Relationships between the Beck Depression Inventory and the Hamilton Psychiatric Rating Scale for Depression in depressed outpatients

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Hamilton Psychiatric Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) were used with 300 outpatients diagnosed with DSM-III major depression disorders. A principal-components analysis was performed on the intercorrelations among the 21 BDI and 24 HRSD symptoms. Three orthogonal components were found and interpreted as reflecting differences in self-report and clinical rating methods for measuring the severity of depression. The importance of using both self-reports and clinical ratings for evaluating depression in psychiatric outpatients was discussed.     

The topics in medieval logic

The topics is a theory of argumentation based upon topoi or in Latin loci. The medieval logicians used works by Aristotle and Boethius as their sources for this doctrine, but they developed it in a rather original way. The topics became a higher-level analysis of arguments which are non-valid from a purely formal point of view, but where it is none the less legitimate to infer the conclusion from the premiss(es). In this connection the topics give rise to a number of discussions about the form and the matter of arguments. Further the topic contribute to the elaboration of the important doctrine of the second intentions, i.e. higher-level concepts of the particular things. In some respects the topics may be said to form a link between formal and informal logic. The topics vanished as a part of logic at the end of the Middle Ages, perhaps because the medieval logicians never got rid of Boethius' claim to have compiled a complete list of the loci, which was an unlucky one. The topics does not have an exact parallel in modern formal logic, but some reflections on non-formal argumentation by recent authors contain certain resemblances to it.     

Correspondence in children's self-report: Tacting and manding aspects

Four boys and 4 girls (3 to 5 years old) played with as many as three toys chosen from a set of six, and were then asked whether they played with each of the toys. After a baseline in which all children showed high levels of correspondence between reported and actual behavior, reports of play were differentially reinforced, first in an individual and then in a social context. Two children in the individual condition began to report play with all six toys, even though no more than three toys had been played with. When reports of play were reinforced in a group context, 5 children reported play with all six toys. When correspondence was subsequently reinforced, virtually complete correspondence returned and was maintained in a third noncontingent reinforcement condition. Correspondence and lack of correspondence were discussed in terms of self-tacting and distorted tacting or manding.     

An improved solution for factals: A nonmetric common factor analysis

In FACTALS an alternating least squares algorithm is utilized. Mooijaart (1984) has shown that this algorithm is based upon an erroneous assumption. This paper gives a proper solution for the loss function used in FACTALS.     

Assessing compliance to home relaxation: A simple technology for a critical problem

A simple, low-cost, and reliable technology for assessing compliance with relaxation practice in the natural environment is presented. Brief, audible cue tones are overdubbed onto selected client relaxation tapes, which are ordered by the therapist and then played in sequence by the client. The presence/absence or number of cue tones on each tape in the sequence is self-monitored, thereby providing the therapist with a record for objectively assessing whether or not the tapes were used as instructed. A clinical case example is presented to illustrate use of the procedure. Finally, advantages and limitations of the procedure are discussed.A portion of this paper (clinical case study) was presented at the meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, November 1980, New York. This research was partly supported by the Medical Research Service of the Veterans Administration. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Leonard H. Epstein for his support and stimulation in the early development of this and related projects.     

Reliability issues in the penile assessment of incarcerants

Although there has been increased reliance upon the direct physiological measurement of penile tumescence in the assessment of sexual deviations, the reliability of these measures has never been empirically validated. This investigation evaluates the reliability of the rape index as a technique in differentiating rapists from nonrapists. Eighteen individuals incarcerated on non-sexual-related offenses were presented visual and audio stimuli depicting mutually consenting intercourse, rape, and aggression. These stimuli were presented under two instructional sets: (1) enchance arousal and (2) suppress arousal. Reliability indices for the rape index were computed among various conditions of modality presentation, instructional set, and test-retest conditions. The overall reliability of the rape index was found to be low. The implications of these results upon the assessment and classification of offenders is discussed.     

Emotional stimulation, defensive orientation, and hemispheric activation

Lateral eye movements (LEM) were measured for 32 right-handed subjects while responding to questions rated for verbal and visual-spatial cognitive content and for varying levels of emotionally stimulating content. The results indicated that eye movements were distributed to the right and left in response to verbal and spatial items, respectively, and that emotional content enhanced leftward responding. In addition, the defensive style of subjects, as measured by a defense mechanism inventory, interacted with the cognitive and affective dimensions of questions and was a determinant of LEM.     

