PAR staff are on the way to Vancouver, British Columbia for the National Academy of Neuropsychology (NAN) 30th Annual Conference. If you are attending NAN, please stop by our booth to meet some of our staff and take a look at some of the new products we recently released, including the Tasks of Executive Control™ (TEC™), the Memory for Intentions Test™ (MIST™), the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, 2nd Edition (SIRS-2), the Mini-Mental® State Examination, 2nd Edition ( MMSE®-2™), the NEO Personality Inventory-3™ (NEO-PI-3™), and more. NAN attendees receive 15% and free shipping and handling on all purchases made at the conference.

Why did you choose to enter the field of psychology?
My father was a mechanical engineer and very early in my childhood I realized I had no manual aptitude or skills whatsoever. So that career option was closed by lack of talent. My mother always encouraged me to pursue helping professions. When I began taking psychology classes in college at Indiana University, I had a natural affinity for the subject matter.

What made you decide initially to develop the ECAF™-2?
As a practitioner, I realized that the discipline needs more standardization and objectivity and many practicing vocational experts shared my beliefs. In fact, there is a formal group in California that is attempting to develop practice standards. As I gained experience over the years, I learned that there is no other measure equivalent to the ECAF-2.

What would you like to tell people about your product that they may not know?
It has been under development for over a decade and it has been well-validated through a number of published reliability and validity studies. Also, it incorporates generally accepted methods in sync with mainstream theories.

What would you like to tell people about yourself that they may not know?
My first novel, Justice Indicted, will be published in February 2011. The book is a social commentary based on my experiences as an expert witness for over 25 years.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time traveling with my wife. I have three children ages 16-22. I’ll be accompanying my oldest child on a trip to London later this month; he is enrolling in a master’s program at the London School of Economics.

Why did you choose to enter the field of psychology?
This was the best way I could think of to participate in the evolution of our world. I was fascinated by the complex task of identifying patterns to thoughts, feelings, and behavior that could help us predict a person's behavior. I could not find any field more complex, and all other fields seemed boring compared to this intellectual frontier.

What made you decide initially to develop the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2™ Child and Adolescent (STAXI-2™ C/A)?
The amazing paucity of anger measures currently existing, especially for children and adolescents. I knew the state-trait theory already had been overwhelmingly accepted by the field of psychological assessment. As a developmental psychologist in training, I approached Charlie Spielberger and suggested we develop a measure for children. He and I knew there was such a need since parents, teachers, and mental health professionals were all very concerned about the high prevalence of anger, but researchers seemed to have been giving most of their attention to anxiety, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, etc., classical conditions. Meanwhile, the public health problem of anger “snuck up” on our world. We see this with the school shootings that have occurred that now have everyone's attention.

What would you like to tell people about your product that they may not know?
This is a measure that can truly help get at the nuances of anger. As a practicing developmental psychologist who works everyday in the trenches with parents, pediatricians, teachers, etc., I have a keen sense of whether a measure is worth our time and energy as a practitioner who is very busy. The STAXI-2 C/A passes this test admirably. Why? Most people do not want to know if there is anger or not, rather, they want to know if the child is possibly harboring anger, how much they are struggling to control their anger, and to what degree might they be controlling anger much more than any adult appreciates. They also want to know if the anger is more just a temporary state or more like a trait, and thus, more concerning.

These are the most compelling question for our field, and for the adults working with children. And it is these questions that the STAXI-2 C/A provides answers to. Second, this is a necessary measure any time one is conducting a risk assessment, as again, this measure endeavors to assess covert anger that we have learned is “silent but deadly.” This anger measure provides a robust profile of a person's personality as it relates to anger. In this way, this measure is very practical.

What would you like to tell people about yourself that they may not know?
My experience with anger goes far beyond research and clinical settings, as I have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and am blessed with everyday appreciating the nuances of anger in my wonderful children. I learn from them every day. We, as parents, know there is nothing that can replace real-world experience with emotions like anger. I am also a competitive cyclist who most recently rode the Tour de Tucson, a 67 mile road race. My wife and I, with our two wonderful children, live in Tucson, Arizona, deep in the desert, my favorite place on earth.

How do you spend your free time?
Riding as fast as I can down the road, rain or shine. When not in the bike saddle, I am reading to my kids or we are outside enjoying the desert climate. I am currently learning about Transformers and He-Man from my son, and from my daughter, I am learning all about the importance of having tea parties for her dolls.

