Obituaries: John W. Atkinson (1923-2003).

Presents the obituary of John William Atkinson, who died on October 27, 2003, in Chelsea, Michigan, at the age of 79. From the 1950s Atkinson was a leader in establishing motivation as a distinct field of study. His belief that scientific progress came from conceptual breakthroughs fueled his formulation and reformulation of a theory of motivation. He also recognized the importance of measurement in science, maintaining a career-long interest in the refinement of measures of human motivation, especially by means of the content analysis of imaginative thought. His discipline-changing ideas were followed around the world. In recognition, he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association in 1979. Atkinson's life and further career accomplishments are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: David A. Grant (1916-1977).

David A. Grant, Clark L. Hull Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin, died on December 28, 1977, in Madison. He is remembered by family and friends, including a very large number of students whose first efforts in the world of experimental psychology were enhanced and guided by this good and demanding professor. David Grant, born May 17, 1916, was educated at the University of Iowa (BA, 1938), the University of Wisconsin (MA, 1939), and Stanford University (PhD, 1941). His interesting life in the department at the University of Wisconsin began in the basement of Bascom Hall in 1941 as an assistant professor sharing an office with Harry Harlow, another Stanford PhD of a few years earlier. Harlow's days were spent at the cheese-factory-turned-primate-laboratory, so Grant had the office to himself. He advanced through the ranks to full professor and research professor and chaired the department during 1950-1954 and 1971-1972. The department grew impressively during his professional life in it and moved into a building of its own. It is currently a large and respected department. David Grant was still a member of it when he died. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

John W. Money (1921-2006).

John Money died of complications from Parkinson's disease the day before his 85th birthday. Always obsessed with language, Dr. Money (as everyone called him) co-opted the linguistic term of gender to help him explain the human paradox of hermaphroditism, the topic of his 1952 doctoral dissertation at Harvard. He came to the United States, where he completed a residency at the Western State Psychiatric Institute of the University of Pittsburgh in 1948. He then went to Harvard. In 1951, Lawson Wilkins, the founder of pediatric endocrinology, brought him to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Hospital. There, he essentially founded the field of psychoendocrinology when he established the Psychohormonal Research Unit for the long-term psychological study of individuals with intersexuality and other conditions. Money spent his entire professional career as a researcher at Hopkins, with dual appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics. According to the John Money Collections at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, he had a total of 1,192 publications, including 402 scholarly articles, 140 reviews and editorials, 95 book chapters, and 48 books, which were translated into many languages. He was the recipient of more than 65 worldwide honors, awards, lectureships, or degrees. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Douglas W. Bray (1918-2006).

Presents an obituary for Douglas W. Bray, the inventor of the modern-day assessment center, a method used by thousands of organizations around the world to identify the best people for critical roles and to guide individuals in optimizing their talents. Bray's death in Englewood, New Jersey, on May 9, 2006, ended the extraordinary career of a pioneer in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology who optimized the interplay of research and application. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some relationships between the MMPI and a problem checklist.

Problem Checklist responses and MMPI T-scores were obtained for 335 male and 125 female student counselees. The most frequently checked problems dealt with educational and vocational difficulties, and males were nearly twice as variable as females in number of problems checked. "In general, there seems to be some logical correspondence between several of the Checklist problems and personality characteristics as assessed by the MMPI… [but]… Since the number of individuals in most of the high scale groups was so small… valid inference from the… results is impossible." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Driver behavior and scores on the MMPI.

Are auto accidents related to driver personality? Using a paper and pencil personality inventory (MMPI), the driver behavior and MMPI scores of 993 college students were compared. Some slight relationship was found. "Knowledge of the kind of personality organization and motivation of a driver may be useful for purposes of both licensing and training drivers." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: W. Horsley Gantt (1892-1980).

This item presents an obituary for W. Horsley Gantt (1892-1980). He first studied medicine at the University of North Carolina and received his medical degree in 1920 from the University of Virginia. John Dewey was especially influential in helping Horsley obtain a position at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore in 1929, where he immediately started the first Pavlovian laboratory in the US. physiology. In 1950, while still at Hopkins, he started a second Pavlovian laboratory at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Perry Point, Maryland; he continued as director there until 1974. Horsley continued as professor emeritus at Hopkins, where, until three weeks before his death, he lectured, attended conferences, and participated in symposia. He was also a professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical School, where he taught each spring semester. Simultaneously, he was research professor at the Performance Research Laboratory of the University of Louisville, collecting data until two months before he died. Horsley was widely honored for the research and theories he developed over the past 50 years, and he personally regarded his theories of schizokinesis and autokinesis as his most important contributions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Robert W. White (1904-2001).

