Do boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have positive illusory self-concepts?

One hundred ninety-five boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were compared with 73 comparison boys (M = 9.83 years, SD = 1.30) on self-perceptions relative to a teacher-rated criterion. Emphasis was placed on ADHD subgroup comparisons according to level of aggression, academic achievement, and depression compared with control boys. Consistent with the authors' prediction, ADHD boys overestimated relative to teacher report, more than did controls, in the scholastic competence, social acceptance, and behavioral conduct domains. Examination of discrepancy scores (child rating - teacher rating) by comorbidity subgroups suggested that aggressive and low-achieving ADHD boys tended to overestimate their competence the most in the domains in which they were the most impaired. Results are discussed in terms of prior literature on "positive illusions" in ADHD children.     

Atypical depression: enhanced right hemispheric dominance for perceiving emotional chimeric faces

Two studies compared hemispatial bias for perceiving chimeric faces in patients having either atypical or typical depression and healthy controls. A total of 245 patients having major depressive disorder (MDD) or dysthymia (164 with atypical features) and 115 controls were tested on the Chimeric Faces Test. Atypical depression differed from typical depression and controls in showing abnormally large right hemisphere bias. This was present in patients having either MDD or dysthymia and was not related to anxiety, physical anhedonia, or vegetative symptoms. In contrast, patients having MDD with melancholia showed essentially no right hemisphere bias. This is further evidence that atypical depression is a biologically distinct subtype and underscores the importance of this diagnostic distinction for neurophysiologic studies.     

Semantic and syntactic forces in noun phrase production

Three experiments investigated semantic and syntactic effects in the production of phrases in Dutch. Bilingual participants were presented with English nouns and were asked to produce an adjective + noun phrase in Dutch including the translation of the noun. In 2 experiments, the authors blocked items by either semantic category or grammatical gender. Participants performed the task slower when the target nouns were of the same semantic category than when they were from different categories and faster when the target nouns had the same gender than when they had different genders. In a final experiment, both manipulations were crossed. The authors replicated the results of the first 2 experiments, and no interaction was found. These findings suggest a feedforward flow of activation between lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic information.     

Neighborhood predictors of hopelessness among adolescent suicide attempters: preliminary investigation

The role of neighborhood factors in predicting hopelessness among adolescent suicide attempters was examined in this study. Forty-eight adolescents who attempted suicide were administered measures of hopelessness and depression. Family socioeconomic status (SES) was calculated based on family demographics and characteristics of neighborhood context were examined using a geocoding software package. Adolescents who lived in neighborhoods with weak social networks reported higher levels of hopelessness, even after controlling for SES and depression. These preliminary findings suggest that environmental context may play a role in the emotional status of adolescents who attempt suicide.     

A contribution of cognitive decision models to clinical assessment: decomposing performance on the Bechara gambling task

The Bechara simulated gambling task is a popular method of examining decision-making deficits exhibited by people with brain damage, psychopathology, antisocial personality, or drug abuse problems. However, performance on this task is confounded by complex interdependencies between cognitive, motivational, and response processes, making it difficult to sort out and identify the specific processes responsible for the observed behavioral deficits. The authors compare 3 competing cognitive decision models of the Bechara task in terms of their ability to explain the performance deficits observed in Huntington's disease patients as compared with healthy populations and people with Parkinson's disease. The parameters of the best fitting model are used to decompose the observed performance deficit of the Huntington patients into cognitive, motivational, and response sources.     

The multidimensional nature of ageism: construct validity and group differences

The authors investigated the factor structure and construct validity of the Fraboni Scale of Ageism and the age and gender differences in ageism scores. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the multidimensional nature of FSA scores and generally corroborated the initial factor structure reported by M. Fraboni, with some notable exceptions. Essentially, the present findings were aligned with theoretical models of ageism that emphasize both cognitive facets and affective facets. That is, on the basis of their factor analytic findings, the authors redefined Fraboni's original factors of Antilocution, Avoidance, and Discrimination as Stereotypes, Separation, and Affective Attitudes, respectively, because of the clustering of items within factors. The revised 3-factor structure accounted for 36.4% of the variance in FSA scores. FSA factor scores significantly related to other scores from other measures of age-related attitudes, with higher correlations among factors that were similar in terms of their cognitive nature versus their affective nature. Finally, younger individuals and men had significantly higher ageism scores on the FSA than older individuals and women. The authors discussed the importance of adequately assessing ageism, with particular emphasis devoted to the understanding of age bias.