Collateral Reports and Cross-Informant Agreement about Adult Psychopathology in 14 Societies

To advance international mental health assessment, instruments that have been internationally validated are needed. To this end, we analyzed ratings from 14 societies on the Adult Behavior Checklist (ABCL), a collateral-report form parallel to the Adult Self-Report (ASR; Achenbach and Rescorla 2003) for ages 18 to 59. Both the ABCL and the ASR assess problems, personal strengths, and adaptive functioning. For a sample of 8322 see note below collaterals, we found strong consistency across societies regarding which ABCL problem items tended to obtain relatively low, medium, or high ratings. Most societal effect sizes (ESs) for problem scale scores were small to medium (< 13.9 %), but the ES for the ABCL Personal Strengths scale was 25 %. For most of the same participants (N = 8,302), we analyzed cross-informant agreement between self-reports on the ASR and collateral reports on the ABCL. Cross-informant correlations for problem scale scores averaged .47, with considerable societal variation. Problem score means were higher on the ASR than the ABCL in every society, but the size of the difference varied across societies. Mean item ratings on the ABCL and ASR were highly correlated within every society (mean r = .92), but within-dyad item rating agreement varied widely in every society (mean r = .39). In all societies, non-corroboration of self-reported deviance and of collateral-reported deviance was common. Overall findings indicated considerable similarity but also some important differences in collateral-reported problems and adaptive functioning across 14 societies.     

Predicting remembering and forgetting of autobiographical memories in children and adults: a 4-year prospective study

Preservation and loss to forgetting of autobiographical memories is a focus in both the adult and developmental literatures. In both, there are comparative arguments regarding rates of forgetting. Children are assumed to forget autobiographical memories more rapidly than adults, and younger children are assumed to forget more rapidly than older children. Yet few studies can directly inform these comparisons: few feature children and adults, and few prospectively track the survival of specific autobiographical memories over time. In a 4-year prospective study, we obtained autobiographical memories from children 4, 6, and 8 years, and adults. We tested recall of different subsets of the events after 1, 2, and 3 years. Accelerated rates of forgetting were apparent among all child groups relative to adults; within the child groups, 4- and 6-year-olds had accelerated forgetting relative to 8-year-olds. The differences were especially pronounced in open-ended recall. The thematic coherence of initial memory reports also was a significant predictor of the survival of specific memories. The pattern of findings is consistent with suggestions that the adult distribution of autobiographical memories is achieved as the quality of memory traces increases (here measured by thematic coherence) and the rate of forgetting decreases.     

Making sides and taking sides: an analysis of salient images and category constructions for pro- and anti-Gulf War respondents

This paper reports supportive evidence for a modified self-categorisation model of mass social influence, whereby category definitions are determined rhetorically and the character of collective action is shaped through category arguments. The study was conducted shortly after the Gulf War and was concerned with the respective constructions of pro- and anti-war respondents. Respondents were first asked to recall the images of the war which had most impact on them. They were then shown 29 images of the war and asked to rate the impact of each one as well as explain why they had given such impact ratings. Finally, they were asked to select the five images which had most impact on them. The results indicated that different subjects indicated very different views of the categories opposing each other despite the fact that they were characterising the same event. Moreover, the constructions of pro- and anti-war subjects matched those previously having been shown to characterise the rhetoric of pro- and anti-war leaders. Thus pro-war subjects recalled and rated highly those images that were consistent with a construction of the war as opposing the civilised world (ingroup) to Saddam Hussein (outgroup). Anti-war subjects recalled and rated highly those images that were consistent with a construction of the war as opposing ordinary people (ingroup) to business and political leaders prosecuting the war (outgroup). Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Need for closure and reactions to innovation

In two studies using Italian (N = 852) and American (N = 94) samples, we hypothesized that high NFC individuals would have lower intentions to use new technological developments, and that this relationship would be mediated by anxiety about the new technology. We found support for this hypothesis in Study 1, but not Study 2. In the second study, we found that the closed‐mindedness subscale of the full NFC scale was related to greater anxiety about new technology, which in turn led to lower intentions to use the new technology. This suggests that the closed‐mindedness facet of NFC may have been responsible for our results. A meta‐analytic synthesis of both studies provided some support for our original mediation hypothesis.     

