Object constancy in schizophrenia: the enhancement of symbolic objects and conceptual stability.

The hypothesis that symbolic value has a greater influence on size judgments made by schizophrenic patients than on those made by controls was confirmed. The hypothesis that paranoid schizophrenics show greater constriction in their judgments of the range of sizes was confirmed; however, the hypothesis that non-paranoid schizophrenics show greater fluidity in their range of judgments than do the controls was not confirmed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of maternal child-rearing attitudes by schizophrenic males, their normal male siblings, and normal males whose siblings are normal.

This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that a group of normal male siblings of schizophrenics (N-Sc) will agree with a group of male schizophrenic siblings (Sc-N) in their perception of their mothers' child-rearing attitudes and will perceive these attitudes as being more deviant (undesirable) than a group of normal males whose siblings are all normal (N-N). Perception was measured on a child-study questionnaire which Ss were instructed to answer as they thought their mothers would have when Ss were growing up. The results were that the normal siblings of schizophrenics perceive their mothers' attitudes as being more martyred and subtly dominating than do normal siblings of normals (p = .05). There were no other significant differences, although the trend was toward perception of maternal attitudes as least deviant by the N-N group, most deviant by the N-Sc group, and in-between by the Sc-N group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Political attitudes and judgments of other people.

"The hypothesis was set up that in judging other people, subjects tend to associate favorable personal characteristics with political attitudes of which they themselves approve." The data tend to support the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social desirability and individual conceptions of the desirable.

In a large proportion of the college students studied, there was a strong tendency for the person to believe that his own notions of desirable personal traits were "absolute," which should be recognized as desirable by others. Yet there were such wide, and predictable, differences among individuals' conceptions of the desirable that the term "social desirability" could have little common meaning; hence the attempt to control distortion of personality test responses by a forced-choice technique, which assumes common conceptions, would seem fruitless. A standard forced-choice measure of personality needs administered to college students did not correlate so well with self-reports of their own relevant behaviors as did a single stimulus form of the same instrument. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A factor-analytic study of schizophrenic thought processes.

A sample of 99 chronic, paranoid schizophrenic men was given a battery of tests consisting of the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT), Gorham's Proverbs Test (both clinical and multiple-choice versions), Moran's word-meaning tests, and Rapaport's modification of the Gelb-Goldstein-Weigl-Scheerer Object Sorting Test. A total of 42 variables, including age, education, and length of illness, were intercorrelated and factor analyzed to determine the nature of dimensions underlying the perceptual-cognitive functioning of schizophrenics. The 8 orthogonal factors obtained were defined as follows: verbal ability, integrated ideation, stimulus sensitivity, pathological verbalization, conceptual autism, concreteness in proverbs, inkblot residual, sexual concern. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's anxiety scales in relation to self, parental, and psychiatric ratings of anxiety.

The CMAS and the General Anxiety Scale for Children were administered to a group of pediatric and psychiatric outpatients and modified forms were given to the parents of the children. The psychiatric group was also given a clinical rating of anxiety and a check list rating of psychiatric symptoms. Significant positive interest correlations were found between the anxiety items, but not the lie items of the 2 scales. Moderate agreement was found between the children's self-ratings of anxiety and those done by their parents. Significant agreement was found between parents' ratings of their children's anxiety. The psychiatric group scored significantly higher on the CMAS than the pediatric group. The number of psychiatric symptoms was found to correlate positively with the anxiety scale scores. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-esteem, construal, and comparisons with the self, friends, and peers.

Extending the better than average effect, 3 studies examined self-, friend, and peer comparisons of personal attributes. Participants rated themselves as better off than friends, who they rated as superior to generalized peers. The exception was in direct comparisons, where the self and friends were not strongly differentiated on unambiguous negative attributes. Self-esteem and construal played moderating roles, with persons with high self-esteem (HSEs) exploiting both ambiguous positive and ambiguous negative traits to favor themselves. Persons lower in self-esteem exploited ambiguous positive traits in their favor but did not exploit ambiguous negative traits. Across self-esteem level, ratings of friends versus peers were exaggerated when attributes were ambiguous. HSEs seemed to take advantage of ambiguity more consistently to present favorable self-views; people with low self-esteem used ambiguity to favor their friends but were reluctant to minimize their own faults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rigidity of attitudes regarding personal habits and its ideological correlates.

"It was predicted that under present social conditions, urban American college students would show substantial individual consistency in the degree to which they manifest rigidity of attitudes regarding personal habits (hypothesis 1). Further, on the basis of previous research findings, it was predicted that rigidity of attitudes regarding personal habits would be significantly associated with acceptance of fascist or antidemocratic ideology (hypothesis 2)." The data are interpreted as supporting both hypotheses. 19 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Then and now: Recruitment, definition, diversity, and positive attributes of same-sex populations.

It is not my intent to critique individual contributions in this special issue but to assess scholarly progress since the last special issue devoted to sexual orientation in Developmental Psychology (Patterson, 1995). Because not all steps forward can be catalogued in this limited forum, I focus on several long-standing challenges faced by developmental scientists as they investigate same-sex sexuality: recruitment and definition of same-sex populations, developmental diversity of same-sex oriented individuals, and "clinical traps" created by early research on same-sex populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory-delineated subtypes of schizophrenia: Relationship to clinical, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological measures.

