Understanding obsessive-compulsive personality disorder in adolescence: a dimensional personality perspective

The validity of the Axis II Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) category and its position within the Cluster C personality disorder (PDs) section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, APA, 2000) continues to be a source of much debate. The present study examines the associations between general and maladaptive personality traits and OCPD symptoms, prior to and after controlling for co-occurring PD variance, in a general population sample of 274 Flemish adolescents and further explores the incremental validity of two different maladaptive trait measures beyond general traits. The results demonstrate that the number of (general and maladaptive) personality-OCPD associations decreases after controlling for a general personality pathology factor, with the FFM factor Conscientiousness and its maladaptive counterpart Compulsivity as remaining correlates of OCPD. The findings further suggest to complement the general NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) scales with more maladaptive items to enable a more comprehensive description of personality pathology variance. Implications for understanding and assessing OCPD in the developmental context of adolescence are discussed

Attachment priming and avoidant personality features as predictors of social-evaluation biases

Personality research has shown that negativity in social situations (e.g., negative evaluations of others) can be reduced by the activation of participants' sense of attachment security. Individuals with avoidant personality disorder (APD), however, are theoretically less responsive to context or situational cues because of the inflexible nature of their personality disposition. This idea of individual differences in context-responsiveness was tested in a sample of 169 undergraduates who were assessed for APD features and assigned to positive, negative, or neutral attachment priming conditions. More pronounced APD features were associated with more negative responses to vignettes describing potentially distressing social situations. A significant interaction showed that participants with more avoidant features consistently appraised the vignettes relatively more negatively, regardless of priming condition. Those without APD features, by contrast, did not exhibit negative appraisals/evaluations unless negatively primed (curvilinear effect). This effect could not be explained by depression, current mood, or attachment insecurity, all of which related to negative evaluative biases, but none of which related to situation inflexibility. These findings provide empirical support for the notion that negative information-processing is unusually inflexible and context-unresponsive among individuals with more pronounced features of APD

Antecedents of personality disorder in childhood and adolescence: toward an integrative developmental model

Antecedents of personality disorder in childhood and adolescence have been a neglected area in official taxonomies of mental disorders such as the International Classification of Diseases or the different editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. An evolving research field, however, underscores the importance of antecedents for understanding psychopathology and personality pathology in adulthood. The current article summarizes the history, updates reviews, and incorporates new research findings into an integrative scheme for conceptualizing personality pathology in childhood and adolescence. Implications of this model for assessment, future research, and intervention are discussed

Fixed and dynamic predictors of treatment process in therapeutic communities for substance abusers in Belgium

BACKGROUND: Research on substance abuse treatment services in general reflects substantial attention to the notion of treatment process. Despite the growing popularity of process studies, only a few researchers have used instruments specifically tailored to measure the therapeutic community (TC) treatment process, and even fewer have investigated client attributes in relation to early TC treatment process experiences. The aim of the current study is to address this gap by exploring clients’ early in-treatment experiences and to determine the predictors that are related to the treatment process, using a TC-specific multidimensional instrument. METHODS: Data was gathered among 157 adults in five TCs in Flanders (Belgium). Descriptive statistics were used to explore clients’ early in-treatment experiences and multiple linear regressions were conducted to determine the fixed and dynamic predictors of Community Environment and Personal Development and Change (two indicators of TC treatment process). RESULTS: Clients reveal a more positive first-month response to TC social processes than to personal-development processes that require self-reflection and insight. The variance in clients’ ratings of Community Environment was primarily due to dynamic client factors, while the variance in clients’ ratings of Personal Development and Change was only related to fixed client factors. Suitability for treatment was the strongest predictor of Community Environment ratings, whereas a judicial referral more strongly predicted Personal Development and Change scores. CONCLUSIONS: Special attention should be devoted to suitability for treatment as part of motivational assessment as this seems to be a very strong predictor of how clients react to the initiation stage of TC treatment. To help improve clients’ (meta-)cognitive skills needed to achieve insight and self-reflection and perhaps speed up the process of recovery, the authors suggest the introduction of (meta-)cognitive training strategies in the pre-program and/or the induction stage of a TC program

What's in a Face? Mentalizing in Borderline Personality Disorder Based on Dynamically Changing Facial Expressions

The mentalization-based approach to borderline personality disorder (BPD) argues that impairments in mentalizing are a key feature of BPD. Most previous research in this area has concentrated on potential impairments in facial emotion recognition in BPD patients. However, these studies have yielded inconsistent results, which may be attributable to methodological differences. This study aimed to address several limitations of previous studies by investigating different parameters involved in emotion recognition in BPD patients using a novel, 2-step dynamically changing facial expression paradigm, taking into account the possible influence of mood, psychotropic medication, and trauma exposure. Twenty-two BPD patients and 22 matched normal controls completed this paradigm. Parameters assessed were accuracy of emotion recognition, reaction time (RT), and level of confidence, both for first and full response and for correct and incorrect responses. Results showed (a) that BPD patients were as accurate in their first, but less accurate in their full emotion recognition than normal controls, (b) a trend for BPD patients to respond more slowly than normal controls, and (c) no significant difference in overall level of confidence between BPD patients and normal controls. Mood and psychotropic medication did not influence these results. Exposure to trauma in BPD patients, however, was negatively related to accuracy at full expression. Although further research is needed, results suggest no general emotion-recognition deficit in BPD patients using a dynamic changing facial recognition paradigm, except for a subgroup of BPD patients with marked trauma who become less accurate when they have to rely more on controlled, reflective processes

