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  Clinical Psychological Science |
The links below take you to the journal via the APS website. If not already logged in, you will be redirected to log-in using your last name (Garcia) and Member ID (81665).
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New articles are now online.
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Marco Del Giudice
Recent research -- by Caspi and colleagues (2014) and others -- mapping the hierarchical structure of psychological disorders has indicated the presence of a general p factor that reflects generalized sensitivity to psychopathology. In recent publications, Del Giudice and colleagues have proposed a structure for psychopathology based on the life history model and have argued that it can provide a sufficient explanation of the structure of psychiatric disorders and for the emergence of the p factor. To test this, Del Giudice analyzed the distribution of psychiatric symptoms in a virtual sample based on the analysis done by Caspi and colleagues and using assumptions based on the life history model. Del Giudice found that analysis with the life history model replicated the findings of Caspi and colleagues, providing initial validity for the model.
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Craig J. Bryan, Sungchoon Sinclair, and Elizabeth A. Heron
Do people acquire the ability to commit suicide? According to the interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide, people must have both the desire and the capability to commit suicide -- a capability that can be acquired over time through exposure to painful or provocative events. To test this, active-duty U.S. Air Force ground convoy operators' acquired suicide capability was assessed during predeployment training, deployment in Iraq, and postdeployment. Their combat exposure while in Iraq was also measured. The researchers found that suicide capability scores were stable during the assessment period, even among those who experienced high levels of combat exposure. This finding indicates that suicide capability may be better conceived as a stable construct than as something that is acquired over time.
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Michael Witthöft, Tobias Kerstner, Julia Ofer, Daniela Mier, Fred Rist, Carsten Diener, and Josef Bailer
Researchers have hypothesized that multiple cognitive biases simultaneously contribute to pathological health anxiety (the unfounded fear that one suffers from a health problem); however, existing research in this area has suffered from problems such as small non-clinical samples and the use of limited methodology. The researchers resolved these issues by examining a large group of participants who had pathological health anxiety, depression, or no disorder. Participants completed four different tasks used to assess cognitive and emotional processes related to the processing of health-related information (an emotional Stroop task, an implicit association task, a recognition task, and a pictorial task of affective evaluation). In support of the hypothesis, participants with pathological health anxiety showed stronger attention bias to health-related information, negative explicit evaluations of health threats, and biased responses to health threats compared with participants without pathological health anxiety.
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Christine Ma-Kellams, Flora Or, Ji Hyun Baek, and Ichiro Kawachi
Google search information is increasingly used by researchers to study public health behavior, but how do data collected from Google compare with more traditional measures of health? The researchers analyzed suicide-related search terms entered into Google between 2008 and 2009 from all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, comparing them with questions related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors taken from the U.S. nationally representative National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Google search data were a better estimator of suicide death outcomes than the traditional data collected from the nationally representative survey. Both types of measures were found to be the least accurate for states with more minorities, lower income, and higher crime rates. This finding highlights the use of Google data for understanding health behavior and for informing suicide-prevention efforts.
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Rachel A. Vaughn-Coaxum, Patrick Mair, and John R. Weisz
Studies examining differences in the rates of depression among different racial and ethnic groups have produced differing results, leading researchers to question whether standard measures of depression provide an equivalent measure of symptom severity across ethnic groups. To examine this, more than 2,000 sixth- and seventh-grade students completed the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), a self-report measure of depression. Participating students were racially diverse, identifying as White, Black, Asian, Latino, mixed race, or "other." Only 6 of the 26 items on the CDI were found to be invariant across ethnic groups, and CDI sum scores led to overestimations of group differences in depression and to inappropriate classifications of Black, Latino, and Asian participants as having clinically elevated symptoms. The researchers were able to correct for these errors by adjusting for this differential item functioning.
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Richard A. Bryant, Alexander C. McFarlane, Derrick Silove, Meaghan L. O'Donnell, David Forbes, and Mark Creamer
Although researchers have examined how a current diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects functioning, fewer studies have examined whether people continue to experience impairment after PTSD has resolved. Traumatically injured patients were assessed for PTSD and depression (3 and 12 months after injury) and quality of life in four domains: psychological, physical, social, and environmental (during initial hospitalization and 3 and 12 months after injury). The researchers found that, even after controlling for pretrauma functioning, pain, and depression, people who recovered from PTSD continued to experience poorer quality of life compared with those who had not experienced PTSD, indicating that PTSD can have lingering effects on people even after remission.
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Goffredina Spanò, Mary A. Peterson, Lynn Nadel, Candace Rhoads, and Jamie Ogline Edgin
Figure-ground perception -- a type of perceptual grouping necessary for people to visually recognize objects -- is modulated by object memory and by lower-level generic cues. The contribution of high-level cues (object memory) and low-level generic cues (convexity and surface integration) to figure-ground perception was examined in children, adolescents, and young adults who were typically developing, had Down syndrome (DS), or had autism. The researchers found that children as young as 4 used both high- and low-level cues for figure assignment. Although participants with DS showed impaired ability to use object memories for figure-ground integration, participants with autism showed no such impairment. The impaired ability to access memories seen in those with DS could contribute to impairment, not only in perception but also in adaptive skills and everyday functioning.
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Clinical Psychological Science is a publication of the Association for Psychological Science . Please contact APS by email or by telephone at +1 202.293.9300 with questions or comments.
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