Hot answers tagged abnormal-psychology
14
I think it's important to clarify that pedophilia is currently classified by the DSM IV as a paraphilia. A paraphilia is as a "recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving non-human objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, children, non-consenting persons.
The word "paraphilia" is ...
10
The Hare Psychopathology Checklist is considered the current gold standard for measuring potential psychopathy. If you're interested in psychopathology, the book Without Conscience by Robert Hare, Ph.D., is a fascinating read. He has a second book called Snakes In Suits, which I have not yet read, so I cannot recommend or not recommend it. Dr. Hare has a ...
9
There are a few references to the scientific literature on trolling in the wikipedia article
Some psychologists have suggested that flaming would be caused by
deindividuation or decreased self-evaluation: the anonymity of online
postings would lead to disinhibition amongst individuals (Kiesler et al, 1984). Others
have suggested that although ...
9
The Neurobiology and Genetics of Borderline Personality Disorder indicates that a good deal of research has been done but a specific mechanism causing it has not been pinned down. It appears to be largely genetic which would strongly suggest a neurobiological/nature basis as opposed to a "nurture" related cause.
(emphasis mine)
In summary, the ...
8
Depends which IQ test you use - individuals with ASDs show a typical "pattern" on the WAIS, which can cause it to appear like they have lower IQs. When tested with tests which aren't biased in this way, they appear to have the same IQ range as neurotypicals.
The assumption that those with an ASD are cognitively impaired pervades both popular and scientific ...
8
Ben Brocka makes many fine points. Insanity is a legal definition and what constitutes insanity will vary state to state, even jurisdiction to jurisdiction. What makes sanity so hard to quantify is the fact that so often, in a forensic setting, it comes down to the discretion of a jury of one's peers or the Court to accept or deny insanity as an explanation ...
8
Sanity is an explicit legal definition. It is generally not a psychological term. This is Wikipedia's definition of Sanity which aligns perfectly to my understanding of abnormal psychology. (emphasis mine):
In criminal and mental health law, sanity is a legal term denoting that an individual is of sound mind and therefore can bear legal responsibility ...
8
From my very brief skim of the field, it seems like the consensus is that savants have access to the kind of low-level information processing which non-savants do not. I'll summarize one such theory in some detail, since it's the one that I've happened to read. But I'm not an expert in this field and this is just one of the theories, the rest of which I ...
7
I am by no means any sort of expert at the French mental health system, but I was curious and found a few reasons that may indicate why such a philosophy is prevalent.
In this blog, an American psychologist analyzes the differences between the American and French schools of thought on ADHD, but the observations hold for other conditions as well. While ...
7
Before trying to give any sort of answer, it is important to address a common misconception. In popular culture, the terms child-molester and pedophile are often equated. Scientifically, they are not at all the same. The approximate scientific definition for a pedophile is:
an individual that has an unwavering sexual attraction to prepubescent children ...
6
I believe 'psychosomatic' describes a way the mind has effects on the your body which might result in somatic symptoms. Often psychosomatic disorders are diagnosed as such when:
no somatic correlate to the experienced symptoms can be found
somatic correlates do not sufficiently explain the experienced symptoms
This often results in patients who visit ...
6
In general, no. People with excellent memories can just as easily misapply the availability heuristic as people with poor memories.
To see why, consider a situation where a reasoner is asked to estimate the relative frequency of murder and suicide. Because examples of murder or more "available" (i.e., more easily recalled) than examples of suicide, the ...
6
This is only one possible pathway. There are many potential ones. Further the fact that this is possible does not mean that it is the case always.
Stress activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. For example, a meta-analysis by Dickerson et al. (2004) demonstrated that an acute laboratory based stressor reliably increased cortisol levels, ...
6
It’s probably best to ask clinicians since papers usually don’t go into very specific details about patient interactions, but in general this is what I can conclude based on a bit of research. Neglect often co-occurs with other impairments as there can be a range of causes (such as stroke) arising from damage to various brain structures; so it should be ...
