Theoretical and statistical derivation of a screener for the behavioral assessment of executive functions in children.

The problem of valid measurement of psychological constructs remains an impediment to scientific progress, and the measurement of executive functions is not an exception. This study examined the statistical and theoretical derivation of a behavioral screener for the estimation of executive functions in children from the well-established Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC). The original national standardization sample of the BASC–Teacher Rating Scales for children ages 6 through 11 was used (N = 2,165). Moderate-to-high internal consistency was obtained within each factor (.80–.89). A panel of experts was used for content validity examination. A confirmatory factor analysis model with 25 items loading on 4 latent factors (behavioral control, emotional control, attentional control, and problem solving) was developed, and its statistical properties were examined. The multidimensional model demonstrated adequate fit, and it was deemed invariant after configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance tests across sex and age. Given its strong psychometric properties, with further tests of item validity, this instrument promises future clinical and research utility for the screening of executive functions in school-age children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diagnostic test usage by forensic psychologists in emotional injury cases.

Psychologists are becoming increasingly involved in forensic assessments of emotional injuries. To determine which psychodiagnostic instruments are in use in emotional injury assessments and to see if practitioners use instruments for reasons consistent with the admissibility of expert testimony under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993), current psychodiagnostic instrument use in emotional injury cases was examined among 80 concurrent members of American Psychological Association Division 12 and Division 41. Findings indicate that test selection and reasons for test selection are highly variable. It is suggested that experts need to select tests more carefully and, specifically, with Daubert criteria in mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beginning and maintaining an independent practice: A Delphi poll.

A panel of experts participated in a Delphi poll in which they examined the best strategies for developing and maintaining an independent practice in professional psychology. The panel also addressed tips for graduate students considering independent practice as a career path. Results suggest that commitments to excellence, to the client, to the community, and to one's personal and professional development are the key ingredients to success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring psychotherapy process with the Adolescent Psychotherapy Q-set (APQ): Development and applications for training.

This study presents the initial findings from the development of an adolescent version of the Child Psychotherapy Q-set (CPQ, Schneider, 2003). The CPQ is a psychotherapy process measure that utilizes Q-methodology to define psychotherapy process in an empirical form suitable for quantitative analysis. This new instrument, the Adolescent Psychotherapy Process Q-set (APQ), was developed to be pantheoretical in assessing the process of psychotherapy with adolescents. Panels of "expert" psychodynamic (PD) and cognitive-behavioral (CB) theoreticians and practitioners (N = 22) rated the 100 APQ items, and these ratings were factor analyzed to develop general prototypes of ideally conducted therapy for each respective orientation. Agreement between and amongst the experts was examined; in order to determine the reliability of, and shared variance between, each prototype. Coefficient alpha reliabilities were high for both PD (.93) and CB (.94) orientations. A significant correlation between the factor scores of each prototype (r = .31; p ≤ .01) was found. In a second study, a case example is provided to demonstrate the applications of the APQ and the prototypes in psychotherapy training and supervision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training family therapists within an academic setting.

Identifies and discusses the advantages and limitations of training psychologists as family therapists within the traditional academic program. Advantages include introducing systems theory early in student training, integrating systems theory with other therapy models, providing a broad sampling of family theorists, evaluating the empirical basis of family interventions, and doing training with a homogeneous group. Limitations include limited time and human resources, difficulty in balancing didactic and practicum aspects, conflicting academic instruction and supervision, minimal emphasis on the personal issues of trainees, and evaluation and performance pressures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What tests are acceptable for use in forensic evaluations? A survey of experts.

When conducting a forensic evaluation, what psychological tests do experts consider acceptable to use? The answer is useful to psychologists making practice decisions but also to the courts, who rely on others' opinions to base one of the criteria for determining the admissibility of testimony. The author surveyed diplomates in forensic psychology (N=64) regarding both the frequency with which they use and their opinions about the acceptability of a variety of psychological tests in 6 areas of forensic practice. The 6 areas were mental state at the offense, risk for violence, risk for sexual violence, competency to stand trial, competency to waive Miranda rights, and malingering. Results are presented for each practice area, and the implications of these results for the courts, future research, and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement of commitment to role identities.

