An evaluation of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 using item response theory: which items are most strongly related to psychological distress?

The psychometric structure of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18; Derogatis, 2001) was investigated using Mokken scaling and parametric item response theory. Data of 487 outpatients, 266 students, and 207 prisoners were analyzed. Results of the Mokken analysis indicated that the BSI-18 formed a strong Mokken scale for outpatients and prisoners, indicating strong unidimensionality. For students, only the depression and anxiety items formed a medium Mokken scale. Parametric item response theory analyses showed that the best discriminating items came from the depression and anxiety subscales.     

On reducing an empathy gap: the impact of self-construal and order of judgment

Empathy gaps, in which individuals exaggerate self-other similarities or differences, generate errors in social judgments. We investigated whether changing individuals' self-construal may reduce one specific empathy gap: the illusion of courage. Participants primed with independent or interdependent self-construal made judgments about their own and other people's willingness to dance in public. Participants in the interdependence condition showed a reduction of the empathy gap, but only when judging the other first. This finding highlights that simple contextual manipulations have the potential to reduce egocentric biases in social judgments.     

A beverage-specific measure of expectancies for malt liquor: development and initial testing

Malt liquor (ML) is a unique, high alcohol content beverage marketed to encourage heavy drinking. We developed the Malt Liquor Expectancy Questionnaire (MLEQ), a beverage-specific measure of alcohol expectancies, and examined its association with typical weekly ML use, typical weekly alcohol use, and alcohol problems. Forty positive and 40 negative expectancy items were administered to a sample of 639 young adults who regularly consumed ML. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses led to the development of the 30-item MLEQ. The MLEQ consists of two positive (i.e., Social Facilitation and Enjoyment, Enhanced Sexuality) and two negative factors (i.e., Aggression and Negative Consequences; Impairment and Physical Symptoms) that possess good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity. The psychometrically sound MLEQ contributes to the limited research on beverage-specific expectancies and heavy drinking.     

On the role of intervening distractors in the attentional blink

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the decline in accurate report for a second target (T2) when presented within about 500 ms of a first target (T1) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation stream of distractors. It is debated whether the distractors presented shortly after T1 cause the AB directly, as is proposed by distractor-based models, or can modulate its amplitude only indirectly by increasing T1 difficulty, as is proposed by capacity-based models. To investigate this issue, an intervening distractor was presented at lag 1 (T1 + 1), at lag 2 (T1 + 2), or at neither of these two lags (no distractor). T2 was presented at either lag 3 or 9. An AB was observed even in the absence of intervening distractors, indicating that distractors are not necessary to produce an AB. Nonetheless, the T1 + 2 distractor did modulate the AB directly, without influencing T1 performance. Neither theory can fully account for the results but can do so given some modifications.     

Choosing the best means to an end: The influence of ingroup goals on the selection of representatives in intergroup negotiations

According to Scheepers, Spears, Doosje, & Manstead (2006), instrumental goals refer to the maximization of profit whereas identity goals are associated with the attainment of a positive social identity. In two experiments, we show that when negotiations are purely instrumental individuals prefer pro-outgroup deviants as representatives (Experiments 1 and 2). In contrast, when negotiations are identity-related, group members increase their preference for normative (Experiments 1 and 2) and pro-ingroup deviants (Experiment 1). Furthermore, these goals also impact perceptions of typicality of group members. Taken together, these results suggest strategic acceptance of deviance when the goal is to bring the other party to concede and increased preference for normativity when identity is the group's main preoccupation. We discuss implications of these results for research on negotiation as well as on the influence of the intergroup context on intragroup dynamics.     

Executive Functioning Characteristics Associated with ADHD Comorbidity in Adolescents with Disruptive Behavior Disorders

The nature of executive dysfunction in youth with disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) remains unclear, despite extensive research in samples of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To determine the relationship between DBD, ADHD, and executive function deficits in aggressive teens, adolescents with DBD and comorbid ADHD (DBD + ADHD; n = 25), DBD without ADHD (DBD-ADHD; n = 23), and healthy controls (HC; n = 25) were compared on neurocognitive tests and questionnaires measuring executive functioning. Teens with DBD + ADHD performed worse on both neurocognitive and questionnaire measures of executive function than the DBD-ADHD and HC groups. Results suggest that subgroups of DBD may exist depending on the presence or absence of comorbid ADHD, which may have implications for the selection and efficacy of treatment strategies.     

