Effects of positive impression management on the NEO Personality Inventory--Revised in a clinical population.

Sixty adults in outpatient psychotherapy completed the NEO Personality Inventory--Revised (NEO PI-R, P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992a). Half were instructed to fake good and half were given standard instructions. All completed the Interpersonal Adjective Scale--Revised, Big Five (J. S. Wiggins & P. D. Trapnell, 1997) under standard instructions, and their therapists completed the observer rating form of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. A comparison group of 30 students completed the NEO PI-R under standard instructions. Standard and fake-good participants obtained significantly different NEO PI-R domain scores. Correlations between the NEO PI-R and criterion measures were significantly lower for faking than for standard patients. Validity scales for the NEO PI-R (J. A. Schinka, B. N. Kinder, & T. Kremer, 1997) were moderately accurate in discriminating faking from standard patients, but were only marginally accurate in discriminating faking patients from students.

Tacting and manding in correspondence training: effects of child selection of verbalization.

We investigated correspondence between verbal and nonverbal behavior in preschool children in a play setting. Four children (4 years old) participated in a multiple baseline across subjects design. Children were asked what toy(s) they were going to play with during an immediately upcoming play period. When no contingencies were placed on either verbal or nonverbal behavior, children showed high rates of correspondence. When children were required to verbalize about a toy from a restricted range of infrequently used toys, but no contingencies were placed on correspondence, low rates of correspondence were observed. High rates of correspondence were noted when reinforcement was contingent on it. Results are discussed in terms of tacting and manding.

NEO PI-R profiles of adults with attention deficit disorder.

The personality functioning of adults diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) without comorbid psychiatric illness was examined. NEO PI-R profiles in a group of 25 adults referred for ADD evaluation meeting criteria for this diagnosis without any history of other psychiatric disturbance were compared to profiles from a control group of 23 nonpsychotic adult outpatients being treated with psychotherapy. All participants completed self-report measures of ADD symptoms as well as the NEO PI-R (Form S). The ADD adult group obtained significantly higher scores in the Neuroticism domain and significantly lower scores in the Conscientiousness domain than the outpatient comparison group. The NEO PI-R appears useful to the understanding of ADD in adulthood.

Correspondence training: review and current issues.

This article reviews the literature on correspondence training and discusses issues of theoretical, conceptual, or applied importance. Generalization, maintenance, and application to mentally retarded individuals are addressed. The relationship between correspondence training procedures and the concept of self-control is discussed. Directions for future research are described.

On the functional role of the verbalization in correspondence training procedures.

We investigated the functional role of the child's and experimenter's verbalizations in correspondence training procedures with toy play behaviors in a day-care center setting. Six children participated in a multiple baseline across responses and/or multielement design. Baseline conditions were followed by reinforcement of verbalization. This resulted in little or no change in responding, similar to findings of previous research. Experiment I isolated the child's verbalization as the variable under study. With an experimenter's prompt and postplay reinforcement held constant, the effects of including versus omitting the child's verbalization were examined. A contingency-space analysis revealed that the presence or absence of the child's verbalization exerted no influence on play with the target toy. In Experiment II, a condition in which no experimenter's prompt occurred was added. Results suggested that the complete absence of any antecedent verbalization, by child or experimenter, resulted in much lower rates of play with the target toys. Again, however, when the experimenter's prompt was included, no clear difference was noted between conditions in which the child verbalized and conditions in which the child did not. These results raise doubts about the commonly held view of correspondence training procedures as a method of promoting self-regulation.

Effects of caffeine on classroom behavior, sustained attention, and a memory task in preschool children.

The effects of caffeine on the behavior of young children is an important issue, as children in our society consume considerable amounts of caffeine, primarily in soft drinks. This study investigated the effects of normative amounts of caffeine on the behavior of 6 normal children in a kindergarten setting. Using a reversal design, counterbalanced for order of conditions, children's behavior was examined during a baseline condition, a caffeinated beverage condition, and a noncaffeinated beverage condition. Measures included direct observation of off-task and gross motor activity, actometer readings of movement, a Continuous Performance Test, a Paired Associates Learning Test, and teacher ratings of classroom behavior. Results suggest that caffeine exerts only small and inconsistent effects on the classroom behavior of kindergarten children. These results cast doubt on the importance of caffeine as a variable controlling the classroom behavior of normal kindergartners.

Using intermittent reinforcement to program maintenance of verbal/nonverbal correspondence.