Commitment to social identities has been postulated as a central organizing feature of the self-system, yet the only widely used instrument for assessing identities is the Twenty Statements Test. R. C. Wylie (1974) has criticized the use of the test as a measure of self because of its failure to provide reliable and valid results. An alternative method of assessing commitments and tests of its validity are described in the present paper. Study 1 (309 undergraduates) demonstrated that a 23-item index can be used to assess commitment to a number of diverse identities. Commitment scores based on the index correspond to the placement of identities in a hierarchy of importance based on subjective rank orderings. In Study 2 (288 Ss), a multitrait–multimethod matrix was created to establish the convergent and discriminant validity of the 23-item index for the identities of peer, religious participant, romantic partner, and family member. Correlations between commitment to each of these 4 identities and related attitude measures are reported. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fuzzy Preference Relations Consensus Approach to Reduce Conflicts on Shared Responsibilities in the Owner Managing Contractor Delivery System

This paper proposes a fuzzy preference relations consensus (FPRC) approach that helps owners and contractors reach consensus on their responsibilities and reduce conflicts in shared tasks. A fuzzy similarity consensus (FSC) model was developed to aggregate experts’ opinions on roles and responsibilities in the owner managing contractor (OMC) project delivery system. The FSC model categorized 324 generic OMC tasks into three responsibility task lists: owner, contractor, and shared. In a consensus-reaching process, the FPRC approach is applied to shared tasks, where expert opinions on responsibility conflict are expressed, to achieve an aggregated responsibility decision for each task. Experts compare the three responsibility alternatives in pairs by using linguistic preferences, defined on a fuzzy preference scale, to select a preferred responsibility alternative for each of the conflicting tasks. A computed linguistic consensus degree guides the experts on their level of consensus in every round of the process. The quality of experts is defined with a fuzzy expert system–determined importance weight factor for each expert. The FPRC approach is relevant to the construction industry, as it incorporates consistency in decision making by allowing experts to measure and reach an adequate level of consensus linguistically when deciding on responsibilities. The proposed approach provides a method of reducing conflicts in the assignment of task responsibility between the owner and its contractors as early as the project initiation phase; thus, the project teams can concentrate on the work to be done rather than deal with responsibility conflicts during project execution.     

The timing of psychosocial changes in women's lives: The years 25 to 45.

60 30–45 yr old women participated in a retrospective interview concerning psychosocial changes in their adult lives. Ss' responses provided self-report data concerning specific psychosocial changes, and 3 judges who read the interview protocols provided independent ratings of major psychosocial transitions. The distributions of self-reported changes and rated transitions across both age and family cycle phases were examined statistically. Rated transitions were reliably related to age but not to family cycle phase. Specifically, 78% of the Ss manifested a major transition commencing between ages 27 and 30 yrs. That transition was characterized initially by personal disruption, followed by reassessment, and finally by increased psychological well-being. Both age and family cycle phase were reliably related to self-reported changes such as geographic moves, career commitments, and childrearing responsibilities. Implications for conceptions of adult developmental changes are discussed. (64 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Magnetic field changes in the human brain due to swallowing or speaking

Urologists enjoying the protection of the law owe a duty to participate in the legal system as expert witnesses. Forensic education has been neglected by clinical educators. Qualification of experts includes forensic as well as clinical competence. The forensic urologist must know legal concepts and language; the powers, duties, and role of courtroom experts. The expert witness' role is to factually enlighten the judges, not to persuade them. Practical measures to remedy the current state of affairs are described from over a decade of experience. These practical measures should be supplemented by the formal development of a subspecialty of Forensic Urology sponsored by our colleges and professional societies.     

Rater (dis)agreement on risk assessment measures in sexually violent predator proceedings: Evidence of adversarial allegiance in forensic evaluation?