Top Psychology Schools in the U.S.

A number of online academic resources have come out with lists of the best U.S. colleges for psychology majors. We decided to take a look at College Crunch, Social Psychology Network, Schoolahh to see which undergraduate programs were highly ranked across the board.

Stanford University in Palo Alto, California ranks number one on all three of the lists above. This isn’t surprising given that Stanford’s psychology department has been collecting kudos for more than fifty years. The philosophy of the department is that success results from the connection between teaching and scientific research. It’s organized into five areas of study within the field of psychology: Cognitive, Developmental, Neuroscience, Personality and Social Psychology. Research at Stanford includes (but is not limited to) topics like aggression, social behavior, competitiveness, dreaming, color perception, spatial relations, learning and memory.

The University of Michigan Ann Arbor appears in the top five of each list. This Big Ten School offers three concentrations: 1) Psychology, 2) Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science and 3) Neuroscience. The school has many research labs that provide undergraduates with the ability to participate in research studies. Active research studies include African-American racial identity, human brain electrophysiology, human performance and cognition, visual and verbal working memory, affective neuroscience and biopsychology, neuronal mechanisms of movement and reward, and many more.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign appears in the top ten on the lists above largely because of its laboratories for research in human learning, animal learning, physiological psychology, animal motivation, human perception, and social behavior, just to name a few. The school houses extensive computer facilities, a complete animal colony, a fully equipped video laboratory facility for observation and videotape production. The Urbana-Champaign psychology department also operates a psychological clinic and other research and training facilities housed outside of its main building.

Because PAR, Inc. is based in Florida, we’re also familiar with high caliber programs in our Sunshine State. Most notable is University of Florida’s graduate program, which was voted one of the best programs in the country by U.S. News and World Report in 2009. Programs at University of South Florida and University of Miami also earn high marks for their courses of study and resources.

The Standard Inventory Measure of the Five-Factor Model Is Now Applicable to Those as Young as 12 Years

The new NEO™ Inventories for the NEO Personality Inventory-3™ (NEO-PI-3™), NEO Five-Factor Inventory-3™ (NEO-FFI-3™), and NEO Personality Inventory-Revised™ (NEO PI-R™)

by Robert R. McCrae, PhD and Paul T. Costa, PhD are now available. In  addition, several updated NEO software products are now available including the NEO Software System™  with NEO-PI-3™ , NEO PI-R™, NEO-FFI-3™ , and NEO PDR™ Modules; the NEO Software System™  with NEO-PI-3™ , NEO PI-R™, and NEO-FFI-3™  Modules; the NEO Software System™  On-Site Scanning Module for the NEO-PI-3™  and NEO PI-R™; as well as all materials needed for the NEO PI-R™ and NEO-PI-3™  Professional Report Service.

The NEO-PI-3™  provides a comprehensive and detailed assessment of adult and adolescent personality. It is a concise measure of the five major domains of personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). The NEO-FFI-3™  is a 60-item version of the measure, ideal for situations where time is limited and global information on personality is sufficient. The NEO PI-R™  forms and norms have not changed with the update of the NEO™  Inventories Professional Manual.

Both the NEO-PI-3™  and NEO-FFI-3™  include a downward extension to age 12. Items have been revised to make them easier to read and more appropriate for younger examinees. Separate adolescent and adult norms are available. NEO-PI-3™  Profile Forms have been made larger and now more user-friendly; combined-sex Profile Forms are now available. New features such as the NEO Problems in Living Checklist and NEO Style Graph Booklet provide innovative ways to give clients feedback on their particular personality profile.

Try the NEO-3 and let us know what you think.

Congratulations! You’ve received an unexpected financial windfall. Should you use the money to buy a new GPS or go to a concert with friends?

According to a 2009 study conducted by the San Francisco State University psychology department, you’d be well served to choose the concert; your appreciation of the experience will grow over time, whereas your appreciation for the GPS will lessen in a matter of weeks.

Participants in the study answered questions about purchases they made with the intention of making themselves happy. Most were initially happy with their purchases regardless of whether they were material or experiential. However, those who invested in experiences tended to show higher levels of satisfaction for a significant amount of time after the events occurred. Also, because the experiences usually included other people, they reported a sense of connecting to friends or relatives, fulfilling a need for social bonding.

