Perspectives on Individual Differences - Böcker

With the recent increase in the scope of drug and alcohol problems has come an awareness of the need for solutions. In this context, federal support for research on drug problems increased tremendously during the last 10 to 15 years with the establishment of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Funding from these and other sources has led to a substantial increase in the quantity and quality ofpublished work related to substance abuse. As data accumulate, it is becoming more apparent that substance abuse problems are extremely complex and are influenced by a variety ofbiological psychological, and environmental variables. Un­ fortunately it has proved difficult to go beyond this conclusion to a de­ scription of how these multiple factors work tagether to influence the development of, and recovery from, drug and alcohol dependence. The purpose of this book is to try to meet that objective by including, in one volume, Iiterature reviews and theoretical analyses from a wide variety of drug researchers. We chose the authors in an attempt to assure that each of the various Ievels of analysis appropriate to the substance abuse problems would be included. In each case, the author was asked to consider how the variables in is or her particular domain might con­ tribute to the appearance of individual differences in both alcohol and drug problems.

The Neuropsychology of Individual Differences: A Developmental Per­ spective was designed to sliIVey the complexities and subtleties of neu­ rologically based differences in human beings. By conceptualizing and presenting subject matter in a developmental sequence, we hoped to emphasize the inseparable union between the science of neuropsychology and the study of human behavior. Following a brief introductory chapter, the volume opens with chap­ ters concerning critical preliminary questions, such as establishing a foundation and rationale for a neuropsychological basis for individual differences and consideration of important methodological issues. It pro­ ceeds with discussions of the role of neuropsychology in the individual's efforts to organize the world via such basic means as perception and temperament. Three chapters follow that discuss individual differences in higher cortical functions: cognitive ability, language, and learning. Neuropsychological differences between the sexes and in the expression of psychopathological and neurological conditions comprise the topics for the next three chapters. The final topical chapter provides a discussion of rehabilitation of neurological disorders in children, and the volume concludes with a synthesis of all contributions.

This volume represents a beginning effort to compile a history of educational psychology The project began, innocuously enough, several years ago when we decided to add mon material about the history of educational psychology to the undergraduate course we were teaching. What seemed like a simple task became very complex as we searched in vain for a volume dealing with the topic. We ended up drawing on various histories of psychology that devoted anywhere from a few paragraphs to several pages to the topic and on a very few articles addressing the issue. We were startled, frankly, by the apparent lack of interest in the history of our field and decided to attempt to compile a history ourselves. As is the case with any edited volume, the contributing authors deserve credit for its positive features. They uniformly made every effort asked of them and taught us much about educational psychology. Any errors or omissions are our responsibility alone.

In this book we have attempted to confront a number of issues that are intimately related to the theoretical basis of behavior therapy. We believe that behavior therapy is an extremely efficient procedure for the treatment of neurotic disorders; that it is based on certain principles derived from learning theory; and that it is unique in using basic scientific principles in psychology in the service of applied and practical ends. We believe that we are here dealing with much more than the advantageous use of serendipitous borrowings from nonexistent principles, the cookbook collection of precepts, methods, and working rules that happen to have lasting effects. We also believe that there is truly a general principle unde. rlying behavior therapy, rather than a varied mass of nonintegrated therapies that have little in common other than a name. These beliefs are often contes ted, but usually those who oppose them do so on the basis of misconceptions and misunderstandings that indicate a lack of knowledge of fundamental facts. It is the purpose of this book to remove these misconceptions and misunderstandings, and to bring up to date our knowledge in certain fundamental areas of learning theory, behavior therapy, and the biological foundations of per­ sonality and individual differences. There are three major groups of misconceptions and misunderstandings. The first of these relates to beliefs held by many psychiatrists and cognitive psychologists relating to behavior therapy.

