The utility of ground rule instructions with younger and older adult witnesses

This study examined the effectiveness of ground rules—simple instructions outlining the communication expectations of an investigative interview—with 73 younger (age 18–40) and 57 older (age 60+) adults. Participants watched a film depicting an implied sexual assault and were interviewed after a brief delay. One third received no ground rules, one third received ground rules as statements, and one third received the statements along with practice examples. The interview contained questions that required participants to apply one of the rules. Those who received ground rules were asked their perceptions of the rules. Results demonstrated that practicing ground rules improved response quality to problematic recognition questions, younger adults showed more variability in responses to different ground rules than older adults, and most participants found ground rule instructions useful in investigative interviews. Results provide support for the use of ground rules in interviews with adult witnesses.     

高低水平汉英二语者阅读难易英语句子的知觉广度

通过考察高、低水平汉英二语者阅读难易英语句子的知觉广度,本研究发现二语水平和句子难度调节汉英二语者的英语阅读速度,但不影响其阅读知觉广度,均表现为注视词左侧1个词至右侧1个词。该结果表明汉英二语者采用相对固定的注意分配策略来阅读英语,与中央凹加工负荷假说不一致。     

Psychoanalytic patients in the U.S., CANADA,and Australia: I. DSM-III-R disorders,indications, previous treatment,medications, and length of treatment

To determine the demographics, DSM-III-R disorders diagnosed, indications used in recommending psychoanalysis, previous treatment histories, use of medication, and length of treatment in patients in psychoanalysis in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, a mail survey of practice was sent to every other active member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and every member of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. This supplemented an earlier survey sent to all Ontario psychoanalysts. The response rates were 40.1 % (n = 342) for the U.S., 67.2% (n = 117) for Canada, and 73.9% (n = 51) for Australia. Respondents supplied data on 1,718 patients. The employment rate for patients increases as analysis progresses (p < .0001). The mean number of concurrent categories of disorders (Axis I, Axis II, and Disorders First Evident in Childhood) per patient at the start of treatment is 5.01 (SD = 3.66; median = 4; mode = 3). There are no statistically significant differences across countries. Mood, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and personality disorders are most common. American Psychiatric Association / American Psychoanalytic Association peer review criteria for indicating psychoanalysis are followed for 86.5% of patients. Over 80% of patients in all three countries had undergone previous treatments prior to analysis. In the U.S., 18.2% of analysands are on concurrent psychoactive medication; in Australia, 9.6%. The mean length of analyses conducted in the U.S. is 5.7 years, in Australia 6.6, and in Canada 4.8. Psychoanalytic patients in all three countries have similar rates of DSM-III-R psychopathology, and many indications of chronicity.     

Reappraising the link between peritraumatic dissociation and PTSD symptom severity: evidence from a longitudinal study of community violence survivors

Cross-lagged panel analysis of longitudinal data collected from young adult survivors of community violence was used to examine the relationship between recall of peritraumatic dissociation and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. Recollections of peritraumatic dissociation assessed within days of exposure differed from recollections measured at 3- and 12-month follow-up interviews. Peritraumatic dissociation was highly correlated with PTSD symptoms within each wave of data collection. Baseline recollections of peritraumatic dissociation were not predictive of follow-up PTSD symptom severity after controlling for baseline PTSD symptom severity. This pattern of results replicates previous work demonstrating a correlation between peritraumatic dissociation and subsequent symptom severity. However, findings are not consistent with the prevailing view that peritraumatic dissociation leads to increased PTSD symptom severity.     

Specificity of the MMPI-2 Fake Bad Scale as a marker for personal injury malingering

Psychologists who evaluate patients in medicolegal contexts should utilize objective assessment data with empirically established sensitivity and specificity for identifying negative response bias. The purpose of this study was to investigate the specificity of the Fake Bad Scale for identifying negative response bias in personal injury claimants. The cutoff scores proposed by Lees-Haley and colleagues were applied a federal prison, medical outpatients, and patients from to inmate volunteers from substance abuse unit. Half of the inmates were given instructions to malinger psychopathology to affect the adjudication process, and the remaining inmates and all of the hospital patients were given standard instructions. The original cutoff scores correctly identified the majority of inmates instructed to malinger psychopathology, but these scores resulted in unacceptably high rates of false positive classifications. The revised cutoff scores resulted in fewer false positives, i.e., 8%-24%.     

The effect of similarity between elemental stimuli and compounds in olfactory patterning discriminations

We studied the ability of honeybees to discriminate between single odorants and binary olfactory mixtures. We analyzed the effect of the number of common elements between these two stimulus classes on olfactory discrimination. We used olfactory conditioning of the honeybees' proboscis extension reflex (PER), a paradigm in which odors can be associated with a reinforcement of sucrose solution. Bees were asked to discriminate reinforced from nonreinforced olfactory stimuli. They were trained with two elemental odors (A and B) versus a binary olfactory mixture. The mixture was either AB (group 2CE, two common elements), AC (group 1CE, one common element A), or CD (group 0CE, no common element). Three groups followed a positive patterning schedule (mixture reinforced and elements nonreinforced: groups 2CE+, 1CE+, and 0CE+) and three other groups a negative patterning schedule (mixture nonreinforced and elements reinforced: groups 2CE-, 1CE-, and 0CE-). We showed that a reduction of similarity (number of common elements) between elemental odors and compounds enhanced the ability to discriminate elements from compounds and that the kind of compound processing used by the bees supports theories that assume nonelemental compound processing (i.e., that exclude the mere summation of the elemental associative strengths upon compound presentation).     

Tactile perception in blind Braille readers: a psychophysical study of acuity and hyperacuity using gratings and dot patterns

It is not clear whether the blind are generally superior to the sighted on measures of tactile sensitivity or whether they excel only on certain tests owing to the specifics of their tactile experience. We compared the discrimination performance of blind Braille readers and age-matched sighted subjects on three tactile tasks using precisely specified stimuli. Initially, the blind significantly outperformed the sighted at a hyperacuity task using Braille-like dot patterns, although, with practice, both groups performed equally well. On two other tasks, hyperacute discrimination of gratings that differed in ridge width and spatial-acuity-dependent discrimination of grating orientation, the performance of the blind did not differ significantly from that of sighted subjects. These results probably reflect the specificity of perceptual learning due to Braille-reading experience.     

Characteristics of auditory agnosia in a child with severe traumatic brain injury: a case report

We present a case that is unusual in many respects from other documented incidences of auditory agnosia, including the mechanism of injury, age of the individual, and location of neurological insult. The clinical presentation is one of disturbance in the perception of spoken language, music, pitch, emotional prosody, and temporal auditory processing in the absence of significant deficits in the comprehension of written language, expressive language production, or peripheral auditory function. Furthermore, the patient demonstrates relatively preserved function in other aspects of audition such as sound localization, voice recognition, and perception of animal noises and environmental sounds. This case study demonstrates that auditory agnosia is possible following traumatic brain injury in a child, and illustrates the necessity of assessment with a wide variety of auditory stimuli to fully characterize auditory agnosia in a single individual.