DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (JOURNAL OF IRANIAN PSYCHOLOGISTS)
Year:2009 | Volume:5 | Issue:20|Papers Count:10

A sample of 36 patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) was selected through clinical inter views based on DSM-IV-TR (2000). The half of patients received psychodynamic therapy and the other half received phar- macotherapy for three months. The presence and severity of their anxiety symptoms were assessed using DSM-IV-TR and the MMPI-II (Butcher and Williams, 2000) before and after the therapies. The results indicated no difference in reduction of anxiety symptoms presence between the two groups after the treatments. However, the severity of anxie- ty was lower in the psychodynamic therapy group. The re- sults interpreted based on the oedipal conflicts in psycho- dynamic theory.

The level of anger in mothers of mentally retarded and slow learning children was compared based on their level of education and employment status. 100 mothers of slow learners and trainable mentally retarded children completed the Multidimensional Anger Inventory (Siegel, 1986) included anger arousal, anger eliciting situations, hostile outlook, anger out, and anger-in subscales and a demographic information questionnaire. Results of a two-way ANOVA showed that academic educated mothers experienced lower levels of anger arousal and anger in than nonacademic educated ones.

The effectiveness of life skills training in relieving depression was examined. Sixty two female students in grade nine were randomly selected and assigned to an experimental or a control group. Biweekly, the experimental group received life skills training sessions of two hours, for 12 weeks. The both groups completed the Children Depression Scale (Lang & Tisher, 1983) before and after the training. The results of ANCOVA posited that life skills training significantly decreased symptoms of depression: social problems, and mental preoccupation with illness and death. However there were no significant difference between the two groups in terms of affective response, feelings of guilt, self esteem and pleasure. It appears that a complete treatment of symptoms requires a more extensive training.

Taking into account the ambiguities and limitations of prevailing statistical models, such as losing data related to complicated and nonlinear interactions between psychological constructs and some of the assumptions like homogeneity of variances and normal distribution, the present research investigated the capability of Artificial Neural Networks Model for con ducting predictive studies. A sample of 456 male senior high school students responded to the California Personality Inventory (CPI; Gaff, 1975) and Adjustment Inventory for School Students (AISS; Sinha & Singh, 1993), and was categorized into five levels of adjustment (from maladjusted to completely adjusted). Factor analysis of various combinations of personality traits suggested that some of the networks could not predict adjustment due to non conformity between the number of variables and network architectures. However, a re- vision of the architectures and repetition of new networks significantly increased the proportion of correct predictions (the proportion of participants categorized into the indicated levels of adjustment based on AISS). The most appropriate network for predicting adjustment included a combination of the cognitive variables of flexibility, femininity, communality and tolerance.

The present study aimed to predict drug abuse on the basis of identity status. 160 male students of Iran Islamic Azad University, branch of Bandar Abbas completed the Persian version of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Survey Questionnaire (Oetting & Beauvaise, 1987) and the Revised Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (Bennion & Adams, 1986) included foreclosed, diffused, achieved and moratorium identities. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the foreclosed and diffused identities were positive predictors of drug abuse. However, the achieved and moratorium identities did not predict drug abuse.

The present study examined the effects of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) on maternal obsessive-compulsive symptoms and child anxiety. A sample of 217 mothers of primary school children completed the Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (MOCI; Rachman & Hodgson, 1980), Nilipour Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (NOCI; Nilipour, 2000) and Ontario Child Health Scale (Boyle et al., 1993). Based on the highest scores in MOCI and NOCI scores and on DSM-IV diagnostic inter- views, thirty two mothers were randomly assigned to an experimental and witness groups equally. The experimental group received 8 sessions of 90-minute CBT. The witness group received none. MANCOVA revealed significantly lower mean scores in symptoms of OCD (p=0.00) among mothers after receiving treatment. Inspite of, Mothers’ obsession and children’s anxiety were correlated, the treatment of mothers did not improve children’s level of anxiety. A follow up test conducted a month later did not reveal a change in maternal OCD scores and child anxiety.

This study investigated the factor structure, and construct validity of Positive and Negative Affect Scales (Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998) among Iranian students. A sample of 88 male and 117 female students of Tehran University completed the Positive Affect, Negative Affect, Psychological Well-being (Ryff, 1989) and Social Well being (Keys, 1998) Scales. The results of exploratory factor analyses showed the unidimensional factor structure of the positive and negative scales, but the goodness-of-fit indexes of confirmatory factor analysis were not apropriate, expecially for the negative scale. The convergent and discriminate validity (with Psychological Well-being and Social Well-being Scales) and internal consistency of both scales were acceptable.