The assessment of personality characteristics in depressed and dependent psychiatric inpatients

The diagnosis and treatment of depression may be complicated by the presence of excessive dependency needs. Previous research has found stable personality traits useful in identifying depressive subtypes. This study was designed to assess the personality characteristics of 106 psychiatric inpatients. Subjects were grouped according to the presence or absence of two primary dimensions: depression and dependency. Results indicated that both depression and dependency were significantly related to various indices of psychopathology. Main effects were more useful than interactions, implying that depression and dependency both affect symptomology directly rather than interactively. Although the assessment of personality traits may be complicated by the presence of a major psychiatric disorder, results from our study suggest that the assessment of both Axis I and Axis II variables can be useful in understanding the current clinical picture.     

An assessment of appraisal,anxiety, coping,and procrastination during an examination period

High School students responded to an inventory which included dispositional measures of procrastination and social evaluation trait anxiety. Subsequently, and 7 days prior to their first examination (Stage 1), each of the 40 female and 23 male students completed measures of state anxiety, perception of the stressor situation, and ways of coping, all with regard to their approaching exam period. These judgments were repeated 1 day prior to their first examination (Stage 2), and again 5 days after their last examination (Stage 3). Correlational analyses indicated that threat and harm perceptions were highly positively related to state anxiety, whereas challenge and gain were moderately and negatively related. State anxiety was linked to emotion-focused coping, but was independent of problem-focused coping. In an analysis of variance, high procrastination, high trait anxious subjects felt the least challenged at Stage 1. In a ‘maverick’, post hoc analysis, high procrastinators were more likely than low procrastinators at each stage to promise themselves ‘that things will be different next time’. Discussion included an assessment of the need for specificity when using the Ways of Coping (Folkman and Lazarus, 1985) scale.     

Interrelations of empathy,cognition, and moral reasoning with dimensions of juvenile delinquency

The interrelations of a variety of indices of sociocognitive development (empathy, role-taking, logical cognition, and moral reasoning) were studied in delinquent and nondelinquent adolescents. Delinquent males (grouped into psychopathic, neurotic, and subcultural subgroups) and a matched nondelinquent comparison group were administered individually two empathy scales (the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Mehrabian and Epstein Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy), an adaptation of Byrne's and Flavell's role-taking tasks, two Piagetian cognitive tasks, and two of Kohlberg's structured moral dilemmas. Delinquents as a group displayed significantly more immature modes of role-taking, logical cognition, and moral reasoning than did nondelinquents. The delinquent subgroups, however, did not significantly differ from one another on these dimensions. Role-taking, logical cognition, and moral reasoning were significantly related to one another. Anticipated differences in level of empathy between the delinquent and nondelinquent adolescents failed to occur. A number of interpretations for this unexpected finding are offered.This study is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Texas at Austin (Lee, 1983) and presented in part at the meetings of the Western Psychological Association, San Jose, April 1985, and the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Tours, France, July 1985. Appreciation is expressed to James Bieri, Edward T. Emmer, Guy J. Manaster, Philip M. Powell, and Robert K. Young for constructive suggestions at various phases of the study.Delinquents were drawn from the Brownwood (Texas) State School through the cordial collaboration of Adrian Moore, Director of Planning, Research, and Evaluation of the Texas Youth Commission. The support of Cary Cockerell, superintendent at the Brownwood State School, and Dann Barger, superintendent at the Statewide Reception Center, and their staff was also instrumental in securing delinquents. Nondelinquents were obtained through the cooperation of Jack Allison, principal of the Travis High School, Austin, Texas, and his staff. Freda M. Holley, Director of the Office of Research and Evaluation, Austin Independent School District, and her staff are thanked for their assistance in obtaining these subjects.The contributions of Danny Escobar and of Ping-Fong Chu in scoring protocols is gratefully acknowledged.     

Line bisection by left-handed preschoolers: A phenomenon of symmetrical neglect

When a normal dextral attempts to bisect a horizontal line placed across his/her midline, there is a tendency for the transection to be placed slightly to the left of true center, a tendency which may be a little more pronounced when the left hand is used. However, left-handed children at or younger than 5 years of age err substantially to the left with the left hand and to the right with the right hand. This symmetrical neglect of extents contralateral to the hand currently in use, which may possibly reflect relatively greater commissural immaturity in left-handers, was not seen in dextral children of comparable ages, whose performance closely followed adult patterns.     

The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984: Much ado about nothing

The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984(IDRA), passed in the wake of Hinckley (1981) and after two years of Senate and House testimony and debate, removed the “volitional” prong of the ALI test, leaving only the “cognitive” prong. Prior empirical research and speculation suggested that this corrective would not serve its intended purpose. In this experiment, 54 mock jurors received one of four insanity test instructions: IDRA, ALI, a wild beast/mens rea test, or no instructions. Results showed that the test instructions did not produce significantly different verdict patterns, or effect in any other way the relevant and determinative constructs that jurors used in four different insanity cases.     

Fair equality of opportunity and decent minimums: a reply to Buchanan

Responding to criticism by Allen Buchanan in a Winter 1984 Philosophy and Public Affairs article on "The right to a decent minimum of health care," Daniels defends his thesis that if justice requires protecting equality of opportunity, then health care institutions should be governed by the principle of fair equality of opportunity because impairments of normal functioning, seen as impediments to opportunity, are obviated by good health care. He defines his concept of normal opportunity range, which is relative to certain social considerations, and shows that health care services affect the distribution of opportunity, but not the normal opportunity range, among individuals. He agrees with the criticism that his argument does not guarantee minimum health care or solve problems of resource allocation.     

The perception of 3-D structure from contradictory optical patterns

Two experiments investigated observers’ perceptions of 3-D structure when optical sources of information were contradictory. When motion and stereoscopic disparities specified different surfaces, the perceptual outcome depended strongly on the direction of curvature present within each modality. Previous research has shown that the perception of surface slant and curvature is anisotropic for both motion and stereo and that it depends on the direction in which it takes place. In the present experiments, the modality with the “effective” direction of curvature tended to dominate or suppress the perception of surfaces in the other modality with less effective curvatures. The results have implications for models which attempt to combine 3-D data from different optical sources.     

A general model for preferential and triadic choice in terms of centralF distribution functions

A model for preferential and triadic choice is derived in terms of weighted sums of centralF distribution functions. This model is a probabilistic generalization of Coombs' (1964) unfolding model and special cases, such as the model of Zinnes and Griggs (1974), can be derived easily from it. This new form extends previous work by Mullen and Ennis (1991) and provides more insight into the same problem that they discussed.