Psychopathology and Adaptive Functioning Across the Life Span: Top-down, bottom-up, multi-informant, and multi-cultural challenges and solutions

This keynote address will outline some important challenges for assessment of psychopathology and adaptive functioning from age 1 to 90+ years. It will then present practical ways to meet the challenges

Empirically based assessment and taxonomy of psychopathology: Cross-cultural applications. A review

This paper provides an overview of empirically based assessment and taxonomy, as illustrated by cross-cultural research on psychopathology. The empirically based approach uses standardized assessment procedures to score behavioral and emotional problems from which syndromes are derived by multivariate analyses. Items and syndromes are scored quantitatively to reflect the degree to which individuals manifest them, as reported by particular informants. Although the approach to assessing problems and to constructing taxonomic groupings differs from the ICD/DSM approach, there are no inherent contradictions between either their models for disorders nor the criterial features used to define disorders. Cross-cultural comparisons have yielded relatively small differences in problem rates and syndrome structure, plus considerable similarity in associations of problems with sex and SES, as well as similar correlations between reports by different types of informants. Research on variations in problems in relation to culture, sex, age, SES, and type of informant can contribute to improving both the ICD/DSM and empirically based approaches and to a more effective synthesis between them

Problems reported by parents of children in multiple cultures: the Child Behavior Checklist syndrome constructs

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare syndromes of parent-reported problems for children in 12 cultures. METHOD: Child Behavior Checklists were analyzed for 13,697 children and adolescents, ages 6 through 17 years, from general population samples in Australia, Belgium, China, Germany, Greece, Israel, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. RESULTS: Comparisons of nine cultures for subjects ages 6 through 17 gave medium effect sizes for cross-cultural variations in withdrawn and social problems and small effect sizes for somatic complaints, anxious/depressed, thought problems, attention problems, delinquent behavior, and aggressive behavior. Scores of Puerto Rican subjects were the highest, whereas Swedish subjects had the lowest scores on almost all syndromes. With great cross-cultural consistency, girls obtained higher scores than boys on somatic complaints and anxious/depressed but lower scores on attention problems, delinquent behavior, and aggressive behavior. Although remarkably consistent across cultures, the developmental trends differed according to syndrome. Comparison of the 12 cultures across ages 6 through 11 supported these results. CONCLUSIONS: Empirically based assessment in terms of Child Behavior Checklist syndromes permits comparisons of problems reported for children from diverse cultures

The generalizability of empirically derived syndromes of collateral-reported elder psychopathology across 11 societies

The purpose of this study was to test whether a syndrome model of elder psy chopathology derived from collateral ratings, such as from spouses and adult chil dren, in the United States would be generalizable in 11 other societies. Societiesrepresented South America, Asia, and Europe. The Older Adult Behavior Checklist(OABCL) was completed by collateral informants for 6141 60- to 102-year-olds. Thetested model comprised syndromes designated as Anxious/Depressed, Worries,Somatic Complaints, Functional Impairment, Memory/Cognition Problems, ThoughtProblems, and Irritable/Disinhibited. The model was tested using confirmatoryfactor analyses in each society separately. The primary model fit index showed agood fit for all societies, while the secondary model fit indices showed acceptable toa good fit for all societies. The items loaded strongly on their respective factors,with a median item loading of 0.69 across the 11 societies. By syndrome, the overallmedian item loadings ranged from 0.47 for Worries to 0.77 for Functional Impair ment. The OABCL syndrome structure was thus generalizable across the testedsocieties. The OABCL can be used for broad assessment of psychopathology forelders of diverse backgrounds in nursing services and research

Older adult psychopathology: International comparisons of self-reports, collateral reports, and cross-informant agreement

