Confirmatory Analyses of the School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised: Replication and Extension to a Truancy Sample

School absenteeism and school refusal behavior are prevalent and serious issues for youth, but few measures have been developed specifically for this population. The School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised (child and parent versions) provides clinicians with a profile of the relative strength of four functions or maintaining variables regarding school refusal behavior. The scales have been previously tested largely on clinical samples in outpatient treatment settings, however. This study examined 216 youth with primary school refusal behavior and their parent/guardian referred to a community-based truancy court or truancy diversion setting for problematic absenteeism. The four-factor structure of the scales (Kearney Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 24:235–245, 2002a; Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 28:139–144, 2006) was supported via confirmatory factor analysis and specific functions were associated with specific symptom sets as predicted. The results help extend the generalizability of the scales to youths and their families who are more ethnically diverse and referred to a legal process.     

BOLD response to semantic and syntactic processing during hypoglycemia is load-dependent

This study investigates how syntactic and semantic load factors impact sentence comprehension and BOLD signal under moderate hypoglycemia. A dual session, whole brain fMRI study was conducted on 16 healthy participants using the glucose clamp technique. In one session, they experienced insulin-induced hypoglycemia (plasma glucose at ∼50 mg/dL); in the other, plasma glucose was maintained at euglycemic levels (∼100 mg/dL). During scans subjects were presented with sentences of contrasting syntactic (embedding vs. conjunction) and semantic (reversibility vs. irreversibility) load. Semantic factors dominated the overall load effects on both performance (p < 0.001) and BOLD response (p < 0.01, corrected). Differential BOLD signal was observed in frontal, temporal, temporo-parietal and medio-temporal regions. Hypoglycemia and syntactic factors significantly impacted performance (p = 0.002) and BOLD response (p < 0.01, corrected) in the reversible clause conditions, more extensively in reversible-embedded than in reversible-conjoined clauses. Hypoglycemia resulted in a robust decrease in performance on reversible clauses and exerted attenuating effects on BOLD unselectively across cortical circuits.The dominance of reversibility in all measures underscores the distinction between the syntactic and semantic contrasts. The syntactic is based in a quantitative difference in algorithms interpreting embedded and conjoined structures. We suggest that the semantic is based in a qualitative difference between algorithmic mapping of arguments in reversible clauses and heuristic linking in irreversible clauses. Because heuristics drastically reduce resource demand, the operations they support would resist the load-dependent cognitive consequences of hypoglycemia.     

Caring and coercive aspects of the psychoanalytic situation

Certain ambivalent reactions to undergoing analysis add content and intensity to the analysand's transference and to some extent to the analyst's countertransference. A significant share of these reactions may be attributed to the structure of the psychoanalytic situation. Among other things, analysands' reactions feature fantasized and sometimes realistic experiences of being coerced by their analyst's counter-transferences. However, to achieve a clear view of these coercive experiences, they must be considered in relation to another, equally weighty structural feature: ambivalent reactions to the analyst's concerned care. Observation suggests that an intervention can be experienced, simultaneously or sequentially, as both coercive and caring, and that, when analyzed, each of these experiences is usually found to be saturated with mixed feelings.     

Wild analysis

Contemporary debates over psychoanalytic theory and practice warrant a reconsideration of the concept of wild analysis. Freud's initial formulation of the problem, subsequent developments in the Freudian conventions, and the work of Melanie Klein, Kohut, and Gill are compared in order to bring out different conceptions of interpretation that is wild, sound, or too tame. These different conceptions are system-bound. Moral implications of Klein's, Kohut's, and Gill's critiques and alternative systems are taken up.     

The Effects of Marital Interaction,Depression and Self-Esteem on Dietary Self-Efficacy Among Married Couples1

This investigation defines the construct of dietary self-efficacy and examines the personal and interactional factors that predict efficacy in food behavior. Dietary self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of behavior necessary to produce a nutritionally healthful diet. A path model was tested that located dietary self-efficacy as a consequence of the character of marital interaction (role disagreement, equity/inequity, and family food interaction), personal conditions of depression and low self-esteem, age, and education. One hundred fifty-five married couples were randomly selected and interviewed. The path model predicted a direct causal effect of role disagreement and inequity on depression and an indirect effect on dietary self-efficacy mediated by depression and self-esteem. The findings supported the proposed model for wives but not for husbands, suggesting that dietary self-efficacy is a female construct. Wives continue to take major responsibility for food selection and preparation, including the nutrition of children. Therefore, dietary self-efficacy gains a position of centrality for wives that is not independent of the effect of everyday interaction.     

Coping With a Health Threat: A Study of Food Safety1

The coping strategies used to respond to the perceived health threat of contaminated food are examined. Six hundred and thirty randomly selected adults in the state of Iowa responded to a mailed questionnaire asking their attitudes and behaviors concerning food safety. A principal component analysis of coping measure identified two distinct coping strategies–problem solving and fatalism/avoidance/ trust. Multiple regression analysis showed that the respondents who tended to be health conscious (i. e., engaged in health protective behaviors and had better quality diets) and perceived unsafe food as a personal threat and a social problem were more likely to select problem solving as a coping mechanism. The respondents who were low in health consciousness were more likely to select the approaches of fatalism/ avoidance. Social class variables did not differentiate coping strategies.     

Development of associative and perceptual interference

In a choice reaction-time letter-identification task, the temporal development of perceptual and associative interference was studied with visual displays containing identical, irrelevant, or response-incompatible noise letters. Using the methods of variable-criterion theory, it was determined that perceptual interference is complete very early and has no effect on the shape of the function for the growth of associative strength. Associative interference begins later, gradually increases to a maximum, and then declines to zero at long latencies. In experiments with speeded performance, it was also found that the growth of excitatory strength for errors contains the same nonmonotonic process as for correct responses, but in reverse form. In addition, it was observed that the discriminability of the target stimuli affects the rate of growth of associative strength for the correct response. Analyses of individual differences in theoretical parameters indicate information-processing patterns similar to those reported for simple auditory tasks.     

Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance: An Introduction to the Symposium

This article provides an overview of the issues, methods, and constructs presented in the papers for the symposium Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance. These papers share a substantive focus on the psychological characteristics of U.S. presidents and a common commitment to the use of 'at-a-distance' assessment techniques. In this context, at-a distance measures raise several substantive and methodological issues, including the connections between leaders and advisors, the value of public versus private rhetoric, and differences between spontaneous and prepared source material. The authors of the papers use two psychological constructs, the operational code and conceptual complexity, to investigate these issues and to illustrate the utility of at-a-distance methods for assessing psychological characteristics.