Child pornography offenses are a valid diagnostic indicator of pedophilia

This study investigated whether being charged with a child pornography offense is a valid diagnostic indicator of pedophilia, as represented by an index of phallometrically assessed sexual arousal to children. The sample of 685 male patients was referred between 1995 and 2004 for a sexological assessment of their sexual interests and behavior. As a group, child pornography offenders showed greater sexual arousal to children than to adults and differed from groups of sex offenders against children, sex offenders against adults, and general sexology patients. The results suggest child pornography offending is a stronger diagnostic indicator of pedophilia than is sexually offending against child victims. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Phobic anxiety in 11 nations. Part I: Dimensional constancy of the five-factor model

The Fear Survey Schedule-III (FSS-III) was administered to a total of 5491 students in Australia, East Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and Venezuela, and submitted to the multiple group method of confirmatory analysis (MGM) in order to determine the cross-national dimensional constancy of the five-factor model of self-assessed fears originally established in Dutch, British, and Canadian samples. The model comprises fears of bodily injury-illness-death, agoraphobic fears, social fears, fears of sexual and aggressive scenes, and harmless animals fears. Close correspondence between the factors was demonstrated across national samples. In each country, the corresponding scales were internally consistent, were intercorrelated at magnitudes comparable to those yielded in the original samples, and yielded (in 93% of the total number of 55 comparisons) sex differences in line with the usual finding (higher scores for females). In each country, the relatively largest sex differences were obtained on harmless animals fears. The organization of self-assessed fears is sufficiently similar across nations to warrant the use of the same weight matrix (scoring key) for the FSS-III in the different countries and to make cross-national comparisons feasible. This opens the way to further studies that attempt to predict (on an a priori basis) cross-national variations in fear levels with dimensions of national cultures.     

Older spouses' perceptions of partners' chronic arthritis pain: implications for spousal responses, support provision, and caregiving experiences

This study of older patients with osteoarthritis and their spouses examined concordance between patients' and spouses' reports of patients' pain severity and the association of concordance with support and caregiving outcomes. Patients and spouses independently viewed videotapes of the patient performing simulated household tasks and provided ratings of patients' pain. Spousal overestimation of patients' pain was the most common type of nonconcordance. Spouses who were accurate in their perceptions of their partner's level of pain during a log-carrying task responded less negatively and provided emotional support that was more satisfying to patients. In addition, spouses who were accurate in their perceptions of their partner's pain during the log-carrying task reported less stress from providing support and assistance. Future research that uses such observational methods may be highly useful for understanding the effects of chronic illness on older couples.     

The simpler syntax hypothesis

What roles do syntax and semantics have in the grammar of a language? What are the consequences of these roles for syntactic structure, and why does it matter? We sketch the Simpler Syntax Hypothesis, which holds that much of the explanatory role attributed to syntax in contemporary linguistics is properly the responsibility of semantics. This rebalancing permits broader coverage of empirical linguistic phenomena and promises a tighter integration of linguistic theory into the cognitive scientific enterprise. We suggest that the general perspective of the Simpler Syntax Hypothesis is well suited to approaching language processing and language evolution, and to computational applications that draw upon linguistic insights.     

The faculty of language: what's special about it?

We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g. words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g. speech perception). We find the hypothesis problematic. It ignores the many aspects of grammar that are not recursive, such as phonology, morphology, case, agreement, and many properties of words. It is inconsistent with the anatomy and neural control of the human vocal tract. And it is weakened by experiments suggesting that speech perception cannot be reduced to primate audition, that word learning cannot be reduced to fact learning, and that at least one gene involved in speech and language was evolutionarily selected in the human lineage but is not specific to recursion. The recursion-only claim, we suggest, is motivated by Chomsky's recent approach to syntax, the Minimalist Program, which de-emphasizes the same aspects of language. The approach, however, is sufficiently problematic that it cannot be used to support claims about evolution. We contest related arguments that language is not an adaptation, namely that it is "perfect," non-redundant, unusable in any partial form, and badly designed for communication. The hypothesis that language is a complex adaptation for communication which evolved piecemeal avoids all these problems.     

