A comparison of four PTSD measures' convergent validities in Vietnam veterans.

We compared the convergent validities of four commonly used post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) measures in 80 help-seeking Vietnam veterans by contrasting their intercorrelations. When scored as continuous severity or frequency measures, the Mississippi Scale for Combat-related PTSD's and the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Interview's (PTSD-I's) concordances with other measures were similar to one anothers' and generally larger than those of either the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) PTSD module or the MMPI PTSD scale. However, when used only to identify stress disorder's presence or absence, the four techniques' concordances were nearly identical. This suggested that the four measures have similar convergent validities when used simply to identify PTSD, but that the PTSD-I and Mississippi scale offer better convergent validity than the MMPI or DIS instruments when used as severity measures.

The comparative concurrent validities of the Shipley Institute of Living Scale and the Henmon-Nelson Tests of Mental Ability.

This study compared the abilities of the Shipley Institute of Living Scale and the Henmon-Nelson Tests of Mental Ability to predict Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) scores in psychiatric hospital patients. The Henmon-Nelson DIQs accounted for about 50% more WAIS-R Verbal and Full Scale IQ variance than did the Shipley IQs, apparently because of their higher correlations with the Information, Vocabulary, and, perhaps, Similarities subtests. Because Henmon-Nelson scores were more variable and generally higher than their WAIS-R counterparts, statistical adjustments were needed to optimize Wechsler IQ estimates. Therefore, regression formulae and a conversion table for the estimation of WAIS-R Full Scale IQs from Henmon-Nelson and Shipley intelligence scores also are presented.

A factor analysis of Ellis' irrational beliefs.

In an effort to identify, organize, and operationally define the philosophies that underlie Albert Ellis' self-defeating beliefs, the authors factored an 11-item irrational-values self-report instrument given to 190 psychiatric patients. Four factors emerged and were named to reflect the contents of their items--"I need to control a dangerous world," "Self-assertion is painful," "I need affirmation," and "I lack control over my fate."

The contributions of self-defeating philosophies, perceived helplessness, and repression to anxiety among psychiatric patients.

Four of the most influential psychological explanations for the development of anxiety attribute it to (1) repressed awareness of undesirable emotions; (2) the emergence of unacceptable feelings from the unconscious; (3) adherence to irrational, self-defeating philosophies; and (4) perceived helplessness/lack of control over one's affairs. To test these theories, the authors administered the Trait Anxiety, Denial, Irrational Beliefs, and Locus of Control scales to 190 psychiatric inpatients. Appropriate zero-order, attenuation-corrected, multiple, and partial correlations were run. Denial was correlated negatively with Trait Anxiety; this is consistent with the view that awareness of unpleasant emotions generates anxiety, but does not support the claim that it is the result of repression. The correlations of Trait Anxiety with the Irrational Beliefs scale were substantial. However, its relationships with Locus of Control were limited and nonsignificant after the effects of the Denial and Irrational Beliefs scales were removed statistically. The findings lend support to the positions that anxiety results from self-defeating philosophies and/or the emergence of unpleasant thoughts about oneself, but give only modest support to the "perceived helplessness" hypothesis and seem to contradict the "excessive repression" explanation.

The comparative validities of six MMPI repression scales.

The validities of six MMPI repression scales were compared using each of the other five and an independent measure as criteria (N = 190). The data gave little support to the Eichman, Welsh, and Haan Repression scales as operational definitions of this construct. The results for the Little-Fisher Denial, Byrne et al. R-S, and Haan Denial scales showed more promise.

A test of the interference and normal associate bias theories of schizophrenic cognitive deficit.

The performances of schizophrenics, psychiatric controls, and normals on No Distractor, Irrelevant Distractor, and Associate Distractor memory tasks matched for length, reliability, and difficulty were compared to evaluate the interference theory and a variation of the normal associates bias theory of schizophrenic thought disorder. The distractors had greater negative impacts on the performances of the schizophrenics than on those of the normals or psychiatric controls. However, the associate distractors did not interfere with the learning of the schizophrenics more than the irrelevant distractors did. The results offer strong support for interference theories of schizophrenic thought disorder, but the hypotheses we developed from Chapman and Chapman's (Disordered Thought in Schizophrenia, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1973) normal associate bias model did not assist in predicting our results.

The relationship of personality style to abstract thinking deficits in schizophrenia.

Hypothesized that the correlation between Inability to Abstract and Autism measures of schizophrenics would be larger after the effects of relevant personality variables were partialed out than before. The multiple correlations of these deficit measures with 15 of the Sixteen Personality Factor scales and a measure of verbosity were determined in a sample of 100 schizophrenics. The correlations between Inability to Abstract and Autism before and after those scales that contributed significantly to the Rs had been partialed out also were calculated. Neither was significant. The results offer no support for the view that observed differences between schizophrenic subgroups in inability to abstract and autism reflect variations in personality style rather than cognitive factors.

An MMPI sign to separate organic from functional psychiatric patients.

Evaluated the utilities of all 90 possible unweighted additive/subtractive two-scale MMPI combinations as indices to separate brain-damaged from functional patient groups in a Veterans Administration psychiatric hospital. One index, Hs-PT, showed more promise than any of the other 89. Hs-PT mean scores were significantly higher among organics than among alcoholics, neurotics, affective psychoses, character disorders, process schizophrenics or reactive schizophrenics. Interpretative information on the Hs-PT index was presented.