Actuarial risk assessment measures are often admitted in court, partly because strong psychometric properties such as interrater agreement suggest that they increase reliability and reduce subjectivity in forensic evaluation. But how strong is rater agreement when raters are retained by opposing sides in adversarial legal proceedings? The authors review sexual offender civil commitment cases in which opposing evaluators reported scores on the STATIC-99, the Minnesota Sex Offender Sex Offender Screening Tool—Revised (MnSOST–R), or the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL–R) for the same individual. Differences between scores from opposing evaluators were often greater than expected based on rater agreement values reported in the instrument manuals and research literature. Score differences were often in a direction that supported the party who retained each evaluator. Rater agreement was stronger for the STATIC-99, intraclass correlation coefficient ([ICC]A,1) = .64; than for the MnSOST–R, ICC(A,1) = .48; and the PCL–R, ICC(A,1) = .42. STATIC-99 scores appeared less influenced by adversarial allegiance. Overall, however, results raise concern that an evaluator's adversarial allegiance could influence some assessment instrument scores in forensic evaluation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociating interference-control processes between memory and response.

The ability to mitigate interference is of central importance to cognition. Previous research has provided conflicting accounts about whether operations that resolve interference are singular in character or form a family of functions. Here, the authors examined the relationship between interference-resolution processes acting on working memory representations versus responses. The authors combined multiple forms of interference into a single paradigm by merging a directed-forgetting task, which induces proactive interference, with a stop-signal task, which taps response inhibition processes. The results demonstrated that proactive interference and response inhibition produced distinct behavioral signatures that did not interact. By contrast, combining two different measures of response inhibition by merging a go/no-go task variant and a stop signal produced overadditive behavioral interference, demonstrating that different forms of response inhibition tap the same processes. However, not all forms of response conflict interacted, suggesting that inhibition-related functions acting on response selection are dissociable from those acting on response inhibition. These results suggest that inhibition-related functions for memory and responses are dissociable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Combining work with caring for children, findings from a longitudinal study of midwives' careers

Facilities that enable women to combine work with caring for children are of particular importance to professions comprised primarily of women, such as midwifery. This article presents findings on four aspects of this topic obtained in the course of a 13-year longitudinal study of midwives' careers: the numbers who had children and had taken breaks for pregnancy and child care, opportunities for professional development during periods of child care; the effect of such breaks on career progression, and the importance of family commitments in relation to retention. The majority of both cohorts were single women in their twenties at the time that they qualified as midwives. During the course of the study more than half the respondents had children; pregnancy was cited as the main reason for leaving midwifery followed in later years by being unable to find posts with hours of work that could be combined with family commitments. Findings showed little evidence of employers keeping in touch with midwives during child care breaks about job opportunities and professional developments; the majority of respondents however, said that they would have welcomed such contact. In common with other work on women's careers, this study demonstrated that breaks for child care are associated with slower rates of promotion. A wide range of issues were identified by respondents as relevant to retention, with those relating to combining work and family rated consistently as among the most important. The study demonstrates the importance that should be accorded to this issue when overall policies to improve retention in midwifery are being considered.     

A theory of ethics for forensic psychiatry

This article offers a justification for a set of principles that constitute the ethical underpinnings of forensic psychiatry. Like professional ethics in general, the principles are based on the particular societal functions performed by forensic psychiatrists and result in the intensification of obligations to promote certain important moral values. For forensic psychiatrists, the primary value of their work is to advance the interests of justice. The two principles on which that effort rests are truth-telling and respect for persons. In the same manner as other physicians who perform functions outside of the usual clinical context (e.g., clinical researchers), forensic psychiatrists cannot simply rely on general medical ethics, embedded as they are in the doctor-patient relationship--which is absent in the forensic setting. Indeed, efforts to retain some residuum of that relationship and its associated ethical principles are likely to create confusion in the minds of both forensic psychiatrists and their evaluees and to heighten the problems of double agency. A virtue of this approach is the clear distinction it offers between clinical and forensic roles.     

A knowledge-based approach to 3-D reconstruction of human cerebral vasculature

In this work the expert's status from the point of view of law, psychiatry, psychology, as well as his social, economical and financial position was discussed. The need of improvement of the expert's part in the lawsuit, and legal protection of his person were shown. The dissimilarity of the relation: the physician--the patient and the expert--the person under examination was discussed. The range of code idea "special knowledge" which, in the author's opinion, includes knowledge and clinical trial of psychiatrist, the know-how of the specificity of prison subculture, the possession of methods and conditions for investigation and competence to pronounce forensic and psychiatric opinion, were analysed. Conditioning of the expert's social position in Poland in comparison with experts from other countries and up-to-date state as well as the needs in the range of getting adequate salary for his work were described. In the author's opinion, the conditioning of the expert's status in Poland shown in this work, may influence the essential level of the expert's opinion. Therefore, the author suggests the following traits to be used in evaluation of experts and their work: competent-incompetent; complementary to knowledge-uncomplementary; critical towards opinion-of little criticism; diagnostically thoughtful-of little thoughtfulness; unemotional in his opinion (the person under examination)-emotional ("the opinions of the heart") and so on. The proposed rating scale may be used among other things for instruction of forensic experts.     