A Multicultural‐Ecological Assessment Tool: Conceptualization and Practice With an Asian Indian Immigrant Woman

A multicultural‐ecological (M‐Eco) method assesses multiple levels of a client's presentation, such as individual, micro‐, meso‐, exo‐, macro‐, and chronosystems. An M‐Eco method is a culturally sensitive practice of Bronfenbrenner's (1995) ecological perspective that focuses on behavior's contextual and interactional nature and an individual's interactions within his or her cultural group as well as meaning making of contexts. A través de una ecología multicultural (M‐Eco), se consideran múltiples niveles de la presentación de un cliente (individual, micro‐, meso‐, exo‐, macro‐y cronosistemas). M‐Eco es una práctica culturalmente sensible de la perspectiva ecológica de Bronfenbrenner (1995) que se centra en la naturaleza contextual e interaccional del comportamiento y en las interacciones de un individuo dentro de su propio grupo cultural, además de cómo se obtiene significado a partir de contextos.     

To honor Fechner and obey Stevens: relationships between psychophysical and neural nonlinearities

G. T. Fechner (1860/1966) famously described two kinds of psychophysics: Outer psychophysics captures the black box relationship between sensory inputs and perceptual magnitudes, whereas inner psychophysics contains the neural transformations that Fechner's outer psychophysics elided. The relationship between the two has never been clear. Moreover, psychophysical power laws are found in almost every sensory system, yet the vast majority of neurons show sigmoid nonlinearities. Here, we selectively review the literatures on psychophysical and physiological nonlinearities and show how they can be placed within a framework for understanding the relationship between inner and outer psychophysics: a neural organization with a logical structure commensurate to outer psychophysical theory. In theoretical treatments of Stevens's law, the power law is a consequence of combining a Weber's law scaling of inputs with a Weber's law-like scaling of sensation magnitudes, yielding an exponent that is the ratio of the Weber constants. A neural derivation using physiological sigmoid nonlinearities should be commensurate to this internal logic. There is a class of models in which two nonlinear neural mechanisms (e.g., a sensory channel and the cortical numerosity mechanism tapped by magnitude estimation) are coupled through feedback, yielding power law behavior as an emergent property of the system, with an exponent that is a ratio of neural coupling strengths. Rather than a discrepancy between psychophysics and physiology, these models suggest complementarity between inner and outer psychophysics, because the Weber constants required for outer psychophysics modeling can be derived from the sigmoid nonlinearities of inner psychophysics.     

Division I men and women athletes do not differ on perceptions of worth

Historically, especially prior to the increased interest in women's athletics with the passage of Title IX in 1972, there have been negative perceptions of women as athletes. If these social perceptions still hold in part today, as is indirectly suggested by unequal press coverage and less basic support for women athletes, one might predict that collegiate female athletes would rate themselves lower on self-esteem and worth than collegiate male athletes. 176 Division I male (n = 90) and female (n = 86) athletes rated their perceptions of self on the Worth Index which measures basic human worth, personal security, performance, and physical self; these are divided into intrinsic (unconditional worth) measures and behavior or performance (conditional worth) measures. There were no significant sex differences in the ratings of any aspect of perceived worth, in contrast to prior results among non-athletes. In spite of less support given to women athletes, perhaps the long-term high-intensity competition that is required to reach Division I status tends to eliminate sex differences in self-worth.     

Elementary visual hallucinations and their relationships to neural pattern-forming mechanisms

An extraordinary variety of experimental (e.g., flicker, magnetic fields) and clinical (epilepsy, migraine) conditions give rise to a surprisingly common set of elementary hallucinations, including spots, geometric patterns, and jagged lines, some of which also have color, depth, motion, and texture. Many of these simple hallucinations fall into a small number of perceptual geometries-the Klüver forms-that (via a nonlinear mapping from retina to cortex) correspond to even simpler sets of oriented stripes of cortical activity (and their superpositions). Other simple hallucinations (phosphenes and fortification auras) are linked to the Klüver forms and to pattern-forming cortical mechanisms by their spatial and temporal scales. The Klüver cortical activity patterns are examples of self-organized pattern formation that arise from nonlinear dynamic interactions between excitatory and inhibitory cortical neurons; with reasonable modifications, this model accounts for a wide range of hallucinated patterns. The Klüver cortical activity patterns are a subset of autonomous spatiotemporal cortical patterns, some of which have been studied with functional imaging techniques. Understanding the interaction of these intrinsic patterns with stimulus-driven cortical activity is an important problem in neuroscience. In line with this, hallucinatory pattern formation interacts with physical stimuli, and many conditions that induce hallucinations show interesting interactions with one another. Both types of interactions are predictable from neural and psychophysical principles such as localized processing, excitatory-inhibitory neural circuits, lateral inhibition, simultaneous and sequential contrast, saccadic suppression, and perceptual opponency. Elementary hallucinations arise from familiar mechanisms stimulated in unusual ways.