This study investigates the use of response guidance for errorless learning of a perceptual motor task in normal elderly. It provides normative data for a study with stroke patients using this technique for cognitive rehabilitation. While errorless learning has been shown to be more effective on most tasks than trial and error learning for people with memory impairments, its use with normal individuals has received limited attention. The questions of interest were whether errorless training of the perceptual motor task was more effective for improving and retaining accuracy; and whether both accuracy and response speed were more resistant to the effects of increased cognitive demands. A sample of 43 normal elderly in the United Kingdom, ranging in age from 60 to 77, completed an assessment of intelligence, memory, and attention. They then received training, over two sessions one week apart, to mark the midpoint of Judd Arrows presented on a computer screen using a cross cursor moved by an active force feedback joystick (AFF). During training the errorless group received AFF guidance to the correct midpoint, while the errorful group received none, and both received auditory and visual knowledge of results. There was no AFF during baseline or post test …

Health Locus of Control (HLOC) and other predictors of Quality of Life (QL) were examined for women with an initial versus recurrent breast cancer diagnosis. Twenty-eight women with an initial breast cancer (IBC) diagnoses and twenty-eight women with recurrent breast cancer (RBC) diagnoses were recruited from doctors' offices and cancer support groups. Correlational analyses were used to assess the relationships between variables. No significant differences were found between women with IBC and RBC on Psychological QL. Doctor HLOC and Psychological QL were related for women with RBC (r = .481, p = .01) and marginally so for women with IBC (r = .329, p = .09). A positive correlation was also found between Doctor HLOC and Functional QL for both women with IBC (r = .464, p = .01) and women with RBC (r = .390, p = .04). After controlling for stage of cancer, women with RBC reported higher Functional QL than did women with IBC. Advanced (stages III or IV) versus early (stages I or II) cancer stage related to lower Functional QL, controlling for initial versus recurrent diagnosis (r = -.283, p = .01). A marginally significant relationship was also found for cancer stage, regardless of initial …

Understanding the relation between personality characteristics, psychopathology, and sexual offenses can contribute to developing more effective treatment interventions. Previous research with sex offenders has focused on general personality traits or inconsistently classified sex offenders based on psychopathology. It was hypothesized that combining personality and psychopathological traits can assist in understanding sex offenders. The current study evaluated 88 male sex offenders in a court-mandated outpatient treatment program utilizing the NEO-PI-R and the MMPI-2. Three clusters of child molesters were examined for differences in personality characteristics and number of offenses. A second-order principle axis factor (PAF) analysis of personality and psychopathology traits revealed three factors: Psychological Distress, Excitement-Seeking, and Social Desirability. The potential clinical utility of these dimensions in predicting treatment compliance is examined.

Age/cohort differences in several aspects of the self-system were investigated utilizing a sentence completion paradigm. Eighty-eight adults over age sixty and one hundred eight adults under age forty served as subjects. Subjects were asked to complete 30 self-referent sentence stems which were pre-structured to elicit information from the self-system. Responses were subjected to a content analysis utilizing a coding system which contained concepts used by subjects in their self-representations. Contents were coded for dimensions conceptually related to Physical Health, Autonomy, Self-Evaluation, Depression, Spirituality, and Altruism. Frequencies of codings were counted and subjected to statistical analysis for performing age group comparisons.

Recently, multi-source feedback has been a popular way of providing performance-related feedback to individuals in many organizations. Many who use multi-source feedback consider Rating Convergence, others seeing target individuals as they see themselves, to be a positive outcome of this process. However, the variables that account for Rating Convergence are not known. This study investigated whether the personality factor Extroversion and Behavioral Consistency, acting as a moderator variable, could account for Self-other Rating Convergence, particularly the Convergence between self and peer Ratings. The sample consisted of 235 mid-level managers from a variety of industries who were participants in individual career development workshops. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicated that a model consisting of a single Extroversion factor could account for the convergence of self-peer ratings. This finding calls into question the significance of Rating Convergence when using multi-source rating instruments that provide feedback on trait characteristics since it may be heavily influenced by a single personality factor rather than observers' comprehensive understanding of the ratee's performance.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of parental divorce and family conflict during adolescence on young adult females' social support and psychological adjustment. The three areas explored were perceptions of relationship satisfaction and closeness, sources and amount of social support and adjustment. One hundred and forty-one female undergraduates, 53% from families in which their parents are still married and 47% from families in which a parental divorce occurred during adolescence, completed the following measures: the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976), the Social Provisions Scale-Source Specific (Cutrona, 1989), the Inventory of Common Problems (Hoffman & Weiss, 1986), the Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1981), and the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985).

