Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Theses
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ItemPersonal attributes in inter-personal contexts: statistical models for individual characteristics and social relationships( 1998-07)The thesis develops models for social phenomena based on two primitive concepts: individual and relation. The models - based on the p* class of models for social networks - are designed to examine the inter-dependence of individual characteristics together with the social relations that exist among those individuals. The goal of constructing such models is to extend the capacity to develop rich descriptions of social processes. Relations among individuals are represented by a network or networks of interpersonal ties. The first part of the thesis describes models solely for such sets of relational ties. Techniques to represent data dependencies, approaches to model interpretation, and methods for valued attribute and relational data, are developed. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemCulturally different and successful?: case studies of gifted Vietnamese secondary students( 1993-01)There is concern in the literature that gifted children from ‘culturally different’ populations, such as Hispanics and Blacks, are underrepresented in special programs due, in part, to the often insensitive traditional methods of identification used that do not detect particular abilities that are valued and promoted within that particular culture. Contrary to these findings, studies indicate that gifted Asians are in profusion. They present themselves as excellent, motivated students and it is almost expected that they will achieve highly in the areas of mathematics and science. The focus of this paper is a study of seven highly capable secondary school boys of Vietnamese background. In several of these cases the children have had huge hurdles to overcome including the death of a mother, escape by boat, life in a refugee camp, parents whose skills are not being utilised as well as being ‘different’. Despite this they have been successful. A case study approach was adopted to look at the nature of these students, the role of the parents and the attitudes towards giftedness. The aim is to present a holistic view of the child rather than obscure their unique characteristics in a muddle of statistics of a large scale study. This paper takes the position that it is dangerous to make such generalisations and that although gifted from the same cultural group will have certain similar traits, the assumption that common values will automatically apply to them should be curtailed as the particular circumstances of the individual child leads to different manifestations in each.
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ItemThe effectiveness of three treatment regimens used in the management of neonatal abstinence syndrome( 1995-09)This study proposed a multifactorial model of development to understand the development of infants during their first 12 months of life who had been born to chemically dependent women. The impact of maternal chemical dependency on pregnancy outcome, factors associated with severity of neonatal abstinence syndrome and effectiveness of three treatments used in the management of neonatal abstinence syndrome was studied in 271 mother-infant pairs, who were managed by the Chemical Dependency Unit, Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne between April 1991 and May 1994. The chemically dependent mothers and their infants were grouped on the basis of their primary drug of abuse: viz methadone, heroin, non-opioid and codeine groups. Fifty two infants born to drug-free mothers were recruited from a routine antenatal clinic of the same hospital to serve as a control group. The controls were matched for maternal age, marital status, race socioeconomic status, educational level, alcohol and tobacco consumption. Patterns of maternal drug use were determined by reports from methadone treatment programs, drug rehabilitation centres, medical records, personal interviews and urine toxicologic assays performed on mothers during pregnancy and on their infants during the first 48 hours of life. Urine was assayed for metabolites of methadone, amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine, opiates, cannabis and benzodiazepines. There were 180 heroin-dependent, one morphine-dependent and one pethidine-dependent pregnant women enrolled in methadone maintenance programs. The methadone group consisted of these 182 methadone-maintained women and their offspring. Thirty five heroin-dependent women and their offspring formed the heroin group. The non-opioid group consisted of 46 chemically dependent women who used multiple drugs but not opioid drugs during their pregnancy and their offspring. There were eight mother-infant pairs in the codeine group. The mothers in this group primarily abused medication containing codeine in pregnancy. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemLinguistic politeness in middle childhood: its social functions, and relationships to behaviour and development( 1997-07)This research compared Brown and Levinson’s “face saving” account of linguistic politeness with the everyday or social normative account in the context of children’s requesting skills. The research also explored the relationship between children’s politeness skills and their behavioural adjustment. The subjects comprised four groups of ten-and-a-half year old children: a comparison group without behaviour problems, a hostile-aggressive group; an anxious-fearful group; and a comorbid group. All the children were selected from the Australian Temperament Project subject population based on parents’ ratings of the children on the hostile-aggressive and anxious-fearful subscales of the Rutter Child Behaviour Questionnaire. Study 1 found that all the groups of children discriminated between others on the power and distance dimensions in ways consistent with social norms, e.g. adults are judged as more powerful than children. Study 1 also showed that the hostile-aggressive and comorbid groups were significantly less likely to discriminate between others on these dimensions compared to the comparison group. Study 2 showed that for all the children studied politeness as a normative way of speaking was marked by use of please whereas face saving politeness was marked by the use of question directives and hints compared to other request forms. Further, Study 2 showed that there were no differences between children with and without behaviour problems in their use of please to mark different ways of asking.
