MMPI-A in the inpatient assessment of adolescents with eating disorders.

The MMPI-A (Butcher et al., 1992), like the older MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1983), distinguishes between anorexia and bulimia. In this study, 245 adolescent girls diagnosed with anorexia, bulimia, or eating disorder not otherwise specified completed the MMPI-A. Multivariate analyses revealed significant differences between anorexia and bulimia on the MMPI-A's validity, clinical, content, and supplementary scales, particularly suggesting multiple impulse control problems among bulimic patients. However, profiles were also more homogeneous across eating disorder groups than in studies using the older MMPI, with high points involving some combination of Scales 1, 2, 3, and 0 for two thirds of the patients in this study. Implications are considered for understanding the common and differential psychopathology of eating disorders.     

Executive functioning and compliance in HIV patients

25 adult HIV patients were evaluated in a study of appointments, medication, and compliance with restrictions on sexual activity. The Executive Interview (EXIT) was useful in assessing these patients for cognitive difficulties; compliance with medication and countertransference issues were negatively correlated with EXIT scores.     

K-ABC simultaneous processing, DAS nonverbal reasoning, and Horn's expanded fluid-crystallized theory.

Horn's distinction between--fluid intelligence (Gf) and visualization (Gv) was investigated with two Nonverbal Reasoning subtests from the Differential Ability Scales and three Simultaneous Processing subtests from the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children. The sample comprised a predominantly Euro-American groups of 57 normal boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Principal factor analysis yielded clear-cut Gf and Gv dimensions. The Gf factor was composed both of Differential Ability Scales and Kaufman-ABC subtests, suggesting that the construct of simultaneous processing is not merely a measure of Gv, as researchers have hypothesized, but also measures Horn's Gf fluid intelligence to a considerable extent.     

MMPI screening scales for somatization disorder

44 items on the MMPI were identified which appear to correspond to some of the symptoms in nine of the 10 groups on the Perley-Guze checklist for somatization disorder (hysteria). This list was organized into two scales, one reflecting the total number of symptoms endorsed and the other the number of organ systems with at least one endorsed symptom. Full MMPIs were then obtained from 29 women with primary affective disorder and 37 women with somatization disorder as part of a follow-up study of a consecutive series of 500 psychiatric clinic patients seen at Washington University. Women with the diagnosis of somatization disorder scored significantly higher on the somatization disorder scales created from the 44 items than did women with only major depression. These new scales appeared to be slightly more effective in identifying somatization disorder than the use of the standard MMPI scales for hypochondriasis and hysteria. Further development is needed.     

Race, culture, and psychotherapy: transference to minority therapists

We present observations on the use of racial and cultural stereotypes in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with patients from the majority culture and with those from minority backgrounds. Earlier work has centered on black/white patient dyads and has not taken other possible combinations into account. "Race" and "culture" have sometimes been used synonymously. Our clinical experience indicates that there is some overlap in the themes of transferences to us as members of different racial minorities. We note, however, that for the African-American therapist, projections are more often based on racial stereotypes, whereas for the Chinese-American therapist, projections are based more on cultural assumptions. When careful attention is paid to the manifestations of racial and cultural stereotyping, much can be learned about the patient's inner life, to the benefit of the analytic work.     

Correlations for timing consistency among tapping and drawing tasks: evidence against a single timing process for motor control.

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether timing processes can be shared by continuous tapping and drawing tasks. In all 3 experiments, temporal precision in tapping was not related to temporal precision in continuous drawing. There were modest correlations among the tapping tasks, and there were significant correlations among the drawing tasks. In Experiment 3, the function relating timing variance to the square of the observed movement duration for tapping was different from that for drawing. The conclusions drawn were that timing is not an ability to be shared by a variety of tasks but instead that the temporal qualities of skilled movement are the result of the specific processes necessary to produce a trajectory. These results are consistent with the idea that timing is an emergent property of movement.     

Better discrimination of small changes in commonly encountered than in less commonly encountered auditory stimuli

Results from 3 auditory tasks revealed that small changes made in stimuli commonly encountered in everyday life are more easily discriminated than are the same changes made in stimuli not as commonly encountered. The tasks required discrimination of a frequency difference in 1 tone of 6-tone chords or nonchords, discrimination of a duration difference in 1 note of common tunes or nontunes, and discrimination of the deletion of a band of frequencies from speech sounds played forward or backward. Different crews of college-aged listeners served in the different tasks. If future research shows this difference in discriminability to be a general property of commonly encountered stimuli--attributable to a difference in the way they are processed in the nervous system--then discrimination tests of this sort could become useful for assessing whether stimuli have made the transition from one form of processing to the other.     

A developmental grammar for syllable structure in the production of child language.

The order of acquisition of Dutch syllable types by first language learners is analyzed as following from an initial ranking and subsequent rerankings of constraints in an optimality theoretic grammar. Initially, structural constraints are all ranked above faithfulness constraints, leading to core syllable (CV) productions only. Subsequently, faithfulness gradually rises to the highest position in the ranking, allowing more and more marked syllable types to appear in production. Local conjunctions of Structural constraints allow for a more detailed analysis.