We investigated the effects of an intermittent reinforcement procedure on maintenance of verbal/nonverbal correspondence with nutritious snack choices in a day-care setting. Nutritious snack choices were first established using correspondence training procedures in a multiple baseline across three children. Withdrawal of the procedures with one subject led to loss of appropriate responding, suggesting the need for a maintenance strategy. The intermittent reinforcement procedure was implemented in a multiple baseline across subjects. Nutritious snack choices were observed consistently during the intermittent reinforcement condition and the subsequent extinction condition.

Delayed reinforcement as an indiscriminable contingency in verbal/nonverbal correspondence training.

We investigated the programming of generalization and maintenance of correspondence between verbal and nonverbal behavior in a preschool setting. Four children participated in a series of multiple-baseline designs. In Experiment 1, delayed reinforcement of verbal behavior effectively controlled maintenance of correspondence with previously trained responses and also resulted in generalization of correspondence to one untrained response. As the latter effect was limited, Experiment 2 was a further assessment of the effects of delayed reinforcement of generalization of correspondence to untrained responses, and consistent generalization was shown. Experiment 2 also showed that generalization, if lost, could be recovered through use of "booster training," in which the original contingencies were reinstated for a brief period. Experiment 3 provided replications, with two additional children, of the effects of delayed reinforcement on maintenance of correspondence. Results are discussed in terms of using delayed reinforcement as an indiscriminable contingency.

Effects of information about validity scales on underreporting of symptoms on the personality assessment inventory.

We investigated the effects of information about validity scales on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) on underreporting of symptoms in a college student population. A group of participants completing the PAI under the standard instructions was compared to two groups of participants who had been instructed and given incentives to underreport symptoms. One of the underreporting groups was given a brief warning about the presence of scales designed to detect respondents attempting to present an unrealistically favorable impression. Results suggested that underreporting scales on the PAI are effective in discriminating standard profiles from those completed by uncoached underreporting participants but are less effective in discriminating standard profiles from those produced by participants who have been warned about the underreporting scales. The findings suggest that coaching may enable some respondents to underreport symptoms without detection.

Detection of underreporting on the MMPI-2 in a clinical population: effects of information about validity scales.

We investigated the effects of information about the MMPI-2's validity scales on underreporting of symptoms in a clinical outpatient population. Adults participating in outpatient psychotherapy were randomly assigned to a standard control group or to one of two groups given instructions and incentives to underreport symptomatology. One of the underreporting groups was given brief information about the presence of validity scales designed to detect respondents attempting to create an unrealistically positive impression. The other underreporting group was given no information about the validity scales. A demographically matched group of adults from the general population who had completed the MMPI-2 under the standard instructions comprised a second control group. Results suggested that traditional and supplementary underreporting scales were reasonably effective in discriminating uncoached underreporters from standard profiles completed by both the clinical and the general population groups. These scales were somewhat less accurate in discriminating coached underreporters from either clinical or nonclinical standard respondents. These findings are consistent with previous results from a college student population suggesting that coaching about validity scales may interfere with the test's ability to detect underreporting respondents, although a few supplementary underreporting scales show promising resistance to the effects of coaching.

Developmental norms for the Wisconsin Card Sorting test.

While the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) has been used widely among adult populations to evaluate the effects of frontal-lobe lesions, no comparable work has been done among younger populations due, in part, to the lack of an adequate normative base. This study presents developmental norms by age for the WCST for 105 school-age children. The data indicate that, by the time children are 10 years old, their performance on the WCST is indistinguishable from that of normal adults. Examination of the acquisition curves by age for Categories Achieved, Perseverative Errors, and Failures to Maintain Set reveals developmental changes that roughly correspond with neuroanatomical changes in the brain and cognitive stages of development. The present developmental norms are intended to complement and extend existing adult norms for the WCST and to facilitate the clinical use of the WCST as a neuropsychological test in child populations.

Effects of response sets on NEO-PI-R scores and their relations to external criteria.

Validity scales indicate the extent to which the results of a self-report inventory are a valid indicator of the test taker's psychological functioning. Validity scales generally are designed to detect the common response sets of positive impression management (underreporting, or faking good), negative impression management (overreporting, or faking bad), and random responding. The revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992b) is a popular personality assessment tool based on the 5-factor model of personality and is used in a variety of settings. The NEO-PI-R does not include objective validity scales to screen for positive or negative impression management. The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of recently proposed validity scales for detecting these response sets on the NEO-PI-R (Schinka, Kinder, & Kremer, 1997) and to examine the effects of positive and negative impression management on correlations between the NEO-PI-R and external criteria (the Interpersonal Adjective Scale-Revised-B5 [Wiggins & Trapnell, 1997] and the NEO-PI-R Form R). The validity scales discriminated with reasonable accuracy between standard responding and the 2 response sets. Additionally, most correlations between the NEO-PI-R and external criteria were significantly lower when participants were dissimulating than when responding to standard instructions. It appears that response sets of positive and negative impression management may pose a significant threat to the external validity of the NEO-PI-R and that validity scales for their detection might be a useful addition to the inventory.

