Logan Wright

The Pediatric Psychologist

In a recent article, Kagan (1965) announced a marriage had taken place between pediatrics and psychology. If this union proceeds like most which are happy and productive, then we might soon look forward to a “blessed event.” The offspring could be of two sexes: the psychological pediatrician and the pediatric psychologist. The psychological pediatrician will be a scholar-professional who is trained both as a physician and as a behavioral scientist. He will emerge from the growing number of medical school programs which now combine the residency in a medical specialty with the PhD in a related academic area. At least one major program (University of Iowa) now offers the opportunity to combine a pediatric residency with a PhD in child psychology. The purpose of this article, however, is not to make presumptions regarding medical offspring but rather to focus on those of psychological gender.

Counseling With Parents of Chronically III Children

Treating a child with a chronic disease may involve more than managing the physical symptoms. Behavioral difficulties often arise. To give the young patient more help than limited professional time allows, some physicians are teaching parents to be the agents of change through individual consultation, group discussion, and didactic technics.

Validity of Koppitz's Developmental Score as a Measure of Organicity

The Koppitz developmental score was used to evaluate the Bender Gestalt performances of 30 children with, and 30 children without, brain damage The brain-damaged children had a higher mean score than the non-brain-damaged Ss and did more poorly relative to the normative data reported by Koppitz.

An Expanded Sociometric Device for Measuring Personal Effectiveness

158 male and 80 females representing 4 fraternities and 3 sororities at a large state-supported university in the Southwest were administered Duncans Personality Integration Reputation Test and 48 additional sociometric items. on the basis of their content validity and correlation with Duncans scale, 30 of the 48 items were selected for a test of personal effectiveness. The correlation of the total of these 30 items with Duncans scale was .92 for males and .90 for females. The 30 items plus 6 from Duncans scale, gave similar rs (.93, .91). The major advantage of the new scale lies in greater appeal to users who might be prejudiced against a 6-item instrument. Estimates of reliability and validity are needed.

WISC and Nebraska performance of deaf and hearing children.

The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to evaluate the visual-perceptual skills of deaf and of hearing children; (2) to compare the performances of the two groups on two tests frequently used to assess intellectual functioning; and (3) to compare the performance of deaf children in a day school with those in a residential school. Results indicate deaf children are not inferior to hearing children on visual-perceptual tasks and day-school deaf children performed better than residential deaf children. Differences between the deaf and hearing on the two tests were significant on 3 of the 10 subtests. In addition, normative scores on at least one subtest of the Nebraska appear too high, and correction may be in order. Correlations between the two tests, for both deaf and hearing children, were low.

Application of Psychologic Theory in Management of Behavior Problems in Children

From Children’s , Memorial Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics, University of Oklahoma Medical Center, Oklahoma City, Okla. 73104. P-F-~ THIS paper has two aims: to review for the physician six principles in child behavior-two from each of the three leading theories of behavior ; and to suggest practical methods of applying these principles through discussions with parents of &dquo;problem&dquo; children. 5taceessful management by the doctor of the numerous behavior problems of young children resides largely in discussions with the parents. These problems include those related feeling difficulties, thumb-sucking, ~z~uresis, tics, unhappinesSj school and antisocial behavior. Many pediatricians, even those with limited training, have acquired a growing sensitivity to understanding and managing psychologic difficulties. By using this knowledge and sensitivity, they can explain the dynamics of child &dquo;behavior to parents and advise alterations in parental response and actions to lessen behavior problems.

Reliability of Duncan's Personality Integration Scale

Investigations were conducted to determine the reliability of Duncans Personality Integration Scale. The two types of reliability investigated were test-retest stability and intersex congruence. The results indicated that Duncans Scale possesses test-retest reliability for both male and female populations but lacks intersex congruence.

Success with Electroshock in Habitual Vomiting

Mesenteric angiography in three children with active regional enteritis demonstrated arterial dilatation, a dense capillary phase, and early dense venous filling. These observations differ somewhat from angiography reports with older patients, and suggest a wide spectrum of findings depending on the age and activity of the disease state. When the usual small bowel barium studies are not diagnostic, and with recurrent disease in postoperative patients, mesenteric angiography may be a useful adjunct to diagnosis.

COMPARISON OF TWO SOCIOMETRIC DEVICES FOR MEASURING PERSONALITY INTEGRATION

A comparison was made of two sociometric measures of personality integration. Contrary to prediction, the more brief, 6-item PIRT scale was significantly more reliable (r11 = .84) than the lengthier 30-item ESD scale (r11 = .74). Also contrary to prediction, neither test was more highly correlated than the other (and therefore more valid) with any of 8 construct-validity measures. It was concluded that the PIRT was the more functional measure and therefore recommended for use in future personality integration research. Earlier results concerning the relationship of personality integration to self-concept and environmental contact, as well as locus of control and locus of evaluation in college-age females, were replicated.

Factor Structure of the Expanded Sociometric Device: a Measure of Personal Effectiveness

IN recent years a number of personality tests have emerged which are designed to measure behavior which deviates from statistical normalcy but in a positive or healthy direction. Barron’s (1953) ego strength scale was an initial step in this direction. However, the term &dquo;ego strength&dquo; usually refers to characteristics which supposedly aid in overcoming pathology, while the type of effectiveness discussed here involves adaptive behavior in individuals for whom the possibility of psychopathology may be remote. Duncan (1963) provided the first instrument designed specifically to measure effectiveness or integration. Since that time Fitt’s (1965) Shostrom (1965) and Wright, Bond and Denison (1968) have produced instruments for this purpose. The factor structure of these tests is still largely unknown, and only one factor study involving any of these instruments (Wright, 1967) has been reported. In that study, the sociometric device developed by Duncan was analyzed and found to possess an extremely potent first factor which consistently accounted for 8590 per cent of the variance associated with a given matrix, and which was not susceptible to sex differences.