Investigating the Big Five Personality Factors and Smoking: Implications for Assessment

Global personality dispositions may be important for understanding population-based individual differences in smoking outcomes, yet few studies have been executed using measures of these global dispositional constructs from the contemporary field of personality. This study explored whether the Big Five personality factors (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect) were concurrently associated with key smoking (e.g., nicotine dependence, smoking rate, age at first cigarette) and cessation (e.g., self-efficacy to quit, motivation to quit, number of prior quit attempts, length of most recent quit) variables in a sample of regular smokers (n = 130). Of the 35 correlations computed, only 2 were significant: Intellect was positively correlated with motivation to quit and number of 24-hr quit attempts in the last year. These results have implications for using trait variables to study individual differences in smokers.     

健康儿童与问题儿童父母教养方式结构的比较研究

本研究以生态系统理论为指导,分别运用差异模式、因素分析比较和结构模式比较三种方法,对健康组与问题组儿童的父母教养方式进行了比较分析。不但发现两组父母教养方式在诸多因子上存在显着差异,还发现两组父母的教养方式有着十分不同的结构模式特点。这对于深入认识父母教养方式影响儿童心理发展的可能机制具有重要的启迪意义。     

Psychoanalytic attitudes towards homosexuality: An empirical research

Homosexuality is a challenging subject for the psychoanalytic community, which is now rethinking some of its basic theoretical and institutional assumptions. In recent decades psychoanalytic theory has changed, and the classical psychosexual model has been challenged. After a short review of major psychoanalytical theories of homosexuality, the authors focus on the existence of contrasting attitudes towards homosexuality. This plurality of theories and their clinical and institutional consequences stimulated the authors to investigate the relationship between the individual analyst's theoretical model and his/her clinical practice. The authors present the results of empirical research conducted in the Italian psychoanalytic community on the attitude of psychoanalysts towards homosexuality and the implications for cultural, theoretical and institutional issues. A questionnaire was sent to 600 psychoanalysts (206 of which responded), members of the five main Italian psychoanalytic institutions. First, analysts' personal characteristics and preferred theoretical models were investigated. Second, the respondents responded to statements eliciting their theoretical and clinical approach towards homosexuality. Results indicate that: a) cultural and theoretical background influences the analysts' attitudes towards homosexuality more than gender; b) there is a discrepancy between analysts' theoretical position and their clinical practice; and c) IPA institutes are more discriminatory towards homosexual colleagues than are Jungian ones.     

At‐one‐ment,intuition and ‘suchness’1

Many senses exist for perceiving sensory experience; there are in turn others which make it possible to perceive emotional experience: intuition is one of these. The author, using W. R. Bion's work, studies intuition psychoanalytically, considering it to be a powerful ‘sense’ in clinical work. He describes the metapsychology of intuition, and proposes models that make it possible to think—from different perspectives— about how to make use of it in an analysis. To this end, he examines a series of useful processes and concepts: growth, tolerance, ‘suchness’, suffering and courage. The author defi nes the intuitive mechanism as a derivation of the renunciation of memory, desire and understanding; such a renunciation, learning from the experience of suffering the pain of facing the Truth in at‐one‐ment, makes it possible to tolerate the frustrations associated with observing the analysand ‘such‐as‐he‐is’. Finally, once immersed in the intelligence of intuition, the author considers ways in which intuition might be linked with concepts, with a view to interpreting the facts that must be transformed in the analysis.     

Use of the ABA fear renewal paradigm to assess the effects of extinction with co-present fear inhibitors or excitors: Implications for theories of extinction and for treating human fears and phobias

In four experiments using albino rats in an ABA fear renewal paradigm, we studied conditioned fear in the A test context following extinction in Context B. Conditioned suppression of operant responding was the index of fear. In Experiments 1-3, we found that extinguishing a feared cue in compound with a putative conditioned inhibitor of fear led to more fear in the test context than did a conventional extinction procedure. In Experiments 4a and 4b, we found that extinguishing three feared cues in compound required one third the time and generally led to less fear to the cues in the test context than did the extinction of each cue separately. Thus, fear in the test context seems to vary inversely with the values of co-present cues during extinction in Context B. Results imply that cue value is actually reduced by extinction procedures rather than merely being opposed by a growing inhibitory process. Implications for theories of renewal and for clinical practice are discussed.     

An EM algorithm for fitting two-level structural equation models

Maximum likelihood is an important approach to analysis of two-level structural equation models. Different algorithms for this purpose have been available in the literature. In this paper, we present a new formulation of two-level structural equation models and develop an EM algorithm for fitting this formulation. This new formulation covers a variety of two-level structural equation models. As a result, the proposed EM algorithm is widely applicable in practice. A practical example illustrates the performance of the EM algorithm and the maximum likelihood statistic.We are thankful to the reviewers for their constructive comments that have led to significant improvement on the first version of this paper. Special thanks are due to the reviewer who suggested a comparison with the LISREL program in the saturated means model, and provided its setup and output. This work was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grants DA01070, DA00017, and a UNH 2002 Summer Faculty Fellowship.     

Problems and Possibilities of Theological Models: Responding to David Klemm and William Klink

This essay is a response to the proposals of David Klemm and William Klink concerning the construction and testing of theological models. A number of issues are raised for critical attention. (1) The exclusive attention to Christian theology, with no discussion of other religions, poses some significant problems, not the least of which is that cognitive claims of religious thinking are not universal but rather are defined by the particularities of the religious context in which they are made. (2) Although the authors wish to transcend confessionalism, their focus on Christianity and on the concept of God as a basic assumption can be construed as a kind of confessionalism. (3) The argument that theological and scientific models stand in analogy to each other requires more critical examination, particularly with respect to the issues of explanation, prediction, falsification, nesting, and openness. (4) While the argument is persuasive when referred to certain theologians, such as Paul Tillich, it requires some adjustment if it is to apply to other theological systems, such as Process theology.     

概化理论研究及应用前景

1972年,Cronbach和他的同事们提出概化理论之后,概化理论在行为与心理测量领域得到了广泛的应用,较之经典测量理论,它的优势逐渐地显露：(1)测量的多种误差来源可以在同一个分析中分别估计;(2)可以指导决策者选择最优测量方案;(3)提供可靠性系数：概化系数(G系数)和依存性指标(φ系数)用于不同的决策任务;(4)排除了严格平行测验的假设。概化理论以它的精确性和可藏性受到了信度测量领域研究者们的青睐,本文旨在对概化理论的基本框架、产生、发展及应用前景进行详细论述。