Development of Sustained Attention Assessed Using the Continuous Performance Test among Children 6–15 Years of Age

The Continuous Performance Test (CPT) is a widely used measure of sustained attention, which may rely on the efficiency of cognitive inhibition. We examined the relationships of age and sex with CPT performance among 341 randomly selected school children 6–15 years of age. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the hit rate, false alarm rate, and sensitivity of both the undegraded and the degraded CPT were associated with age by a quadratic relationship. The age–development curves for the hit rate and sensitivity were convex, whereas that for the false alarm rate was concave. Sex was associated with the hit rate and sensitivity on the degraded CPT only. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that sustained attention develops during the primary school ages. The data reported are essential for identifying children with conditions associated with sustained attention deficit, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as those at an increased risk for developing schizophrenia.     

Designer testing: using subjects'' personal vocabulary to produce individualised tests

The principle of designer tests is that of using a subject's own semantics rather than lists of words that may or may not be relevant or even understandable for the subject. The Personalised Emotional Index (PEI) is a prototype designer test, in this case a mood test, that uses words that the subject chooses from a list of suggestions within mood categories. Each person's test is custom made from familiar and understandable words from his/her own vocabulary. Such a test has much face validity, can be succinct and has comprehensibility for the subject. The results obtained when using this test at the same time as the Profile of Mood States Bipolar Version (POMS-BI) were very similar (e.g. in a regression analysis, the ‘elated-depressed' variable predicted present overall mood on both tests (POMS: t=5.25, p<0.000, PEI: t=5.84, p<0.000) with a high correlation for total scores (r=0.82, p<0.000). The PEI results were correlated within the two week interval (r's about −0.74; p<0.000) and reasonably but not highly correlated on retesting some months after the first testing (r's about −0.25; p<0.000). It was successfully used to differentiate mood variables from a group consisting of caregivers of people with schizophrenia (n=30, producing 399 days of data) and a group of unselected controls (n=62, producing 1080 days of data). The test appears to have validity, reliability, comparability, and utility.     

Toward a dependable measure of reflection-impulsivity: An application of generalizability theory

Generalizability theory was applied to the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF) to analyze the dependability of the MFF as a measure of reflection-impulsivity at four grade levels: second, third, fourth, and fifth. A completely crossed, two-facet random model design was used to provide a multidimensional framework for examining the dependability of the MFF. Components of variance and coefficients of generalizability were derived from this design for the MFF error and latency scores at each grade level. Results showed that the MFF latency score was a more dependable measure than the MFF error score. In addition, the number of testing occasions made a more significant contribution to the generalizability of the MFF than the number of items. Coefficients of generalizability based on extrapolated items and occasions were also computed, providing the basis for improving the dependability of the MFF in future research. Overall, results indicate that the traditional method of allowing multiple trials for each item contributes to the imprecision of the MFF error score. An alternative procedure for administering the MFF is recommended.Portions of this article were presented at the annual convention of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, Canada, March 1978. At various times during the conduct and completion of the present article, the first author was affiliated with the Los Angeles Unified School District and the University of California, Los Angeles.     

Negative problem orientation (Part I): psychometric properties of a new measure

Negative problem orientation, a set of dysfunctional attitudes toward social problem-solving, has increasingly become an important construct in our understanding of deficits in problem-solving ability in daily life. Until recently, no measure was specifically constructed to assess negative problem orientation directly, other than as a subscale in a more global measure of problem-solving ability. The goal of the present study was to translate the French version of the Negative Problem Orientation Questionnaire (NPOQ), and to examine its psychometric properties. The sample consisted of 201 university students who completed five questionnaires assessing psychological distress, pessimism, components of problem-solving ability, and the NPOQ. A unitary factor structure was revealed, accounting for 54.8% of the variance. The NPOQ had excellent internal consistency, good test-retest reliability at 5 weeks, and demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity when measured against self-reported pessimism, depression, anxiety, and problem-solving ability. The findings suggest that the NPOQ is a measure with sound psychometric properties that will be a valuable tool in future research on problem orientation.     

The California Verbal Learning Test: Psychometric characteristics and clinical application

The California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) is a popular clinical and research test that claims to measure key constructs in cogntive psychology such as repetition learning, serial position effects, semantic organization, intrusion, and proactive inteference. The psychometric characteristics of the CVLT are reviewed and related to the test's clinical utility. The utility of the CVLT is shown to be limited by its poor standardization and inlated norms. Further, the validity is limited because the CVLT uses multiple trials whereas the constructs it purports to the CVLT and guidelines for its clinical use. It concludes that if the limitations of the CVLT are recognized, it can still make a usefull contribution to the clinical assessment of verbal learning and memory.     

