PRIMARY ENCOPRESIS: EVALUATION AND TREATMENT

Cathartic and behavioral treatment procedures for eliminating diurnal and nocturnal primary encopresis were investigated using a multiple-baseline design across four children. The dependent and independent variables measured were appropriate bowel movements, soiling accidents, independent toiletings, and cathartic use. Over 177 reliability observations (home visits) were conducted. For two of the children, treatment with cathartics and child-time remedied their soiling accidents and increased their independent toiletings in 8 to 11 weeks. While the cathartics and child-time increased the rate of appropriate bowel movements, they did not eliminate the soiling accidents with the other two children. Independent toiletings for these two children were achieved after 32 to 39 weeks of treatment when punishment procedures (positive practice, time-out, and hourly toilet sits) were incorporated and the suppositories were faded systematically.     

The width of the auditory filter in children

Because young children have poorer auditory temporal resolution than older children, they ought to have, according to the inverse relation between temporal and frequency resolution, narrower auditory filters than older children. Therefore, the auditory filters of two 6-year-olds, two 10-year-olds, and two adults were measured by having them detect a 400-ms sinusoid (500, 1000, or 3000 Hz) centered in a spectral notch in a band of noise. The signal power for 71% correct was determined as a function of notch width with the two-alternative, forced-choice procedure. The principal results showed a significant decrease in signal power with age and a significant interaction between age and notch width. The best-fitting parameters of a model of the auditory filter showed that the filter was significantly wider for the 6-year-olds than for the 10-year-olds or the adults.     

Exemplification: The self-presentation of moral character

How do people come to terms with moral self-presentations and disconfirming behaviors? Subjects were exposed to the self-presentation of either an exemplifier (presenting himself as morally virtuous) or a pragmatist (presenting himself as morally adaptable) and then learned whether the self-presenter had or had not cheated for self-serving reasons in an earlier experiment Subjects clearly distinguished between exploitativeness and hypocrisy in their attributions, and considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and self-deluding, but less exploitative and devious than a cheating pragmatist A second experiment manipulated subjects' involvement with the cheating of an exemplifier and a pragmatist by making half of the subjects its victims As in Experiment 1, uninvolved subjects considered the cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist, however, involved subjects (victims) considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical but no less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist The results are discussed in terms of strategic self-presentation and the attribution of moral character     

Attributional mediators of social inhibition and avoidance

People differ in the degree to which they become inhibited and avoidant when they feel socially anxious This study explored the hypothesis that characterological attributions for one's feelings of nervousness in social settings are related to social inhibition and avoidance In a preliminary study, the dimensions people use to explain their feelings of nervousness and relaxation were determined One hundred and twenty-five subjects then completed measures of social anxiousness, inhibition, and avoidance, and made attributions for feeling nervous and relaxed in 10 interpersonal scenarios As predicted, attributions of nervousness to characterological factors, such as ability and personality traits, correlated positively with social inhibition and avoidance Unexpectedly, behavioral attributions for nervousness also predicted inhibition and avoidance     

Sex typing and division of labor as determinants of marital change across the transition to parenthood

This investigation examines the proposition that wives who describe their personality in ways that deviate from sex stereotypes will become less positive and more negative about their marriage from before to after they become mothers, particularly when the transition to parenthood is accompanied by an increase in the traditionalism of marital roles. Sixty-one couples were studied longitudinally from the last trimester of pregnancy through the third postpartum month. The wives completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence & Helmreich, 1978), which measures the extent to which they ascribe personality attributes stereotyped as "masculine" (i.e., instrumental, agentic) and "feminine" (expressive, affectional) to themselves, and several questionnaires assessing the marital relationship at both times of measurement. Results revealed that the more division of labor changed toward traditionalism, the greater the decline in wives' evaluations of the positive aspects of marriage and that changes in wives' evaluations of both positive and negative aspects of marriage can be significantly predicted by the interaction of the wives' expressivity and changes toward increased traditionalism in division of labor. Additional analyses showed that wives who do not ascribe female sex-typed attributes to themselves (relative to those who see themselves in sex-stereotyped ways) are more apt to evaluate their marriage less favorably from before to after parenthood when roles shift toward greater traditionalism.     

