Search

This report is primarily concerned with reporting on the normative results obtained on a large sample of serious adult offenders. An expanded Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery was administered to 584 adult offenders (OF), 132 normal controls (NC), and 494 acute psychiatric patients (PP). Subjects were between 18 and 44 years of age. Descriptive statistics for all neuropsychological measures are reported. Impairment analyses indicate substantial neuropsychological impairment in the OF and PP groups, especially on measures of executive function and verbal capacities. The neuropsychology of the prefrontal cortex and of Attentional Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Conduct Disorder is reviewed. This review, in the context of the present findings, supports a working hypothesis that the executive deficits and behavioral disinhibition of offenders represent heterotypic continuities of brain dysfunction among some children with disruptive behavior disorders. Implications for research, the ...

The Profile of Mood States was administered to samples of 182 college males, 179 college females, and 257 prison inmates. College males and females did not differ significantly from each other in terms of scale elevation but differed from prison inmates on all scales except Fatigue-Inertia. The college samples differed from the published normative college samples, suggesting the importance of using local norms. A confirmatory item factor analysis suggested convergent item validity with the scoring key and similarity of structure across samples. Discriminant item validity, however, suggested that a smaller number of mood scales would offer a more justifiable interpretation of this inventory.

Several measurement problems were identified in the literature concerning the fidelity with which the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) assesses psychopathology. A straightforward solution to some of these problems is to develop an orthogonal basis in the MMPI; however, there are 550 items, and this is a cumbersome task even for modern computers. The method of alternating least squares was employed to yield a singular value decomposition of these measures on 682 prison inmates. Unsystematic or sample-specific error variance was minimized through a two-stage least squares split thirds replication design. The relative explanatory power of models of psychopathology based on external, internal, naive, and construct-oriented measurement strategies is discussed.