Memory performance was examined in patients with schizophrenia to determine whether subgroups conforming to cortical and subcortical dementias could be identified and, if so, whether subgroups differed on clinical, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological measures. A cluster analysis of California Verbal Learning Test performance classified patients into 3 subgroups. Two groups exhibited memory deficits consistent with the cortical-subcortical distinction, whereas 1 group was unimpaired. Cortical patients tended to be male, and they had earlier illness onset, reduced temporal lobe gray matter, and hypometabolism. Subcortical patients had ventricular enlargement and more negative symptoms. Unimpaired patients had fewer negative symptoms and dorsal medial prefrontal hypermetabolism. The authors conclude that categorizing patients on the basis of memory deficits may yield neurobiologically meaningful disease subtypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and ego strength as predictors of response in schizophrenic patients.

Hypotheses, derived from existing psychological formulations of schizophrenia, that degree of manifest anxiety and ego strength would be positively related to response to treatment were examined in a sample of 50 male and 50 female first admission schizophrenics. Scales (Baron, 1953a; Taylor, 1953) purported to assess these variables did not predict treatment outcome for the combined groups. However, in analyses broken down by sex both predictors were significantly related to outcome criteria, but in consistently opposite directions for men and women. The markedly different results for men and women are interpreted in terms of the sex-role appropriateness of the behavior sampled by the predictor measures. (27 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The formation of positive attitudes toward group members.

"Three-member groups of children played a game in which some members were rewarded and others were not. On a later sociometric test, outside of the game situation, rewarded Ss chose a significantly greater proportion of their fellow group members than did the nonrewarded Ss. These results were predicted from general principles. of S-R learning theory." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Origins of adolescents' ideal self: An intergenerational perspective.

The present longitudinal study traced the ideal self of 120 adolescents to the ideals that parents hold for themselves and for their children. Ideals were assessed using Q sorts for personality attributes and life goals. After permutation analysis was used to control for random similarity, moderate parent-child ideal-self similarity was evident. Three intermediate transmission steps accounted for this intergenerational similarity: (a) transfer of parents' ideal self to ideals for their children, (b) children's perception, and (c) acceptance of these parental ideals. The last 2 processes related to parenting practices, with parental warmth augmenting parent-child concordance and restrictiveness reducing it. Compared with boys' ideal self, that of girls was more similar to the ideals that parents hold for their children and for themselves. Analyses of patterns over time suggested a growth of ideal-self stability across adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some personal and social attitudes of habitual traffic violators.

"The results indicate that the negligent operators do not constitute a homogeneous group with respect to either the personal variables or the attitudes expressed toward the law, the police, or themselves… [they] therefore, fail to support the common belief that drivers who have unfavorable attitudes toward self or society become serious traffic violators and that such violators have developed unfavorable attitudes toward traffic laws, enforcement agencies, or themselves as a result of frequent apprehension for traffic violations… . In conclusion, it appears that the drivers used in this study are not different from other drivers in the characteristics considered, except in the frequency of traffic violations on their records." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of stress on expressed attitudes toward self and others.

"There were two main phases of this study: (a) prestress administration of tests of acceptance of self and others, and (b) the stress phase during which tests of acceptance of self and others were readministered… . It was predicted that following introduction of stress, Ss would: (a) express liking for more pictures of people, (b) rate others more favorably, and (c) make significant changes in their self-ratings… . All three hypotheses were supported by the data… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship of age and privilege status to reaction time indices of schizophrenic motivation.

An experiment designed to investigate the relationship of age and ground privilege status to reaction time indices of biological, social and anxiety motivation in schizophrenic patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Wellness Promotion in Persons With Disabilities: Physicians' Personal Behaviors, Attitudes, and Practices.

Objective: To examine physicians' attitudes, personal wellness behaviors, and wellness promotion practices with their patients who were living with a disability. Design and Participants: A 20-item survey was mailed to 1,200 physicians from a national stratified random sample. Responses were received from 417 physicians (34.8% response rate). Results: Physicians who reported engaging in high levels of wellness promotion with their patients with disabilities rated wellness promotion as more important and reported feeling more competent and responsible. Several barriers and incentives to wellness promotion were reported. Conclusions: Physicians' attitudes and perceived competencies may influence their wellness promotion activities with their patients with disabilities. Medical training modules and other methods may increase physicians' wellness promotion activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group beliefs, ability, and performance: The potency of group potency.

Although it is clear that group members' attitudes, beliefs, and abilities are factors that contribute to group success, the interplay among these factors has received little attention. This study examined the impact of group potency, group goal commitment, and group ability on group performance. One hundred forty-three Officer Cadets, working in 51 groups, participated in this study. Consistent with our hypothesis, group potency contributed to the prediction of group performance over and above group ability. In contrast, group goal commitment did not have a strong relation with group performance. On the basis of these results, it seems that "thinking we can" is an important factor in its own right, regardless of the group's ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)