A comparison of the MCMI-III personality disorder and modifier indices with the MMPI-2 clinical and validity scales

In this study, we examined the relationship of the MCMI-III (Millon, Davis, & Millon, 1997; Millon, Millon, & Davis, 1994) modifier indices and personality disorder scales to the validity and basic clinical scales of the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989). The MCMI-III modifier indices highly correlated with all of the MMPI-2 validity scales except for the F(p) scale. Similarly, the MCMI-III personality disorder scales strongly covaried with the MMPI-2 validity and clinical scales except for the F(p) and 5 (Mf) scales. A factor analysis with Promax rotation revealed substantial relationships between the MMPI-2 and MCMI-III. However, the MMPI-2 F(p) scale did not tend to correlate with MMPI-2 or MCMI-III scales, indicating that F(p) scale variance was largely independent of other scales. The results suggest that clinicians should consider the interrelationship between personality characteristics and dissimulation.     

Middle East and north Africa regional conference of psychology, dubai, United arab emirates

The first Middle East and North Africa Regional Conference of Psychology (MENA RCP) was held in Dubai. United Arab Emirates, December 13–18, 2003, under the auspices of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS), the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), and the International Association for Cross–Cultural Psychology (IACCP). It was organized by a local Conference Committee and by the Yemen Psychological Association (YPA), in collaboration with the Egyptian Association for Psychological Studies (EAPS). High attendance, with participation from 35 countries, including 17 from the neighbouring Middle East and North Africa region, was a major achievement of the conference. Conference participants, many of them leaders of their national psychology associations, who also attended the concomitant National Capacity Building Workshop organized by the IUPsyS, signed an official Declaration to create a Regional Council of Arab Psychological Associations during the coming year and to follow this first MENA Conference with a second conference to be held in Amman. Jordan, in 2005.     

Seeing double: the role of meaning in alphanumeric-colour synaesthesia

When PD, an alphanumeric-colour synaesthete, is shown black digits or letters, each grapheme elicits a highly specific colour, called a "photism" (e.g., a 2 induces green, a Z induces brown). Previous experiments showed that photisms interfere with video-colour naming when the photism colour and the video colour are incongruent. Here we used coloured ambiguous graphemes that could be interpreted as either digits or letters depending on context (e.g., an ambiguous grapheme was interpreted as a 2 if presented within a block of digit trials, but as a Z if presented within a block of letter trials). Ambiguous graphemes were presented in video colours that were either congruent or incongruent with PD's photisms. Crucially, what was a congruent trial in one context was an incongruent trial in the other context. PD's pattern of response times indicated that identical graphemes could induce differently coloured photisms depending on their interpretation. This suggests that the meaning of graphemes ultimately determines their synaesthetic colour.     

Backward inhibition as a means of sequential task-set control: evidence for reduction of task competition

Endogenously initiated transitions between tasks are associated with inhibition of the attentional set for the task preceding the transition, as demonstrated by slowed reactions to a task most recently switched away from (U. Mayr & S. W. Keele, 2000). Using an altered methodological approach, the authors found that this backward inhibition counteracts perseverative tendencies when switching to a new task in that it selectively reduces interference exerted by the preceding task set. The reduction of interference was dependent on endogenous preparation for the new task and did not occur for unpredictable task switches or for task switches that were precued without information about the identity of the new task.     

Synaesthetic photisms guide attention

We evaluated whether synaesthetic colour experiences (i.e., photisms) guide or attract attention. An alphanumeric-colour synaesthete, J, and seven non-synaesthetes searched for target digits presented against backgrounds that were either congruent or incongruent with the colours of J's photisms for the target digits. For J, the slope of the search function for detecting the target digits on incongruent trials was shallower than the slope of the search function for detecting the target digits on congruent trials. In contrast, for the seven non-synaesthetes, the slopes of the search functions for detecting the target digits on congruent and incongruent trials were equivalent. These findings suggest that synaesthetic colour experiences influence the efficiency of visual search by guiding or attracting attention.     