Validity of the miami structured interview-1 for assessing type a behavior,competitiveness, and aggression in children

The validity of the Miami Structured Interview-1 for measuring Type A behavior in children was examined in 122 boys 8 to 16 years old. We assessed the relationship between interview ratings and Type A and factor analytically derived Type A component scores from the Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH), a teacher rating scale. The validity of interview ratings was initially supported by significant correlations with MYTH Type A scores for preadolescents rated by English teachers and adolescents rated by English and mathematics teachers. Principal-components analyses of the MYTH items revealed components we labeled competitiveness-leadership and impatience-aggression. Interview ratings were related to the competitiveness-leadership component from English and mathematics teachers of both age groups but not the impatience-aggression component. The implications of these findings and the strengths and limitations of the Miami Structured Interview-1 for preadolscents and adolescents are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Psychological Association 91st Annual Meeting, Anaheim, California, 1983. This research was supported by National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Grant R01 HL23356, Cross-Cultural Determinants of Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors in Preadolescents and Adolescents. We gratefully acknowledge the confidence and support shown by Dr. George Christakis, Principal Investigator of Grant R01 HL23356.     

Psychometric Evaluation of an Alternate Scoring for the Remote Associates Test

The Remote Associates Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962; Mednick & Mednick, 1967) is a commonly employed test of creative convergent thinking. The RAT is scored with a dichotomous scoring, scoring correct answers as 1 and all other answers as 0. Based on recent research into the information processing underlying RAT performance, we argued that the dichotomous scoring may lead to a loss of potentially relevant information. Thus, we proposed an alternate scoring based on semantic similarity between the answer given by the participant and the correct solution using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA; Landauer & Dumais, 1997). We evaluate the psychometric properties of the alternate LSA scoring and found evidence of construct validity for the LSA scoring which was comparable to findings for the standard scoring, but not better as we would have expected. Thus, our expectations that LSA-based scoring of the RAT counteracts potential information loss were not met. However, LSA based scorings appear to be a promising alternative for hardly solvable RAT items. We conducted additional analyses comparing different RAT item types with regard to their validity as well as evaluating the information uniquely contained in the LSA scoring. Implications of all finding for existing research using RAT items are discussed.     

Performances on Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and Rey Complex Figure Test in a healthy, elderly Danish sample--reference data and validity issues

This study presents Danish data for Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT) from 100 subjects aged 60-87 years. Education and estimated verbal intelligence (DART score) had a significant impact on the RAVLT trial 1-5 score but not on other RAVLT measures. The RCFT copy score was significantly related to age and the DART score. On RCFT recall a highly significant difference was found between persons who could make a faultless copy and persons with incomplete copy performance. Thus, this study presents separate data for RCFT recall scores according to the subjects' copying performance (in separate tables for age and education groups). For all measures on both RAVLT and RCFT wide distributions of scores were found and the impact of this broad score range on the tests' discriminative validity is discussed. RAVLT performances for elderly were similar to previous published meta-norms, but the included sample of elderly Danes performed better on RCFT (copy and recall) than elderly from the United States.     

题目难度分布和样本容量对两种CTT等值结果的影响

基于经典测验理论(CTT)的等值方法主要有线性等值和等百分位等值两种。在不同情境下,不同的等值方法会产生不同的等值结果。本研究以真分数等值为依据,用蒙特卡洛模拟研究方法,综合比较了各种题目难度分布条件下和各种样本容量条件下两种CTT等值方法的等值结果。研究结果表明:(1)线性等值的误差受题目难度分布影响较大,等百分位等值的误差几乎不受题目难度分布影响。(2)线性等值的误差几乎不受样本容量的影响,等百分位等值的误差受样本容量影响较大。(3)不论题目难度分布如何,只要样本容量足够大,等百分位等值的效果都比线性等值更好。     

Psychopathy and the ability to read the “language of the eyes”: Divergence in the psychopathy construct

The capacity to interpret others people's behavior and mental states is a vital part of human social communication. This ability, also called mentalizing or Theory of Mind (ToM), may also serve as a protective factor against aggression and antisocial behavior. This study investigates the relationship between two measures of psychopathy (clinical assessment and self‐report) and the ability to identify mental states from photographs of the eye region. The participants in the study were 92 male inmates at Bergen prison, Norway. The results showed some discrepancy in connection to assessment methodology. For the self‐report (SRP‐III), we found an overall negative association between mental state discrimination and psychopathy, while for the clinical instrument (PCL‐R) the results were more mixed. For Factor 1 psychopathic traits (interpersonal and affective), we found positive associations with discrimination of neutral mental states, but not with the positive or negative mental states. Factor 2 traits (antisocial lifestyle) were found to be negatively associated with discrimination of mental states. The results from this study demonstrate a heterogeneity in the psychopathic construct where psychopathic traits related to an antisocial and impulsive lifestyle are associated with lower ability to recognize others' mental states, while interpersonal and affective psychopathic traits are associated with a somewhat enhanced ability to recognize others' emotional states.