This project investigated the spiritual well-being (SWB) of psychotherapists in training and their physiological reactions to religious questions posed by a mock client. Electrodermal activity served as an index of physiological arousal interpreted as anxiety. Thirteen psychotherapists in training at the University of North Texas were recruited. They participated in a simulated intake session with a mock client who asked the psychotherapist neutral questions, personal-other questions (POQs), and personal-religious questions (PRQs). It was discovered that the level of SWB did not affect subjects' anxiety responses to PRQs. There also was no difference in subjects' anxiety responses for POQs between high and low SWB therapists. However, psychotherapists did experience some anxiety associated with questions related to their counseling experience and expertise.

The influences of family relationship variables on motivations for adolescent sexual risk-taking were investigated. Previous research has linked these variables to adolescent sexual behavior, however, the nature of these links has not been specifically examined. Family variables were operationalized as child attachment to mother, parental support of each other, parental conflict strategies, and parental monitoring. Emotional motivations were operationalized as attachment and affiliation needs. The sample consisted of 40 single females ages 18 to22 recruited from a local pregnancy care center. Predictions that parent-child relationship and parental influence would predict emotional motivations for sexual risk-taking were not supported. The variable most highly related to sexual risk-taking, though not included in the model tested, was father's destructive conflict strategies. Theoretical and methodological issues are discussed.

Psychopathic criminals commit more crimes, are more prone to recidivism, and more likely to engage in violent crimes and other aggressive behavior than nonpsychopathic criminals. Less is known about forensic patients, both with and without psychopathy, and their aggression. In the current study, patients in a maximum security hospital were examined with respect to their psychopathy and its predictive value on institutional management and dangerousness. In this regard, the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R) have proven to be valid and reliable measures of psychopathy. The present study was an attempt to establish predictive validity for a new version: the Psychopathy Checklist Screening Version (PCLSV). As such, this study examined the PCL-SV's relationship to (a) diagnoses of Antisocial Personality Disorder according to DSM-III-R criteria and (b) the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) Aggression, Drug Problems, and Antisocial Features scales. The influence of major Axis I disorders on the assessment of psychopathy with the PCLSV was also examined. Participants were 150 male forensic psychiatric patients at Vernon State Hospital who were committed for various reasons: incompetence to stand trial, initial evaluation and treatment after having been found not guilty by reason of insanity, and manifest dangerousness. Chart reviews …

This study began testing the Sewell and Williams (in press) model that differing trauma types yield differing presentations in social versus event processing domains. Other hypotheses explored trauma type with levels of guilt, and shame-proneness with anxiety. Volunteers were 44 male combat veterans being treated for PTSD. Data analyses determined whether trauma type related to guilt and perceived social support and whether shame-proneness related to levels of anxiety. High shame persons may process anxiety and social support differently than low shame persons. Results can assist professionals understand how a person's functioning is affected by certain types of trauma. Future research should focus on increasing social support for persons who have experienced trauma.

The present study was designed to assess both the construct of psychopathy in a female jail sample as well as the quality of the measures that have been employed to assess this personality style. Utilizing the multitrait-multimethod matrix proposed by Campbell and Fiske (1959), the construct of psychopathy was measured via three instruments: (a) the Antisocial Scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory, (b) the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, and (c) the Antisocial Scale of the Personality Disorder Examination. In addition, the predictive validity of each of these measures of psychopathy was evaluated to determine their ability to predict institutional violence and non-compliance. The results revealed significant convergence and divergence across the three instruments supporting the construct of psychopathy in a female jail sample. In addition, the measures of psychopathy demonstrated moderate predictive validity.

Applied sport psychology consultation is a relatively new phenomenon with limited empirical underpinnings. The purpose of the study was to evaluate three applied sport psychology consultant personal and professional characteristics within Strong's social influence model that have been suggested to impact consultants' effectiveness in working directly with athletes and their performance problems. The three consultant characteristics were academic training, past athletic experience, and interpersonal skill. Division I female athletes (N = 187) read written preconsultation information and watched a 10- minute vignette between a consultant and an athlete. Participants completed the Counselor Rating Form-Short (CRFS), the Sport Psychology Consultant Evaluation Form (CEF), and questions concerning willingness to work with the consultant. The data from the dependent measures were analyzed by a 2 (level of consultant academic training) X 2 (level of consultant past athletic experience) X 2 (level of consultant interpersonal skill) MANOVA. Results indicated that applied sport psychology consultants' academic training and past athletic experience had only limited influence on the participants' perceptions about the consultants. The Division I female athletes unambiguously rated consultants with positive interpersonal skills more favorably on all dependent measures regardless of the consultants' level of academic training or past athletic experience. Directions for future …

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between ease of discussion of sexual likes and dislikes with a sexual partner and religious, expressive, and affectional influences in the family of origin.