We found out about this study in a blog post from David DiSalvo called Ten Psychology Studies from 2009 Worth Knowing About. There are some other interesting studies on his list. We encourage you to take a look.

Well, we are all packed and ready to go to San Diego for the 118th Annual APA conference. 

We hope We hope you’ll stop by the booth to meet some of our staff and take a look at several of the new products we have released this year including the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2™ (STAXI-2™),  Child and Adolescent (STAXI-2™ C/A), the Tasks of Executive Control™ (TEC™), the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, 2nd Edition (SIRS-2), and the 11 new NAB® stand-alone tests. We also have copies of the new Mini-Mental® State Examination, 2nd Edition ( MMSE®-2™) and a sample copy of the soon-to-be-released NEO™ Inventories 3 for you to examine. 

Remember, you’ll receive 15% and free shipping and handling on all purchases made at APA. So, be sure to stop by and say, “hello.”

Cynthia Lumpee
Vice President Customer Support

When it comes to common fears, snakes, heights and confined spaces seem to grab all the headlines. But there are hundreds of other phobias we struggle from, including some you may never have heard of:

1.  Chionophobia: February 13, 2010 must have been a particularly bad day for Americans suffering from Chionophobia – a fear of snow. On that day, 49 out of 50 states had snow on the ground. The holdout? Hawaii.

2.  Coulrophobia: Finally! A proper name for our fear of clowns. Coulrophobia often originates with an early childhood experience that’s, well, not very funny.

3.  Phronemophobia: This could win the award for being the world’s most difficult phobia to treat -- the fear of thinking.

4.  Telephonophobia: No word on whether this phobia – a fear of telephones – extends to text messages.

5.  Geniophobia: We were certain this referred to a fear of genies, but the only genies that could scare a Geniophobe would be those with … chins.

Assuming that you don’t suffer from Sesquipedalophobia (fear of long words), we’d like to hear about other unusual phobias you know about. Please use the comment section below to add to our list.

PAR is proud to announce that the following software products are now available for direct download to your computer through our Web site, www.parinc.com:

• Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales™ Interpretive Report (RIAS™-IR)


• Wide Range Achievement Test 4 Interpretive Report (WRAT4-IR)


• Wide Range Achievement Test 4 Scoring Program (WRAT4-SP)


• Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function® Software Portfolio (BRIEF®-SP)


• Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function®–Adult Version Software Portfolio (BRIEF®-A SP)


• Personality Assessment Inventory™ Software Portfolio (PAI®-SP) Counter Serial Numbers


• Personality Assessment Inventory™–Adolescent Software Portfolio (PAI®-A SP) Counter Serial Numbers

Simply click on the product page link and select the Download item code or the Download with CD-ROM item code to have a backup CD mailed to you.

We hope you will enjoy being able to download software products directly from PAR and hope to make more products available in this way in the future. We are conducting a survey to see which other software products you would like to be made available in this format.


We appreciate your feedback. Thank you for helping us to understand how we can better serve you.

Recently PAR held a contest and asked its Customers to describe, in 300 words or less, their involvement in their favorite local charities. The winners are listed below and will receive cash donations in their names to the charities they submitted and support - $500 for the first place winner, $350 for second place winner, and $250 for the third place winner.

The winner of the PAR Community PARtners contest is Robert Mintz from Short Hills, NJ. Robert nominated a charity called Down The Block (http://www.downtheblock.org) that provides assistance to local residents who find themselves in financial distress. Robert described the charity as a “hyper-local” non-profit organization located in Millburn Township, NJ that focuses on assisting those who are not eligible for traditional support.

The second place winner is Shaun Keel who nominated Foster A Life (http://www.fosteralife.com). The organization’s mission is to provide services and opportunities to foster children to promote a more positive self-image and an increase in their self-esteem. They are a 100% volunteer organization, so all funding goes directly to the children.

The third place winner is Judith Mathewson who submitted an organization named Welcome Home Vets (http://www.whvets.org). This organization focuses on providing psychological, financial, or spiritual help to veterans returning home from combat as well as to their families.

Our congratulations and thanks to each of you for all the good work you do in your communities!

Download the entries from the winning contestants.

 

For more information about PAR's involvement in the community, please visit Community PARtners.