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ItemMultiple loss: a phenomenology of attachment and its felt absence in fostered children( 1997)This thesis addresses two questions. The first concerns the shape of contemporary attachment theory and the place for a phenomenological approach to research in this field. The second applies this idea to the study of attachment disruption as experienced in childhood, specifically exploring the lived world of attachment and its absence for six multiply fostered children. Phenomenological psychology is concerned with explicating and describing the fullness of human experience, as lived in its immediacy, prior to theory or reflection. This thesis originated in the regret that while this kind of understanding once existed in John Bowlby’s early writings, it has since been “worn smooth with use” by the experimental frame in which attachment has predominantly come to be examined. Chapter 1 looks at the phenomenological insights apparent in Bowlby’s writings, before tracing the movement away from these roots by the contemporary attachment field through its ongoing adherence to the experimental paradigm and concern with typology. From this base, the review of literature shows that the foster care and adoption fields have tended to use attachment theory for its ability to explain and predict behaviour. As a consequence, the field has yielded very little knowledge about the inner world of attachment, particularly as experienced by children who have endured multiple disruptions and losses in caregiving. Chapters 2 and 3 layout the origins of the phenomenological method and its application within the present research. Findings from the analyses of interviews and drawings are presented in the form of phenomenological depth descriptions in Chapter 4. Here, the Individual and General Structures layout the psychological predicates for the experiences of “feeling attached” and of “not feeling attached”. The interface of attachment as lived by these children and attachment as theorised is then explored in the final chapter.
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ItemParaphilias: a developmental approach to psychopathology( 1998)It is proposed that developmental psychopathology provides a theoretical framework for advancing our understanding of paraphilias. This study involved a group of 63 community-based sex offenders, and 33 non-violent, non-sex, non-drug related offenders; the 63 sex offenders were further classified into the four subgroups of pedophilia, exhibitionism, rape, and multiple paraphilia. These groups overlapped in membership because of co-occurring paraphilic diagnoses. The present investigation set out to identify: a) the general, common, and specific developmental risk factors for paraphilias; b) the general, common and specific psychopathological features of paraphilias; and c) the relationships between the developmental risk factors and psychopathological features. The current results showed that: a) Childhood Emotional Abuse and Family Dysfunction, Childhood Sexual Abuse, and Childhood Behaviour Problems were general developmental risk factors for paraphilias; and b) Anger and Hostility, and Sexual Maladjustment and Heterosocial Skills Deficit were general psychopathological features of paraphilias. In order to overcome the methodological problem associated with analyses of co-occurring paraphilic diagnoses, a special analytic procedure was put in place, and this procedure involved systematic comparisons of the results of logistic regression analyses. The outcome of this procedure indicated that: a} Childhood Emotional Abuse and Family Dysfunction was a common developmental risk factor for the various types of paraphilias; b) Childhood Sexual Abuse was a specific developmental risk factor for pedophilia; c) Anger and Hostility was a common psychopathological feature for the various types of paraphilias; d) Sexual Maladjustment and Heterosocial Skills Deficit was a specific psychopathological feature of pedophilia; and e) Anger and Hostility was also a specific psychopathological feature of multiple paraphilia (suggesting a high level of Anger and Hostility for multiple paraphilia). No specific developmental risk factors were identified for exhibitionism, rape, or multiple paraphilia; nor was any specific psychopathological feature found for exhibitionism, or rape. Analyses at the variable level also demonstrated some interesting findings for the various types of paraphilias in terms of anger, anger expression, insecure attachment styles, heterosocial and sexual adjustment. The results of this study are discussed in relation to a developmental psychopathology perspective for paraphilias and other models of sexual offending.
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ItemEarly neuropsychological change in possible dementia of the Alzheimer type( 1996)Early detection of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) is vital in understanding the natural course of the disease, which in turn guides the development of potential pharmacological treatment and management strategies. However, early detection of DAT has traditionally proved difficult. The study described in this thesis comprehensively examined neuropsychological function over a 24 month period in patients with early dementia, using as comparison groups individuals with isolated memory complaints (questionable dementia, QD), and normal controls. The neuropsychological battery utilised included standard measures of cognition, such as the WAIS-R and WMS-R, and experimentally-derived computerised tests of memory. The same pattern of neuropsychological change was exhibited by patients with early DAT and by QD subjects who later fulfilled standard criteria for the disease. In both groups pronounced impairment of recent memory preceded deficits in language and visuospatial function. The progression of cognitive deterioration observed in DAT is likely to reflect the spread of neuropathology throughout the cortex. In view of these findings, the selection of appropriate neuropsychological measures for the detection and staging of early DAT is discussed. One computerised measure, the paired associate learning test, was found to be particularly efficacious in the prediction and early detection of DAT. The QD group performed at a similar level to normal controls when first assessed using the paired associate learning subtest. However, over the course of the study, 43% of the QD subjects exhibited significant deterioration in scores on this measure. All subjects who deteriorated on the computerised paired associate learning task met standard criteria for DAT at the conclusion of the study. Diagnosis of probable DAT was not predicted by any other demographic or psychometric variable. These findings are discussed in terms of the special sensitivity of the associate learning paradigm to the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease.