Evaluation of self-contained training procedures for the Time-Sample Behavioral Checklist

The comparative effectiveness of two time-limited modes of training observers to code the behavior of clients in residential treatment programs on the Time-Sample Behavioral Checklist (TSBC) was evaluated. The susceptibility of training procedures to consensual observer drift and the predictability of TSBC mastery from trainee characteristics were also examined. Two equated groups of undergraduate students (N=15 each) participated in full-time training on the TSBC and another instrument for 27 days, followed by criterion testingin vivo and on videotapes. One group was trained by experienced personnel using procedures known to be effective but potentially subject to consensual observer drift. The other group was trained using a previously untested set of written and videotape procedures that do not rely on experienced personnel. Comparative effectiveness and observer drift were evaluated by multivariate and univariate ANOVAs on mastery scores reflecting both pattern agreement and level differences between each trainee and criterion codings. The new, more efficient training procedures were found to be as effective as the original training procedures in the degree of mastery achieved by trainees. Original training procedures were found to be resistant to consensual observer drift, with such a phenomenon appearing in only 1 instance of 156 opportunities. The high degree of mastery achieved by trainees during the time-limited training period was comparable to that previously achieved with the original training procedures. No meaningful predictions of coding mastery were found, with only one trainee characteristic being significantly related to one of six mastery criteria. The results document procedures that are both efficient and resistant to invalidity for training observers in the use of multidimensional observational systems, as well as providing guidelines for the development of standardized procedures.This article is based on a thesis submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in psychology by the first author and under direction of the second author. The third and fourth authors also participated as supervisors. Appreciation is extended to other members of the thesis committee, Fred Kanfer, Ross Parke, and Julian Rappaport, and to John Gottman and W. Robert Nay for their comments and recommendations. This study was partially supported by Public Health Service Grants MH-25464 and MH-14257 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by grants from the Joyce Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.     

The comparative effectiveness of two modes of observer training on the Staff-Resident Interaction Chronograph

The comparative effectiveness of two time-limited modes of training observers to code activity on the Staff-Resident Interaction Chronograph (SRIC) in residential treatment programs for mentally disabled adults was evaluated. The susceptibility of training procedures for consensual observer drift was also examined, as was the predictability of SRIC mastery from trainee characteristics. Two equated groups of undergraduate student trainees (N=15 each) participated in full-time training for 27 days, followed by two weeks of criterion testing in vivo and on videotapes. One group received training by experience personnel using procedures known to be effective (original method). The other group received training via a previously untested set of written and videotaped procedures that do not rely on experienced personnel (package method). Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance found both methods to be equally effective in the degree of mastery achieved by trainees, without evidence of observer drift. No meaningful predictions of coding mastery were found, but conceptual mastery was predictable from individual characteristics. Differences were obtained for both groups between in vivo versus videotaped criterion tests. The results document procedures that are both efficient and resistant to invalidity for complex observational methodology as well as feasible for standardizing assessment of staff functioning across residential settings.This article is based on a thesis submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in psychology by the first author under direction of the second author. The third and fourth authors also participated as supervisors. Appreciation is extended to other members of the thesis committee, Fred Kanfer, W. Robert Nay, Julian Rappaport, and James Wardrop, for their comments and recommendations. This study was partially supported by Public Health Service Grants MH-25464 and MH-14257 from the National Institute of Mental Health, and by grants from The Joyce Foundation and the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.     

Observational assessment of behavioral changes accompanying clinical improvement in hospitalized psychiatric patients

Naturalistic observational techniques were employed over a four-week period to assess the behavior of clinically improved (n=7) and unimproved (n=12) hospitalized patients suffering from acute psychiatric disorders. The population was selected from four clinical diagnostic groups. Patients were sampled on an individual basis. Categories of recorded behaviors included social behavior as well as spatial proximity measures between individuals. Social behavior was further divided into components of sending and receiving. Results showed that patients who clinically improved had significantly different behavioral profiles and greater degrees of behavioral change for the following categories: send affiliation, receive affiliation, send assertion, and receive assertion. Improved patients also maintained closer distance to other individuals during the latter stages of hospitalization. In most cases, week 2 of hospitalization marked the point at which behavioral divergence between improved and unimproved patients occurred. Clinical and theoretical implications of observational procedures are discussed.