Professional Practice Guidelines for Personality Assessment.

The current paper conveys guidelines for personality assessment developed by a work group formed by the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), which are intended to serve as an aid for best practices specific to personality assessment for professionals, and a source of information for consumers and policy makers. The guidelines were developed after a careful and systematic review of the literature on personality assessment and examination of practice patterns, and were refined through multiple rounds of input from stakeholders including members of SPA and other professionals routinely conducting personality assessment. The guidelines address the scope of personality assessment and current practice trends, minimum education and training qualifications, ethical practices, diversity considerations, assessment procedures, and appropriate applications. By following these guidelines and other established professional standards, psychologists can help ensure that they practice ethically, competently, with appropriate attention to diversity, and to the highest standards of the profession. These guidelines can function as a resource for educators and supervisors of personality assessment. Additionally, the guidelines will serve as a benchmark for best practices in personality assessment and, as such, represent a first step in what is hoped to be an evolution of ever improving personality assessment standards of practice.

Orthographic Input and the Acquisition of German Final Devoicing by Native Speakers of English.

We present an artificial lexicon study designed to test the hypothesis that native English speakers experience interference from written input when acquiring surface voicing in German words. Native English speakers were exposed to German-like words (e.g., /ʃtɑit/ and /ʃtɑid/, both pronounced [ʃtɑit]) along with pictured meanings, and in some cases, their written forms (e.g., and ). At test, participants whose input included the written forms were more likely to produce final voiced obstruents when naming the pictures, indicating that access to the written forms in the input interfered with their acquisition of target-like surface forms. In a separate experiment, we attempted to moderate this negative impact of the written input by explicitly telling participants about the misleading nature of the words' written forms, with no beneficial effect on their pronunciation accuracy. Together these findings indicate a powerful influence of orthographic input on second language lexical-phonological development that is not readily overcome by a simple intervention.

Assessment Intervention Using the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test: A Clinical Illustration.

Therapeutic assessment (TA) aims to affect change in a client, in part, through an in vivo intervention using any number of assessment methods during a planned assessment intervention session (AIS). To date, neuropsychological tests have not been widely used in AIS. We suggest that the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT) can be a helpful tool, especially when the assessment questions pertain to cognitive functioning, owing to its complexity and the fact that it taps several different cognitive functions. To illustrate this, we present the case of Mr. B, a 45-year-old man with a childhood history of neglect and abuse who was struggling with mood and cognitive complaints in the context of identifying a satisfying career. His performance on the RCFT had illuminated his cognitive style, and an AIS was built around observing and changing his approach to problem solving in the context of a supportive relationship. Based on the intervention, he was able to reassess his narrative of cognitive dysfunction, address his problems in organization, and practice using another person for support in problem solving.

Context Matters: Commentary on Papers by Aschieri, Chudzik, Evans, and Fantini.

This article discusses articles by Aschieri, Chudzik, Evans, and Fantini (this issue) that address cultural considerations in Therapeutic Assessment (TA). The importance of the cultural context in which a TA is conducted is highlighted. Among the themes highlighted are the conceptualization of psychology, and more specifically psychological assessment, as a culture in and of itself and the importance of shame (Aschieri), the way the cultural values influence the practice of assessment (Chudzik), the importance of understanding the meaning of one's experience within their culture (Evans), and the role of subcultural differences (Fantini). The role of culture is seen as an important variable across these articles that explore varied conceptualizations and influences on assessment psychology. Cultural sensitivity and responsivity is seen as a crucial factor in the avoidance of misalliances. The articles in this special section are viewed as important contributions to the TA literature and demonstrate how the TA paradigm can help assessors overcome potential cultural influences that could affect the benefit of a psychological assessment.

A comparison of new and revised Rorschach measures of schizophrenic functioning in a Serbian clinical sample.