Spear operators between Banach spaces

The aim of this manuscript is to study \emph{spear operators}: bounded linear operators $G$ between Banach spaces $X$ and $Y$ satisfying that for every other bounded linear operator $T:X\longrightarrow Y$ there exists a modulus-one scalar $\omega$ such that $$\|G + \omega\,T\|=1+ \|T\|.$$ To this end, we introduce two related properties, one weaker called the alternative Daugavet property (if rank-one operators $T$ satisfy the requirements), and one stronger called lushness, and we develop a complete theory about the relations between these three properties. To do this, the concepts of spear vector and spear set play an important role. Further, we provide with many examples among classical spaces, being one of them the lushness of the Fourier transform on $L_1$. We also study the relation of these properties with the Radon-Nikod\'ym property, with Asplund spaces, with the duality, and we provide some stability results. Further, we present some isometric and isomorphic consequences of these properties as, for instance, that $\ell_1$ is contained in the dual of the domain of every real operator with infinite rank and the alternative Daugavet property, and that these three concepts behave badly with smoothness and rotundity. Finally, we study Lipschitz spear operators (that is, those Lipschitz operators satisfying the Lipschitz version of the equation above) and prove that (linear) lush operators are Lipschitz spear operators.Comment: 114 pages, 9 chapter

Identity processes and statuses in patients with and without eating disorders

Problems with identity formation are associated with a range of psychiatric disorders. Yet the mechanisms underlying such problems and how they are refined into specific diagnostic presentations require further investigation. The present study investigated identity processes among 123 women with eating disorders (ED) and age-matched community controls via a newly developed identity model. Several clinical outcome variables were assessed. Patients with ED scored lower on committing to and identifying with identity-related choices and scored higher on maladaptive or ruminative exploration, identity diffusion, and identity disorder. They also experienced less identity achievement as compared to controls. The identity disorder status was associated with the highest scores on anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder symptoms, and non-suicidal self-injury, and the lowest scores on need satisfaction. Results indicate that patients with ED experience more identity problems than community controls and those captured by an identity disorder status experience the most problematic psychosocial functioning.status: publishe

Diurnal changes of Rubisco activity under ambient and elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide

V této bakalářské práci byl studován denní chod aktivity enzymu Rubisco v podmínkách normální (380 µmol mol-1) a zvýšené (700 µmol mol-1) koncentrace oxidu uhličitého u buku lesního (Fagus sylvatica). Vzorky listů byly odebírány 22. 7. 2009 od 4:00 do 21:30 zhruba ve dvouhodinových intervalech, aktivita Rubisco byla stanovena spektrofotometricky. Mezi aktivitami enzymu Rubisco v listech rostoucích při normální a zvýšené koncentraci oxidu uhličitého nebyly zjištěny statisticky významné rozdíly, nebyla tedy prokázána aklimační deprese aktivity Rubisco vlivem dlouhodobého působení zvýšené koncentrace CO2. Po rozednění nenastal vzestup celkové aktivity Rubisco, což svědčí o nepřítomnosti nebo zanedbatelné roli nočního inhibitoru CA1P. V průběhu dne vykazovala aktivita jenom statisticky nevýznamné odchylky. Mírný pokles stupně aktivace v odpoledních hodinách indikuje mírnou odpolední depresi počáteční aktivity enzymu Rubisco.Diurnal changes of Rubisco activity under the impact of ambient (380 µmol mol-1) and elevated (700 µmol mol-1) concentrations of carbon dioxide were studied in beech (Fagus sylvatica). Samples from leaves were taken in the two-hour intervals from 4:00 to 21:30 on the 22. 7. 2009 and activity of Rubisco was determined spectrophotometrically. No statistically significant differences were found between Rubisco activity of leaves growing in ambient and elevated CO2 concentrations. No increase of Rubisco total activity after daylight shows that nocturnal inhibitor CA1P is not present or plays only negligible role in beech. During the day Rubisco activity showed only statistically insignificant deviations. A slight decrease of Rubisco activation state in the afternoon indicates the afternoon depression of Rubisco initial activity.

Influence of elevated carbon dioxide concentration at Rubisco activity and its content in sunny and shaded leaves of beech

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá vlivem zvýšené koncentrace oxidu uhličitého na aktivitu a obsah enzymu Rubisco ve slunných a stinných listech buku lesního (Fagus sylvatica). U odebraných vzorků byla měřena počáteční a celková aktivita spektrofotometricky. Obsah enzymu Rubisco byl stanoven elektroforeticky metodou SDS-PAGE. U listů kultivovaných při zvýšené koncentraci oxidu uhličitého byla prokázána významně vyšší aktivita enzymu Rubisco v červnu, avšak nikoliv v září. Naopak, expozice listů (slunné/stinné) neměla významný vliv na aktivitu Rubisco v červnu, naproti tomu v září byla u stinných listů naměřena nižší aktivita Rubisco než u listů slunných a tyto rozdíly byly na hranici statistické významnosti. Obsah Rubisco byl statisticky významně nižší u listů kultivovaných při zvýšené koncentraci oxidu uhličitého (aklimační deprese), s výjimkou stinných listů v září. U stinných listů byl zjištěn významně nižší obsah Rubisco než u listů slunných jak v červnu, tak v září.This bachelor thesis focuses on influence of elevated carbon dioxide concentration at Rubisco activity and its content in sunny and shaded leaves of beech (Fagus sylvatica). The initial and total activities were measured spectrophotometrically, the content of Rubisco was determined by using SDS-PAGE method. It was observed statistically significant higher activity of Rubisco in leaves cultivated under elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in June but not in September. In contrary, exposure of leaves (sunny/shaded) did not have significant influence on Rubisco activity in June, but in September was found lower activity of Rubisco in shaded leaves than in sunny leaves. The content of Rubisco was lower in leaves cultivated under elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide (acclimation), with the exception of shaded leaves in September. There was found significantly lower Rubisco content in shaded leaves than in sunny leaves both in June and in September.