Psychology Commons^™

Book Review 2 Optimize Your Life! The One-Page Strategic Planner By Bernhoff A. Dahl, M.D., William C. Mcpeck

William C. McPeck

This is my personal review of Optimize Your Life! The One-page Strategic Planner by Bernhoff A. Dahl and published by Wind-Breaker Press in 2003.

Stressful Life Events As Predictors Of Functioning: Findings From The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study, Maria E. Pagano, Andrew E. Skodol, Robert L. Stout, M. Tracie Shea, Shirley Yen, Carlos M. Grilo, Charles A. Sanislow, Donna S. Bender, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Mary C. Zanarini, John G. Gunderson

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Objective:  Although much attention has been given to the effects of adverse childhood experiences on the development of personality disorders (PDs), we know far less about how recent life events influence the ongoing course of functioning. We examined the extent to which PD subjects differ in rates of life events and the extent to which life events impact psychosocial functioning. Method:  A total of 633 subjects were drawn from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS), a multi-site study of four personality disorders – schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) – and a comparison group of major depressive …

Book Review 1 The New Science Of Selling And Persuasion: How Smart Companies And Great Salespeople Sell By William T. Brooks, William C. Mcpeck

William C. McPeck

This is my personal review of The New Science of Selling and Persuasion: How Smart Companies and Great Salespeople Sell by William T. Brooks and published by Wiley in 2004.

Validity Of Das Perfectionism And Need For Approval In Relation To The Five-Factor Model Of Personality, David M. Dunkley, Charles A. Sanislow, Carlos M. Grilo, Thomas H. Mcglashan

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

This study examined the validity of the perfectionism and need for approval scales of the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS; Weissman & Beck, 1978) by locating these measures within a comprehensive framework of personality, provided by the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992), in a clinical sample (N ¼ 132). The results indicated that: (1) DAS perfectionism reflects the self-critical aspects of the broader perfectionism construct rather than the active achievement striving aspects; (2) DAS need for approval generally lacks an association with positive interpersonal traits and shares much in common with DAS perfectionism; and (3) with shared …

Associations In The Course Of Personality Disorders And Axis I Disorders Over Time, M. Tracie Shea, Robert L. Stout, Shirley Yen, Maria E. Pagano, Andrew E. Skodol, Leslie C. Morey, John G. Gunderson, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Carlos M. Grilo, Charles A. Sanislow, Donna S. Bender, Mary C. Zanarini

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

In this study, the authors examined time-varying associations between schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), or obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) personality disorders and co-occurring Axis I disorders in 544 adult participants from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study. The authors tested predictions of specific longitudinal associations derived from a model of crosscutting psychobiological dimensions (L. J. Siever & K. L. Davis, 1991) with participants with the relevant Axis I disorders. The authors assessed participants at baseline and at 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up evaluations. BPD showed significant longitudinal associations with major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. AVPD was significantly associated with …

An Alternative Perspective On Infant Emotion And Facial Expression, Linda A. Camras

Linda A. Camras

No abstract provided.

Two-Year Stability And Change Of Schizotypal, Borderline, Avoidant And Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorders, Carlos M. Grilo, M. Tracie Shea, Charles A. Sanislow, Andrew E. Skodol, John G. Gunderson, Robert L. Stout, Maria E. Pagano, Shirley Yen, Leslie C. Morey, Mary C. Zanarini, Thomas H. Mcglashan

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

he authors examined the stability of schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD) and obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) personality disorders (PDs) over 2 years of prospective multiwave follow-up. Six hundred thirty-three participants recruited at 4 collaborating sites who met criteria for 1 or more of the 4 PDs or for major depressive disorder (MOD) without PD were assessed with semistructured interviews at baseline, 6, 12, and 24 months. Lifetable survival analyses revealed that the PD groups had slower time to remission than the MDD group. Categorically, PD remission rates range from 50% (AVPD) to 61% (STPD) for dropping below diagnostic threshold on a …

Deletion Of Bax Eliminates Sex Differences In The Mouse Forebrain, Geert De Vries, N. G. Forger, G. J. Rosen, E. M. Waters, D. Jacobs, R. B. Simerly

Geert De Vries

Several of the best-studied sex differences in the mammalian brain are ascribed to the hormonal control of cell death. This conclusion is based primarily on correlations between pyknotic cell counts in development and counts of mature neurons in adulthood; the molecular mechanisms of hormone-regulated, sexually dimorphic cell death are unknown. We asked whether Bax, a member of the Bcl-2 family of proteins that is required for cell death in many developing neurons, might be essential for sex differences in neuron number. We compared Bax knockout mice and their WT siblings, focusing on two regions of the mouse forebrain that show …