Narcissism and depression: MMPI-2 evidence for the continuum hypothesis in clinical samples

According to one hypothesis, self-report measures of narcissism help describe a psychological continuum related to self-esteem. Most of the previous support for this idea appeared in studies of undergraduates responding to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1981) along with other self-report instruments. In this project, results consistent with the continuum hypothesis were obtained when Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) narcissism scales were correlated with depression in adults receiving treatment for alcoholism. Essentially identical outcomes emerged in a second sample of state psychiatric hospital patients. A third study upheld the hypothesis when narcissism scales were correlated with clinical assessments rather than self-reports of depression. None of these findings were easily explained in terms of alternative interpretations of self-reported narcissism, and these data demonstrate that empirical support for the continuum hypothesis was not limited to the NPI, undergraduates, or self-report measures.     

Concurrent validity of the Wechsler abbreviated scale of intelligence and the Kaufman brief intelligence test among psychiatric inpatients

This study examined the convergent and discriminant validity of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test for 85 psychiatric inpatients. The correlation between the WASI Full Scale and K-BIT Composite IQ scores was significant (r = .89, p < .001). Multitrait-multimethod analysis of the subtest scores showed that the K-BIT had higher internal consistency for its two subtests but, therefore, less differentiation of cognitive functioning than the brief Wechsler scale, as would be expected due to the larger number and diversity of the latter subtests. Correlations among the Wechsler scale subtests were lower than among those for the K-BIT, so the former may tap different cognitive functions and yield more clinically useful information than the latter. This brief Wechsler scale appears to be a valid screening measure of verbal, performance. and general intellectual ability for use with an inpatient psychiatric population when considerations of the setting or patient preclude administration of a longer measure of intellectual ability.     

Eyewitness recognition errors: the effects of mugshot viewing and choosing in young and old adults

Eyewitness memory is vulnerable to information encountered prior to a lineup. Young (18-30 years) and older (60-80 years) witnesses viewed a crime video. Some witnesses were then exposed to mugshots of innocent suspects that included a critical foil. After a 48-h delay, all the witnesses took part in a target-absent lineup that included the critical foil and five new foils. Witnesses who picked one of the mugshots as the likely perpetrator showed inflated rates of choosing the critical foil from the lineup. Context reinstatement instructions did not reduce choices of innocent foils following mugshot exposure. Despite age-related increases in false choosing, age did not qualify other effects. The results are discussed in terms of commitment, source memory, and gist-based processing.     

Perceptions of unconditional and conditional worth among college students

Self-esteem scales tend to represent conditional perceptions of self-esteem. The Worth Index has been previously validated as an effective measure for identifying both conditional and unconditional perceptions of worth. We administered the Worth Index to 1,161 college-aged students at Brigham Young University to assess their current perceptions of unconditional and conditional worth. Both men and women agreed more strongly with items involving unconditional worth than conditional worth. A negative correlation was found between ratings of unconditional and conditional worth. Women had lower unconditional worth scores than men, which was related to being more likely to wish they were someone else, desire to have a better body, and to being concerned about weight. Agreement with two overview measures of self-esteem involving a "good" sense of self and stability of self-esteem was positively associated with agreement on statements about unconditional worth. This research shows the importance of incorporating unconditional worth into self-esteem measures.     

Visual similarity is greater for line drawings of nonliving than living things: the importance of musical instruments and body parts

It has been argued that greater intra-category structural similarity for living things, and the subsequent "visual crowding," makes them more difficult to recognize and name for neurologically damaged individuals and normal subjects (Humphreys et al., 1988). Nevertheless, the precise meaning and quantification of structural similarity remains unclear, as does the rationale for why it necessarily should be greater for living things. We derived a new measure of visual overlap from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart corpus of line drawings: the degree of pixel overlap within subcategories (Euclidean distance: ED). Contrary to existing notions of visual crowding and extant measures of contour overlap, within-category ED indicated less within-category visual overlap for living things. Furthermore, musical instruments clustered with living things (having low overlap), while body parts clustered with nonliving things (having high overlap). These counter-intuitive findings accord with patient data and thus, provide evidence for the psychological reality and utility of ED.