Broadening student experience in mental hygiene and abnormal psychology.

"At Whittier college an attempt is made to relate closely the student's experience in the mental hygiene and abnormal psychology courses." "In mental hygiene, emphasis is placed upon the practical problems of community mental health, and an attempt is made to stimulate the student's interest… ." "In the abnormal psychology course… trips are arranged to an institution for the mentally defective, a hospital for the care of the physically handicapped, a school for delinquents, and a state mental hospital. Other procedures and possibilities for provoking student interest and enriching class experience are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific communication: The dissemination system in psychology and a theoretical framework for planning innovations.

"About 1000 persons make presentations at a single annual national convention of APA, and an equal number appear before meetings of regional associations affiliated with APA. There are close to 1000 journals of some interest to psychologists. About 20 of these journals may be considered central. 200-300 technical books relevant to psychological work are published each year." There appear to be "only about 2000 psychologists who are extremely active in scientific communication within psychology." 2 diagrams are provided, one indicating in detail the process of the dissemination of scientific information from work production to secondary publication and the other suggesting an innovation on the system for the dissemination of scientific information in psychology. Major sections are: Discussion of some findings. Dissemination as a dynamic process. Effects of innovation upon the dynamic process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internships for doctoral training in clinical psychology approved by the American Psychological Association.

A list is presented of agencies approved for doctoral internship training in clinical psychology by the Education and Training Board with the concurrence of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association on the recommendation of the Committee on Evaluation. 3 types of internships are indicated: G (relatively broad training and experience with a wide variety of patients), S (intensive and varied experience, but with relatively restricted clinical material), and U (has 2 subclasses—the captive agency limiting its resources to students from a single university, and a group of agencies offering an organized pattern of rotations coordinated with a university training program). 78 agencies are listed in 28 states and the District of Columbia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimental effects of ego-defense preference on interpersonal relations.

The hypothesis that a connection exists between the personality personality defenses of interacting individuals and their attitudes toward and perceptions of their interaction is explored by assessing the defense mechanisms of a group of Ss to psychosexual stimuli, the Blacky Pictures, and evaluating their interaction when pairs of Ss are engaged in a task which arouses a specific psychosexual disturbance. The results indicate that the interaction of two people who project the same psychosexual impulse is more negative than pairs of people who use other defenses. Dissimilar defenses do not seem to adversely affect the interaction; however, when both partners have high conflict, more negative interaction tends to result than when only one is disturbed. The relative hierarchies of defense mechanisms and psychosexual dimensions, with regard to their effect on interpersonal relations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Technique in Teaching Abnormal Psychology.

Recent issues of the American Psychologist have been devoting some space to techniques in teaching abnormal psychology. Mills (1955, 10, 74-78) suggested field trips to existing community facilities; Brown (1955, 10, 85-86) reported on a technique of having students analyze, without their knowing until afterwards, their own personality test protocols; and more recently Wertheimer (1955, 10, 826) wrote on a method of the students writing short papers on "abnormal" behavior from their own or their friends' experiences. Only the latter demonstration comes close to meeting one of the fundamental problems for the student of abnormal psychology: the meaning of the concepts of "normal" and "abnormal." This article presents a simple classroom demonstration that has been used successfully at Trinity College during the early part of the course to emphasize two fundamental ideas: (a) behavior which is different from that of the group is not necessarily abnormal behavior, and (b) our labels of normal and abnormal have more meaning for us if we are aware of the circumstances underlying the deviant behavior observed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Elementary Psychology for Eighth Graders: Four Years Later.

In September 1954, the author introduced a course in elementary psychology as an 8th grade elective in a junior high school in Buffalo, New York. This article reports a summary of results from responses to an information questionnaire distributed in May 1959 to seniors who took the original psychology class. Replies were split 50-50 as to whether or not students' interest in the subject had continued. When asked whether or not the course had wrought any changes in themselves, 19 (of 20) claimed that their attitudes and opinions had changed, 17 reported changes in personal relationships, and 10 affirmed their behavior patterns had changed. The unit remembered the most was the one on hypnotism, followed by the psychology of advertising, dreams, ESP, and personality development. It is noted that because of the numbers of students who elect this course, additional classes with larger class sizes have been opened. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The psychology of sport: the behavior, motivation, personality and performance of athletes, 2nd edition.