7. The Supreme Court And Reluctant Witnesses: Crawford V. Washington., Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Perception Of Shared Visual Space: Establishing Common Ground In Real And Virtual Environments, Jonathan W. Kelly, Andrew C. Beall, Jack M. Loomis

Jonathan W. Kelly

When people have visual access to the same space, judgments of this shared visual space (shared vista) can facilitate communication and collaboration. This study establishes baseline performance on a shared vista task in real environments and draws comparisons with performance in visually immersive virtual environments. Participants indicated which parts of the scene were visible to an assistant or avatar (simulated person used in virtual environments) and which parts were occluded by a nearby building. Errors increased with increasing distance between the participant and the assistant out to 15 m, and error patterns were similar between real and virtual environments. This …

Best Practices To Address The Demand Side Of Sex Trafficking, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Each year, hundreds of thousands of women and children around the world become victims of the global sex trade. They are recruited into prostitution, often using tactics involving force, fraud, or coercion. Criminals working in organized networks treat the victims like commodities, buying and selling them for profit. This modern-day form of slavery is called sex trafficking.

This report will describe efforts to address the demand side of sex trafficking. It will define the demand and describe its different components. It will describe laws, policies, and programs aimed at reducing the demand for prostitution in communities and entire countries. It …

Temporal Coherence Of Criteria For Four Personality Disorders, Leslie C. Morey, Andrew E. Skodol, Carlos M. Grilo, Charles A. Sanislow, Mary C. Zanarini, M. Tracie Shea, John G. Gunderson, Thomas H. Mcglashan

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

This study sought to investigate the coherence of changes observed in diagnostic criteria for borderline, schizotypal, obsessive-compulsive, and avoidant personality disorders. Five hundred, forty-nine patients were independently evaluated 2 years apart, and correlations of observed changes in each diagnostic criterion with changes in other criteria were examined to determine if there was within-syndrome consistency in these changes. The observed changes in criteria were consistent within syndrome (median alpha = 0.72 across 4 disorders), and reasonably specific to that syndrome relative to the other disorders. The results support the validity of these criterion sets as representing coherent syndromes.

Major Depressive Disorder And Borderline Personality Disorder Revisited: Longitudinal Interactions, John G. Gunderson, Leslie C. Morey, Robert L. Stout, Andrew E. Skodol, M. Tracie Shea, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Mary C. Zanarini, Carlos M. Grilo, Charles A. Sanislow, Shirley Yen, Maria T. Daversa, Donna S. Bender

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

BACKGROUND: This report investigates the longitudinal association of changes in major depressive disorder (MDD) and borderline personality disorder.

METHOD: A DSM-IV-diagnosed sample of 161 patients with borderline personality disorder who have been followed with repeated measures at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months are investigated to see whether those with co-occurring MDD differ at baseline and in their course. Proportional hazard regression and cross-lagged panel analyses are used to demonstrate whether changes in the course of either disorder have predictable effects on the course of the other.

RESULTS: The rate of remissions of borderline personality disorder was not affected by …

Longitudinal Diagnostic Efficiency Of Dsm-Iv Criteria For Obsessive–Compulsive Personality Disorder: A 2-Year Prospective Study, Carlos M. Grilo, Andrew E. Skodol, John G. Gunderson, Charles A. Sanislow, Robert L. Stout, M. Tracie Shea, Leslie C. Morey, Mary C. Zanarini, Donna S. Bender, Shirley Yen, Thomas H. Mcglashan

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Objective: To examine the longitudinal diagnostic efficiency of the DSM-IV criteria for obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD).

Method: At baseline, criteria and diagnoses were determined using diagnostic interviews, and blinded assessments were performed 24 months later with 550 participants. Diagnostic efficiency indices (conditional probabilities, total predictive power, and kappa) were calculated for each criterion determined at baseline, using the independent OCPD diagnosis at follow-up as the standard.

Results: Longitudinal diagnostic efficiencies for the OCPD criteria varied; findings suggested the overall predictive utility of preoccupied with details, rigid and stubborn, and reluctant to delegate.

