On the dimensionality of the stress-related growth scale: one, three, or seven factors?

We examined the factorial validity and dimensionality of the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS; Park, Cohen, & Murch, 1996) using a large multiethnic sample (n = 1,070). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggested that a multidimensional representation of the SRGS fit better than a unidimensional representation. Specifically, we cross-validated both a 3-factor model and a 7-factor model using confirmatory factor analysis and were shown to be invariant across gender and ethnic groups. The 3-factor model was represented by global dimensions of growth that included rational/mature thinking, affective/emotional growth, and religious/spiritual growth. We replicated the 7-factor model of Armeli, Gunthert, and Cohen (2001) and it represented more specific components of growth such as Self-Understanding and Treatment of Others. However, some factors of the 7-factor model had questionable internal consistency and were strongly intercorrelated, suggesting redundancy. The findings support the notion that the factor structure of both the original 1-factor and revised 7-factor models are unstable and that the 3-factor model developed in this research has more reliable psychometric properties and structure.     

They all look the same to me (unless they're angry): from out-group homogeneity to out-group heterogeneity

People often find it more difficult to distinguish ethnic out-group members compared with ethnic in-group members. A functional approach to social cognition suggests that this bias may be eliminated when out-group members display threatening facial expressions. In the present study, 192 White participants viewed Black and White faces displaying either neutral or angry expressions and later attempted to identify previously seen faces. Recognition accuracy for neutral faces showed the out-group homogeneity bias, but this bias was entirely eliminated for angry Black faces. Indeed, when participants' cognitive processing capacity was constrained, recognition accuracy was greater for angry Black faces than for angry White faces, demonstrating an out-group heterogeneity bias.     

Functional projection: how fundamental social motives can bias interpersonal perception

Results from 2 experimental studies suggest that self-protection and mate-search goals lead to the perception of functionally relevant emotional expressions in goal-relevant social targets. Activating a self-protection goal led participants to perceive greater anger in Black male faces (Study 1) and Arab faces (Study 2), both out-groups heuristically associated with physical threat. In Study 2, participants' level of implicit Arab-threat associations moderated this bias. Activating a mate-search goal led male, but not female, participants to perceive more sexual arousal in attractive opposite-sex targets (Study 1). Activating these goals did not influence perceptions of goal-irrelevant targets. Additionally, participants with chronic self-protective and mate-search goals exhibited similar biases. Findings are consistent with a functionalist, motivation-based account of interpersonal perception.     

Psychoanalytic reconstructions and empirical data: reciprocal contributions

Freud (1905, 1917, 1937) throughout his lifetime sought empirical scientific confirmation of the validity of his discoveries. In pursuit of this goal, he persistently emphasized the importance of establishing agreement between analytic reconstructions and the results of naturalistic child observation. The same objective lead Lichtenberg (1983), Emde (1981, 1985), and Stern (1985) to produce detailed evaluations of the impact of infant research findings on analytic developmental propositions. The present paper examines the relation among clinical reconstructions from an analysis developed through transference interpretations, empirical observations originating in the analytic patient's daughter's psychotherapy, and the results of empirical infant research that was being concurrently conducted by two of the authors. The findings from the clinical analysis of the mother, the psychotherapy of the daughter, and empirical infant research all converged on the same larger causative factor for the daughter's psychopathology--a type of maternal deprivation. Such a confluence of different sources of evidence, each identified by a different method of investigation, provides one kind of validation for psychoanalytic reconstructions, making it possible to provide that "satisfactory degree of certainty" which Freud (1937) called for in the attempt to integrate the patient's "psychic truth" with "actual" or historical truth.     

Emotional and autonomic responses to visual traumatic stimuli

A fine-grain analysis of autonomic responses are presented with the purpose of extending the conclusions from a previously published paper (Christianson & Nilsson, 1984) on emotional and memorial responses to traumatic visual stimuli. Control subjects were presented with a series of 18 slides of neutral faces, whereas the experimental subjects were presented with six slides of horrible facial injuries in positions 7–12, interspersed between six slides of neutral faces in the beginning, and six slides of neutral faces at the end of the series. The time course of heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) during stimulus presentation was recorded. These data showed an initial pattern of increase in SC, but not in HR. This pattern was subsequently replaced by a combined increase in both SC and HR. The results are discrepant to previous work and are interpreted as effects of not informing the subjects about the gruesome slides to be presented.     

Evaluation of long term effects of phonemic awareness training in kinderarten: Illustrations of some methodological problems in evaluation research

The long-term effects of phonemic awareness training in kindergarten were evaluated by studying various aspects of reading, spelling, and oral phonological skills in school. In the kindergarten-part of the study 95 children divided into three experimental and two control groups took part. One year later 83 of them were identified and tested in school. The children who participated in the phonemic training program seemed to have benefited from it to some extent. At least they improved their scores on phonemic synthesis tests in school. Some children in the middle and high range of pretest performance seem to have avoided a risk for reading failure to a greater extent than the corresponding children in the control groups. It is suggested that phonemic training contributes to the development of accurate concepts of reading in the preschool child and makes the child less confused when confronted with formal reading instruction in school. Great variances, ceiling effects, and group heterogeneity created many difficulties in evaluating the training effects. The various methodological problems implied in evaluation research with nonequivalent control group design were analysed and illustrated with data from the present research.     

Surrender to win: how adolescent drug and alcohol users change their lives

Adolescent drug and alcohol addiction is a serious problem in the United States. However, some addicted adolescents do quit drinking and using drugs. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of seven young adults who managed to surrender their addictions and, for anywhere from five to fifteen years, construct sober identities. The participants came from highly dysfunctional homes, began substance use as children, and were polydrug users. A series of catastrophic life events led them to Alcoholics Anonymous, where they were exposed to self-reflective prayer, a cadre of recovering adolescents and, in particular, adults who offered detached nurturing. This provided the support they needed to confront their addictions through the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.     

Perceptions of primary family therapy supervisory techniques: A critical incident analysis

This study surveyed a randomly selected group of Approved Supervisors of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (n=275) and their supervisees (n=266) on their perceptions of the primary supervisory technique used in supervisory incidents that had a positive effect on supervisee development. Individual case consultation was the technique most often identified by both supervisors and supervisees.This study was funded in part by grants from the Research Committee of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy; the Agricultural Experiment Station, Purdue University; and the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Purdue University Calumet.     

Attribution and expressed emotion in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia.

Indexes of expressed emotion (EE) in 58 relatives of patients with schizophrenia were related to those relatives' spontaneously expressed causal beliefs about the illness and about related symptoms and behaviors. Relatives made attributions predominantly to factors external, universal, and uncontrollable from their own perspective, and to factors internal, universal, and uncontrollable from the patient's perspective. Low-EE relatives were similar in their attributions to emotionally overinvolved relatives. Compared with these two groups, critical and/or hostile relatives made more attributions to factors personal to and controllable by the patient. Subsequent analyses suggested that hostile relatives were further characterized by making more attributions to factors internal to the patient and by making attributions with fewer causal elements.     

Personality organization defined by DMT and the Structural Interview

The psychoanalytic concept of Personality Organization (PO) may be operationalized by means of a Structural Interview as well as by means of psychological tests. The present study utilized the Structural Interview and a projective test called the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) to operationalize the PO concept on a sample of 50 psychiatric inpatients. The reliability of the PO judgements were found to be acceptable for both the Structural Interview and the DMT. The validity, which was estimated as the correlation between the two methods, was also found to be substantial. The conclusion is that the concept of PO may be reliably operationalized for psychiatric patients and seems to have concurrent validity. Both the DMT and the Structural Interview may be used for differential diagnosis of PO.