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Biomedical subjects

V Pishkin

Publications and source records attributed to V Pishkin.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1980

A comparison of four scales for anxiety, depresison, and neuroticism.

Examined the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), AND THE Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS) for specificity and validity as measures of anxiety and depression. It was hypothesized that if the BDI and SDS were specific to symptoms of depression, they would show high correlations with each other, low correlations with the TMAS, and intermediate correlations with the Neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI-N). The four instruments were administered to 170 undergraduate students, and correlations and qualitative content analyses showed that the BDI, SDS and TMAS were intercorrelated significantly with the EPI-N scale and that item content overlapped heavily among the tests. The results suggest all four tests tap an emotionality factor of stability-instability.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Performance of type A (coronary-prone) men during and after exposure to uncontrollable noise and task failure.

The present study examined the effects of exposure to uncontrollable noise and task failure in Type A (coronary-prone) and Type B (nonprone) men. It was predicted that Type A subjects would initially react to such exposure with increased coping efforts, as indexed by improved task performance on pretreatment tasks, and that following exposure they would react with decreased coping, as measured by poor performance on a final task. Type B's were predicted to perform consistently throughout. Instead, the Type B subjects showed initial coping attempts during exposure to uncontrollability and showed decrease coping following exposure, whereas A's performed consistently throughout. It was concluded that Type A and B persons do indeed react differently to exposure to a threat to their control of a situation, but it was further concluded that this experimental paradigm may, at this time, lack the precision necessary to elucidate the psychological factors motivating the behavior of the coronary-prone individual.

Achievement↗
PubMed1980

Type A behavior, self-involvement, autonomic activity, and the traits of neuroticism and extraversion.

Classifying Type A and Type B men according to the frequency of self-references used during the behavior pattern interview was useful in identifying Type As who showed elevated resting levels of systolic blood pressure and a degree of cutaneous vasoconstriction than the other subjects. Preliminary findings are presented showing that Type As are higher in neuroticism than Type Bs, and that the highly involved subjects are more extraverted than those less involved. The results demonstrate the value of attempting to identify a subgroup of Type As who are particularly high risk of developing heart disease. Additional speech and interview parameters--length of interview, time spent talking, and rate of speech--are also reported.

Autonomic Nervous System↗
PubMed1980

Residual effects of temazepam and other hypnotic compounds on cognitive function.

The morning after effects of taking single doses of three hypnotic compounds were compared in a five-group design, including the three drug conditions (temazepam, flurazepam, barbiturate), placebo, and no capsule controls. Results showed a slight superiority for temazepam over barbiturate on visual-motor and reaction time tasks. On one phase of a cognitive task, the barbiturate and flurazepam groups made more errors than the control groups. Overall, the results indicate an impairment in performance for the group taking barbiturate and a smaller impairment for the flurazepam group. No detectable impairment occurred for subjects taking temazepam.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Randomness and the "streaking" phenomenon: attentional anomalies in performance on the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST).

Examined in detail the performance of 36 hospitalized male schizophrenics on the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST). Results indicated two interesting phenomena. First, the performance of patients with the highest level of cognitive deficit approached a random level of responding with respect to both the type of error made and the propensity to improve after an error. Second, a subgroup of these highly impaired Ss, identified as "streakers," displayed periods of virtually error-free responding, interspersed with periods of extremely impaired performance. The streaking phenomenon, as well as the tendency toward randomness, was discussed in terms of attentional anomalies.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Factored scales for the Personal Health Survey with schizophrenics, alcoholics, felons, unmarried mothers, and college students.

Employed the Personal Health Survey (PHS) to study patterns of symptomology related to physical and mental health in a population of 730 Ss, which consisted of five subgroups: felons, hospitalized alcoholics, unmarried mothers, college students and institutionalized schizophrenics. The factorial data were analyzed in terms of (a) size of item factor loadings; (b) base rates of responding True to each item; and (c) clinical judgments as to the specificity and meaning of the items and factor scale patterns. Five main factors were extracted: Factor I--General health status; Factor II--Sociopathic character disorders; Factor III--Mixed psychiatric symptoms; Factor IV--Anxiety state with psychosomatic symptoms and general nervousness; and Factor V--Schizophrenicity.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1978

The factorial structure of the Personal Health Survey in normals and schizophrenics.

Administered the Personal Health Survey to five different groups: 74 incarcerated felons, 47 hospitalized alcoholics, 172 unmarried mothers, 51 college students, and 386 hospitalized chronic schizophrenics. On 191 of 200 items, the schizophrenics had higher base rates than any other group. Although some groups did not have large enough Ns for statistically adequate factor analyses, factorial studies also were done on the four control groups. Every group studied gave different factor patterns, with different orders of emergence of factors, different item loadings and heterogeneous composition of items. It is concluded that subgroups should be factored independently across time to determine population characteristics because overall population patterns do not make possible more than general predictions about subgroups. Individuals cannot be predicted from either overall or subgroup factorial characteristics.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1977

A factorial structure of the dimensions of femininity in alcoholic, schizophrenic and normal populations .

