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The 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) is the most widely used instrument for assessing alexithymia, with more than 25 years of research supporting its reliability and validity. The items that compose this scale were written to operationalize the components of the construct that are based on clinical observations of patients and thought to reflect deficits in the cognitive processing of emotions. The Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) is a recently introduced measure and is based on a theoretical attention-appraisal model of alexithymia. An important step with any newly developed measure is to evaluate whether it demonstrates incremental validity over existing measures. In this study using a community sample (N = 759), a series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted that included an array of measures assessing constructs closely associated with alexithymia. Overall, the TAS-20 showed strong associations with these various constructs to which the PAQ was unable to add any meaningful increase in prediction relative to the TAS-20. We conclude that until future studies with clinical samples using several different criterion variables demonstrate incremental validity of the PAQ, the TAS-20 should remain the self-report measure of choice for clinicians and researchers assessing alexithymia, albeit as part of a multi-method approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) was designed to measure the personality traits of the alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD). It is comprised of 25 lower order facet scales. Factor analytic investigation of these scales has consistently recovered five factors corresponding to the trait domains of the AMPD. Most of these factor analytic studies, however, have been conducted in the United States and Western European countries and languages. Fewer studies have examined the factor structure of the PID-5 in East Asian countries; and no studies have examined whether the five-factor structure found in Western countries/cultures/languages is congruent with those from East Asia. In this study, we examine the PID-5 factor structure in adult community samples from the People's Republic of China (PRC; N = 233 [116 females], Mage = 35.88, range = 22–60) and the United States (N = 237 [118 females], Mage = 35.44, range = 22–60) using exploratory structural equation modelling and assess whether the factor structures across these samples are congruent using Tucker's congruence coefficient. A five-factor solution was an adequate-to-good fit in both samples. The factor structure obtained from the U.S. sample was congruent with the PID-5 normative sample factor structure. The compositional configuration of the factors in the five-factor structure in the PRC sample, however, showed poor congruence with the U.S. sample. A six-factor model proved to be a better fitting model in the PRC sample. We conclude that the PID-5 does not have factor structure equivalence across U.S. and Chinese cultures/languages. Public Significance Statement: In this study, we demonstrated that the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) designed to measure personality psychopathology does not measure the same set of pathological personality traits in U.S. and Chinese cultures. The scores on the PID-5 are not comparable in Chinese and U.S. samples and likely cannot be interpreted equivalently across these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we compare the incremental predictive capacities of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) Section II personality disorders (SII-PDs) with Section III trait domains of the Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD) in a psychiatric outpatient sample ( N = 185). To this end, a series of hierarchical regression analyses was conducted in which the 10 SII-PDs and the five AMPD trait domains served as the predictor variables and five areas of clinical dysfunction as the criterion variables. Two models for each criterion were tested. In Model A, the 10 PDs were entered as a block, followed by the block entry of trait domains; in Model B, the block entry of these predictors was reversed. As the AMPD was designed to address the shortcomings of the SII-PDs, it was hypothesized that the AMPD trait domains would show greater predictive capacity vis-à-vis the latter by (a) explaining more overall variance for each criterion variables when entered first into the model versus when SII-PDs was entered first and (b) explaining more incremental variance than SII-PDs when block was entered second. These hypotheses were partially supported. Overall, the AMPD trait domains predicted more variance than SII-PDs and demonstrated better model fit and more predictive power for three of the criterion variables. Similarly, the AMPD domains predicted a significant but modest incremental increase in variance over that of the SII-PDs for three of the criterion variables. We conclude that more work needs to be done to improve the AMPD, particularly in the assessment of externalizing psychopathology as it relates to clinical dysfunction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).