some of the earliest gender-based messages by encouraging children to engage in activities associated with, for example, dolls and trucks. In the current study, we measured the influence of parental socialization by assessing 5- and 12 ½-month-old infants’ exposure to dolls and trucks and by experimentally manipulating parents’ encouragement to play with these toys. We found that infants displayed gender-typical toy preferences at 12 ½, but not 5 months, a pattern characteristic of previous studies. However, brief encouragement by a parent to play with toys from each category was ineffective in altering infants’ preferences. Rather, the types of toys present in the home predicted preferences, suggesting that at-home exposure to toys may be influential in the development of toy preferences. These findings reveal that socialization processes may indeed play a role in the formation of early gender-typical toy preferences and highlight the importance of equal toy exposure during infancy to ensure optimal development.     

Live Showups and Their Influence on a Subsequent Video Line‐up

A live showup (known as a street identification in the UK) allows the perpetrator to be identified shortly after a street crime. If the suspect disputes the identification, a video line‐up often ensues. Four experiments examined the reliability of live showups and their influence on a subsequent video line‐up using realistic procedures and conditions. Similar proportions of culprits and innocent suspects were identified from live showups and video line‐ups. Both culprits and innocent suspects previously identified were likely to be identified again in a subsequent line‐up, with delays from a few minutes to a month. Only a weak effect of clothing bias was observed. There was strong evidence of commitment to a previous identification but no reliable evidence of source monitoring errors. The results suggest that a live showup is not less fair than a line‐up, but the use of repeated identification procedures introduces an unfair bias against innocent suspects. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reading aloud: New evidence for contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation

Computational accounts of reading aloud largely ignore context when stipulating how processing unfolds. One exception to this state of affairs proposes adjusting the breadth of lexical knowledge in such models in response to differing contexts. Three experiments and corresponding simulations, using Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler’s (2001) dual-route cascaded model, are reported. This work investigates a determinant of when a pseudohomophone such as brane is affected by the frequency of the word from which it is derived (e.g., the base word frequency of brain) by examining performance under conditions where it is read aloud faster than a nonword control such as frane. Reynolds and Besner’s (2005a) lexical breadth account makes the novel prediction that when a pseudohomophone advantage is seen, there will also be a base word frequency effect, provided exception words are also present. This prediction was confirmed. Five other accounts of this pattern of results are considered and found wanting. It is concluded that the lexical breadth account provides the most parsimonious account to date of these and related findings.     

Are we all in this together?: co-victimization,inclusive social identity and collective action in solidarity with the disadvantaged

Common experience of injustice can be a potent motivator of collective action and efforts to achieve social change - and of such efforts becoming more widespread. In this research, we propose that the effects of co-victimization on collective action are a function of inclusive social identity. Experiment 1 (N= 61) demonstrated that while presence (compared to absence) of co-victimization positively predicted consumer (i.e., participants) willingness to act collectively in solidarity with sweatshop workers, this effect was mediated by inclusive social identity. In Experiment 2 (N= 120), the salience of inclusive social identity was experimentally manipulated and interacted with co-victimization to predict collective action. When inclusive social identity was salient, co-victimization enhanced collective action, including willingness to pay extra for products made ethically and in support of fair wages for workers. In contrast, collective action was attenuated when co-victimization took place in the absence of inclusive social identity. Implications for understanding when co-victimization is transformed into common fate and political solidarity with the disadvantaged are discussed.     

Cues to deception in context: response latency/gaps in denials and blame shifting

Over 40 years of work on lying in psychology and communication has investigated numerous 'cues to deception'- the subtle signals people show when they are lying. One of these cues to deception is 'response latency' or the gap that occurs between questions and the lying response. The current investigation uses the methodology of conversation analysis to re-consider the question of response latency in the context of lying. Drawing on data from two naturalistic sources, the television shows COPS and the Jeremy Kyle Show, this investigation analyses response latencies in order to show the regular organization of gaps between turns in both lies and non-lies. The current investigation demonstrates that in blame shifting turns which are lies, any gaps between turns result from a display of upcoming 'trouble', rather than being related to lying per se. The investigation highlights the need to analyse lies in the contexts in which they are told, taking prior and subsequent talk into account.     