The role of factor analysis in the development and evaluation of personality scales

The purpose of this paper is to examine the usefulness of factor analysis in developing and evaluating personality scales that measure limited domain constructs The approach advocated follows from several assumptions that a single scale ought to measure a single construct, that factor analysis ought to be applied routinely to new personality scales, and that the factors of a scale are important if it can be demonstrated that they are differentially related to other measures A detailed study of the Self-Monitoring Scale illustrates how factor analysis can help us to understand what a scale measures A second example uses the self-esteem literature to illustrate how factor analysis can clarify the proliferation of scales within a single content domain Both examples show how factor analysis can be used to identify important conceptual distinctions Confirmatory techniques are also introduced as a means for testing specific hypotheses It is concluded that factor analysis can make an important contribution to programmatic research in personality psychology     

Concordance between clinicians' and patients' ratings of anxiety and depression as mediated by private self-consciousness

This study assesses the relations between the ratings of clinicians and psychiatric inpatients on several anxiety and depression measures, as mediated by private self-consciousness. The overall concordance between clinicians' and patients' ratings is quite high, particularly on the depression measures. Levels of private self-consciousness do not appear to mediate concordance of structured behavior or symptom-based ratings of either anxiety or depression; however, there is limited support for levels of private self-consciousness mediating concordance between patients' global ratings of anxiety and clinicians' anxiety ratings.     

The relations between type A behavior, clinically relevant behavior, academic achievement, and IQ in children

The relation of Type A behavior to IQ, academic achievement, and several clinically relevant dimensions of behavior in children was assessed in 873 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders by means of the Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH), the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT), the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITED), and the teachers' form of the Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist (MCBC-T). The MYTH and its competitiveness and impatience-aggression subscales were found to be differentially related to academic achievement and to account for a small but significant portion of the variance in achievement not accounted for by IQ. The subscales of the MYTH were found to be highly correlated with several clinically familiar dimensions of children's behavior. The significance of these findings for the construct validity of the MYTH is discussed.     

Discriminant validity of the General Behavior Inventory: an outpatient study

Recent studies have provided strong support for the convergent validity of the General Behavior Inventory (GBI), a case identification inventory for chronic subsyndromal affective disorders (cyclothymia and dysthymia). Fewer data are available, however, on the ability of the GBI to distinguish chronic subsyndromal affective disorders from other forms of psychopathology. In order to address this issue, outpatients with cyclothymia (n = 9), dysthymia (n = 26), nonchronic major depression (n = 16), and nonaffective psychiatric disorders (n = 30) were compared on the GBI. Diagnoses were derived blind to GBI scores using structured diagnostic interviews and DSM-III criteria. The inventory significantly discriminated cyclothymes and dysthymes from patients with nonchronic major depressions and nonaffective disorders. Using the cutoff score that maximized GBI-diagnosis concordance, the inventory correctly classified 88% of the sample. All of the cyclothymes, 92% of the dysthymes, 87% of the patients with nonaffective psychiatric disorders, and 75% of the nonchronic major depressives were correctly classified by the inventory. These data provide strong support for the discriminant validity of the GBI.     

Alternative scoring system of repeated items on the MMPI: caveat emptor

There are 16 items in the standard MMPI group forms which are included twice. It was found that a number of computerized scoring services use only the first occurrence of repeated items in scoring the MMPI scales, whereas the handscoring templates use an arbitrary combination of the first and second occurrence of these items. Comparison of these conventions suggested a potential for significant differences in score, particularly on the Sc scale. Scoring a set of 126 MMPIs of chronic pain patients by both of these scoring conventions revealed differences of up to 10 T points on the Sc scale. It is recommended that a single scoring convention for the MMPI be adopted by psychologists. For several reasons we suggest that only the first occurrence of repeated items should be used for scoring purposes. In the absence of a single convention, comparisons between Sc scores on different protocols should not be made without first insuring that the protocols were scored in the same manner.