The recollective qualities of adolescents’ and adults’ narratives about a long-ago tornado

The recollective qualities of autobiographical memory are thought to develop over the course of the first two decades of life. We used a 9-year follow-up test of recall of a devastating tornado and of non-tornado-related events from before and after the storm, to compare the recollective qualities of adolescents’ (n?=?20, ages 11 years, 11 months to 20 years, 8 months) and adults’ (n?=?14) autobiographical memories. At the time of the tornado, half of the adolescents had been younger than age 6. Nine years after the event, all participants provided evidence that they recall the event of the tornado. Adults also had high levels of recall of the non-tornado-related events. Adolescents recalled proportionally fewer non-tornado-related events; adolescents younger than 6 at the time of the events recalled the fewest non-tornado-related events. Relative to adolescents, adults produced longer narratives. With narrative length controlled, there were few differences in the recollective qualities of adolescents’ and adults’ narrative reports, especially in the case of the tornado; the recollective qualities were stronger among adolescents older at the time of the events. Overall, participants in both age groups provided evidence of the qualities of recollection that are characteristic of autobiographical memory.     

Association of Economic Internality With Saving Behavior and Motives,Financial Confidence,and Attitudes Toward State Intervention1

This study investigates economic locus of control (ELOC) in a Greek sample using Furnham's (1986) scale. In particular, it examines the association between ELOC and saving behavior and motives, attitudes toward state intervention in the economic field, and factors engendering confidence in economic matters. The main hypotheses predicted that internal ELOC should be associated with (a) desire for less state intervention; (b) confidence in factors under one's own control (knowing the other party in transactions, being well informed) more strongly than with other factors of economic trust, such as the state and the law; (c) more saving; and (d) that respondents with internal and external ELOC should be differentiated with respect to saving motives. Analysis was based on a sample of 135 participants from Athens. Principal components analysis of the Greek translation of Furnham's ELOC questionnaire gave results similar to those reported from England, yielding 4 factors interpretable as chance, internal, external/denial, and powerful others. The findings of the study include confirmation of all of the hypotheses.     

Autonomic Activity, Pain, and Perceived Health in Patients on Sick Leave Due to Stress-Related Illnesses

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to compare autonomic activity, pressure-pain thresholds, and subjective assessments of health and behavior between patients with stress-related illnesses and healthy control subjects. METHODS: Twenty sick-listed patients with stress-related illnesses and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects performed tests of autonomic regulation and algometric tests, and completed questionnaires about physical and mental health and behavioral patterns. RESULTS: Patients exhibited higher autonomic reactivity to cognitive and physical laboratory tasks (p < 0.05), and had lower pressure-pain thresholds in the shoulders and lower back than healthy control subjects (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the patients rated considerably poorer health and health behavior than the control subjects (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate an engagement of the autonomic nervous system in stress-related illnesses. Furthermore, they show that patients with stress-related illnesses experience symptoms of musculoskeletal pain, and it is therefore recommended that assessments of musculoskeletal pain be incorporated in the clinical examinations and the rehabilitation of patients with stress-related illnesses.     

When emotional valence modulates audiovisual integration

We constantly integrate the information that is available to our various senses. The extent to which the mechanisms of multisensory integration are subject to the influences of attention, emotion, and/or motivation is currently unknown. The ??ventriloquist effect?? is widely assumed to be an automatic crossmodal phenomenon, shifting the perceived location of an auditory stimulus toward a concurrently presented visual stimulus. In the present study, we examined whether audiovisual binding, as indicated by the magnitude of the ventriloquist effect, is influenced by threatening auditory stimuli presented prior to the ventriloquist experiment. Syllables spoken in a fearful voice were presented from one of eight loudspeakers, while syllables spoken in a neutral voice were presented from the other seven locations. Subsequently, participants had to localize pure tones while trying to ignore concurrent visual stimuli (both the auditory and the visual stimuli here were emotionally neutral). A reliable ventriloquist effect was observed. The emotional stimulus manipulation resulted in a reduction of the magnitude of the subsequently measured ventriloquist effect in both hemifields, as compared to a control group exposed to a similar attention-capturing, but nonemotional, manipulation. These results suggest that the emotional system is capable of influencing multisensory binding processes that have heretofore been considered automatic.