Memorializes Robert W. White for his major contribution to the holistic personologic tradition in psychology. He also played a signal role in replacing the narrow drive-reduction conception of human motivation characteristic of both neobehaviorism and psychoanalysis with perspectives that include provision for intrinsic motivation with human agency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hans H. Strupp (1921-2006).

Presents an obituary for Hans Hermann Strupp, internationally acclaimed clinical psychologist and psychotherapy research pioneer, who died October 5, 2006, in Nashville, Tennessee, following a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. Hans Strupp elicited unusual respect across disciplines, including psychiatry and medicine, and across national boundaries in numerous countries. Hans was truly a person of great distinction; he brought honor to his friends, his discipline, his university, his nation, and his family. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Felix E. Goodson II (1922-2007).

Provides an obituary for Felix E. Goodson II, a psychologist who focused mainly on evolutionary psychology and who passed away on May 17, 2007. In his teaching and writing, Felix emphasized the historical and theoretical roots of psychology, as can be seen in the four chapters he wrote for Theories in Contemporary Psychology (2nd ed., 1976), co-authored with Melvin Marx. His book The Evolutionary Foundations of Psychology: A Unified Theory (1973) grew out of almost two decades of seminars and empirical studies with DePauw students and colleagues. However, his magnum opus, 30 years in the making, was The Evolution and Function of Cognition (2003), published when Felix was 81 years old, 18 years after his formal retirement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Set and content scores for personality scales and response styles in the MMPI.

Set and content scores from 3 MMPI scales, Edwards SD scale, the Manifest Anxiety scale (MA), and the Masculinity-Femininity (Mf) scale, were derived by an adaptation of the Helmstadter technique for obtaining separate (acquiescence) set and content scores from personality scales. In a factor analysis of scores for 150 male college Ss on 54 variables, the MA-Set and SD-Set variables defined a common factor, but only the Mf-Set variable loaded the 2nd, or acquiescence, factor. The inconsistency of these results indicated that the set formula was not consistently measuring, or reflecting, acquiescence, or any other construct, and furthermore suggested the need for caution in making acquiescence interpretations based on the Helmstadter procedure. Some speculations were advanced to account for the disparate results of the set variables, such as the degree of true-false and SD-SUD keying in the "parent" scales. A systematic variation of such scale keying in future research may indicate what the set procedure is measuring and have potential implications for the clarification of the nature of acquiescence in personality scales. (34 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

John W. Gardner (1912-2002).

Memorializes J. W. Gardner for his contributions to the field of psychology. Gardner believed in the power and responsibility of individual citizens to make a difference in their communities. He started as an experimental psychologist, teaching in colleges and became a leader across the philanthropic, governmental, and nonprofit sectors, creating public and private initiatives that have affected the lives of millions of Americans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Brain lesions and five MMPI items.

A 29-item scale was developed using 30 + 30 Ss and .05 level X2 values, for differentiating patients with CNS diseases from those without. Upon cross-validation, the scale differentiated too poorly for clinical use. The X2 values of 5 of the original 29 items towered above the others, and when these 5 were used with cross-validation groups, a cuttingpoint score of 4 on them differentiated above the .01 level of significance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic, method, and stylistic variance in the MMPI.

"Strategic variance arises in the assessment of an S's communality with respect to a normative group on a dimension defined by contrast with a criterion group. Method variance is due to the idiosyncratic nature of the total item pool in regard to the proportion of true and false keyings and the distribution of item popularity values. (Stylistic variance includes dispositions to agree (acquiescence) or disagree (cautiousness) with neutral statements, independently of item content." In these terms, relevant research with the MMPI is reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abram Amsel (1922-2006).

Presents an obituary for Abram Amsel who died on August 31, 2006, at 83 years of age. Abram Amsel's academic career spanned the second half of the 20th century, during which time he made seminal contributions to the theory and research of reward-schedule effects in mammals. In the first 20 years of his career, Amsel's behavioral research and theory of "frustrative nonreward" established aversive emotional consequences of nonreward as potent influences on behavior when certain reward schedules are in effect. During the next 30 years, he continued to pursue questions related to reward-schedule effects but this time from the perspectives of ontogeny and behavioral neuroscience. His work resulted in a much deeper understanding and a broader conceptualization of reward-schedule effects that he eventually came to characterize as "dispositional learning and memory." Amsel held several professional roles in his field. He was a member of the governing board of the Psychonomic Society (1973-1978) and the founding editor (1972-1976) of the Society's journal Animal Learning & Behavior (now Learning & Behavior). He also served as consulting editor for the Journal of Experimental Psychology (1964 -1969), editor of Psychonomic Science (1971-1972), and member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology (1982-1988). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response to Drs. Horvath and Fekken.