Modular decomposition in visuomotor learning

The principle of 'divide-and-conquer' the decomposition of a complex task into simpler subtasks each learned by a separate module, has been proposed as a computational strategy during learning. We explore the possibility that the human motor system uses such a modular decomposition strategy to learn the visuomotor map, the relationship between visual inputs and motor outputs. Using a virtual reality system, subjects were exposed to opposite prism-like visuomotor remappings-discrepancies between actual and visually perceived hand locations- for movements starting from two distinct locations. Despite this conflicting pairing between visual and motor space, subjects learned the two starting-point-dependent visuomotor mappings and the generalization of this learning to intermediate starting locations demonstrated an interpolation of the two learned maps. This interpolation was a weighted average of the two learned visuomotor mappings, with the weighting sigmoidally dependent on starting location, a prediction made by a computational model of modular learning known as the "mixture of experts". These results provide evidence that the brain may employ a modular decomposition strategy during learning.     

Application of a sensitive and specific reagent for the determination of serum iron to the Bayer DAX48

Content experts frequently are used in the judgment-quantification stage of content validation of instruments. However, errors in instrumentation may arise when important steps in selecting and using these experts are not carefully planned. The systematic process of choosing, orienting, and using content experts in the judgment-qualification stage of instrument development is addressed, with particular attention to the often neglected, important step of familiarizing these experts with the conceptual underpinnings and measurement model of the instrument. An example using experts to validate content for a measure of caregiver burden is used to illustrate this stage of instrument review.     

Moderating effect of perceived amount of family conflict on the relation between home environmental processes and the well-being of adolescents.

This study examined the extent that perceived amount of conflict in the family moderates the relation between proximal aspects of the home environment and adolescent well-being. Regression models consisting of Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) subscale scores (Responsivity, Learning Materials, Variety of Experiences), family conflict, and the interaction between HOME scores and family conflict were tested for each of 6 dependent measures: academic achievement, task orientation, being considerate, self-efficacy as it pertains to school, self-efficacy as it pertains to family, and school grades. Results indicated moderation in all 3 ethnic groups examined (European Americans, African Americans, and Chinese Americans). For all 3 groups, relations were stronger in families with high conflict, suggesting a heightened sensitivity to social exchanges and events within the family. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reliability of infra-red tympanic thermometry (ITT)

BACKGROUND: The ability to take a patient's temperature quickly, easily, and accurately is desirable in a variety of situations. However, in order to have confidence in the values obtained, it is important to quantify the reliability of the measurement. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine the reliability of temperature measurements obtained by infra-red tympanic membrane thermometers. METHOD: This study examined intra-tester, inter-tester and inter-instrument reliability using two commercially available tympanic membrane thermometers. Forty-four college students (mean age 20.2 +/- 3.6 yr) had their tympanic membrane temperature taken by two investigators, each using two different instruments (ThermoScan Pro-1 and FirstTemp Genius). RESULTS: The results indicated a statistically significant difference between testers for each instrument. Similarly, there was a significant statistical difference between instruments within each tester. Correlations were moderately high (r = 0.66-0.88) between testers for each instrument, whereas correlations within instruments varied considerably between testers (r = 0.35-0.78). The intra-tester reliability was good for both testers using both instruments with all coefficients of variation (CV) less than 2%. Statistically significant differences were found between testers for each instrument and between instruments for each tester. A 2 x 2 ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for Tester and a significant Tester x Instrument interaction. CONCLUSION: We conclude that individual investigators are able to obtain reliable temperature measures when using either the FirstTemp Genius or ThermoScan Pro-1 instruments under resting laboratory conditions. However, inter-tester and inter-instrument reliability should be considered when collecting or comparing data.