Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Z Z Cernovsky.
Rushton's (1988) reinterpretation of recent research on brain weight one-sidedly emphasizes the findings of heavier brain weight in whites than in blacks and neglects to comment on a larger difference found between men and women. Rushton explicitly used brain size as indicator of intelligence. His implicit conclusion that women are less intelligent than men is not supported by empirical research.
The mean self-reinforcement score of 62 chronic alcoholics was significantly lower than the mean score of 18 age- and sex-matched normal controls. However, both groups scored higher than the mean score of 300 normal undergraduates in a study by Heiby: low self-reinforcement scores do not seem to be unique to alcoholics. In alcoholics, the self-reinforcement scores were significantly correlated with the majority of the MMPI clinical scales: the highest coefficients were with the Social Introversion, Depression, Psychasthenia, and Schizophrenia--lower self-reinforcement level was associated with more psychopathology.
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Correlation matrix based on questionnaire item responses by 38 Czechoslovak refugees suggested that "escape nightmares" (recurrent nightmares about being back in the exhomeland, wanting to or trying to re-escape to the free world) are unrelated to postescape incidence of various stressful events (e.g., illness, job difficulties, financial problems). However, refugees who reported a greater number of the stressful events also reported a somewhat higher incidence of nightmares on themes other than escape from homeland (r = .34).
Color preferences of 20 inpatients with ICD-9 diagnosis of schizophrenia were compared with those of 24 normal control subjects by means of the cards of the Luescher 8 Color Test. The only significant difference was found on the Luescher Anxiety Scale; however, this difference seems too weak for practical clinical use.
Contrary to expectations based on past research, 28 female addicts (all false negatives on MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale) did not significantly differ from 18 nonaddicted female psychiatric patients (true negatives on MacAndrew Scale) with respect to the proportion of elevated Repression Scale scores (T scores greater than 60).
A group of 118 patients with a hospital diagnosis of schizophrenia was reviewed. The incidence of suicide attempts was significantly correlated with more frequent past psychiatric admissions, more frequent past diagnoses of schizophrenia, and poor work function. The apparent relationships could be spurious or based on a reversed causal sequence; for example, suicide attempts are likely to be followed by psychiatric admissions.
Questionnaire responses of 38 Czechoslovak refugees indicated that 84.2% experienced, at least once, a nightmare about being back in their ex-homeland and trying to escape again. The escape nightmares were most frequent within the first 2 years after escape. A significant decrease in frequency was noted 4 years after escape and during the subsequent years.
The use of no treatment or waiting list controls for the time span of both treatment and follow-up of one year or longer involves ethical and methodological problems such as sample attrition; however, shorter follow-ups would lead to overestimates of long-term outcomes. Other comparison groups such as nonspecific treatment controls do not provide an estimate of what would happen to the clients without treatment and what their recovery chances would be in other treatment centers. Therefore, as an alternative to traditional design for outcome rate evaluations, the present paper suggests comparisons to pooled data from follow-ups of treated alcoholics. Until methodologically more acceptable pooled data is available, the data on untreated alcoholics pooled and re-analyzed by Emrick and the data on treated alcoholics presented by Gillies, Laverty, Smart, and Aharan could provide a temporary interpretational background. The most serious drawback of the two criterion samples is insufficient description of basic characteristics of the clients (e.g., in respect to age, education, sex, occupation, and to personality measures). More detailed descriptions in most future evaluation studies would make it possible to create better described criterion samples by pooling the data. This would also allow further analyses of the relationship of client characteristics to outcomes and, thus, would allow for special credit to outcomes with difficult clientele.
In a sample of 78 female alcohol and drug addicts, 24.4% marked True the Item 31 ("I have nightmares every few nights") of the MMPI. The proportion is significantly higher than in normative MMPI data of normal US Midwest women published by Coligan: only 8.2% of the latter marked the item True. The female alcohol and drug addicts who marked the item True differed from those responding with False by higher scores on Schizophrenia, Psychasthenia, Paranoia, Anxiety, Depression, Psychopathic Deviate, and Social Introversion scales and by lower scores on Ego Strength scale. Nightmare sufferers consistently scored in a more pathological direction.
In a group of 86 male chronic alcoholics (mean age 38.7 yr.), 25.6% responded with "True" to Item 31 ("I have nightmares every few nights") of the MMPI; the remaining patients marked the item as false. The two groups did not differ in age, visuospatial reasoning skills, and on a variety of MMPI measures except on the Psychasthenia scale: the former were more highstrung. The vocabulary of the latter was more extensive. A comparison of the responses to Item 31 with recent normative MMPI data for men (age 30 to 39 yr.) published by Colligan, et al. 1983 showed that alcoholics responded significantly more often with "True" than normal men.
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Scales to assess nightmare recall frequency and recalled frequency of insomnia-related disorders (sleep onset, sleep-maintenance problems, unrefreshing sleep, and restless sleep) were administered, together with the Social Readjustment Rating Scale of Holmes and Rahe to 170 part-time undergraduate students (mean age 27.4 yr., 97 men, 73 women), and together with the Life Events Inventory of Tennant and Andrews to another sample of 91 part-time undergraduates (mean age 26 yr., 53 men, 37 women). The time span for which life events and sleep disorders were to be assessed was the previous 6 mo. Pearson rs suggested that the relationships of different types of scores for life events (scores for change, for distress, for amount of control over events, weighted and unweighted scores for negative and positive events) to reports of sleep disorders were mostly weak (the largest coefficient was .29) and nonsignificant. Of all life events measures, negative life events listed on the Readjustment Scale were the most closely associated with reports of sleep disorders; all 14 coefficients involving negative events were significant and in the clinically expected direction. Further research is needed to examine whether the size of correlations between events and sleep disorders is related to factors such as readiness to recall and report negative personal experiences.
Examined the relationship of incidence of 3 types of nightmare themes to incidence of specific events listed in the Social Readjustment Rating Scale and in the Life Events Inventory. The former list of events was administered to 98 and the latter to 56 part-time college students. Information on nightmares' content was available for both samples. Events and nightmare themes were retrospectively reported for the last 6 mo. No significant relationships were found between specific types of nightmare content and specific events. Persons who experienced more events of the Life Events Inventory also reported more nightmare themes, however, similar relationship was not observed for events listed in the readjustment scale.
Scores of 46 part-time college students (mean age 25.8 yr., SD = 5.7, 21 women, 24 men) on a 16-item inventory measure of attitudes toward dreams were only weakly related to the students' own estimates of their dream recall frequency in the last 6 mo. (r = .31), and unrelated to a similar estimate of nightmare recall frequency.
Collected data on nightmare recall in 60 Swiss university students (51 men; 9 women; mean age 25.8 yr.; SD = 2.9 yr.). 50% reported having experienced at least one nightmare in the last two years, 36.7% no nightmare within this time span, and 13.3% were unable to remember.
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