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ItemSelf-discrepancy and emotion in the workplace: ban exploration of the place of the other in self-discrepancy theory( 1997)According to Self-Discrepancy Theory (SDT; Higgins, 1987), self-perceptions measured in a specified manner are associated with specific kinds of emotional vulnerability. The theory predicts that discrepancies between the self-concept (actual self) and two kinds of personally-relevant standards (ideal and ought self-guides) are associated, respectively, with dejection-related and agitation-related emotions. This thesis places SDT in a workplace context, attempting to integrate aspects of the theory with models of emotion proposed by Russell (1980) and Dahl (1979). According to SDT, the type of emotional experience associated with individuals’ beliefs about themselves depends in part on whether the individual takes her or his own standpoint or that of a significant other. The major focus of this thesis is on self-discrepancies involving the Other standpoint, or interpersonal self-discrepancies. It is argued that, while SDT provides a conceptually balanced set of predictions regarding self-discrepancies from the Own standpoint, predictions regarding the link between interpersonal self-discrepancies and emotions are less theoretically coherent. The goal of this thesis is to formulate a model of interpersonal self-discrepancies and emotions. A major argument is that such a model may require that interpersonal emotions be assessed. To this end, a new measure of emotions is developed, based on Dahl's (1979) distinction between me (intrapsychic) and it (object-directed) emotions. It is further argued that a model of interpersonal self-discrepancies may require an expansion of the Other standpoint, to represent the variety of others which influence the self. A multifaceted Other standpoint is explored in three ways: contrasting personal with institutional significance; examining sex effects; and contrasting the relational modes of Fiske's (1991) social relations theory. Using data from three Australian samples, organized in terms of six studies, links between emotions and self-discrepancies involving different types of Other standpoints are examined with respect to actual:ideal (AI), actual:ought (AO), and actual-own:actual-other (AA) discrepancies. The predictions of SDT include the idea that AI self-discrepancies, involving the perceived failure to meet aspirations, are associated with the low-arousal negative emotion, dejection, and that AO self-discrepancies, involving the perceived failure to meet one's obligations, are associated with the high-arousal negative emotion, agitation. Through exploration of AA discrepancies, the self-discrepancy model is expanded to include the notion of self-verification (Swann, 1983). In particular, it is suggested that routine and crisis self-verification strategies are connected, respectively, with low-arousal and high-arousal emotions. The empirical studies focus on workplace-specific self-discrepancies and emotions. They show that actual:self-guide discrepancies involving the Other standpoint are associated with emotion when the other is the work supervisor. In addition, type of other moderates the link between AA self-discrepancies and emotion. Only when a relationship is close (communal) or hierarchical (authority-based) is the link between AA discrepancies and emotion evident. These findings are used to construct a model of interpersonal self-discrepancies as they relate to the workplace. The applicability of SDT to the workplace is then explored by testing a mediational hypothesis, that self-discrepancies influence job satisfaction through experienced emotion. Support for this hypothesis across a range of self-discrepancy types demonstrates the importance of SDT in accounting for job satisfaction. It is concluded that an interpersonal perspective on self-discrepancy and emotion is pertinent in the workplace.
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ItemPsychometric properties of the Myers-Briggs type indicator( 1999)The Myers-Briggs type indicator is an extremely popular psychological instrument. Despite years of development, and much research, the psychometric properties of the instrument have not been definitely agreed upon. Two issues attract attention; that of categorisation associated with the concept of type, and the issue of what exactly the instrument measures. Previous factor analytical studies produced various results. Data from 309 psychology students from the University of Melbourne were used to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis, and a latent trait analysis. The confirmatory factor analysis was a good fit to the data, and confirmed that with the exception of two items, the 56 items tested fitted the expected four factor structure of the Myers-Briggs type indicator. A latent trait/latent class analysis showed that at least three (the extraversion-introversion, thinking-feeling and judgement-perception) of the four subscales were best conceptualised as a normally distributed latent trait. This finding is in agreement with some previous studies. These have suggested that the scoring and categorical interpretation of the Myers-Briggs type indicator may not be the optimal method for utilisation of the instrument.