During the last two decades the experimental investigation of atomic coherence phenomena has made rapid progress. Detailed studies have been performed of angular correlations, spin polarization effects, angular momen­ tum transfer, and the alignment parameters which characterize the charge cloud of excited atoms. The enormous growth in the number of these investigations was made possible through substantial development and application of new experimental technology, the development of sophisti­ cated theoretical models and numerical methods, and a fine interplay between theory and experiment. This interplay has resulted in a deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms of atomic collision processes. It is the purpose of the chapters in this book to provide introductions for nonspecialists to the various fields of this area as well as to present new experimental and theoretical results and ideas. The interest in spin-dependent interactions in electron-atom scattering has a long history; it dates back to the early investigations of Mott in 1929. While the more traditional measurements in this field were concerned with the determination of spin polarization and asymmetries, the range of investi­ gations has been expanded enormously during the last few years and now includes many observables sensitive to one or more of the various spin­ dependent interactions. The understanding of these effects requires a theoretical description of the orientation and alignment parameters of the target atoms, of the forma­ tion of resonances, of the influence of electron-exchange processes, and of the relativistic interactions inside the atom and between projectile and target.

A style is any pattern we see in a person's way of accomplishing a particular type of task. The "task" of interest in the present context is education-learning and remembering in school and transferring what is learned to the world outside of school. Teachers are expressing some sort of awareness of style when they observe a particular action taken by a particular student and then say something like: "This doesn't surprise me! That's just the way he is. " Observation of a single action cannot reveal a style. One's impres­ sion of a person's style is abstracted from multiple experiences of the person under similar circumstances. In education, if we understand the styles of individual students, we can often anticipate their perceptions and subsequent behaviors, anticipate their misunderstandings, take ad­ vantage of their strengths, and avoid (or correct) their weaknesses. These are some of the goals of the present text. In the first chapter, I present an overview of the terminology and research methods used by various authors of the text. Although they differ a bit with regard to meanings ascribed to certain terms or with regard to conclusions drawn from certain types of data, there is none­ theless considerable agreement, especially when one realizes that they represent three different continents and five different nationalities.

The title that the authors have chosen for this book, The Causes and Cures of Criminality, suggests that it may be just another book specu­ lating on the sociological evils that need to be put right for "everything in the garden to be lovely." If this is the expectation, the reader could not be more mistaken. The recurrent theme, in fact, is a strong accent on psychological experiments. Both authors have tackled the theoretical and practical side of crime through an exhaustive literature review of past experi­ mental work. Hans J. Eysenck has concentrated on the constitutional and biological theory of criminality, whereas Gisli Gudjonsson has con­ cerned himself more with a review of ongoing research into therapy and possible prevention of antisocial behavior. Part I goes into considerable detail on the causes of criminality, stressing much of the strangely neglected area of individual differences in personality. Research studies point to a very heavy involvement of heredity in the causation of criminality, but the authors are careful to acknowledge that much can be done environmentally to discourage a life of crime once those persons who are at risk have been identified.

The motivation underlying our development of a "handbook" of creativity was different from what usually is described by editors of other such volumes. Our sense that a handbook was needed sprang not from a deluge of highly erudite studies calling out for organization, nor did it stem from a belief that the field had become so fully articulated that such a book was necessary to provide summation and reference. Instead, this handbook was conceptualized as an attempt to provide structure and organization for a field of study that, from our perspective, had come to be a large-scale example of a "degenerating" research program (see Brown, Chapter 1). The handbook grew out of a series of discussions that spanned several years. At the heart of most of our interactions was a profound unhappiness with the state of research on creativity. Our consensus was that the number of "good" works published on creativity each year was small and growing smaller. Further, we could not point to a journal, text, or professional organization that was providing leadership for the field in shaping a scientifically sound framework for the development of research programs in creativity. At the same time, we were casting about for a means of honoring a dear friend, E. Paul Torrance. Our decision was that we might best be able to honor Paul and influence research on creativity by developing a handbook designed to challenge traditional perspectives while offering research agendas based on contemporary psychological views.

This book discusses the interaction of light with atoms, concentrating on the semiclassical descriptions of the processes. It begins by discussing the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with a classical charged dipole oscillator. Then, in a pivotal chapter, the interaction with a free charge is described (the Compton effect); it is shown that, in order to give agreement with observation, certain quantum rules must be introduced. The book then proceeds to discuss the interaction from this point of view-light always being described classically, atoms described quantum-mechanically, with quantum rules for the interaction. Subsequent chapters deal with stimulated emission and absorption, spontaneous emission and decay, the general problem of light stimulating and being scattered from the two-state atom, the photoelectric effect, and photoelectric counting statistics. Finally the author gives a personal view on the nature of light and his own way of looking at certain paradoxes. The writing of this book was originally conceived as a collaboration between the present author and a colleague of former years, Alan V. Durrant. Indeed, some preliminary exchange of ideas took place in the mid-1970s. But the problems of joint-authorship from antipodean positions proved too difficult and the project was abandoned. I would like to record my indebted­ ness to him for the stimulation of this early association. I also acknowledge the encouragement of my colleagues at the Univer­ sity of Otago. Special reference must be made to D. M.