Conclusion: These findings suggest the predictive validity of …

Being The Change I Want To See In The World: Learning And Teaching From The Heart, Gloria Gordon Phd

Gloria Gordon PhD

The author draws on her professional practice as an educator/academic in a UK higher education institution to share her journey, as an African British woman, of becoming the change she wants to see in the world. She shares the process of the radical appropriation of her own unique and creative spiritual ‘I’ and the challenges she is presented with of identifying her particular path of meaning and purpose; of transcending the social construction of black and white identities; of definitive movement towards self realisation and spiritual freedom. The central thrust of the paper is the emphasis on how every individual …

Rapid, Hierarchical Modulation Of Vocal Patterning By Steroid Hormones, Luke Remage_Healey, Andrew H. Bass

Luke Remage-Healey

Vocal control systems have been identified in all major groups of jawed vertebrates. Although steroid hormones are instrumental in the long-term development and maintenance of neural structures underlying vocalization, it is unknown whether steroids rapidly modulate the neural activity of vocal motor systems. The midshipman fish generates advertisement and agonistic calls that mainly differ in duration. A descending midbrain pathway activates a hindbrain-spinal vocal circuit that directly establishes the discharge frequency and duration of the rhythmic vocal motor volley. This vocal motor output, which can be monitored from occipital nerve roots, directly determines the rate and duration of contraction of …

Healing The War Between The Genders: The Power Of The Soul-Centered Relationship (Book Author, Linda Marks; Book Reviewer, Carroy Ferguson), Carroy U. Ferguson

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

As humanity seeks to understand its next evolutionary journey and to evolve its consciousness, insightful thinkers and writers have emerged to identify where we must first heal and to provide guidance for how to heal. In her book Healing The War Between The Genders: The Power of the Soul-Centered Relationship, Linda Marks adeptly discusses what she calls a “cultural heart wound” as being at the center of the gender struggle. In this context, the struggle actually transcends heterosexual relationships, gender-role conflicts, and particular one-to-one dynamics per se. As each person has what are often called male and female energies, “the …

The Longitudinal Relationship Of Personality Traits And Disorders, Megan B. Warner, Leslie C. Morey, John F. Finch, John G. Gunderson, Andrew E. Skodol, Charles A. Sanislow, M. Tracie Shea, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Carlos M. Grilo

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Personality disorders are presumed to be stable because of underlying stable and maladaptive personality traits, but while previous research has demonstrated a link between personality traits and personality disorders cross-sectionally, personality disorders and personality traits have not been linked longitudinally. This study explores the extent to which relevant personality traits are stable in individuals diagnosed with 4 personality disorders (schizotypal, borderline, avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders) and examines the assumption that these personality disorders are stable by virtue of stable personality traits. This assumption was tested via the estimation of a series of latent longitudinal models that evaluated whether changes …

Testing An Apa Practice Guideline: Symptom-Targeted Medication Utilization For Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder, John M. Oldham, Donna S. Bender, Andrew E. Skodol, Ingrid R. Dyck, Charles A. Sanislow, Shirley Yen, Carlos M. Grilo, M. Tracie Shea, Mary C. Zanarini, John G. Gunderson, Thomas H. Mcglashan

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

BACKGROUND: The goal of this study was to test whether the use of psychotropic medication treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD) was consistent with proposals in the recently published American Psychiatric Association's Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder.

METHOD: Medication utilization by patients with BPD was assessed prospectively over a 2-year period prior to the publication of the Guideline. Three BPD symptom clusters--cognitive-perceptual, affective dysregulation, and impulsive-behavioral dyscontrol--along with demographic and functioning variables were used to predict the use of five classes of medication.

RESULTS: Symptoms of impulsive-behavioral dyscontrol significantly predicted use of both neuroleptics …

Psychophysiological Reactivity To Traumatic And Abandonment Scripts In Borderline Personality And Posttraumatic Stress Disorders: A Preliminary Report, Christian G. Schmahl, Bernet M. Elzinga, Ulrich W. Ebner, Timothy Simms, Charles A. Sanislow, Eric Vermetten, Thomas H. Mcglashan, J. Douglas Bremner

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a highly prevalent and disabling condition linked to early stressors including traumatic abuse and abandonment. While much work has addressed traumatic events in childhood, little is known about the biological sequelae of BPD including how this disorder may be differentiated from other stressrelated disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The purpose of this study was to investigate psychophysiological effects of different types of stressful reminders in BPD and in PTSD. Psychophysiological measures including heart rate, skin conductance responses, systolic and diastolic blood pressure in response to standardized neutral scripts, and personalized scripts of traumatic …

Childhood Maltreatment Associated With Adult Personality Disorders: Findings From The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study, Cynthia L. Battle, M. Tracie Shea, Dawn M. Johnson, Caron Zlotnick, Mary C. Zanarini, Charles A. Sanislow, Andrew E. Skodol, John G. Gunderson, Carlos M. Grilo, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Leslie C. Morey

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Borderline Personality Disorder Criteria Associated With Prospectively Observed Suicidal Behavior, Shirley Yen, M. Tracie Shea, Charles A. Sanislow, Carlos M. Grilo, Andrew E. Skodol, John G. Gunderson, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Mary C. Zanarini, Leslie C. Morey

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

OBJECTIVE: The authors prospectively examined associations between each DSM-IV borderline personality disorder criterion and suicidal behaviors.