Measuring Judgments of Professionals: Using Vignettes in a Social Survey About Patient Confusion

The use of a factorial survey to measure the clinical judgments of professionals is described. This design allows the researcher to partial out the effects of variables on clinical decision making while using probability sampling. Methods frequently used to study judgments are reviewed and a study of nurses' judgments about patients' confusional episodes are used to illustrate the application of the factorial survey. Acute confusion in patients is a common clinical problem for nurses working in medical-surgical units in acute care hospitals. Using the factorial survey to study a real-life problem such as confusion demonstrates how this design can be used to test judgments in complex clinical situations, to aid in concept development, and to identify consensus among professionals.     

'Getting into the spirit': Alcohol-related interpretation bias in heavy-drinking students

Alcohol misuse is characterized by patterns of selective information processing. The present study investigated whether heavy- compared with light-drinking students, show evidence of an alcohol-related interpretation bias to ambiguous, alcohol-related cues. Toward this aim, participants were asked to create continuations for ambiguous, open-ended scenarios that provided either an alcohol-related or neutral context. Results showed that heavy-drinking students generated more alcohol continuations for ambiguous alcohol-related scenarios than light-drinking students. This result was independent of the coding method used, with an interpretation bias found when continuations were coded by either participants themselves or by two independent raters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Maturation of rapid auditory temporal processing and subsequent nonword repetition performance in children

According to the rapid auditory processing theory, the ability to parse incoming auditory information underpins learning of oral and written language. There is wide variation in this low-level perceptual ability, which appears to follow a protracted developmental course. We studied the development of rapid auditory processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by tone pairs presented at varying inter-stimulus intervals (25, 50, 100, 200, and 400 ms) in a sample of children (N = 103) aged 7-9 years initially and again at 9-11 years. We also assessed their ability to repeat nonsense words at both time-points. The amount of difference between the ERP to single tones and paired tones (as assessed by the intra-class correlation coefficient, ICC) provided a measure of the brain's capacity to discriminate auditory information delivered at different presentation rates. Results showed that older children showed greater neural discrimination to tone pairs than younger children at rapid presentation rates, although these differences were reduced at slower presentation rates. The ICC at time 1 significantly predicted nonword repetition scores two years later, providing support for the view that rapid auditory temporal processing ability affects oral language development in typically developing children.     

Reconnecting cognition in the lab and cognition in real life: The role of compensatory social and motivational factors in explaining how cognition ages in the wild

The papers in this Special Issue compellingly show that older adults' everyday cognitive life is governed not by the decline in elementary cognitive processes as measured in the lab, but by a multitude of compensatory mechanisms, most of which are of the social/motivational variety. Much of this compensatory behavior can be elicited with no or only little experimental prodding, underscoring the self-organizing or self-initiated nature of this type of behavior, even in advanced old age. We suggest that the study of compensation and the orchestration of cognitive, social, and motivational compensatory mechanisms in effective and healthy aging provides a meaningful challenge to traditional ways of examining developmental changes in cognitive performance.     

Color categories and color appearance

We examined categorical effects in color appearance in two tasks, which in part differed in the extent to which color naming was explicitly required for the response. In one, we measured the effects of color differences on perceptual grouping for hues that spanned the blue-green boundary, to test whether chromatic differences across the boundary were perceptually exaggerated. This task did not require overt judgments of the perceived colors, and the tendency to group showed only a weak and inconsistent categorical bias. In a second case, we analyzed results from two prior studies of hue scaling of chromatic stimuli (De Valois, De Valois, Switkes, & Mahon, 1997; Malkoc, Kay, & Webster, 2005), to test whether color appearance changed more rapidly around the blue-green boundary. In this task observers directly judge the perceived color of the stimuli and these judgments tended to show much stronger categorical effects. The differences between these tasks could arise either because different signals mediate color grouping and color appearance, or because linguistic categories might differentially intrude on the response to color and/or on the perception of color. Our results suggest that the interaction between language and color processing may be highly dependent on the specific task and cognitive demands and strategies of the observer, and also highlight pronounced individual differences in the tendency to exhibit categorical responses.