An examination of interrater reliability for scoring the Rorschach Comprehensive System in eight data sets

In this article, we describe interrater reliability for the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner. 1993) in 8 relatively large samples, including (a) students, (b) experienced re- searchers, (c) clinicians, (d) clinicians and then researchers, (e) a composite clinical sample (i.e., a to d), and 3 samples in which randomly generated erroneous scores were substituted for (f) 10%, (g) 20%, or (h) 30% of the original responses. Across samples, 133 to 143 statistically stable CS scores had excellent reliability, with median intraclass correlations of.85, .96, .97, .95, .93, .95, .89, and .82, respectively. We also demonstrate reliability findings from this study closely match the results derived from a synthesis of prior research, CS summary scores are more reliable than scores assigned to individual responses, small samples are more likely to generate unstable and lower reliability estimates, and Meyer's (1997a) procedures for estimating response segment reliability were accurate. The CS can be scored reliably, but because scoring is the result of coder skills clinicians must conscientiously monitor their accuracy.     

Perceptions of unconditional and conditional worth among college students

Self-esteem scales tend to represent conditional perceptions of self-esteem. The Worth Index has been previously validated as an effective measure for identifying both conditional and unconditional perceptions of worth. We administered the Worth Index to 1,161 college-aged students at Brigham Young University to assess their current perceptions of unconditional and conditional worth. Both men and women agreed more strongly with items involving unconditional worth than conditional worth. A negative correlation was found between ratings of unconditional and conditional worth. Women had lower unconditional worth scores than men, which was related to being more likely to wish they were someone else, desire to have a better body, and to being concerned about weight. Agreement with two overview measures of self-esteem involving a "good" sense of self and stability of self-esteem was positively associated with agreement on statements about unconditional worth. This research shows the importance of incorporating unconditional worth into self-esteem measures.     

Assessing ADHD across settings: contributions of behavioral assessment to categorical decision making

Adapted methods of behavioral assessment to assess home and school functioning in a way that maps directly to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The study was conducted in a school-based sample with 5- to 12-year-old children referred to a school intervention team. A multigate set of procedures was used to assign children to one of 3 groups: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), inattentive group; ADHD, combined group; and a non-ADHD control group. The ADHD Rating Scale-IV was used to assess parent and teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms as delineated in DSM-IV. The findings suggest that the use of a fixed cutoff point (i.e., 6 or more symptoms), which is employed in the DSM-IV, is often not the best strategy for making diagnostic decisions. The optimal approach depends on whether diagnostic information is being provided by the parent or teacher and whether the purpose of assessment is to conduct a screening or a diagnostic evaluation. Also, the results indicate that a strategy that aggregates symptoms in the order in which they are accurate in predicting a diagnosis of ADHD is a more effective strategy than the approach used in DSM-IV, which aggregates any combination of a specific number of items. Implications for using methods of behavioral assessment to make diagnostic decisions using DSM-IV criteria are discussed.     

Medical Marijuana Regulation in Michigan: Problems of Legitimacy

Since the initiation of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA) in 2008 State of Michigan . 2008 . “Michigan Medical Marihuana Act.” Initiated Act 1 of 2008. Retrieved June 5, 2012 (www.legislature.mi.gov)  [Google Scholar], several issues relevant to the study of sociology of law and deviant behavior have emerged. I analyzed the administration of the MMMA using a case study method and interpret the initial social issues developing from this law by focusing on legitimacy. Due to a contradictory system where the MMMA is at odds with the Schedule I categorization of marijuana at the federal and state levels, the legitimacy of both the administration of the MMMA and the administration of marijuana law more generally are threatened. This lack of legitimacy in turn leads to a situation of “Pyrrhic Defeat” where failure to gain legal compliance maintains the inertia of marijuana prohibition.     

