Falling forever: the price of chronic shock

Manifestations of chronic shock and annihilation anxiety-including autistic defenses, chaotic relationships, disorganized attachment, split-off affective states, and vulnerability to disintegration--exist side by side with apparent ego strength and high functioning, even in nonabused patients. Chronic shock stemming from uncontained distress and failed dependency during childhood can persist throughout the lifespan, creating ripples of dysfunction that mask as character distortion and contribute to therapeutic impasse. Patients rely on omnipotent defenses to provide a sense of "having skin" in the face of the fear of breakdown, striving to avoid vulnerability, and trying to insulate themselves from shock experience. Although the relinquishment of autistic defenses and subsequent integration of disowned affect states are overwhelming and painful, patients can emerge from this process with significant shifts in intrapsychic, interpersonal, and existential/spiritual functioning. Clinical material from one psychodynamic psychotherapy group tracks the group process and growth trajectories of seven group members struggling with chronic shock. The ability to recognize subtle dissociative states is a valuable tool in the repertoire of the group psychotherapist.     

Being bad isn't always good: affective context moderates the attention bias toward negative information

Research has demonstrated that people automatically devote more attention to negative information than to positive information. The authors conducted 3 experiments to test whether this bias is attenuated by a person's affective context. Specifically, the authors primed participants with positive and negative information using traditional (e.g., subliminal semantic priming) and nontraditional (e.g., social interactions) means and measured the amount of attention they allocated to positive and negative information. With both event-related brain potentials (Experiment 1) and the Stroop task (Experiments 2 and 3), results suggest that the attention bias to negative information is attenuated or eliminated when positive constructs are made accessible. The implications of this result for other biases to negative information and for the self-reinforcing nature of emotional disorders are discussed.     

Assessment of a practice effect in serial sensory organization testing scores of healthy adults

This study assessed whether a practice effect occurs across five serial administrations of the sensory organization test. Composite equilibrium scores and mean equilibrium scores from 30 healthy volunteers (M age=36.9, SD = 12.2 yr.) performing each of the six test conditions were examined using a two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance. Analysis yielded a significant interaction between testing condition and time, as well as significant main effects for both condition and time. Pairwise comparisons showed significant differences among test conditions and the first and second times of test administration. Analysis of simple effects between the two administrations identified significant increases in composite equilibrium scores and mean equilibrium scores on two sway-referenced support surface conditions, vision removed and sway-referenced visual surround. An immediate increase in equilibrium scores suggests clinicians and researchers allow one pracatice trial before recording test scores for baseline measurements.     

Using the multifaceted Rasch model to improve the TAT/PSE measure of need for achievement

We used the Rasch (1980) model to develop new pictures for the Thematic Apperception Test (C. D. Morgan & Murray, 1938; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953) or picture story exercise to measure need for achievement (nAch). In Experiments 1 and 2, we analyzed stories to assess the difficulty level of a total of 8 pictures using the multifaceted Rasch model with picture difficulty, story probe difficulty, and participant ability as facets with a partial credit model (FACETS; Linacre, 2005). A total of 6 pictures were retained and 4 new ones added for Experiment 3 in which 201 participants wrote 6 stories to a random set of the 10 pictures. FACETS analysis revealed improved person separation reliability. In Experiment 4, 206 participants wrote 1 story to the Studying picture either before or after filling out a battery of achievement-related questionnaires. The 2 experimental groups did not differ in the amount of nAch in their stories. The coder facet was demonstrated with 2 independent coders using the revised coding system for nAch.     

Lateralized perceptual organization deficits on the global-local task in schizotypal personality disorder

Right and left hemisphere contributions to perceptual organization functions were examined using a divided-attention version of the global-local task in a sample of 21 unmedicated participants diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) and 20 controls. The SPD participants showed an abnormal global processing advantage. When the visual angle of the hierarchical stimuli was increased from 3 degrees to 9 degrees, the controls showed an increasing local processing advantage, but the SPD participants continued to show an abnormal global processing advantage. These findings suggest a local processing deficit on divided-attention versions of the global-local task in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Female SPD participants, who had less severe interpersonal deficit symptoms, showed a more abnormal global processing advantage. Hemispheric and processing resource mechanisms that might explain these findings are discussed.     

Personality and the genetic risk for alcohol dependence

The extent to which the genetic risk for alcohol dependence (AD) and conduct disorder (CD) and their common genetic risk overlap with genetic factors contributing to variation in dimensions of personality was examined in a study of 6,453 individuals from 3,383 adult male and female same-sex and unlike-sex twin pairs from the Australian Twin Registry. The associations between the personality dimensions of positive emotionality, negative emotionality, and AD and CD risk were modest, whereas the associations between behavioral undercontrol and AD and CD risk were substantially higher. Genetic influences contributing to variation in behavioral undercontrol accounted for about 40% of the genetic variation in AD and CD risk and about 90% of the common genetic risk for AD and CD. These results suggest that genetic factors contributing to variation in dimensions of personality, particularly behavioral undercontrol, account for a substantial proportion of the genetic diathesis for AD and most of the common genetic diathesis for AD and CD among both men and women.     

Social exclusion causes self-defeating behavior

Four experiments tested the idea that social exclusion leads to (unintentionally) self-defeating behavior. Exclusion was manipulated by telling some people that they were likely to end up alone later in life. This randomly assigned feedback caused people to take irrational, self-defeating risks (Experiments 1 and 2), choose unhealthy, rather than healthy, behaviors (Experiment 3), and procrastinate longer with pleasurable activities rather than practicing for an upcoming test (Experiment 4). A control group, who heard that their future would be marred by frequent accidents, did not show these self-defeating patterns. Thus, the effect goes beyond just hearing bad news. Emotional distress did not significantly mediate these effects across 3 different mood measures.     

On the complexities of measuring naming

The aims of this study were to investigate the adequacy of electronic voice keys for the purpose of measuring naming latency and to test the assumption that voice key error can be controlled by matching conditions on initial phoneme. Three types of naming latency measurements (hand-coding and 2 types of voice keys) were used to investigate effects of onset complexity (e.g., sat vs. spat) on reading aloud (J. R. Frederiksen & J. F. Kroll, 1976; A. H. Kawamoto & C. T. Kello, 1999). The 3 measurement techniques produced the 3 logically possible results: a significant complexity advantage, a significant complexity disadvantage, and a null effect. Analyses of the performance of each voice key are carried out, and implications for studies of naming latency are discussed.     

Dyadic short forms of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III

Various short forms of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)/WAIS-R have been developed to obtain estimates of overall intellectual level, although little research of WAIS-III short forms has been published to date. Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) estimatesfromfour WAIS-III dyadic short forms were obtained by entering selected subtest scores from a mixed neurologic/ psychiatric sample (n = 196) into regression equations. Results were cross validated on a second sample (n = 57). Within both samples, WAIS-III FSIQ scores were highly correlated (r = .90-.92, p < .001) with estimated FSIQ scores. Estimated FSIQ fell within 5 points of actual FSIQ in 49% to 74% of cross-validation cases and within 10 points of actual FSIQ in 81% to 93% of the sample. Comparable to findings from previous short-form investigations, actual and estimated FSIQ classification levels agreed in 46% to 67% of cases in the cross-validation sample. These dyadic WAIS-III forms appear appropriate for obtaining gross estimates of FSIQ in similar populations, although caution is recommended in interpreting estimated IQ scores.