Severity Indices of Personality Problems (SIPP-118): development, factor structure, reliability, and validity

This article describes a series of studies involving 2,730 participants on the development and validity testing of the Severity Indices of Personality Problems (SIPP), a self-report questionnaire covering important core components of (mal)adaptive personality functioning. Results show that the 16 facets constituted homogeneous item clusters (i.e., unidimensional and internally consistent parcels) that fit well into 5 clinically interpretable, higher order domains: self-control, identity integration, relational capacities, social concordance, and responsibility. These domains appeared to have good concurrent validity across various populations, good convergent validity in terms of associations with interview ratings of the severity of personality pathology, and good discriminant validity in terms of associations with trait-based personality disorder dimensions. Furthermore, results suggest that the domain scores are stable over a time interval of 14-21 days in a student sample but are sensitive to change over a 2-year follow-up interval in a treated patient population. Taken together, the final instrument, the SIPP-118, provides a set of 5 reliable, valid, and efficient indices of the core components of (mal)adaptive personality functioning.     

Countermanding saccades: evidence against independent processing of go and stop signals

In a stop signal paradigm, subjects were instructed to make a saccade to a visual target appearing left or right of the fixation point. In 25% of the trials, an auditory stop signal was presented after a variable delay that required the subject to inhibit the saccade. Observed saccadic response times in stop failure trials were longer than predicted by Logan and Cowan's (1984) race model. Saccadic response time and amplitude decreased with the time between stop signal presentation and saccade execution, suggesting an inhibitory effect between the stop signal and the go signal processes that is not compatible with an independent race assumption. Moreover, countermanding a saccade was more difficult when stop and go signals appeared at the same location.     

Blood flow velocity changes in anterior cerebral arteries during cognitive tasks performance

Objective

Transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) enables monitoring of blood flow velocities (BFVs) in basal cerebral arteries during different cognitive tasks performance with great temporal resolution. So far, BFVs changes during mental activity were monitored primarily in middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) and little is known about these changes in anterior cerebral arteries (ACAs).

Aim

To determine the effect of different cognitive tasks performance on BFV changes and hemispheric dominance in ACAs and to assess the most suitable activation test for monitoring of BFV changes in ACAs.

Methods

Fourteen right-handed, healthy subjects aged 20–26 were included in the study. BFVs in both ACAs were recorded simultaneously during performance of cognitive tasks designed to activate frontal lobes: phonemic verbal fluency test (pVFT), Stroop tests and Trail Making Tests (TMTs).

Results

A statistically significant BFV increase was recorded in both ACAs during performance of all cognitive tasks. Statistically significant right ACA dominance was found during performance of pVFT and TMTB. The most significant BFV increase was obtained during performance of TMTB.

Conclusion

Our result addressed cognitive tests with great activation potential for monitoring of ACAs that might be used in distinguishing of healthy individuals and patients with neurovascular or neurodegenerative diseases.     

Is the Male Advantage in Mental-Rotation Performance Task Independent? On the Usability of Chronometric Tests and Paper-and-Pencil Tests in Children

This article presents a reanalysis of the data of 862 second and fourth graders collected in two previous studies, focusing on the influence of method (psychometric vs. chronometric) and stimulus type on the gender difference in mental-rotation accuracy. The children had to solve mental-rotation tasks with animal pictures, letters, or cube figures, either in a chronometric condition (computerized) or in a psychometric condition (paper-and-pencil). Results show a slight male advantage in mental-rotation accuracy, which is neither influenced by method nor by stimulus type. However, mental-rotation accuracy differed between the stimulus types, with the highest accuracy in animal pictures and the lowest accuracy in cube figures, and between age groups, with better performance in fourth graders than in second graders in both conditions. Results show that psychometric and chronometric mental-rotation tests with all the stimulus types are more or less similarly usable with children of that age.     

How the great apes (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) perform on the reversed contingency task: the effects of food quantity and food visibility

S. T. Boysen and G. G. Berntson (1995) found that chimpanzees performed poorly on a reversed contingency task in which they had to point to the smaller of 2 food quantities to acquire the larger quantity. The authors compared the performance of 4 great ape species (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) on the reversed contingency task while manipulating food quantity (0-4 or 1-4) and food visibility (visible pairs or covered pairs). Results showed no systematic species differences but large individual differences. Some individuals of each species were able to solve the reversed contingency task. Both quantity and visibility of the food items had a significant effect on performance. Subjects performed better when the disparity between quantities was smaller and the quantities were not directly visible.     

Empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking

The present study examined whether strategy moderated the relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and empathy. Participants (N=96) undertook both a perspective-taking task requiring speeded spatial judgements made from the perspective of an observed figure and the Empathy Quotient questionnaire, a measure of trait empathy. Perspective-taking performance was found to be related to empathy in that more empathic individuals showed facilitated performance particularly for figures sharing their own spatial orientation. This relationship was restricted to participants that reported perspective-taking by mentally transforming their spatial orientation to align with that of the figure; it was absent in those adopting an alternative strategy of transposing left and right whenever confronted with a front-view figure. Our finding that strategy moderates the relationship between empathy and visuospatial perspective-taking enables a reconciliation of the apparently inconclusive findings of previous studies and provides evidence for functionally dissociable empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking.     

Parenting style in Spanish parents with children aged 6 to 14

The aim of this paper was to establish which parenting style of Spanish families is associated with optimum children's outcomes. A random Spanish sample of 1,103 parents of children and teenagers from 6 to 14 years of age, of whom 47% were females, reported on their child-rearing practices. Families were classified into 1 of 4 groups (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful) based on the parents' answers. Socialization outcomes were 6 indicators of interpersonal relationship quality, 9 indicators of psychological adjustment, 7 indicators of personal competence, and 12 indicators of behavior problems. Results showed that indulgent and authoritative parenting styles were associated with better outcomes than authoritarian and neglectful parenting. Overall, our results supported the idea that, in Spain, the optimum parenting style is the indulgent one, as scores in the four sets of socialization outcomes among children and teenagers from indulgent families were always equal to, or even better than, the authoritative parenting style.     

War stress and late-life mortality in World War II male civilian resistance veterans

The mental and physical health of 146 Dutch males exposed to severe war stress during their young adulthood were examined in 1986-1987 when they were at ages 61 to 66 years. The veterans' data were compared with a randomly selected population-based sample of same-aged males. In 2005, 70% of the war stress veterans had died, and only 35% of the comparison group. The baseline quality of life was significantly poorer in the war stress veterans than in the comparison group. Baseline variables explained 42% of the increased risk of mortality among war stress veterans. Smoking was the largest single contributor to mortality.     

Are lies more wrong than errors? Accuracy judgments of inaccurate statements

People are often mistaken when estimating and predicting quantities, and sometimes they report values that they know are false: they lie. There exists, however, little research devoted to how such deviations are being perceived. In four vignette studies, participants were asked to rate the accuracy of inaccurate statements about quantities (prices, numbers and amounts). The results indicate that overstatements are generally judged to be more inaccurate than understatements of the same magnitude; self-favorable (optimistic) statements are considered more inaccurate than unfavorable (pessimistic) statements, and false reports (lies) are perceived to be more inaccurate than equally mistaken estimates. Lies about the future did not differ from lies about the past, but own lies were perceived as larger than the same lies attributed to another person. It is suggested that estimates are judged according to how close they come to the true values (close estimates are more correct than estimates that are less close), whereas lies are judged as deviant from truth, with less importance attached to the magnitude of the deviation.     

Center-of-pressure regularity as a marker for attentional investment in postural control: A comparison between sitting and standing postures

Postural control is a highly automatized basic activity that requires limited attentional investments. These investments have been shown to increase from balancing experts to controls, and from controls to persons with impaired postural control. Such between-subject comparisons led to a proposed direct relation between the regularity of center-of-pressure (COP) fluctuations and the amount of attention invested in posture. This study aims to expand this relation to a within-subject comparison of conditions that differ in balance demands. Specifically, more regular COP fluctuations were expected for standing than sitting, as stimulus-response reaction-time studies showed that the required attentional demands are lower for sitting than standing. COP registrations were made for fifteen healthy young adults in seated and standing postures. COP regularity was quantified with sample entropy. As expected, COP fluctuations were found to be more regular for standing than sitting, as evidenced by significantly lower sample entropy values. These findings expand the relation between COP regularity and the amount of attention invested in posture to postural tasks that vary in balance demands. An assessment of COP regularity may thus not only be instrumental in the examination of attentional investment in posture in between-subject designs, but also for different postures in within-subjects designs.