We empirically evaluated indexes derived from the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS) and the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) that are used for the assessment of psychotic functioning in schizophrenia. We compared the Perceptual Thinking Index (PTI) and the Ego Impairment Index (EII-2) with their revised versions: Thought and Perception Composite (TP-Comp) and EII-3. We evaluated their predictive validity for differentiating schizophrenic from nonschizophrenic patients in a Serbian sample. The sample consisted of 211 (109 men and 102 women, 18-50 years old) inpatients in Serbia who were divided into 2 groups: schizophrenic (100) and nonschizophrenic (111). Test administration, coding, and form quality classification followed CS guidelines. Logistic regression analysis indicated that the new indexes TP-Comp and EII-3 have slightly better predictive power than their counterparts, PTI and EII-2, in identification of schizophrenia, and that TP-Comp performed better than other indexes, although all 4 indexes were successful in differentiating these groups. The results supported the use of TP-Comp in diagnosis of schizophrenia and generally provided evidence for the utility of the Rorschach in evaluating psychosis and for its use in a cross-national context.

Differentiation of psychotic from nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients: the Rorschach Perceptual Thinking Index.

The aim of the study was to investigate the validity of the Rorschach Perceptual Thinking Index (PTI) to detect psychotic perceptual and thought disturbance in a sample of Slovene psychiatric inpatients. Using a sample of 275 adult psychiatric inpatients of both sexes, we examined the differences between patients with psychosis (PP) and patients with no psychotic features (NP) from various diagnostic groups on the global PTI and its subcomponent variables. PPs obtained significantly higher PTI scores, indicating more disturbed perception and more thinking disturbance, than NPs. No differences were found for diagnostic differences within the PP and NP groups. Results are in accordance with previous studies of the PTI as a valid cross-cultural index of perceptual and thinking disturbance.

Neonatal mortality of elk driven by climate, predator phenology and predator community composition.

1. Understanding the interaction among predators and between predation and climate is critical to understanding the mechanisms for compensatory mortality. We used data from 1999 radio-marked neonatal elk (Cervus elaphus) calves from 12 populations in the north-western United States to test for effects of predation on neonatal survival, and whether predation interacted with climate to render mortality compensatory. 2. Weibull survival models with a random effect for each population were fit as a function of the number of predator species in a community (3-5), seven indices of climatic variability, sex, birth date, birth weight, and all interactions between climate and predators. Cumulative incidence functions (CIF) were used to test whether the effects of individual species of predators were additive or compensatory. 3. Neonatal elk survival to 3 months declined following hotter previous summers and increased with higher May precipitation, especially in areas with wolves and/or grizzly bears. Mortality hazards were significantly lower in systems with only coyotes (Canis latrans), cougars (Puma concolor) and black bears (Ursus americanus) compared to higher mortality hazards experienced with gray wolves (Canis lupus) and grizzly bears (Ursus horribilis). 4. In systems with wolves and grizzly bears, mortality by cougars decreased, and predation by bears was the dominant cause of neonatal mortality. Only bear predation appeared additive and occurred earlier than other predators, which may render later mortality by other predators compensatory as calves age. Wolf predation was low and most likely a compensatory source of mortality for neonatal elk calves. 5. Functional redundancy and interspecific competition among predators may combine with the effects of climate on vulnerability to predation to drive compensatory mortality of neonatal elk calves. The exception was the evidence for additive bear predation. These results suggest that effects of predation by recovering wolves on neonatal elk survival, a contentious issue for management of elk populations, may be less important than the composition of the predator community. Future studies would benefit by synthesizing overwinter calf and adult-survival data sets, ideally from experimental studies, to test the roles of predation in annual compensatory and additive mortality of elk.

A Boston Yankee: Paul M. Lerner and the heart of assessment.

In this article, I review the contributions of Paul M. Lerner to the theory and practice of personality assessment. I contrast Lerner's clinical approach with a narrow empirical approach along several dimensions. I explicate Lerner's experiential-psychoanalytic method. I draw attention to the patient's subjective experience as the nexus for interpretation and to the centrality of the patient-examiner relationship in the conduct of assessment.

Production and perception of temporal patterns in native and non-native speech.

Two experiments examined production and perception of English temporal patterns by native and non-native participants. Experiment 1 indicated that native and non-native (L1 = Chinese) talkers differed significantly in their production of one English duration pattern (i.e., vowel lengthening before voiced versus voice-less consonants) but not another (i.e., tense versus lax vowels). Experiment 2 tested native and non-native listener identification of words that differed in voicing of the final consonant by the native and non-native talkers whose productions were substantially different in experiment 1. Results indicated that differences in native and non-native intelligibility may be partially explained by temporal pat-tern differences in vowel duration although other cues such as presence of stop releases and burst duration may also contribute. Additionally, speech intelligibility depends on shared phonetic knowledge between talkers and listeners rather than only on accuracy relative to idealized production norms.

The interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for native speakers of Mandarin: Production and perception of English word-final voicing contrasts.

This study investigated the intelligibility of native and Mandarin-accented English speech for native English and native Mandarin listeners. The word-final voicing contrast was considered (as in minimal pairs such as `cub' and `cup') in a forced-choice word identification task. For these particular talkers and listeners, there was evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners (i.e., native Mandarin listeners were more accurate than native English listeners at identifying Mandarin-accented English words). However, there was no evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for talkers (i.e., native Mandarin listeners did not find Mandarin-accented English speech more intelligible than native English speech). When listener and talker phonological proficiency (operationalized as accentedness) was taken into account, it was found that the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners held only for the low phonological proficiency listeners and low phonological proficiency speech. The intelligibility data were also considered in relation to various temporal-acoustic properties of native English and Mandarin-accented English speech in effort to better understand the properties of speech that may contribute to the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit.

Different differences: revelation and disclosure of social identity in the psychoanalytic situation.

The authors propose a taxonomy of social identities, suggesting that three different classifications of identities can be distinguished. These comprise those that are innate and visible, such as race or gender; those that are innate, but invisible, such as sexual orientation; and those that are acquired or achieved, such as marital status or political affiliation. The authors argue that each of these categories has different implications for the revelation or disclosure of aspects of the therapist's identity, as well as for transference-countertransference dynamics. These points are illustrated with brief clinical examples.

The interclinician reliability of Rorschach interpretation in four data sets.

To examine agreement on Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2004) interpretations, 55 patient protocols were interpreted by 3 to 8 clinicians across 4 data sets on a representative set of 29 characteristics. Substantial reliability was observed across data sets, although a problematic design produced lower results in one. Unexpectedly, a Q-sort task had slightly lower reliability than a simple rating task. As expected, scales that summarized judgments had higher agreement than judgments to individual interpretive statements, and some clinicians produced more generalizable inferences than others. Interpretations for all clinicians were more strongly associated with patients' psychometric true scores (aggregated judgment M range = .82 to .92) than with the judgments of other clinicians (range = .76 to .89). Compared to meta-analyses of interrater reliability in psychology and medicine, the findings indicate these clinicians could reliably interpret Rorschach CS data.

The end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine): comment on Erard.

We review Erard's (this issue) article. We laud him for the measured tone and carefully reasoned position that is taken. Although his main point that The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the new American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code (2002) need not be seen as disasters for the practice of assessment, we pose several problems with his analysis. In particular, we argue that although his point that test security is not airtight at present is well taken, nonetheless, it is important to set the bar as high as possible to limit breaches in security. Although Erard is correct that more complex instruments may withstand attempts to manipulate the results, many smaller or more focused instruments may be irrevocably damaged. Furthermore, the release of raw test data can have a deleterious effect in the clinical arena, especially in instances in which it could be subject to misinterpretation and misuse. Finally, we criticize the APA for subjugating the interests of the profession to political expediency.

Effects of speaking rate on temporal patterns of English.

Individual subjects have been found to show considerable variation in the extent to which they manifest certain temporal patterns of English in their speech. Because at least some differences across speakers appear to be related to the fact that some subjects typically talk faster/slower than others, the present investigation examined variability in temporal patterns by having subjects produce target stimuli in sentences spoken at normal and fast rates. The results from these manipulations of speaking rate generally supported previous findings related to temporal patterns as a function of 'natural' variations in rate of speech. That is, there was considerable variability among the 15 subjects in the normal speaking rate condition in the extent to which temporal parameters such as final-syllable vowel lengthening occurred. In addition, there was substantial variation in these parameters in the fast speaking rate condition, and some systematic changes in certain patterns also occurred as a function of the rate change. For example, vowel lengthening preceding voiced obstruents tended to decrease when subjects spoke at a fast versus a normal rate, whereas phrase-final vowel lengthening was typically greater when they spoke at a faster rate.