Personality and relaxation therapy: changes among clinical and normal subjects

There are increasing numbers of self-referral stress-management programs, a few of which use group-relaxation techniques, but few data are available on the personalities of the symptomatic and asymptomatic clients who attend or on any changes in personality after the program. Scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory, Multiple Health Locus of Control, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory as well as demographic information were obtained from 255 adults who attended a 10-session, university-based, group-relaxation program. The symptomatic clients reported significantly less anxiety, less neuroticism, were more extraverted and ascribed less of their behavior to chance at a 1 month post-treatment follow-up than at intake. The small group of asymptomatic clients also reported less anxiety and neuroticism at the follow-up. There were no sex differences on the Eysenck inventory or the anxiety scales but there were for the Multiple Health internal and control scales. It was concluded that group relaxation appeared to improve mental health scores effectively for both stressed and nonstressed adults and that age was significantly related to some personality scores.     

Paradoxes of moral reparation: Deontic foci vs. circumstances

Conclusion The distinction between deontic focus and deontic circumstance is obvious and essential to the understanding of our reasonings about obligations, permissions, rights, and wrongs. Here we have dealt with the basics. These basics must be developed into a full deontic logic. Fortunately, such a comprehensive deontic logic that includes identity, quantification over individuals, and quantification over properties has already been proposed, and applied to the interpretation of legal texts. It should be an excellent basis for Feldman's intriguing and promising idea of world utilitarianism.     

Offering predictive testing for Huntington disease in a medical genetics clinic: Practical applications

Predictive testing for Huntington disease is presently offered in a select few medical genetics centers in the United States. This is in part due to the labor intensive counseling and psychological testing suggested by the research protocols. We discuss some specific suggestions for establishing programs for Huntington disease predictive testing within pre-existing medical genetics clinics to encourage more centers to offer presymptomatic testing. This will allow more at risk individuals the opportunity to consider predictive testing and cut down the expenses of traveling to the few predictive testing centers that currently exist. The counseling principals will remain similar to those discussed here, even following the identification of the Huntington disease mutation.     

The internal consistency and concurrent validity of a Spanish translation of the Child Behavior Checklist

The Child Behavior Checklist's applicability to a Hispanic sample was assessed by an examination of the instrument's internal consistency and concurrent validity. The CBCL and TRF were administered to a community sample representative of children of Puerto Rico aged 4 to 16. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the internal consistency of empirically derived scales. The relation of CBCL and TRF scores to clinical diagnosis, adaptive functioning, and need for services served as indicators of the concurrent validity of the instrument's Spanish version. The results indicate that the total behavior problem scores on the instruments are good continuous measures of maladjustment for children in Puerto Rico. A child with high values on the scales has a high probability of being classified as a case by a psychiatrist. High levels of internal consistency were found in most subscales. Only scales comprising low prevalence problems showed poor internal consistency.     

REFLECTIONS ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION GOALS IN PSYCHOLOGY ADMISSIONS

Four goals of affirmative action in higher education are described as they relate to psychology admissions. Broadly conceived, these goals are compensating for past injustice, correcting present inequity, promoting intellectual diversity, and enhancing the presence of role models. It is argued that the four goats differ in their underlying assumptions about the purposes of affirmative action and that these differences can result in disparate admission decisions. Data from three experiments on decision making in graduate psychology admissions are presented to illustrate the analysis. In these studies, academic psychologists rated the admissibility of hypothetical graduate student applicants who varied on a number of characteristics (e g., ethnicity, social class, interest in minority research) pertinent to affirmative action. A consistent pattern of ethnic group differences in admissibility ratings was documented, illustrating that compensation for past injustice can be interpreted as a salient affirmative action goal in graduate admissions decisions. Implications of the analysis for clarifying admissions decisions guided by affirmative action goals are discussed.     

Mental health service utilization among Puerto Rican children ages 4 through 16

This paper examines those children receiving mental health services in Puerto Rico, their demographic and psychosocial characteristics, and describes service providers and nature of facilities. The survey was done on a probability sample of children ages 4 through 16 across the island of Puerto Rico (N=777). Need for services was clinically defined as presence of a DSM-III diagnosis and functional impairment. The overall rate of service utilization for Puerto Rican children was 6% (26.2% of definite cases and 5.1% of probable cases). In most cases services were provided by psychologists and/or social workers, and they were mainly provided in schools and general medical facilities. In over 60% of the children assessed as cases, who did not receive services, the reason, given by the parent was that they considered the problem not serious. Factors associated with service utilization were measures of psychopathology, teacher's perceived need, and parental rates of criticism and hostility. These findings suggest that there is a need for more research on the motivating factors for service use (impairment and parental criticism). Teachers could benefit from receiving special training to help them readily recognize behavioral problems in children, communicate them to parents and set up services alternatives.     

A follow up study of a behavioral program for young people with learning disabilities and challenging behavior

This paper describes a pilot follow-up study of a behavioral program for 20 young people with learning disabilities and challenging behavior. Eighteen participants made good overall improvement during the treatment period, and this was partially maintained at follow-up. Eight had continued to improve, eight had deteriorated slightly and four had deteriorated markedly. Adaptive skills were generally maintained. The reemergence of challenging behaviors explained the difference between the Good and Poor Outcome groups. Those participants in the Good Outcome group were younger on admission, scored lower on adaptive skills and higher on challenging behaviors. In addition they had remained on the treatment programme for 12–18 months and had been discharged from the Unit for longer. The overall level of independent living had increased from preadmission and the majority of participants were living in less restrictive placements. These results confirm and extend the findings of previous research. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for more detailed longitudinal follow-up studies in this area.     

Birkhoff-like sheaf representation for varieties of lattice expansions

Given a variety we study the existence of a class such that S1 every A can be represented as a global subdirect product with factors in and S2 every non-trivial A is globally indecomposable. We show that the following varieties (and its subvarieties) have a class satisfying properties S1 and S2: p-algebras, distributive double p-algebras of a finite range, semisimple varieties of lattice expansions such that the simple members form a universal class (bounded distributive lattices, De Morgan algebras, etc) and arithmetical varieties in which the finitely subdirectly irreducible algebras form a universal class (f-rings, vector groups, Wajsberg algebras, discriminator varieties, Heyting algebras, etc). As an application we obtain results analogous to that of Nachbin saying that if every chain of prime filters of a bounded distributive lattice has at most length 1, then the lattice is Boolean.We wish to thank Lic. Alfredo Guerin and Dr. Daniel Penazzi for helping us with linguistics aspects. We are indebted to the referee for several helpful suggestions. We also wish to thank Professor Mick Adams for providing us with several reprints and useful e-mail information on the subject.Suported by CONICOR and SECyT (UNC).