Cultural contributions to adults' self-rated mental health problems and strengths: 7 culture clusters, 28 societies, 16 906 adults.

BACKGROUND: It is unknown how much variation in adult mental health problems is associated with differences between societal/cultural groups, over and above differences between individuals. METHODS: To test these relative contributions, a consortium of indigenous researchers collected Adult Self-Report (ASR) ratings from 16 906 18- to 59-year-olds in 28 societies that represented seven culture clusters identified in the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioral Effectiveness study (e.g. Confucian, Anglo). The ASR is scored on 17 problem scales, plus a personal strengths scale. Hierarchical linear modeling estimated variance accounted for by individual differences (including measurement error), society, and culture cluster. Multi-level analyses of covariance tested age and gender effects. RESULTS: Across the 17 problem scales, the variance accounted for by individual differences ranged from 80.3% for DSM-oriented anxiety problems to 95.2% for DSM-oriented avoidant personality (mean = 90.7%); by society: 3.2% for DSM-oriented somatic problems to 8.0% for DSM-oriented anxiety problems (mean = 6.3%); and by culture cluster: 0.0% for DSM-oriented avoidant personality to 11.6% for DSM-oriented anxiety problems (mean = 3.0%). For strengths, individual differences accounted for 80.8% of variance, societal differences 10.5%, and cultural differences 8.7%. Age and gender had very small effects. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, adults' self-ratings of mental health problems and strengths were associated much more with individual differences than societal/cultural differences, although this varied across scales. These findings support cross-cultural use of standardized measures to assess mental health problems, but urge caution in assessment of personal strengths.

Emotion recognition from the eye region in children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder in Arab and Scandinavian countries.

BACKGROUND: Difficulties in facial emotion recognition (ER) skills are linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in studies performed in Western and Eastern Asian countries. However, there is a paucity of research examining ER skills in Arab countries, where face-covering veils are more common than in Western countries. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to examine basic ER and ER error patterns in Egyptian and Finnish children with and without ASD. METHOD: We employed the eye-submodule of the Frankfurt Test and Training of Facial Affect Recognition (FEFA) and the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ). RESULTS: Arab children with ASD (n = 34, M age = 8.6 years, FSIQ = 96.7) recognized correctly fewer emotions than did Scandinavian children with ASD (n = 32, M age = 12.5 years, FSIQ = 102.8) and Arab typically developing (TD) children (n = 34, M age = 10.3 years, FSIQ = 123.4) in general and specifically on surprise, disgust and neutral scales as well as on a blended emotion scale. Scandinavian children with ASD demonstrated a lower ability to recognize emotions in general and specifically happiness than did Scandinavian TD children. There were no differences between Arab and Scandinavian (n = 28, M age = 13.9 years) TD children in ER accuracy. We found country specific differences in ER error patterns in happiness, sadness and anger: Arab children interpreted these emotions more often as another emotion (happiness = sadness, sadness = anger, anger = sadness and surprise), whereas Scandinavian children interpreted happiness and sadness as neutral expression and anger as disgust. Arab children with ASD labeled sadness and anger in their ER error patterns more negatively than did Arab TD children, but there were no differences between Scandinavian children with ASD and TD in ER error patterns. CONCLUSIONS: The differences between the Arab and Scandinavian children may reflect cultural differences in ER and ER error patterns.

Neuropsychological performance of Finnish and Egyptian children with autism spectrum disorder.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies investigating neuropsychological functioning of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have only analysed certain abilities, such as executive functions or language. While comprehensive assessment of the neuropsychological profile of children with ASD has been the focus of recent research, most of the published evidence originates from single centres. Though studies on differences in neuropsychological features of children with ASD across countries are essential for identifying different phenotypes of ASD, such studies have not been conducted. OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to assess the neuropsychological abilities of children with ASD in northern Finland and Egypt and to examine the effect of age and intelligence quotient (IQ) on these abilities. DESIGN: Selected verbal and non-verbal subtests of the neuropsychological assessment NEPSY were used to examine 88 children with ASD in northern Finland (n=54, age M=11.2, IQ M=117.1) and Egypt (n=34, age M=8.4, IQ M=96.6). RESULTS: Finnish ASD children scored significantly higher than their Egyptian counterparts on the verbal NEPSY subtests Comprehension of Instructions (p<0.001), Comprehension of Sentence Structure (p<0.01), Narrative Memory (p<0.001) and Verbal Fluency (p<0.05) and on the non-verbal NEPSY subtest Design Fluency (p<0.01). Finnish and Egyptian ASD children did not differ on the subtests Memory for Faces, Object Recognition and Object Memory. In addition, we found that age and verbal IQ can have significant influence on neuropsychological performance. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest a possible cultural impact on verbal and visuomotor fluency. However, the ability to recognize and memorize objects and the disability to remember faces appear to be typical for ASD and culturally independent.

Syndromes of Self-Reported Psychopathology for Ages 18-59 in 29 Societies.

This study tested the multi-society generalizability of an eight-syndrome assessment model derived from factor analyses of American adults' self-ratings of 120 behavioral, emotional, and social problems. The Adult Self-Report (ASR; Achenbach and Rescorla 2003) was completed by 17,152 18-59-year-olds in 29 societies. Confirmatory factor analyses tested the fit of self-ratings in each sample to the eight-syndrome model. The primary model fit index (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) showed good model fit for all samples, while secondary indices showed acceptable to good fit. Only 5 (0.06%) of the 8,598 estimated parameters were outside the admissible parameter space. Confidence intervals indicated that sampling fluctuations could account for the deviant parameters. Results thus supported the tested model in societies differing widely in social, political, and economic systems, languages, ethnicities, religions, and geographical regions. Although other items, societies, and analytic methods might yield different results, the findings indicate that adults in very diverse societies were willing and able to rate themselves on the same standardized set of 120 problem items. Moreover, their self-ratings fit an eight-syndrome model previously derived from self-ratings by American adults. The support for the statistically derived syndrome model is consistent with previous findings for parent, teacher, and self-ratings of 1½-18-year-olds in many societies. The ASR and its parallel collateral-report instrument, the Adult Behavior Checklist (ABCL), may offer mental health professionals practical tools for the multi-informant assessment of clinical constructs of adult psychopathology that appear to be meaningful across diverse societies.