This study investigates the effects of eight organizational support systems on virtual team effectiveness in five areas: communication, planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, resolving conflict, and responding to customer requirements. One hundred and eighty surveys were sent to information technology managers and collaborative team members, representing 43 companies. The results indicated that developing new roles for IT professionals and senior managers significantly increased virtual team effectiveness in several areas. The findings support the theory that organizations that utilize virtual teams must create high-level structures, policies, and systems to support the teams and the information tools they use.

Male and female college students were administered scales assessing their daily hassles, negative life events, control, commitment, challenge, psychological symptomatology, psychological distress, and physical symptomatology. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that control, commitment, and challenge act in an additive (rather than multiplicative) manner in relation to psychological and physical outcome measures.

The impact of training on virtual team effectiveness was assessed in five areas: communication, planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, resolving conflict, and responding to customer requirements. A 12-page survey was developed exploring all aspects of virtual teams. 180 surveys were distributed, 52 were returned representing 43 companies. Training led to higher effectiveness in planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, and conflict resolution, but not in communication and responding to customer requirements. Training may not solve all the problems that virtual teams will encounter; however, training will make the challenges easier to handle.

The present study is an exploratory analysis of associations among sexual orientation, childhood abuse, and characteristics of both early and current family environment in a sample of 80 inpatient trauma survivors. Participants were administered a background information questionnaire, Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule, the Family Environment Scale and other instruments not analyzed in the current study. Multi-type abuse was significantly associated with low expressiveness and independence and high control in the early family, but no associations emerged with current family characteristics. Results suggest that the intergenerational transmission of family organization and moral-religious orientation occurred in the entire sample, and the transmission of family conflict patterns occurred only in the L/G/B group. Overall, participants perceived improvements in their current family environments compared to their early family environments. Findings yield support for the sexual minority stress model and mixed support for the intergenerational transmission of family characteristics.

Religion and spirituality are thought to be of great importance for the meaning and quality of life for many individuals, and research suggests that there may be important health benefits associated with religion and spirituality. Religion and spirituality should be related to health behaviors for a number of reasons. Health behaviors are important contributors to an individual's overall health, illness and mortality. Major negative health behaviors related to health outcomes are smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, risky driving, and high risk sexual behaviors. Health behaviors may also be linked to personality traits. The key trait examined for this study was extraversion. It includes adjectives such as being active, assertive, energetic, outgoing, and talkative. In this thesis, I take several hypotheses and explore the influence of extraversion, religiosity, and spirituality on health behaviors.

The current work assesses the relationship between reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) and Personality Traits for the DSM-5 (PID-5), to explore the degree to which they are associated with mood disorder symptoms. Participants (N = 138) from a large public university in the South were administered a semi-structured interview to assess for current mood disorder and anxiety symptoms. They were also administered self-report inventories, including the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and Behavioral Approach System (BAS) scales and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5). Results indicate that both the BIS/BAS scales and the PID-5 scales were strongly associated with current mood symptoms. However, the maladaptive personality traits demonstrated significantly greater associations with symptoms compared to the BIS/BAS scales. Results also indicated support for using a 2-factor model of BIS as opposed to a single factor model. Personality models (such as the five factor model) are strongly associated with mood symptoms. Results from this study add to the literature by demonstrating credibility of an alternative five-factor model of personality focused on maladaptive traits. Knowledge of individual maladaptive personality profiles can be easily obtained and used to influence case conceptualizations and create treatment plans in clinical settings.