Refining and Testing “Counterintuitiveness” in Virtual Reality: Cross-Cultural Evidence for Recall of Counterintuitive Representations

The experiment presented provides partial cross-cultural empirical support for Pascal Boyer's theory of the transmission of minimally counterintuitive (MCI) ideas. Boyer hypothesized that concepts with a small number of counterintuitive features are better remembered and more faithfully communicated than extremely counterintuitive concepts or comparable ordinary or even unusual concepts. This transmission advantage may help to explain the cross-cultural ubiquity of religious/supernatural concepts, which often have counterintuitive features. The experiment was conducted in Second Life, an online 3D virtual world. Fifty English-speaking western participants and 51 Chinese-speaking participants from far-eastern nations viewed intuitive and counterintuitive test items and then were asked to free recall the displays immediately and after varying delays. Results show that MCI displays were not better recalled than intuitive displays at initial reporting. For both samples, however, the amount of time elapsed since exposure to the test items correlated significantly with memory degradation for intuitive concepts but not for counterintuitive concepts. These results suggest that although MCI concepts may not be more easily encoded than intuitive concepts, once they are encoded they may be more easily retrieved than intuitive concepts. Results also show that, among the westerners, increased age predicted poorer delayed recall of MCI but not intuitive items, suggesting that the MCI effect may bear most directly on transmitting ideas to adolescents and young adults.     

The physical activity and sport anxiety scale (PASAS): Scale development and psychometric analysis

Research suggests that social anxiety may be elicited in athletic or sporting situations, resulting in decreased physical activity due to avoidance behavior. Given the myriad physical and psychological health consequences of a non-active lifestyle, valid assessment of social anxiety and avoidance in this domain is warranted. However, none of the common measures of social anxiety appear to assess social anxiety in physical activity or sporting domains. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a brief measure of social anxiety in physical activities and sports. A 16-item self-report questionnaire, the Physical Activity and Sport Anxiety Scale (PASAS), was extracted from a larger pool on empirical and theoretical grounds. The PASAS demonstrated excellent internal consistency across a number of samples, and excellent temporal stability. The PASAS also demonstrated good convergent and divergent validity, and is related to self-perceived performance biases as postulated by cognitive-behavioral models of social anxiety.     

Binding actions and scenes in visual long-term memory

How does visual long-term memory store representations of different entities (e.g., objects, actions, and scenes) that are present in the same visual event? Are the different entities stored as an integrated representation in memory, or are they stored separately? To address this question, we asked observers to view a large number of events; in each event, an action was performed within a scene. Afterward, the participants were shown pairs of action–scene sets and indicated which of the two they had seen. When the task required recognizing the individual actions and scenes, performance was high (80 %). Conversely, when the task required remembering which actions had occurred within which scenes, performance was significantly lower (59 %). We observed this dissociation between memory for individual entities and memory for entity bindings across multiple testing conditions and presentation durations. These experiments indicate that visual long-term memory stores information about actions and information about scenes separately from one another, even when an action and scene were observed together in the same visual event. These findings also highlight an important limitation of human memory: Situations that require remembering actions and scenes as integrated events (e.g., eyewitness testimony) may be particularly vulnerable to memory errors.     

Does Zhu Xi Distinguish Prudence from Morality?

In Stephen Angle’s Sagehood, he contends that Neo-Confucian philosophers reject ways of moral thinking that draw hard and fast lines between self-directed or prudential concerns (about what is good for me) and other-directed or moral concerns (about what is right, just, virtuous, etc.), and suggests that they are right to do so. In this paper, I spell out Angle’s arguments and interpretation in greater detail and then consider whether they are faithful to one of the chief figures in Neo-Confucian thought. I begin by identifying some of the better-known ways in which moral philosophers give special treatment to prudential considerations, and say which of these Angle’s reading of the Neo-Confucians appears to rule out. After laying this groundwork, I proceed to test Angle’s interpretation against the moral thought of history’s most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), arguing that even on Angle’s own reading, there are certain respects in which Zhu preserves the distinction, although by Angle’s lights these ways are perhaps less pernicious than their contemporary equivalents. I also look closely at how Angle uses the psychological structure of humane love (ren 仁) to undermine the prudence-versus-morality distinction. Here I suggest that the better way to phrase his point is to say that prudence drops out or becomes an ethically incoherent concept, which is something quite different from rejecting or collapsing the distinction between prudence and morality.