The Femininity Study was administered tl 31 alcoholic females, 146 college females, and 152 female schizophrenic patients. The data were factor analyzed: five major factors were identified: (1) heterosexual social role inadaptability; (2) parental role inadaptability; (3) homemaker role inadaptability; (4) general affective (neurotic) instability; and (5) maternal role inadaptability. The institutionalized women showed much greater incidence of all types of inadaptability.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

Relationship between schizophrenic thinking and MMPI for process and reactive patients.

This study examined the relationship between Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) and MMPI performance in 25 male Process and Reactive schizophrenic inpatients. The results demonstrated a correlation between the WIST index and the Sc scale of the MMPI (r = .54, p less than .05) for Process patients only. Other MMPI scales highly correlated with each other also correlated with WIST index for the Process group. The lack of association between WIST and MMPI scales for Reactive patients was interpreted as suggesting a high degree of behavioral disorganization in these patients. Other results, i.e., lack of correlation between time and error scores on the WIST and high variability of time scores on the WIST, suggest that part of this disorganization for the Reactive patients may be understood in terms of disrupted pacing of behavior with respect to time, a process that may be related to the intrusion of irrelevant event processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

Comparative study of the factorial composition of femininity in alcoholic, schizophrenic and normal populations.

The Femininity Study (Thorne, 1965) was administered to a total of 329 women, which included alcoholic females, Skidmore College students, University of Alberta students, and institutionalized chronic undifferentiated schizophrenics. In the alcoholic women, the first five factors were labeled high interpersonal adaptability, heterosexual role inadaptability, female role ambivalence, female identification problems, and maternal role inadaptability. In the Skidmore College population, the first five factors were heterosexual role inadaptability, general female role inadaptability, physical and/or psychosomatic disabilities with low female self-concepts, positive female self-concepts and interests, and emancipated female role concepts. In the University of Alberta women, the first five factors were heterosexual and general social inadaptability, heterosexual interests and adaptability, homosexual tendencies, conflictual sexuality, and emancipated female role concepts. In the institutionalized schizophrenics, the five factors were homosexual conflicts, heterosexual adaptability, rejection of parental-caretaker roles, promiscuity, and negative sexual self-concepts.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1977

Schizophrenic cognitive dysfunction: a deficit in rule transfer.

This study examined conceptual rule learning (RL) deficit in male schizophrenic Ss categorized into three groups as defined by Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST). Ss were administered a conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional or biconditional rule learning task, WIST, and Shipley-Hartford Memory Scale. It was shown that: (a) the WIST reliably differentiates among three levels of thought disorder as reflected by a deficit in inter-problem transfer of rule learning; (b) certain WIST and Shipley parameters reliably predict RL performance; and (c) phenothiazine dosage levels show no influence on the WIST and no correlation with RL. The findings indicate that cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenics is evidenced by limited inductive reasoning, insufficient channel capacity for filtering out irrelevant information, and inability to gain from antecedent RL experience. Principal locus of schizophrenic thought disorder is examined within a stimulus encoding-information processing paradigm.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

A factorial study of personal development of unmarried mothers, college, alcoholic, and schizophrenic populations.

Reported the results of a factor analytic study of the Personal Development Study (PDS). The PDS was administered for research purposes to four diagnostic groups, which included 89 institutionalized alcoholics, 336 unmarried mothers, 159 college students, and 388 chronic schizophrenics. A principal component factor analysis with Varimax rotation performed on the combined populations (N = 972) yielded five main factors labeled as projection, optimism-responsibility, reaction and symptom formation, repressive-compulsive, and intropunitiveness-guilt. Analysis of base rates of responding to the individual items revealed that the four populations ranged along a continuum, with the normals at one extreme and the institutionalized schizophrenics at the other extreme of greater pathological responding.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

The factorial structure of personal development mechanisms in unmarried mothers, college, alcoholic, and schizophrenic populations.

The Personal Development Study (PDS) was administered to four diagnostic groups, which included 89 hospitalized alcoholics, 336 unmarried mothers, 159 college students, and 387 chronic institutionalized schizophrenics. The PDS data from the four groups were factor analyzed separately by Varimax rotation of principal component factors. Cluster analysis methods were used to compare the separate diagnostic group factors with the overall factors previously reported by Pishkin and Thorne (1977). Only a few close fits of the diagnostic group factors showed large differences in item composition, order of emergence of factors and size of loadings between groups. Because many items and factors could be interpreted in terms of several alternative theoretical systems, interpretations were based on the clinical meanings of items and clusters in terms of integration theory (Thorne, 1976).

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Cognitive rigidity in information processing of chronic undifferentiated schizophrenics.

This study investigated Concept Identification (CI) performance and hypothesis behavior of 100 chronic undifferentiated schizophrenic and matched normal Ss as functions of motor-cognitive, personality-perceptual, and psychomotor speed parameters of rigidity. The CI task was designed to test the effects of five levels of information complexity and to examine 10 categories of hypothesis strategies utilized in conceptual problem solving. It was found that normals were superior to schizophrenics in CI and that schizophrenics performed more poorly than normals at higher complexity levels. Normals were markedly less rigid on the motor-cognitive dimension than were schizophrenics. Correlational analysis revealed a number of reliable relationships between the three rigidity measures and the 10 hypothesis categories. Some insight was gained about the role of rigidity in utilization of effective strategies in problem solving; the psychomotor speed factor emerged as the best predictor of schizophrenics' hypothesis behavior.

Adaptation, Psychological↗