The growing interest in research on temperament during the last decade has been re­ corded by several authors (e. g. , R. Plomin; J. E. Bates) from such sources of informa­ tion as the Social Sciences Citation Index or Psychological Abstracts. The editors' inquiry shows that the number of cases in which the term temperament was used in the title of a paper or in the paper's abstract published in Psychological Abstracts reveals an essential increase in research on temperament. During the years 1975 to 1979, the term temperament was used in the title and/or summary of 173 abstracts (i. e. , 34. 6 publications per year); during the next five years (1980-1984), it was used in 367 abstracts (73. 4 publications per year), whereas in the last five years (1985 to 1989), the term has appeared in 463 abstracts, that is, in 92. 6 publications per year. Even if the review of temperament literature is restricted to those abstracts, it can easily be concluded that temperament is used in different contexts and with different meanings, hardly allowing any comparisons or general statements. One of the consequences of this state of affairs is that our knowledge on temperament does not cumulate despite the increasing research activity in this field. This situation in temperament research motivated the editors to organize a one­ week workshop on The Diagnosis of Temperament (Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany, September 1987).

This book presents an introduction to the study of relationships among per­ sonality, social skills, and psychopathology. Although research findings dur­ ing the last decade have made it clear that the relationships among these variables are almost always complex and mUltiply determined, many clini­ cians and theoreticians have not incorporated such complexities into their models of human behavior and therapeutic intervention. This discrepancy between clinical theory and research-based findings has been of special con­ cern to us because we have been both empirically oriented academic re­ searchers and practicing clinicians. It is our belief that clinical theory relat­ ed to personality, social skills, and psychopathology can be enriched by re­ search findings from a wide range of fields-from human genetics, tempera­ ment, and personality to family systems, affect, psychophysiology, and learning. This book is divided into an introductory chapter and three sections. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the issues in the field, compares models, and provides suggestions for further integration and ar­ ticulation of concepts related to personality, social skills, and psycho­ pathology. The book's first section presents state-of-the-art general models of interactions among personality, social skills, and psychopathology. Con­ nolly opens this section with a chapter that reviews longitudinal findings in­ dicating that personality traits predict the onset of psychopathology and marital distress. The etiology of these and related findings is the subject of other chapters in this section.

Demonstrating that the magnitude and pattern of cardiovascular response to stress varies markedly between individuals, this work discusses the mechanisms by which the cardiovascular system is mobilized during stress, the determinants of individual differences, and the pathophysiological processes by which responses to stress may lead to cardiovascular disease. Behavioral scientists from a variety of disciplines will find the work pertinent to their research.

No diagnosis of mental disorder is more important or more disputable than that of "schizophrenia." The 1982 case of John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan, brought both aspects of this diagnostic dilemma to the forefront of national attention. It became evident to the general public that the experts engaged to study him exhaustively could not agree on whether Hinckley was schizophrenic. General public outrage ensued, as schizophrenia, "the sacred symbol of psychiatry," in the words of Thomas Szasz (1976), emerged as a king of Alice in Wonderland travesty. Schizo­ phrenia seemed not to be a legitimate diagnostic entity but some sort of facade erected to protect the guilty. In 1973, David Rosenhan had already shown the readers of Science that schizo­ phrenia was a label that could be given to normal people presenting with a supposed auditory hallucination on even one occasion. In Rosenhan's studies, mental health professionals were outclassed by the regular psychiatric hospital patients, who cor­ rectly saw the false schizophrenics as imposters while the professional diagnosticians continued to fool themselves.