Responds to comments by P. Horvath (see record 2007-09683-001) and G. C. Fekken (see record 2007-09684-001) on the current authors' original article entitled The Research Base, Psychometric Properties and Clinical Uses of the MMPI-2 (see record 1992-25725-001). Horvath and Fekken have made a substantial contribution to the evolution of MMPI-based assessment by providing thoughtful evaluations of key issues in the revision. We appreciate both their endorsement of the improved aspects as well as the questions and critiques they skillfully raise. In the limited space allotted to us, we will try to respond to the major issues. Both Horvath and Fekken, while noting the ways in which MMPI-2 improves the original instrument, point out apparent deficiencies in the original instrument that were not eliminated. The current authors contend that regardless of its psychometric ugliness and somewhat archaic aspects, the MMPI has worked extremely well as a screening instrument for psychopathology. Second, Fekken raises an important concern about the validity of the MMPI-2. Two published studies are cited to debate this critique. Third, Fekken cites the work of Duckworth which reports apparent "differences" between the profiles of some participants who took both the original and revised MMPI. Unfortunately, Duckworth's report fails to address a fundamental prerequisite of experimental design: the test-retest variable. Fourth, Horvath, in his critique of the original MMPI, questions validity generalization. However, the cited research did not study the original MMPI instrument but rather an abbreviated derivation or approximation of the test, the Minimult, which utilizes only 81 of the original MMPI items. Fifth, both Horvath and Fekken note that there are additional aspects about the revision process, the psychometric properties, and the applicability of the MMPI-2 that were not addressed in our original article. These are significant issues that deserve a much more detailed response than we can render in this brief response. However, these issues have been and continue to be addressed in the research literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Screening for malingering in a criminal-forensic sample with the Personality Assessment Inventory.

In this study, the authors examined how overreporting of psychopathology indices on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; L. C. Morey, 1991) performed as screening measures for malingering in a sample of 166 defendants undergoing pretrial court-ordered evaluations in the federal criminal justice system. Using results from the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS; R. Rogers, R. M. Bagby, & S. E. Dickens, 1992) as the criterion measure of malingering, the authors found that the Negative Impression scale (NIM) was the most effective PAI screening measure (cut score ≥ 81T). NIM performed as well as an established comparison measure from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989; Infrequency [F] cut score ≥ 95T), supporting the use of either of these indices as reasonable screening measures to identify potential malingerers for subsequent evaluation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory scores and scores on certain scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

"The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was administered to two groups of… teachers at opposite extremes of the distribution of scores for the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory. Differences in mean scores of the two groups on the clerical scales of the MMPI, with and without the K correction and on 'subtle' and 'obvious' items scored separately, and differences in frequencies of different codings of profiles were analyzed." Several differences on MMPI scales between teachers scoring high on the MTAI and those scoring low on the MTAI seemed to be significant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ringing in the new: The MMPI-2.

In a timely paper entitled "The Research Base, Psychometric Properties and Clinical Uses of the MMPI-2," Butcher and Pope guide test users and researchers toward an understanding of the updated MMPI by summarizing its key features. A central reason for revising the MMPI, according to Butcher and Pope, was the need to edit specific items for ambiguity, complexity, and outmoded or sexist wording. At the same time, the MMPI revision committee committed itself to a "conservative" revision with the goal of keeping the basic scales relatively intact. The authors attribute the adoption of a conservative strategy to a desire to ensure the continued relevance of the vast MMPI research base. They could have argued further that the success of the original MMPI attests to the clinical usefulness and heuristic value of the basic scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Paul B. Baltes (1939-2006).

Paul B. Baltes died in Berlin, Germany, on November 7, 2006, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was probably the most influential developmental psychologist on the international scene at the time of his death. His broad scientific agenda was devoted to establishing and promoting the life-span orientation of human development-an area that he, more than any other scholar of modern times, shaped into its current form. The obvious part of Paul's scientific legacy resides in over 250 publications covering various aspects of developmental psychology. Their impact is attested to by his numerous awards and honors, including election to some of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)