Objectives:To conduct international comparisons of self-reports, collateral reports, and cross-informant agreement regarding older adult psychopathology.Participants:We compared self-ratings of problems (e.g. I cry a lot) and personal strengths (e.g. I like to help others) for 10,686 adults aged 60-102 years from 19 societies and collateral ratings for 7,065 of these adults from 12 societies.Measurements:Data were obtained via the Older Adult Self-Report (OASR) and the Older Adult Behavior Checklist (OABCL; Achenbach et al.2004).Results:Cronbach's alphas were.76 (OASR) and.80 (OABCL) averaged across societies. Across societies, 27 of the 30 problem items with the highest mean ratings and 28 of the 30 items with the lowest mean ratings were the same on the OASR and the OABCL. Q correlations between the means of the 0-1-2 ratings for the 113 problem items averaged across all pairs of societies yielded means of.77 (OASR) and.78 (OABCL). For the OASR and OABCL, respectively, analyses of variance (ANOVAs) yielded effect sizes (ESs) for society of 15% and 18% for Total Problems and 42% and 31% for Personal Strengths, respectively. For 5,584 cross-informant dyads in 12 societies, cross-informant correlations averaged across societies were.68 for Total Problems and.58 for Personal Strengths. Mixed-model ANOVAs yielded large effects for society on both Total Problems (ES = 17%) and Personal Strengths (ES = 36%).Conclusions:The OASR and OABCL are efficient, low-cost, easily administered mental health assessments that can be used internationally to screen for many problems and strengths. © International Psychogeriatric Association 2020

Understanding the Mechanisms through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes

A growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes. Little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts. This paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality skills from an experimental evaluation of the influential Perry Preschool program to analyze the channels through which the program boosted both male and female participant outcomes. Experimentally induced changes in personality skills explain a sizable portion of adult treatment effects

Non-monotonicity of the frictional bimaterial effect

Sliding along frictional interfaces separating dissimilar elastic materials is qualitatively different from sliding along interfaces separating identical materials due to the existence of an elastodynamic coupling between interfacial slip and normal stress perturbations in the former case. This bimaterial coupling has important implications for the dynamics of frictional interfaces, including their stability and rupture propagation along them. We show that while this bimaterial coupling is a monotonically increasing function of the bimaterial contrast, when it is coupled to interfacial shear stress perturbations through a friction law, various physical quantities exhibit a non-monotonic dependence on the bimaterial contrast. In particular, we show that for a regularized Coulomb friction, the maximal growth rate of unstable interfacial perturbations of homogeneous sliding is a non-monotonic function of the bimaterial contrast, and provide analytic insight into the origin of this non-monotonicity. We further show that for velocity-strengthening rate-and-state friction, the maximal growth rate of unstable interfacial perturbations of homogeneous sliding is also a non-monotonic function of the bimaterial contrast. Results from simulations of dynamic rupture along a bimaterial interface with slip-weakening friction provide evidence that the theoretically predicted non-monotonicity persists in non-steady, transient frictional dynamics.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Quantitative planar and volumetric cardiac measurements using 64 mdct and 3t mri vs. Standard 2d and m-mode echocardiography: does anesthetic protocol matter?

Cross‐sectional imaging of the heart utilizing computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been shown to be superior for the evaluation of cardiac morphology and systolic function in humans compared to echocardiography. The purpose of this prospective study was to test the effects of two different anesthetic protocols on cardiac measurements in 10 healthy beagle dogs using 64‐multidetector row computed tomographic angiography (64‐MDCTA), 3T magnetic resonance (MRI) and standard awake echocardiography. Both anesthetic protocols used propofol for induction and isoflourane for anesthetic maintenance. In addition, protocol A used midazolam/fentanyl and protocol B used dexmedetomedine as premedication and constant rate infusion during the procedure. Significant elevations in systolic and mean blood pressure were present when using protocol B. There was overall good agreement between the variables of cardiac size and systolic function generated from the MDCTA and MRI exams and no significant difference was found when comparing the variables acquired using either anesthetic protocol within each modality. Systolic function variables generated using 64‐MDCTA and 3T MRI were only able to predict the left ventricular end diastolic volume as measured during awake echocardiogram when using protocol B and 64‐MDCTA. For all other systolic function variables, prediction of awake echocardiographic results was not possible (P = 1). Planar variables acquired using MDCTA or MRI did not allow prediction of the corresponding measurements generated using echocardiography in the awake patients (P = 1). Future studies are needed to validate this approach in a more varied population and clinically affected dogs