Putting the “IRT” in “Dirty”: Item response theory analyses of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen—An efficient measure of narcissism,psychopathy, and Machiavellianism

The Dark Triad Dirty Dozen is a new, concise personality inventory designed to measure individual differences in narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism in sub-clinical populations. To date, the psychometric work on this measure has used classical test theory to assess its validity, reliability, and structure. In two independent samples (N = 1014), we provide the first analyses of this measure using item response theory. In both samples, the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen efficiently recovered information and showed some evidence of differential scale functioning by sex, with a lower endorsement threshold for men compared to women. Results shed new light on the measurement of these “dark” personality traits.     

Aversive conditioning,schizotypy, and affective temperament in the framework of the salience hypothesis

During classic conditioning, the processing of conditioned stimuli (CSs+) is enhanced relative to neutral stimuli (CSs−). In patients with psychotic disorders, CSs− become abnormally relevant relative to CSs+, which may lead to the formation of aberrant associations. In this study, we explored how schizotypal and affective personality traits are associated with salience processing in nonclinical individuals. We used aversive conditioning and personality questionnaires in 100 healthy volunteers. The CSs+ were colored circles predicting the unconditioned stimulus (US), which was a loud noise. Circles of another color were the CSs− predicting no US. Conditioning was measured with skin conductance responses (SCRs) and reaction time. Results revealed that higher reality distortion, introvertive anhedonia, and cyclothymic personality negatively correlated with SCRs and positively correlated with reaction time for CSs+, which indicates less efficient conditioning. After taking into account the covariance between these personality traits, only reality distortion and introvertive anhedonia remained significant for CS+ SCRs, and introvertive anhedonia remained significant for CS+ reaction time. Enhanced responses to CSs− were positively predicted only by reality distortion. These results suggest that salience-processing biases are related to schizotypal personality traits in healthy individuals, exhibiting a similar pattern to that observed in psychotic disorders.     

On the dynamics of implicit emotion regulation: Counter-regulation after remembering events of high but not of low emotional intensity

Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.     

EDITORIAL

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness of Barkley’s (1997a) model of inhibition and executive functioning in describing the deficits associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Besides group differences, the present study addressed the question of independent effects of inhibition and the other executive functions in discriminating between children with ADHD and controls and how well, in terms of sensitivity and specificity, these measures can classify the children into the correct group. The results showed that children with ADHD differed significantly from controls with regard to measures of inhibition as well as all other executive function measures, except repetition of hand movements. In logistic regression models, three different measures tapping inhibition, working memory and emotion regulation were shown to be significant independent predictors of group membership. The sensitivity for these three variables as a set was 76.2, the specificity was 90.5, with a total of 86% of the sample correctly classified. When excluding the parental rating of emotion regulation, the overall classification rate decreased some, but was still relatively high in comparison with previous studies within this area of research.     

A New Model for Acquiescence at the Interface of Psychometrics and Cognitive Psychology

ABSTRACT

When measuring psychological traits, one has to consider that respondents often show content-unrelated response behavior in answering questionnaires. To disentangle the target trait and two such response styles, extreme responding and midpoint responding, Böckenholt (2012a Böckenholt, U. (2012a). Modeling multiple response processes in judgment and choice. Psychological Methods, 17, 665–678. doi:10.1037/a0028111[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) developed an item response model based on a latent processing tree structure. We propose a theoretically motivated extension of this model to also measure acquiescence, the tendency to agree with both regular and reversed items. Substantively, our approach builds on multinomial processing tree (MPT) models that are used in cognitive psychology to disentangle qualitatively distinct processes. Accordingly, the new model for response styles assumes a mixture distribution of affirmative responses, which are either determined by the underlying target trait or by acquiescence. In order to estimate the model parameters, we rely on Bayesian hierarchical estimation of MPT models. In simulations, we show that the model provides unbiased estimates of response styles and the target trait, and we compare the new model and Böckenholt’s model in a recovery study. An empirical example from personality psychology is used for illustrative purposes.     

Mommy is only happy! Dutch mothers’ realisation of speech sounds in infant-directed speech expresses emotion,not didactic intent

Exaggeration of the vowel space in infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented for English, but not consistently replicated in other languages or for other speech-sound contrasts. A second attested, but less discussed, pattern of change in IDS is an overall rise of the formant frequencies, which may reflect an affective speaking style. The present study investigates longitudinally how Dutch mothers change their corner vowels, voiceless fricatives, and pitch when speaking to their infant at 11 and 15 months of age. In comparison to adult-directed speech (ADS), Dutch IDS has a smaller vowel space, higher second and third formant frequencies in the vowels, and a higher spectral frequency in the fricatives. The formants of the vowels and spectral frequency of the fricatives are raised more strongly for infants at 11 than at 15 months, while the pitch is more extreme in IDS to 15-month olds. These results show that enhanced positive affect is the main factor influencing Dutch mothers’ realisation of speech sounds in IDS, especially to younger infants. This study provides evidence that mothers’ expression of emotion in IDS can influence the realisation of speech sounds, and that the loss or gain of speech clarity may be secondary effects of affect.     

Parental Attitudes,Beliefs, and Responses to Childhood Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale

ABSTRACT

This paper documents preliminary examination of the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale (PABS), an OCD-specific measure of parental attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral strategies related to childhood OCD. Employing a sample of 123 youth (mean age = 11.7; 59% male, 79% Caucasian) diagnosed with OCD in an outpatient child anxiety clinic, we used exploratory factor analysis to produce a 3-factor solution representing the following domains of parental responses to childhood OCD: accommodation, empowerment, and hostility/blame. These scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and concurrent validity, providing preliminary evidence for the psychometric integrity of the PABS.     

Quality-of-life after penile prosthesis placed at radical prostatectomy

Abstract

The clinical and psychosocial effects of immediate penile prosthesis implantation at the time of radical prostatectomy (RP) were investigated in 97 consecutive patients and 68 partners. Prosthesis recipients reported more frequent sexual contact, fewer marital problems and slightly fewer sexual functioning problems than the RP-alone patients. There were no group differences on any sociodemographic characteristics, on disease recurrence, on physical and psychosocial functioning, or on reported depression. Patients who chose the prosthesis did, however, evidence less of a link between depression and functional limitations and between depression and marital problems. They also had lower levels of agreement with their partners in reporting their own depression, as compared to the patients who opted for RP surgery alone. We conclude that the penile prosthesis was associated with an increased frequency of sexual contact, a reduction in reported marital problems, and stylistic differences between the two patient groups in dealing with affect.     

An anxiety-induced bias in the perception of a bistable point-light walker

Human sensitivity for social cues is exquisite, as illustrated by the ease with which simplified point-light movements invoke social and emotional responses. Compared to faces, these biological motion stimuli only recently started to be used to explore questions regarding social cognition and anxiety. We presented human point-light walkers that could be perceived as facing towards or facing away from the observer, and tested whether participants with high social anxiety would perceive these bistable stimuli differently, because this type of stimuli has particular relevance for them. The results showed that observers with high social anxiety tended to see walkers as facing away more frequently than those with low social anxiety. This may mean that high socially anxious observers are biased towards the more positive perceptual alternative because they are motivated to protect themselves against threatening social experiences, but we also explore alternative explanations. The findings are in line with the evidence for a positivity bias in perception, also called wishful seeing, but in contrast with the attentional negativity bias often found in social anxiety. We discuss reasons for this divergence and possible limitations of the current study.