(1) Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (2) A.R.P. Associazione per la Ricerca in Psicologia
Discussant: Lo Coco Gianluca (3)
(3) Dipartimento di Scienze Psicologiche, Pedagogiche e della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Palermo
Assessment of personality and psychopathology with checklists and questionnaires is an old challenge (Woodworth, 1920). Nowadays, clinicians frequently use self-reports to evaluate clients, because new self- report questionnaires have been modified both in their structure and format (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), thus offering several indisputable advantages. However, a single self-report must be used in the context of a multimethod assessment (Achenbach, 2006), which helps to minimize the negative impact of reliability and validity limitations inherent in different types of measures (Hopwood & Bornstein, 2014). Consequently, the clinicians must know the strength and limitations of different methods and decide which methods to use, considering a “tailored” assessment (Wakefield, 1995). Overall, the aim of this symposium is to illustrate when and how self-reports can be best applied and how well these measures do converge with same methods of data collection or with other methods (Clark, Livesley, & Morey, 2007). In the first contribution, Brusadelli and Lang highlighted the changes in the development of questionnaires from the detection of the psychopathology to the assessment of the severity. In particular, they will present the GAPD (Livesley, 2006) and will provide the results of the Italian validation. In the second contribution, Ferro and Cristofanelli presented the TSCC (it. ed. Di Blasio et al., 2011), a new instrument to evaluate generalized and non-specific traumas and emerging post-traumatic
symptoms and they will present the results of a clinical sample of adolescent. In the third contribution, Matta and Lang presented the latest researches about emotional intelligence. Their aim is to suggest a new approach to using self-report data and how they can be linked to personality measures. In the fourth contribution, Pignolo and Zennaro analyzed the convergent validity of the MCMI-III and PAI, showing differences and similarities between the two tests.
MEASURING SEVERITY: THE ITALIAN VALIDATION OF GAPD Brusadelli Emanuela (1,2), Lang Margherita (1)
(1) Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan
(2) Clinical Psychology Unit, ASST Rhodense Hospital, Garbagnate Milanese
The publication of the editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders were influenced by the strong debate about the scientific evidence and clinical experience on personality disorders, which suggested to move toward more dimensional systems, considering the aspect of Severity, in order to differentiate personality disorder (PD) from normal personality variation, and more circumscribed personality dysfunction (Morey, 2011; Bender et al., 2011; Skodol et al., 2011). Scientific evidence, indeed, indicated that strictly categorical construct determine diagnostic and treatment limitations, but Severity has been little considered by classification systems (Bender, 2010; Tyrer, 2005). About this, authors like Kernberg (1967, 1970) and Millon (1969) proposed the introduction of this concept in the third edition of the manual, without success. At last, in the fifth edition of DSM-5 it was added a separated Section (Section III), which contains an alternative hybrid dimensional-categorical model for diagnosing personality disorders, in order to help clinicians capture a more comprehensive assessment of patients. Consistent with this approach, in the
field of assessment tools Livesley proposed the General Assessment of Personality Disorder (GAPD; Livesley, 2006), a self-report questionnaire designed to evaluate Severity, which can be considered, in a more broad way, a useful marker to guide the clinician in his clinical decision in order to improve the efficacy of treatment (Gunderson, 2000; Tyrer, 2005). The measure evaluates two major components of disordered personality: self or identity problems and interpersonal dysfunction. This study reports the results of the Italian Validation of the GAPD.
MEASURING THE IMPACT OF TRAUMATIC EVENTS IN CHILDREN: THE TRAUMA SYMPTOM CHECKLIST FOR CHILDREN (TSCC; Briere, 1996)
Ferro Laura (1), Cristofanelli Stefania (1) (1) Università della Valle d’Aosta
Although there are numerous traumatic events that can affect subjects in the childhood, and there is a clear evidence of the variety of negative psychological effects that they can cause, there are currently few tools available to clinicians and researchers to detect generalized and non-specific traumas, to evaluate emerging post-traumatic symptoms, and to plan their treatment in the childhood (Kessler et al., 2010; Biondi, Valentini, 2014; Zoellner, 2013; SINPIA, 2007). The aim of this study is to examine specifically the construct validity of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC, Briere, 1996; Di Blasio et al., 2011) in a clinical sample of preadolescent and adolescent (males and females) victims of trauma and included into residential treatment in therapeutic and rehabilitative communities of Piedmont. The underlying hypothesis of the research is that the type of experienced trauma and the development of psychopathological symptoms may be significantly correlated with TSCC scales scores (Smith et al., 1994; Briere, Lanktree, 1995).
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: JUST OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES?
Matta Michael (1), Lang Margherita (1,2)
(1) Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi Milano Bicocca
(2) A.R.P. Associazione per la Ricerca in Psicologia Clinica (www.arpmilano.it)
Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been conceptualized both as a set of cognitive abilities and as a set of personality tendencies. Each conceptualization is measured by specific tools, performance-based tests and self-report questionnaires respectively. Considering EI as a set of personality characteristics, Petrides created one of the most well-known model (Petrides et al., 2010). His approach to EI provides a comprehensive operationalization of the affective aspects of personality and is totally separated from the taxonomy of cognitive abilities (Schneider & McGrew, 2013). Some authors questioned about this model because they believe emotional intelligence might not be a separate human ability. Rather, they described EI as a new way of talking about something that is already known i.e., intelligence and/or personality (Davies et al., 1998; Schulte et al., 2004). The purpose of this speech is to evaluate the convergence of TEIQue (Petrides, 2009), based on the Petrides’s EI model, with a reliable wideband clinical instrument, the Dimensional Assessment Personality Pathology (Livesley & Jackson, 2009, ed.it. 2014). 155 youth adults (56 males) were administered both questionnaires. The individuals were aged 18-40 years and had a mean age of 23.98 years (SD = 4.23). Bivariate correlations and factor analytic techniques were used to examine the overlap between EI and the high-order personality traits. As results, although we found convergences between the instruments, correlations displayed that EI was not just a set of redundant personality dimensions. Moreover, exploratory
factor analysis revealed that several emotional intelligence traits loaded on a specific factor. These findings should encourage researchers to explore this construct more deeply and clinicians to assess these dimensions during personality assessment.
THE CONVERGENT VALIDITY BETWEEN THE PAI AND MCMI- III SCORES: A NEW APPROACH BY USING CANONICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS (CCA)
Pignolo Claudia (1), Zennaro Alessandro (1) (1) Department of Psychology, University of Turin
The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991, 2007) scales have shown good convergent validity with most of the self-reports assessing personality disorders and traits (see Morey, 2007). However, the convergent validity of the PAI scales with the Millon Clinial Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III; Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2009) scales has never been investigated. Thus, we explored the convergent validity of the PAI scales compared to the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III; Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2009) scales by computing a canonical correlation analysis (CCA). We used archival data from the Italian, PAI normative sample (n = 1,000). Thirteen participants were excluded because they had more than 12 missing items at the MCMI-III (Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2009) and 173 participants were excluded due to their invalid MCMI-III profiles. Thus, we obtained a final sample of 814 participants. CCA individuated four functions that each explained more than 30% of the variance. The results suggested that both test shared a first factor of general distress and psychopathology. The second function identified scales related to aggression, paranoia, mania, and antisocial and borderline personality disorder characteristics. The third function was characterized by a dependent interpersonal style, whereas the fourth function detected
cognitive control. Overall, the results indicated similarities between the internal structures of the two tests.