Relationship satisfaction often declines after marriage or cohabitation and between 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. Furthermore, many couples who stay together report feeling unsatisfied in their relationships. Thus, it is important to examine factors that contribute to enduring and satisfying relationships. One factor that has been closely linked to relationship satisfaction is the sexual relationship of the couple. One aspect of the sexual relationship that has received little attention is masturbation. Although most psychologists hold positive views about masturbation, and recommend masturbation in many instances, the empirical data examining the association between masturbation and relationship satisfaction has mixed findings, with the majority of studies reporting a small negative relationship between these variables. The purpose of the present study was to further explore the association between masturbation and relationship satisfaction, focusing on possible moderators and mediators of this relationship including: masturbation guilt, openness with an individual's partner about masturbation, gender, object of arousal during masturbation, and reason for masturbating. Overall, masturbation frequency did not have a significant association with relationship satisfaction. However, the object of arousal during masturbation and openness about masturbation moderated the association between masturbation frequency and relationship satisfaction. Specifically, individuals who (a) used objects of arousal other …

Flashbulb memories are highly vivid and long-lasting memories for events that are emotionally significant and personally important. These memories are held in very high confidence in accuracy over an extended period. In particular, individuals believe that they can remember the personal details surrounding the event such as where they were and what they were doing at the time the event occurred. Evidence from research, however, indicates that this may not be the case. The study of flashbulb memories has typically been confined to negative events such as September 11, 2001. In the current study, we employ the methods of Talarico and Rubin (2003) to investigate flashbulb memory formation to a positive event. The event is the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which resonated as a highly positive event for many Americans evidenced by the thousands of people flooding the streets of Washington, D.C. and New York City to celebrate. We examined various memory properties over a one-year period, including vividness, rehearsal, belief in accuracy, and consistency. Results confirm the formation of flashbulb memories to the assassination event, but results did not support many of the proposed hypotheses. Some differences were found for different testing groups (i.e., immediate versus one week …

Bipolar disorder is associated with significant social and occupational impairments, as well as increased risk for substance abuse and suicide. More research is needed to identify potential mechanisms associated with vulnerability to the disorder. Previous research has identified altered processing of emotional information in bipolar and bipolar-prone individuals, including attentional biases which appear to differ based on the current affective state of the individual. The current study applied a sensitive measure of attention (i.e., eye-tracking) to assess whether vulnerability to bipolar disorder, as indexed by hypomanic personality traits, would be correlated with biases in attention to emotional facial stimuli, independent of mood state. Hypomanic personality traits were hypothesized to be associated with greater attention to happy and angry faces, as indexed by faster initial orientation, more frequent gazes, and longer gaze duration for these stimuli. Participants completed self-report measures assessing current mood symptoms, positive and negative affect, and hypomanic personality traits. They then completed two tasks assessing attention for emotional faces. The first was an eye-tracking task, which measured latency to first fixation, total gaze duration and total number of gazes for each emotional face category. The second was a spatial cueing task which assessed both attentional engagement with emotional …

This study explored psychopathic personality traits among a non-criminal, college undergraduate sample. Much research has been done on conceptualizing the construct of psychopathy, but this work has been conducted primarily with incarcerated individuals using a structured interview, The Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003). The goal of the current study was to assess psychopathic traits among non-criminal individuals using The Self-Report Psychopathy Scale - Version Four (SRP-IV; Paulhus, Neumann, & Hare, in press), and compare how SRP-IV scores were associated with a well recognized semi-structured interview for psychopathy, The Psychopathy Checklist – Screening Version (PCL: SV; Hart, Cox, & Hare, 1995). The study also examined whether psychopathic personality traits could be predicted using a measure of normal-range personality, based on the five-factor model (FFM; Digman, 1990), and a measure developed by Loevinger (1976) related to ego development. Five-Factor Model Rating Form (FFMRF; Mullins-Sweat, Jamerson, Samuel, Olson, & Widiger, 2006) scores and Total Protocol Ratings (TPR score) on the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT; Hy & Loevinger, 1996) were used to predict psychopathy scores. Correlations of SRP-IV scores and PCL: SV scores with FFMRF scores and WUSCT TPR scores were also examined for their uniformity. As predicted, there …

Miranda understanding, appreciation, and reasoning abilities are essential to courts' determinations of knowing and intelligent Miranda rights waivers. Despite the remarkable development of Miranda research in recent decades, studies have generally focused on understanding and appreciation of Miranda rights, but have not examined Miranda reasoning and waiver decisions. Therefore, examining the nature of defendants' decisional capacities constitutes a critical step in further developing theoretical and clinical models for competent Miranda waiver decisions. The current study evaluated Miranda waiver decisions for 80 pretrial defendants from two Tulsa-area Oklahoma jails. Previously untested, the current study examined systematically how rational decision abilities affect defendants' personal waiver decisions. Components from general models of legal decision making, such as decisional competence and judgment models, were examined to determine their applicability to Miranda waiver decisions.