6
Here is an article explaining trolling based on Sperber and Mercier's "argumentative theory" of human reasoning. The latter is a fascinating paper in its own right.
References
Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? arguments for
an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(02):57-74. FREE PDF
6
The article I found goes into the general phenomenon of seizure self-induction, but does spend quite a bit of time on photosensitive epilepsy (PSE). It's a review, so there are plenty of references.
It first points out the prevalence of PSE, which occurs in between 2-5% of the population, and approximately 25% of those affected by the disorder are thought ...
6
Cognitive dissonance theory seems to be exactly what you're looking for. It seeks to explain how and why people hold incongruous or dissonant beliefs. I guess egosyntonic beliefs would be consonant with self, egodystonic would be dissonant. Anyway, I'll just link you to the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
5
The Hare Psychopathy Checklist is often used to assess psychopathy in clinical settings. NPR has a good, but unscientific read that ponders the validity of the Hare test and its reliability in predicting criminal recidivism.
The online Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale is a test of psychopathy for research situations.
References
Hare, R. D. ...
4
I don't know if you can completely remove the selection bias from such a sample.
You seem to be referring (in some sense, at least) to regression towards the mean. This is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) problem with much research on clinical samples.
What I would do (assuming resources) would be to take the same size (or larger) sample from the ...
4
From an article by the NY times.
Trolling, defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or
provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the
Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Even in the
fourth century B.C., Plato touched upon the subject of anonymity and
morality in his parable of the ring of ...
4
Dissociative Disorders are really fascinating to me as well. Fugue states/episodes as well as dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) in particular.
PTSD must be differentiated from disorders that can exhibit phenomenological similarities, such as borderline personality disorder and dissociative disorders (including dissociative ...
4
I think the answer to that question can be teased out if one knows the reason why the presence of or noticing strangers in the vicinity leads to feelings of discomfort.
What do you mean by "in the vicinity"?
Social psychologists have studied what is called proxemics. If we simplify it, one can say that they study the concept of "personal space". Mostly ...
4
I think the difference comes down to awareness and control. A person who "wears many hats" and can step into different archetypes is a sort of personality chameleon, whereas a person with dissociative identity disorder has little or no control over changing personalities, and certain personalities within that person may be only partially or completely ...
4
Yes, phobias appear to be partly hereditary. This encompasses both genetic and environmental factors.
Kendler et al. (1999) review some work in this area:
We have previously reported, from a population-based sample of female twins, that the liability
to agoraphobia, social phobia and animal
phobia was modestly infuenced by genetic
factors with ...
3
The technical term for having a fear of strangers is Xenophobia (this term also applies to having a fear of foreigners or immigrants).
The DSM lists Social Anxiety as one of three types of phobias. Social phobia, DSM 300.23, is an irrational anxiety elicited by exposure to certain types of social or performance situations; it can lead to avoidant behavior.
...
3
I had a read through the Pronin and Wegner study.
The study had a sample size of 144. They manipulated thought speed by getting participants to read aloud one statement after another at either half normal reading speed (slow thinking) or double normal reading speed (fast thinking). They also manipulated the content of the text being read (depressing ...
2
From an article entitled Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? in the New York Times Magazine (May 11, 2012):
Currently, there is no standard test for psychopathy in children...
The article also lists some assessments used by some practitioners for predicting adult psychopathy:
Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits
Child Psychopathy Scale
...
2
Clinical Case Studies is a journal devoted to the write up of case studies. To quote the site:
It presents cases involving individual, couples, and family therapy.
The easy-to-follow case presentation format allows you to learn how
interesting and challenging cases were assessed and conceptualized,
and how treatment followed such ...
2
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but here are a few major academic journals on neuropsychology and neurology (in no particular order):
Neuropsychology
Cognitive Neuropsychology
NeuroCase
Developmental Neuropsychology
Cortex
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