Relation of Age of Onset to the Type and Severity of Child and Adolescent Conduct Problems

In a cross-sectional household sample of 9-through 17-year-old youths from 4 U.S. communities, youths with earlier ages of onset of conduct problems engaged in more conduct problems than youths with later ages of onset when current age and gender were controlled. Specifically, youths with earlier ages of onset were more likely to engage in several types of physical aggression, frequent lying, theft, and vandalism and were less likely to engage in only truancy. There also was an inverse relation between age of onset and level of functional impairment, mental health service use, and meeting diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Within the limits of cross-sectional data, these results support the hypothesis that key aspects of the heterogeneity of conduct problems among youths are related to the age of onset of conduct problems.     

Exploratory Eye Movements to Pictures in Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

We investigated exploratory eye movements to thematic pictures in schizophrenic, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and normal children. For each picture, children were asked three questions varying in amount of structure. We tested if schizophrenic children would stare or scan extensively and if their scan patterns were differentially affected by the question. Time spent viewing relevant and irrelevant regions, fixation duration (an estimate of processing rate), and distance between fixations (an estimate of breadth of attention) were measured. ADHD children showed a trend toward shorter fixations than normals on the question requiring the most detailed analysis. Schizophrenic children looked at fewer relevant, but not more irrelevant, regions than normals. They showed a tendency to stare more when asked to decide what was happening but not when asked to attend to specific regions. Thus, lower levels of visual attention (e.g., basic control of eye movements) were intact in schizophrenic children. In contrast, they had difficulty with top-down control of selective attention in the service of self-guided behavior.     

The multiple self: working with dissociation and trauma

This paper describes a patient who appears to have a chronic dissociative personality disorder. Renewed clinical interest in dissociative disorders had arisen in North America in the 1980s, in part due to the influence of the Women's Movement which had highlighted the incidence of child sexual abuse. The early psychological observations of Janet, Freud and Jung on hysterical patients who displayed dissociative phenomena were similar to those displayed by the patient. consideration is given to theoretical understanding of the condition, taking into account the views of the earlier theorists and object-relations theory. The possibility of trauma, in particular childhood sexual abuse, as a causative factor in dissociative disorders is discussed.     

An Alternative to an Assessment Centre on Six Pieces of Paper?

The application form currently used in police officer recruitment neither measures competencies necessary ‘on the job’, nor screens out inappropriate applicants. To improve this situation, a competency-based application form was developed and trialled in three police forces. Results were compared with those obtained via the assessment centre acting as the first competency screening stage of the current selection process. A high level of correspondence was found between the two sets of results raising a query as to whether the application form could be a valid replacement for the assessment centre. A future validation study, in which the performance of recruited police officers is compared with application form results, will better answer this question. In the meantime, it is proposed that the competency-based application form questions are incorporated into the current form to reduce the number of inappropriate applicants reaching expensive, labour-intensive stages of the selection process.     

An Evaluation of the Validity and Fairness of the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) Used for MBA Selection in a UK Business School

The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) has been shown to be a valid predictor of Masters of Business Administration (MBA) performance in the USA, but no UK validity studies have been published. This study uses a large sample of UK MBA students to examine the validity and fairness of GMAT. It is found that GMAT-Verbal is a good predictor of MBA examination performance but GMAT-Quantitative is not. It is also found that both components are unfair to native English speakers. The reasons for these findings are to be found in the nature of the criterion employed. Some observations are made regarding the consequences for best practice of the competitive and political context of MBA selection.     

A Different Look at Assessment Centers: Views of Assessment Center Users

This study aims to shed light on possible problems of assessment center users and designers when developing and implementing assessment centers. Semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of assessment center users in Flanders revealed that, besides a large variability in assessment center practice, practitioners experience problems with dimension selection and definition, exercise design, line/staff managers as assessors, distinguishing between observation and evaluation, and with the content of assessor training programs. Solutions for these problems are suggested.     

My Grandmother's Personality: A Posthumous Evaluation

The author's grandmother's personality is investigated posthumously through the use of a significant-other form of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory (CATI) designed for the assessment of personality disorders. The CATI was given to the three surviving children (ages 80, 78, and 76). The oldest child had the highest mean correlation across 13 personality disorders with both of her sisters (r = .67) and the youngest child had the lowest (r = .47). The three highest mean T scores across all three raters were Sadistic (71), Self-defeating (68), and Borderline (67). The parameters of accuracy for significant-other ratings are discussed.     

近现代中国文化名人人格的初步研究

对近现代１５０位中国文化名人的人格,运用问卷调查、人格评定以及个案分析等方法进行了研究,结果表明：近现代中国文化名人的名声等级的排列顺序、他们的整体人格概况及其影响因素、鲁迅等人的个案分析。     

中文人格特质词的基本维度研究:大学生自我评定的因素分析

根据王登峰等人收集的中文人格词表,本研究用定距抽取的方式构造了一个包含２４４个人格特质词的自我评定检核表。６０１名中国大学生参加了自我评定。因素分析结果表明,七因素模式能较好地体现中文人格特质词的基本维度。中国大学生自我描述维度由七个因素钩：（１）负价一：虚伪浮夸,（２）正价：严谨负责,（３）负价二：浅薄无能,（４）内向负情绪：多悉善感。（５）外同正情绪：热情可爱,（６）外向负情绪：暴躁易怒,（７