Doxastic Voluntarism and the Function of Epistemic Evaluations

Control of our own beliefs is allegedly required for the truth of epistemic evaluations, such as “S ought to believe that p”, or “S ought to suspend judgment (and so refrain from any belief) whether p”. However, we cannot usually believe or refrain from believing at will. I agree with a number of recent authors in thinking that this apparent conflict is to be resolved by distinguishing reasons for believing that give evidence that p from reasons that make it desirable to believe that p whether or not p is true. I argue however that there is a different problem, one that becomes clearer in light of this solution to the first problem. Someone’s approval of our beliefs is at least often a non-evidential reason to believe, and as such cannot change our beliefs. Ought judgments aim to change the world. But ‘ought to believe’ judgments can’t do that by changing the belief, if they don’t give evidence. So I argue that we should instead regard epistemic ought judgments as aimed mainly at influencing assertions that express the belief and other actions based on the belief, in accord with recent philosophical claims that we have epistemic norms for assertion and action.     

Specific and differential prediction of health anxiety by disgust sensitivity and propensity

Current models of health anxiety suggest that fear resulting from false alarms to perceived threats to one's health results in the development of hypochondriasis and related disorders. Disgust has been proposed as an affective response that may function as an etiological and maintenance mechanism in health anxiety. Moreover, the way in which an individual perceives the disgust response (disgust sensitivity) may affect health anxiety, separately from their likelihood of experiencing disgust (disgust propensity). The present study utilized multiple hierarchical regression analysis to investigate the degree to which self-reported disgust sensitivity and disgust propensity differentially predict elevated health anxiety in a sample of 620 non-treatment-seeking undergraduates. Further, this effect is tested in comparison to that of anxiety sensitivity, a construct demonstrated to be strongly related to health anxiety. Analyses indicate that disgust sensitivity, rather than disgust propensity, is primarily responsible for this relation. An additional analysis tested the specificity of disgust sensitivity relative to anxiety sensitivity. Disgust sensitivity was no longer significant after including anxiety sensitivity in the model. Suggestions for further evaluation of this relation are provided. These results suggest that although disgust sensitivity may appear related to health anxiety, this relation may be confounded by anxiety sensitivity.     

The Positive Influence of Creating a Holistic Facial Composite on Video Line‐up Identification

Witnesses to a crime may be asked to create a facial composite of the offender from memory. They may then view a suspect in a police line‐up. Previous research on this topic has found both recognition impairment and enhancement following composite construction. In Experiment 1, creator‐participants employed the holistic facial composite system system EFIT‐V or the feature‐based E‐FIT system to create a single composite, and in Experiment 2, creators constructed up to three EFIT‐Vs. In both experiments, facial composite creators were one‐and‐a‐half times more likely than non‐composite creating controls to make correct target identifications from a video line‐up. No between condition effects were found in target‐absent trials in Experiment 1. The development of holistic facial composite systems has enhanced suspect identification rates in police investigations, and these results suggest that the use of such a system can also have a positive influence on a composite‐creating witness' later recognition of the suspect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Brief Behavioral Activation Treatment for Depressed Adolescents Delivered by Nonspecialist Clinicians: A Case Illustration

Behavioral activation (BA) can be as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy for the treatment of depression in adults, but to date there is little research with adolescents. This is problematic given the recognized need to increase access to evidence-based interventions for depression in young people. We have developed a new adaptation of brief Behavioral Activation (Lejuez, Hopko, Acierno, Daughters, & Pagoto, 2011) specifically for young people: Brief BA for depressed adolescents. In this paper, we use a case example with session-by-session measurement to show how a nonspecialist clinician can deliver this intervention successfully. We discuss the key themes arising from this training case, challenges the clinician faced, and how these were managed through training and supervision.