Current practices and advances in pediatric neurosurgery.

Advances in the field of neuroscience are enhancing outcomes for pediatric neurosurgical patients. Innovative diagnostic tools that include ventriculoscopy for hydrocephalus; long-term monitoring with subdural and epidural electrodes for seizures; and intraoperative computer-assisted, three-dimensional imaging for tumors are currently aiding neurosurgeons. These advances in the care of pediatric patients require the perioperative nurse to reevaluate and expand the nurse's role to optimize patient outcomes.

One personality, multiple selves: integrating personality and social roles.

How do people maintain multiple, role-specific self-conceptions as well as a consistent sense of self? In a sample of middle-aged women, we examined three issues: (a) the ways in which people view themselves as both different and similar across social roles (e.g., parent, friend, worker), (b) how role-specific self-conceptions and general self-conceptions are related, and (c) the merits of predicting role-specific criteria from role-specific and general self-conceptions. Results showed that subjects' self-conceptions were specific to role contexts, yet highly correlated across those same role contexts. In addition, role-specific self-conceptions were more similar to the general self-concept for roles with which the individual was more satisfied. Finally, as predicted from the bandwidth-fidelity trade-off, ratings of the general self correlated moderately with outcomes across all role domains, whereas ratings of role-specific self-conceptions correlated strongly with outcomes for the same role, but not in other roles.

Do children use the big five, too? Content and structural form in personality description.

Free personality descriptions generated by 11-year-olds in the Role Construct Repertory Test (Kelly, 1955) were content-analyzed. The children's personality constructs were coded according to structural form (e.g., habits, preferences, traits) and "Big Five" personality content domain (e.g., Agreeableness, Conscientiousness). Findings showed that the children generated constructs from all of the Big Five personality domains. Agreeableness constructs were used most frequently, replicating the prevalence of that domain in studies of adult trait attribution (Peabody & Goldberg, 1989). However, in contrast to adults, less than half of the children's Big Five constructs were expressed as personality traits. The children's use of structural forms varied systematically with the personality domain they were describing. Target likability and age were also found to be related to the personality domains and structural forms of the children's constructs.

The divided self: concurrent and longitudinal effects of psychological adjustment and social roles on self-concept differentiation.

The relation between self-concept differentiation (SCD), the tendency to see oneself as having different personality characteristics in different social roles, and psychological adjustment was examined in a sample of college students and a sample of middle-aged women. In both studies, Ss with high levels of SCD showed poor emotional adjustment (e.g., depression) and tended to reject social norms and conventions (e.g., low socialization). Longitudinal analyses demonstrated that these same characteristics measured at age 21 predicted SCD measured more than 30 years later in middle age. These findings provide strong evidence that SCD is a sign of fragmentation of the self rather than specialization of role identities. The social context was also an important determinant of SCD; both dissatisfaction with role performance and frequent role changes in relationships and jobs predicted SCD measured 9 years later.