METHOD: Borderline personality disorder diagnosis and criteria, major depressive disorder, substance use disorders, and history of childhood sexual abuse were assessed with semistructured interviews. Participants (N=621) were followed for 2 years with repeated structured evaluations that included assessments of suicidality.

RESULTS: With the self-injury criterion excluded, the borderline personality disorder criteria of affective instability, identity disturbance, and impulsivity significantly predicted suicidal behaviors. Only affective instability and childhood sexual abuse were significantly associated with suicide attempts (i.e., behavior with some intent to die).

CONCLUSIONS: Affective …

An Electronic Instruction Manual And Checklist For Steam Boiler Start-Up, Satoru Tokuda, Esa Rantenan, Jessica C. Hill

Jessica Hill

Adult Children Of Divorce -- Some Counselling Considerations, Alan A. Mackenzie

Alan A MacKENZIE

This paper explores the most salient issues concerning counselling adult children of divorce -- and synthesizes the findings from articles and recent books addressing the efficacy of specific counselling interventions. Other relevant aspects like special considerations that require unique interventions are also mentioned. Both Christian and secular modalities are examined.

Sex Differences In Adult And Developing Brains; Compensation, Compensation, Compensation, Geert De Vries

Geert De Vries

Despite decades of research, we do not know the functional significance of most sex differences in the brain. We are heavily invested in the idea that sex differences in brain structure cause sex differences in behavior. We rarely consider the possibility that sex differences in brain structure may also prevent sex differences in overt functions and behavior, by compensating for sex differences in physiological conditions, e.g. gonadal hormone levels that may generate undesirable sex differences if left unchecked. Such a dual function for sex differences is unlikely to be restricted to adult brains. This review will entertain the possibility that …

Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling With Gay And Lesbian Clients.

Mark Pope

A Lego Model Of The Modularity Of The Mind, Steven J. Scher

Steven J. Scher

In this paper I propose that the dominant form of evolutionary psychology (which I term “cognitive adaptationism”) can be improved by adopting an alternative version of the concept of mental modularity. I suggest a metaphor of mental modules as Lego blocks. The Lego blocks represent a relatively small set of elementary operations that the mind/brain can carry out. These Lego blocks are repeatedly assembled in different ways to execute a wide variety of different functions. These repeated assemblies correspond more closely to the things that cognitive adaptationists have asserted are modules. Arguments in favor of the Lego model include the …

Mind And Body: Psychology And Neuroscience, Morton A. Heller

Morton A. Heller

No abstract provided.

Gender Differences For Optimism, Self-Esteem, Expectations And Goals In Predicting Career Planning And Exploration In Adolescents, Wendy Patton, Dee Bartrum, Peter A. Creed

Dee Bartrum

An Australian sample (N=467) of high school students was administered scales tapping optimism, self-esteem, career expectations, career goals, career planning and career exploration. The study tested a career mediational model based on social cognitive career theory (SCCT) and cognitive–motivational–relational theory (CMR). It was hypothesized that the stable person inputs of optimism and self-esteem would predict career planning and career exploration through the variables of career expectations and career goals differentially for young males and females. For males, optimism and self-esteem influenced career expectations, sequentially predicting career goals, career planning and career exploration. A different pathway was identified for females, with …

Internal And External Barriers, Cognitive Style, And The Career Development Variables Of Focus And Indecision, Peter A. Creed, Wendy Patton, Dee Bartrum

Dee Bartrum

One hundred and thirty final year high school students were administered scales tapping optimism/pessimism, self-esteem, external career barriers, career decision-making self-efficacy, career focus and career indecision. It was hypothesised, first, that cognitive style (optimism/pessimism) would predict both internal (self-esteem) and external career-related barriers, second, that internal barriers would interact with external barriers and impact on career decision-making self-efficacy, and third, the previously mentioned variables would subsequently predict career focus and career indecision. Results demonstrated that cognitive style was influential in determining the perception of internal barriers (for females and males) and external barriers (females only). Internal and external barriers, along …