Dementia is a state that has implications for several groups. There are, first, those who wish to assess its nature and impact in an objective and scientific fashion, using tools of research to uncover dementia's causes, effects, and parameters. The result has been a rapidly expanding literature in diverse disciplines: physiology, chemistry, neurology, psychology, and sociology, among others. Second, there are those professionals and caregivers who work di­ rectly with patients and other caregivers and who must assess and apply interventions. Third, physicians are involved in diagnosis and treatment (so far as possible) and are responsible for communicating the ominous meanings of the destructive disease process. Fourth, there are the caregivers, who accept accountability for the future of a human who increasingly shows a "robbing of the mind" in his or her behaviors. The needs and stresses of those who care for and about those with progressive dementia are among the most intense imaginable. They need support of many kinds, frequently without knowing what to ask or of whom to ask it. Finally, there are the patients, who increasingly become dependent as their mental competencies decline. They need empathic care-including answers to questions about cause, stabilization, or reversal of the de­ menting process. Even more, they need cure. Further, present and future generations need the assurance of prevention. This volume surveys present "knowledge" about dementia and its consequences.

Assembling original papers by the field's foremost investigators, this history demonstrates the continuity and progress made across five decades of personality psychology research. In addition to providing a historical perspective for the discipline, the work aims to inspire a more coherent agenda for future research.

This volume is an outgrowth of an invitational conference held in October 1991 on the main campus of Texas A&M University and sponsored by a grant from the Dean's Office of the College of Education. The expressed purpose of the conference was to allow researchers from too often dispa­ rate areas of research related to individual differences to come together and discuss their approaches to the topic, share ideas, and critique their differing paradigms to shorten the time it takes for researchers in parallel disciplines to discover advances that may aid their own work. We sought to bring together world-class psychometricians and statis­ ticians, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists focused on the common theme of individual differences. Each reviewed advances in his or her own work that has clear implications for enhancing our understanding of indi­ vidual differences - from defining and partitioning variance components to modeling individual differences to structural and functional cortical variations that produce individual differences. The Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University, Bruce Thompson, took a lead role along with Victor L.

Deafness is a "low incidence" disability and, therefore not studied or understood in the same way as other disabilities. Historically, research in deafness has been conducted by a small group of individuals who communicated mainly with each other. That is not to say that we did not sometimes publish in the mainstream or attempt to communicate outside our small circle. Nonetheless, most research appeared in deafness-related publications where it was not likely to be seen or valued by psychologists. Those researchers did not understand what they could leam from the study of deaf people or how their knowledge of individual differ­ ences and abilites applied to that population. In Deafness, Deprivation, ami /Q, Jeffrey Braden pulls together two often unrelated fields: studies of intelligence and deafness. The book includes the largest single compilation of data describing deaf people's intelligence that exists. Here is a careful, well-documented, and very thorough analysis of virtually ali the research available. Those who have studied human intelligence have long noted that deafness provides a "natural experiment." This book makes evident two contrary results: on the one hand, some research points to the impact deafness has on intelligence; on the other hand, the research supports the fact that deafness has very little, if any, impact on nonverbal measures of intelligence.

In this groundbreaking handbook, more than 60 internationally respected authorities explore the interface between intelligence and personality by bringing together a wide range of potential integrative links drawn from theory, research, measurements, and applications.

Leading researchers examine how behavior genetics provides crucial insights into genetic and environmental influences in the development of biobehavioral disorders. These influences are illustrated by using the examples of cardiovascular disease, obesity and eating disorders, alcohol use and abuse, and smoking behavior. Contributors discuss the relevance of molecular genetic approaches and twin and family designs to the complex field of behavior medicine research.

This fully updated, comprehensive text examines the assessment of intellectual abilities in children and adults. Chapters emphasize the rationale and techniques for measuring intellectual function in educational, clinical, and other organizational settings. The author includes detailed descriptions of the most widely used procedures for administering, scoring, and interpreting individual and group intelligence tests. This second edition features additional material on testing the handicapped, individual and group differences in mental abilities, theories and issues in the assessment of mental abilities, and new tests for measuring intelligence and related abilities.