Reviews the book, The psychology of sport: the behavior, motivation, personality and performance of athletes, 2nd edition by Dorcas Susan Butt (1987). The book discusses: a motivational model; the nature of the athlete and his/her adaptation; athletes' personality; assisting the athlete; practices and issues in consultation; and social values and sport. In summary, theory and research on sport psychology is well integrated in this book. This is accompanied by an abundance of anecdotal data and case studies that make enjoyable reading. This book is an invaluable addition to a sport consultant's collection and would be well received by students if adopted as a course text in sport psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Smoking and rebelliousness: A longitudinal study from childhood to maturity.

The hypothesis that rebelliousness contributes to the etiology of cigarette smoking was tested with data from 2 longitudinal studies. Comparisons were made between smokers and nonsmokers (as determined at age 30) in the presmoking years from kindergarten through high school on several measures of rebelliousness. In every comparison for both sexes the smokers showed greater rebelliousness; the difference was statistically significant in most instances. This difference persisted into adulthood; smokers of both sexes scored significantly lower on the Socialization scale of the CPI. In discussing factors associated with the initiation and continuance of smoking, the evidence indicating rebelliousness as related also to alcoholism and drug usage suggests that it would be heuristic to regard smoking as 1 of the addictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality and thinking style in different creative domains.

The crucial aspect of creativity in both personality and thinking style may be the ability or tendency to change within personality traits, such as, for example, moving between extraversion and introversion, and within thinking styles, such as moving between heuristic and algorithmic thinking. Such mobility is characteristic of the “complex” personality. On personality and thinking style tests, complexity would be expected to manifest itself in greater variability of responses to items measuring the same overall trait. This issue was investigated with 158 visual art, 136 music, and 309 psychology students. Art students (visual art and music students) showed greater complexity in conscientiousness than psychology and music students, respectively. Visual art students further showed a greater overall complexity (mean complexities across personality and thinking style) than psychology students did. A more traditional analysis revealed that visual art students were more neurotic, more open to experience and more inclined to heuristic thinking than psychology students do, whereas music students were more extraverted and more agreeable than visual art students were, and more inclined to heuristic thinking than psychology students were. Thus, it was possible to distinguish visual art students from music and psychology students by their personality and thinking style. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Education and Training Board. Internships for doctoral training in clinical psychology approved by the American Psychological Association.

The list of 27 agencies "includes only independent agencies, that is, those agencies accepting interns from more than one university. Captive agencies, that is, those agencies in which practicum training is available only to students of a particular university, are not listed." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Undergraduates' perceptions of the prestige and personality characteristics of members of selected occupations in psychology.

120 students in an introductory psychology course rated 6 psychology specialties in terms of members' prestige and personality. All the specialties were perceived as having high status. However, clinicians and counselors were viewed more favorably than physiological, experimental, social, and developmental psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does a Clinical Psychology Education Moderate Relationships Between Personality or Emotional Adjustment and Performance As a Clinical Psychologist?

Does an education in clinical psychology affect relationships between personality or emotional adjustment and clinical knowledge or clinical practice ability? Two groups were assessed at the beginning of their professional development and 1 year later. The 1st group was studying clinical psychology, and the 2nd group was obtaining training under a workplace supervision model. At pretest, measures of defensiveness were correlated with practice ability, and participants who had emotional adjustment problems obtained lower practice ability scores. At posttest, neither pretest personality nor emotional adjustment was correlated with clinical performance. An interaction between education group and problem group suggests that a clinical education enhances the performance of students with emotional problems at the onset of their education. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training clinical students in personality theory.

In training graduate clinical psychology students at the University of North Dakota, "Using Hall and Lindzey's Theories of Personality as a basic text, the student studies each of the major theorists and is required to write a confidential personality evaluation of himself within the framework of the theory under consideration… . Aside from making the course more meaningful personally, students are found to become more introspective and to raise questions about their role in the clinical situation without ever having been exposed to such notions as counter-transference in any formal sense. The positive transfer to the course in projective techniques is also noteworthy." The student seems to approach clinical report writing in a more mature manner; he recognizes the advantages and inadequacies of a variety of personality theories. "To us it seems that a course in personality theory is one of the most fundamental in the training of clinical psychologists and can be enriched by relating the formulations of various theorists to the personal life of the student." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical and Applied Research Techniques.

The use of instruments by applied psychologists is universal though seldom recognized. In this section, an attempt has been made to cover several recent advances in the clinical and applied areas of psychology. Topics range from evaluations of biofeedback alpha devices, the use of computers in profile analysis, interviewing, personality assessment, and medical/clinical data processing and simulation to radio telemetry techniques of use to clinical and applied psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

CEDA: A research instrument for creative engineering design assessment.