Single-subject research designs for optometry.

Single-subject research designs are used extensively in the fields of education and psychology. There are many advantages of these designs over traditional group designs and they appear particularly important for applied research in optometry. An overview of the basic designs is presented. For each type of design, examples are provided that illustrate the application of this methodology to applied optometric research.

Detection of random responding on the MMPI-A.

We examined random responding on the MMPI-A in 106 adolescents from the general population. Participants were asked to report on the frequency, location, and reasons for any random responses occurring during a standard administration of the MMPI-A. Relationships between self-reported random responding and validity indices (F1, F2, F, and Variable Response Inconsistency [VRIN] scale) were examined. In addition, each participant was randomly assigned to 1 of 5 groups, with each group completing an assigned portion (0, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%) of an MMPI-A answer sheet without access to the test booklet, and the utility of the validity scales in discriminating standard protocols from all or partially random protocols was investigated. Most adolescents acknowledged one or more random responses correlated significantly with F but not VRIN. Validity scales were sensitive to all or partially random protocols, and produced high classification rates when discriminating among groups.

An evaluation of the usefulness of the MMPI-2 F(p) scale.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) F(p) scale was developed by Arbisi and Ben-Porath (1995) by identification of 27 items endorsed by fewer than 20% of individuals in both normal and psychiatric samples. The F(p) scale was designed for applications in settings characterized by high base rates of serious psychopathology, such as psychiatric inpatient units, and is proposed as a useful scale in discriminating overreported protocols from those produced by patients with serious psychopathology. In this study we investigated the characteristics of this scale in a sample of 617 psychiatric inpatients who responded to the MMPI-2 under standard conditions, and 203 overreported protocols derived in research studies conducted with normal adult participants instructed to simulate various forms of serious psychopathology. Results of this study are consistent with prior reports of a relatively low frequency of item endorsement for F(p) scale items in psychiatric samples, and intercorrelations between the F(p) scale and the MMPI-2 basic clinical scales in clinical samples that are generally lower than those produced between either F or Fb and the basic clinical scales. However, this intercorrelational pattern between F(p) and the MMPI-2 basic scales was not as consistent for the overreported sample. Additionally, the F(p) scale appears to be effective in discriminating overreported from accurate MMPI-2 protocols, with some evidence that the optimal cutting scores for this and other MMPI-2 infrequency scales may differ as a function of gender. Finally, these findings do not show clear evidence of improved group prediction derived from the use of the F(p) scale in contrast to results obtainable through the use of the MMPI-2 F scale.

Effectiveness of NEO-PI-R research validity scales for discriminating analog malingering and genuine psychopathology.

We investigated the research validity scales for the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) proposed by Schinka, Kinder, and Kremer (1997): Positive Presentation Management (PPM) and Negative Presentation Management (NPM). Additionally, an experimental analog to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2's (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) F-K index was calculated by subtracting the raw score on PPM from the raw score on NPM (NPM-PPM). In 2 studies, all indexes showed significant between-group differences when samples of analog malingerers (n = 97) were contrasted with psychiatric outpatients (n = 272). The sensitivity and specificity of these validity indexes indicated that although none performed well in extremely low base rate environments, the NPM and NPM-PPM indexes showed promise when the base rate of faking bad rose to higher levels.

Detection of a Cry for Help on the MMPI-2: an analog investigation.

We compared Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) results from 2 groups of mildly to moderately disturbed psychiatric outpatients (N=60) answering under either Standard or Cry for Help instructions. Results from previously completed intake MMPI-2 protocols were obtained for each participant. The two groups were comparable on intake MMPI-2 variables and demographic characteristics. Analysis of feedback data from the second, experimental observation indicated that the two groups had equivalent self-estimates of understanding of their role and success in simulating their role. Significant differences were found between the two groups on their experimental MMPI-2 protocols. The Cry for Help group had significantly higher scores on F, F-K, Fb, Ds2, and Fp scales as well as significantly lower scorns on the K scale. The Cry for Help group also had significantly higher scores on all clinical scales with the exception of 5, which was not tested. Cutting scores derived by Rogers, Sewell, and Ustad (1995) for the detection of a Cry for Help in outpatients were cross-validated with fairly positive results. Although these results are promising, particularly in light of the shrinkage expected on cross-validation, further research is needed in this area.