Examination stress and test anxiety are pervasive problems in modern society. As the information age continues to evolve, test scores will become even more important than they are today in evaluating applicants for demanding jobs and candidates for admission into highly competitive educational programs. Because test anxiety gen- ally causes decrements in performance and undermines academic achievement, the development of effective therapeutic interventions for reducing its adverse effects will continue to be an important priority for counselors, psychologists, and educators. Alleviating test anxiety will also serve to counteract the diminished access to edu- tional and occupational opportunities that is frequently experienced by test-anxious individuals. As its title promises, this volume provides a state-of-the-art evaluation of the nature, antecedents, correlates, and consequences of examination stress and test anxiety. Professor Zeidner’s cogent and comprehensive analysis of the affective, cognitive, somatic, and behavioral manifestations of test anxiety are grounded in the extensive knowledge he has gained from his own research on the assessment and treatment of test anxiety. This work has also benefitted from the author’s lo- standing and productive collaboration with leading contributors to test anxiety theory and research, and his active participation in national and international conferences devoted to understanding test anxiety, including those convened by the Society for Test Anxiety Research (STAR).

Temperament is the first monograph in 40 years to present theories and basic findings in the field of temperament from a broad international and interdisciplinary perspective. The text, based on the author's four decades of personal study and data collection, thoroughly explores the physiological, biochemical, and genetic bases of temperament - incorporating age-specific methods of assessment developed through child- and adult-oriented approaches. The 147 illustrations comprise tables of the most popular temperament inventories for both children and adults, and unique data tables illustrating the psychometric features of temperament inventories based on self-rating and rating by others.

A guide which systematically addresses the numerous theoretical, conceptual, and empirical issues pertaining to commitment and relationship longevity. Topics covered include conceptualization and measurement; how commitment develops in relationships; basic commitment processes; commitment within diverse populations; applications and clinical issues; and the relationship between commitment and trust, betrayal, jealousy and relationship stability.

This text brings together a broad sampling of the most respected instruments in the psychologist's armamentarium along with promising new tests of cognitive, vocational, and personal functioning. Contributors presents the most up-to-date versions of these tests in a practical, clearly written format that covers the development, psychometrics, administrative considerations, and interpretive hypotheses for each instrument.

This fully updated, comprehensive text examines the assessment of intellectual abilities in children and adults. Chapters emphasize the rationale and techniques for measuring intellectual function in educational, clinical, and other organizational settings. The author includes detailed descriptions of the most widely used procedures for administering, scoring, and interpreting individual and group intelligence tests. This second edition features additional material on testing the handicapped, individual and group differences in mental abilities, theories and issues in the assessment of mental abilities, and new tests for measuring intelligence and related abilities.

The title that the authors have chosen for this book, The Causes and Cures of Criminality, suggests that it may be just another book specu­ lating on the sociological evils that need to be put right for "everything in the garden to be lovely." If this is the expectation, the reader could not be more mistaken. The recurrent theme, in fact, is a strong accent on psychological experiments. Both authors have tackled the theoretical and practical side of crime through an exhaustive literature review of past experi­ mental work. Hans J. Eysenck has concentrated on the constitutional and biological theory of criminality, whereas Gisli Gudjonsson has con­ cerned himself more with a review of ongoing research into therapy and possible prevention of antisocial behavior. Part I goes into considerable detail on the causes of criminality, stressing much of the strangely neglected area of individual differences in personality. Research studies point to a very heavy involvement of heredity in the causation of criminality, but the authors are careful to acknowledge that much can be done environmentally to discourage a life of crime once those persons who are at risk have been identified.

The motivation underlying our development of a "handbook" of creativity was different from what usually is described by editors of other such volumes. Our sense that a handbook was needed sprang not from a deluge of highly erudite studies calling out for organization, nor did it stem from a belief that the field had become so fully articulated that such a book was necessary to provide summation and reference. Instead, this handbook was conceptualized as an attempt to provide structure and organization for a field of study that, from our perspective, had come to be a large-scale example of a "degenerating" research program (see Brown, Chapter 1). The handbook grew out of a series of discussions that spanned several years. At the heart of most of our interactions was a profound unhappiness with the state of research on creativity. Our consensus was that the number of "good" works published on creativity each year was small and growing smaller. Further, we could not point to a journal, text, or professional organization that was providing leadership for the field in shaping a scientifically sound framework for the development of research programs in creativity. At the same time, we were casting about for a means of honoring a dear friend, E. Paul Torrance. Our decision was that we might best be able to honor Paul and influence research on creativity by developing a handbook designed to challenge traditional perspectives while offering research agendas based on contemporary psychological views.