The Contributions of Oral and Silent Reading Fluency to Reading Comprehension

Silent reading fluency has received limited attention in the school-based literatures across the past decade. We fill this gap by examining both oral and silent reading fluency and their relation to overall abilities in reading comprehension in fourth-grade students. Lower-level reading skills (word reading, rapid automatic naming) and vocabulary were included in structural equation models in order to determine their impact on reading fluency and comprehension. Results suggested that oral and silent reading fluency represent separate constructs, but only oral reading fluency contributed to reading comprehension. Vocabulary was found to contribute uniquely to comprehension even after controlling for reading fluency.     

Psychometric Properties of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire in a College Population

The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976) was developed to permit the study of the continuities between normal and pathological forms of depression. Since its publication over 10 years ago, the DEQ has been increasingly used in a wide range of investigations of depression in clinical and nonclinical samples and as a measure of two major personality dimensions in a number of studies of differential responsiveness to various life stressors. This study provides an analysis of the DEQ responses in a large sample of undergraduate subjects in an attempt to articulate more clearly the psychometric properties of the DEQ. The DEQ consists of 66 items describing experiences frequently reported by depressed individuals. In the original development of the DEQ, factor analyses using male and female undergraduate samples yielded three orthogonal factors, Dependency, Self-Criticism, and Efficacy (Blatt et al., 1976). Most subsequent studies have used the factor scoring coefficients from the female sample to score men and women's DEQs. The factor loadings in the new male and female samples were very similar to one another and to the original female factor loadings. Thus, the continued use of the scoring parameters from the original female sample is recommended. Factor scores for Dependency and Self-Criticism continue to be uncorrelated in both men and women. Normative data are presented from the new samples, with men scoring higher on Self-Criticism and women scoring higher on Dependency.     

Projective Drawings in a Cerebellar Disorder Due to Chicken Pox Encephalitis

Projective drawings may be more sensitive to cerebellar disorders than the Rorschach or the geometric designs of the Bender. Drawings of a nine-year-old whose “bad case of chicken pox” was later diagnosed as varicella encephalitis are presented, with suggestions as to why this sensitivity may occur.     

Differentiation of Personality Types Among Opiate Addicts

A wide range of studies indicate that although sociopathic characteristics are predominant in opiate addiction, depressive and psychotic features are also frequently observed. To test the hypothesis that there are really three types of individuals who become addicted to opiates (rather than a single, predominant personality style), fifty-three opiate addicts were given the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test, the Bellak Ego Functions interview, and the Rorschach. Variables derived from these three procedures were submitted to cluster and discriminant function analyses. Three groups of addicts were identified-those primarily with impaired interpersonal relationships and affective lability (42%), those primarily characterized by thought disorder and impaired ego functioning (30%), and a group with diminished ideational and verbal activity (28%). Comparison of the assessment of these three groups with independently defined normal, neurotic, and schizophrenic samples provided support for three opiate-addicted personality types, each respectively characterized as character disordered, borderline psychotic, arid depressed. Although there seems to be a predominance of character-disordered individuals who become addicted to opiates, the data indicate several additional types of opiate addicts with different types of psychopathology who may require different approaches to management and treatment.     

Representation of Interpersonal Interactions on the Rorschach and Level of Psychopathology

Recent theoretical formulations emphasize the importance of the quality of interpersonal relationships in personality development and psychopathology and have resulted in the construction of methods for assessing the representation of interpersonal experiences. The Urist Mutuality of Autonomy (MOA) Scale is one of the most frequently used methods for assessing the quality of interpersonal relationships by evaluating interactions portrayed on the Rorschach between people, animals, and/or things. This study of the relationship of the MOA scale to independent assessments of interpersonal relationships and clinical symptoms in a group of seriously disturbed adolescents and young adults recently admitted to a long-term, open, residential treatment facility revealed that the average quality of interactions portrayed on the Rorschach relates significantly to the severity of clinical symptoms and the presence of thought disorder, but not to the quality of interpersonal relations. In addition, the portrayal of at least one intensively malevolent and destructive interaction on the Rorschach is correlated primarily with measures of thought disorder and impaired reality testing, whereas not giving at least one mutual and benevolent interaction response is correlated with impaired capacity for social adaptation (e.g., inappropriate interpersonal behavior and unmodulated affect). The relative failure to give at least one mutual and benevolent response is also correlated with the severity of clinical symptoms. Though the MOA scale was developed to assess object relations, it seems more consistently to assess aspects of psychopathology, such as the severity of clinical symptoms and the extent of thought disorder, and only secondarily the quality of interpersonal relationships.     

Use of the TAT to Measure Change in Defense Mechanisms Following Intensive Psychotherapy

Changes in the use of defense mechanisms (denial, projection, and identification) were examined over a period of approximately 15 months of intensive treatment of 90 seriously disturbed young adults who were hospitalized in an intensive, open, long-term treatment setting. Patients independently judged to have primarily an anaclitic or an introjective personality configuration (Blatt, 1974, Blatt & Shichman, 1983) were assessed for psychiatric symptoms and aspects of interpersonal behavior both on admission and after an average of 15 months of treatment. Findings based on an independent assessment of TAT protocols at these two times indicated a significant (p < .05) decline in total use of defenses for the entire sample, but especially for introjective patients. Further, this decline in total use of defenses in the TAT was significantly associated with a reduction in psychiatric symptoms. Also, sex-incongruent patients (anaclitic men and introjective women) were found to rise different defenses and to change in ways different from sex-congruent patients (anaclitic women and introjective men).     

An Experiment in the Prevention of Delinquency by Edwin Powers and Helen Witmer

A longitudinal clinical outcome study based primarily on a questionnaire method is the purpose of this two part paper. Techniques and approaches honed from fifteen years of para-analytic experience with one continuous Saturday morning group (seventy-five adolescents and young adults) are highlighted in this first part. Attention is focused on such pertinent issues as: lateness, selection, duration, individual sessions, physical setting, outside contacts, decreasing anxiety, parents and the important involvement of a female cotherapist. Catalyzing agents in the form of art therapy and mini-silent groups are described. The psychological position is presented for an age-mixed group (adolescents and young adults—age range twenty to thirty) to facilitate a natural flow of topics in the group dialogue rather than a “topic” format.     

The half-life of cognitive-affective states during complex learning

We investigated the temporal dynamics of students' cognitive-affective states (confusion, frustration, boredom, engagement/flow, delight, and surprise) during deep learning activities. After a learning session with an intelligent tutoring system with conversational dialogue, the cognitive-affective states of the learner were classified by the learner, a peer, and two trained judges at approximately 100 points in the tutorial session. Decay rates for the cognitive-affective states were estimated by fitting exponential curves to time series of affect responses. The results partially confirmed predictions of goal-appraisal theories of emotion by supporting a tripartite classification of the states along a temporal dimension: persistent states (boredom, engagement/flow, and confusion), transitory states (delight and surprise), and an intermediate state (frustration). Patterns of decay rates were generally consistent across affect judges, except that a reversed actor-observer effect was discovered for engagement/flow and frustration. Correlations between decay rates of the cognitive-affective states and several learning measures confirmed the major predictions and uncovered some novel findings that have implications for theories of pedagogy that integrate cognition and affect during deep learning.