Psychology and engineering faculty developed a new assessment tool to measure creativity in engineering design (Creative Engineering Design Assessment or CEDA). Fifty-eight engineering students (52 men and 6 women) and 59 psychology students (27 men and 32 women) completed the CEDA as well as other general creativity measures (creative personality, creativity temperament, and cognitive risk tolerance). Interrater reliability for the overall CEDA was high (r = .98). On average, men and women displayed similar levels of creative personality, cognitive risk tolerance, and engineering creativity (CEDA scores). However, the CEDA scores exhibited a cross-over interaction between academic class (engineering and psychology) and gender. Women displayed more creativity temperament. Intertest correlations indicate that the CEDA is different from the other general creativity measures. These results suggest that engineering design creativity may be a specialized skill that needs to be honed in engineering students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific Contribution Awards 1957.

"Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards of the APA were presented to Edward C. Tolman (in absentia), Carl I. Hovland, and Curt P. Richter (in absentia) during special ceremonies at the 1957 APA Annual Meeting. Each recipient was presented, in person or in absentia, with a formal citation of his outstanding scientific contribution to psychology and an honorarium of $1,000." The citation for Edward Chase Tolman read in part: "For the creative and sustained pursuit of a theoretical integration of the multifaceted data of psychology… for forcing theorizing out of the mechanical and peripheral into the center of psychology without the loss of objectivity and discipline; for… his purposive-cognitive theory of learning." The citation for Carl Iver Hovland read in part: "For his original and provocative contributions to the scientific study of persuasive communications and the modification of beliefs and attitudes." The citation for Curt Paul Richter read in part: "For his pioneering investigations of physiological mechanisms affecting behavior." A brief biography and a complete bibliography of his scientific publications is included for each award recipient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Colin Martindale (1943–2008).

When Colin Martindale passed away on November 16, 2008, psychology lost one of its greatest patrons. In the course of a career that spanned four decades, he worked tirelessly to promote the scientific study of aesthetics and creativity, in the process making important contributions not only to his primary focal areas but also to psycholinguistics, computerized content analysis, author attribution, psychoanalytic theory, statistical method, personality, abnormal psychology, interpersonal attraction, and oligonucleotide frequencies in DNA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological thrillers revisited: A tentative list of "master thrillers."

Suggests a supplemental reading list for graduate psychology students consisting of "master thrillers" embodying psychologically based character development. Selection criteria involved reader acceptance, simplicity of expression, brevity, reinforcement, and demand. An annotated bibliography of 31 titles was presented, and all students in the final 5-wk section of the course read and rated 1 book/wk. Since this part of the course dealt with abnormal psychology, all except 2 of the books were concerned with one or another aspect of this topic. The 9 books read most often and rated highest are listed and briefly described. Tentative conclusions are that such low-pressure readings are welcome to graduate students and may be useful in complementing the hard core of scientific material in a psychology course. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internships for doctoral training in clinical psychology approved by the American Psychological Association.

"On the recommendation of the Committee on Evaluation, the Educational Training Board with the concurrence of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association has approved for doctoral training in clinical psychology the internships offered by the agencies listed." Each internship facility is designated by a letter to indicate which of 3 types of internship it provides. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personality: Current Theory and Research.

Reviews the book, Personality: Current Theory and Research by Janet Beavin Bavelas (1978). Personality is not the easiest topic to teach well. Even the question of what content to include and emphasize is problematic. The majority of introductory texts adopt a stance whereby the study of personality largely becomes identified with the study of personality theories. A problem with the theory based approach to personality is that many such theories are of declining importance in contemporary psychology. In this text, Janet Bavelas adopts a theory oriented perspective. However, she is not content merely to describe and evaluate the various theories selected for inclusion. She places the theories within a historical context and attempts to show how critical and empirical appraisal led to the decline of one class of theory and the elevation of another class. The book possesses many positive features. Introductory students find personality theories interesting and the historical context adds to the interest. The coverage is broad and zeros in on many central issues that preoccupy the present generation of personologists. Whether or not to adopt the Bavelas book for an introductory personality course would depend on the orientation of the instructor. For those who teach a traditional course, which emphasizes balanced evaluation and/or comparative analysis of the major theories, other texts might serve better. But for instructors concerned primarily with developments on the level of metatheory, the text probably has no equal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)