Research on the co-occurrence of tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine consumption habits is reviewed. Evidence to date indicates that, among each of the three possible pairs of relationships of these three substances, alcohol and tobacco use and tobacco and caffeine use are moderately to strongly related, and caffeine and alcohol use weakly related. We found no studies that examined the concurrent use of all three substances. The need for improved methods of assessing substance use and research examining health-risk behaviors as interrelated clusters is emphasized, and mechanisms that might account for these interrelationships are discussed.
Developments over the past decade in psychology, in medicine, in funding institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, and in industry make clear that the rapidly growing areas of behavioral medicine and behavioral health are presenting psychology as well as its sister professions with new opportunities for training, research, and practice. Specific developments within psychology leading to the establishment of APA's Division 38 (Health Psychology) are traced. Also traced are some activities on the national level that have led to the development of organizations with a more interdisciplinary focus. Despite a modicum of overselling in some quarters, behavioral health-and health psychology appear to be ideas whose time has come.
The data analyzed were the 14 WAIS-R scores from each of the individuals who comprised the WAIS-R standardization sample. Examined was the individual VIQ-PIQ difference from only the initial examination of each of the 1880 subjects, as well as the test-retest change in each of the 14 WAIS-R scores for each of the 119 subjects who were retested. The results revealed that, although the WAIS-R has excellent psychometric reliability as reflected in its standard error of measurement of a VIQ-PIQ difference and its impressively high test-retest Pearson r values, the actual magnitudes of the differences between the VIQ and PIQ assessed in a single examination, or the magnitudes of gain or loss in the 14 scores on retest, for some of these normal individuals were sufficiently high that such base-rate data should be routinely considered by clinical neuropsychologists and other practitioners.
Increasingly, psychological assessment is conducted with clients and patients involved in child custody and personal injury litigation. Clinical neuropsychologists are being asked sophisticated questions by attorneys regarding the validity of practitioners' most highly respected tests. Research reviewed here bears on the validity of test-buttressed clinical opinions, including research related to the following psychometric properties of individual test scores: standard errors of measurement, test-retest stability and subtest-to-subtest intercorrelations. The highest and the lowest subtest scores used as indices, respectively, of an individual's premorbid level of cognitive functioning and the degree of current impairment from that presumed earlier level is not justified when used in isolation from the life history and current medical findings. Although many practitioners use information from the wider research, courtroom experience suggests that a number do not; contrariwise, the attempt of Faust and Ziskin (1988a) to undermine the courtroom testimony of every psychologist who serves as an expert witness is also criticized.
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