24 parents, 24 school psychologists, and 27 elementary school teachers viewed films of three different children and rated them using a 20-item, 9-point Likert-type instrument. The hypothesis that perceived socio-economic status and ethnic identification would differentially affect the three rater groups' attributions of positive and negative behavior was tested and supported. Results indicated that the three groups of raters were markedly different in their ratings of these children and that the children were rated more positively or negatively as a function of their socio-economic status and ethnic identification rather than as a function of their observable behavior.
Biased responding on the Sternberg Recognition Memory Test was observed in four patients with traumatic brain injury. None of these individuals met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's (DSM-IV) criteria for malingering. Individual recognition memory scores were high shortly after injury, declined to chance or below at the 6- and 12-month evaluations, and then showed substantial recovery by the 24-month evaluation. Recall memory performance actually declined slightly across this same 2-year period. Recognition memory scores were related to the extent to which the patients endorsed somatic items on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D). Poor performance was associated with high somatic scores. The relationship between memory and somatic scores on the HAM-D in this case series suggests that unconscious processes can influence memory performance and, because of this, that clinicians should not use such performance as a primary indicator of malingering. More importantly, biased responding and actual memory deficits may coexist. This is indicated in the current cases by the failure of recall memory to improve during the 2 years these patients were followed.
The US Coast Guard Academy provides a unique setting for predictive research using psychological tests. Not only is it a “closed” setting, but all incoming students (“swabs”) take a battery of tests in the summer before their first semester. Although the senior author and her colleagues had succeeded in isolating variables that differentiate cadets who successfully complete the program from those who drop out, the current study was an attempt to use the profile data to make specific predictions concerning completion vs attrition by use of a discriminant analysis. The relative ineffectiveness of personality scales, even after considerable refinement of the variables, to predict this specific outcome is an indication of the complexity of the decision making.
The challenge of a military academy is to provide cadets with the best education possible, while simultaneously providing an intensive socialization experience that will influence their value systems. To assess the impact of this socialization process on value development, a longitudinal study of value change was undertaken at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. One hundred cadets were administered the Survey of Personal Values and the Survey of Interpersonal Values both as freshmen and seniors, and the results indicated that there were significant changes in value strengths over the four years. These results are discussed in terms of the general effect of a college experience versus the unique education at a military academy. The overall conclusion is that military academy experience may be less a process of inculcating new and different values than of reinforcing the institutionally compatible values of those who voluntarily choose the military profession.
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