A temperamental and development model for personality assessment: application to self-control in middle childhood

In personality theory and assessment, it is important to distinguish between dispositional and developmental constructs. This important but often neglected distinction is applied to general personality models, and, specifically, to psychological temperament dimensions and ego development. These conjoined domains are used as a framework to study impulsivity and self-control in a sample of middle-childhood boys. Impulsivity is conceptualized as a temperamental dimension and self-control as an ego-developmental dimension. A factor-analytic procedure was used to test the assumption of orthogonality between impulsivity and self-control. Results were consistent with the hypothesis and provide implications for the concept of ‘difficulty’ of temperament constellations and study of ego development in middle childhood.     

The I.T.P.A.: Ballast or bonanza for the school psychologist

The author discusses rationale, reliability, factorial validity, and educational usefulness of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. The I.T.P.A. is a serious attempt to identify specific sensory processing abilities. It is assumed that deficits can be remediated and that instruction can be matched to student's strengths and weaknesses. The I.T.P.A. is not a test of psycholinguistics since it does not yield information about the units of natural language. The subtests have good internal consistency and the composite score is reliable over time periods most applicable for instructional planning. Reliability of individual subtests are too low to guide remediation. Factor analytic studies indicate the I.T.P.A. is primarily a measure of verbal intelligence. Remediation directed toward strengths and weaknesses in sensory or perceptual processing has not been effective.     

A stochastic model for free recall

A statistical model for verbal learning is presented and tested against experimental data. The model describes a Markov process with a realizable absorbing state, allowing complete learning on some finite trial as well as imperfect retention prior to this trial.This work was carried out while the author was at Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Operated with support from the U. S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.     

Neural and behavioral effects of interference resolution in depression and rumination

Individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) often ruminate about their depression and their life situations, impairing their concentration and performance on daily tasks. We examined whether rumination might be due to a deficit in the ability to expel negative information from short-term memory (STM), and fMRI was used to examine the neural structures involved in this ability. MDD and healthy control (HC) participants were tested using a directed-forgetting procedure in a short-term item recognition task. As predicted, MDD participants had more difficulty than did HCs in expelling negative, but not positive, words from STM. Overall, the neural networks involved in directed forgetting were similar for both groups, but the MDDs exhibited more spatial variability in activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region critical for inhibiting irrelevant information), which may contribute to their relative inability to inhibit negative information.     

Flexible emotional responsiveness in trait resilience

Field studies and laboratory experiments have documented that a key component of resilience is emotional flexibility--the ability to respond flexibly to changing emotional circumstances. In the present study we tested the hypotheses that resilient people exhibit emotional flexibility: (a) in response to frequently changing emotional stimuli and (b) across multiple modalities of emotional responding. As participants viewed a series of emotional pictures, we assessed their self-reported affect, facial muscle activity, and startle reflexes. Higher trait resilience predicted more divergent affective and facial responses (corrugator and zygomatic) to positive versus negative pictures. Thus, compared with their low-resilient counterparts, resilient people appear to be able to more flexibly match their emotional responses to the frequently changing emotional stimuli. Moreover, whereas high-trait-resilient participants exhibited divergent startle responses to positive versus negative pictures regardless of the valence of the preceding trial, low-trait-resilient participants did not exhibit divergent startle responses when the preceding picture was negative. High-trait-resilient individuals, therefore, appear to be better able than are their low-resilient counterparts to either switch or maintain their emotional responses depending on whether the emotional context changes. The present findings broaden our understanding of the mechanisms underlying resilience by demonstrating that resilient people are able to flexibly change their affective and physiological responses to match the demands of frequently changing environmental circumstances.     

Reliability of the sentence completion test of ego development in a clinical population

Interrater and internal consistency reliability of Loevinger's sentence completion test of ego development is examined within a psychology clinic population consisting of relatively pure types of neurotic, psychotic, and character disordered groups. Reliability study of the instrument suggests it is generalizable across populations, thusly supporting the reasonableness of further research with the test in clinical contexts.     

Linkages between facial expressions of anger and transient myocardial ischemia in men with coronary artery disease

The authors examined whether facial expressions of emotion would predict changes in heart function. One hundred fifteen male patients with coronary artery disease underwent the Type A Structured Interview, during which time measures of transient myocardial ischemia (wall motion abnormality and left ventricular ejection fraction) were obtained. Facial behavior exhibited during the ischemia measurement period was videotaped and later coded by using the Facial Action Coding System (P. Ekman & W. V. Friesen, 1978). Those participants who exhibited ischemia showed significantly more anger expressions and nonenjoyment smiles than nonischemics. Cook-Medley Hostility scores did not vary with ischemic status. The findings have implications for understanding how anger and hostility differentially influence coronary heart disease risk.     

Parental reports of emotional and behavioural difficulties on the SDQ for school-age children with vertically acquired HIV infection living in London

This study uses a screening questionnaire (the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, SDQ) to indicate levels of parental or carer concern about behavioural or emotional difficulties in a representative group of school-age children with vertically acquired HIV attending London clinics. Fourteen per cent of the total 107 children screened were reported to have behavioural and emotional difficulties scoring in the "abnormal" range. Older children tended to have higher scores. Overall, levels of reported difficulties were found to be similar to those reported for other chronic childhood illnesses and slightly higher than in the general child population.