Previous research has found that verbal associative fluency tasks are sensitive to the presence of cerebral lesions and more sensitive to frontal lobe and left hemisphere lesions than to other focal lesions. The present study investigated the diagnostic utility of the Thurstone Word Fluency Test (TWFT), a test of written verbal fluency, in detecting and localizing cerebral lesions. Using results from 203 brain-damaged and 134 normal subjects, we found that TWFT performance is affected by cerebral damage generally. At the same time, it is more impaired by frontal than by nonfrontal, by left than by right hemisphere, and by left frontal than by right frontal lesions. This test does not discriminate focal frontal from diffuse lesions. Stepwise discriminant function analyses indicated that the TWFT adds to the Halstead-Reitan Battery in discriminating focal frontal from nonfrontal lesions, but not in discriminating left hemisphere from right hemisphere lesions. Only markedly impaired TWFT performances had lateralizing significance.

The relationship between age and alexithymia was evaluated within a large (n = 476) group of asthmatic patients ranging in age from 14 to 76 years. Alexithymia was found to occur more frequently in the upper age ranges (middle and late adulthood) than in adolescence and early adulthood. Hypotheses regarding this relationship are addressed.

Objective: This article describes development and initial validation studies of the Primary Attachment Style Questionnaire (PASQ), a brief self-report for delineating six styles of attachment to a primary caregiver. Theoretically cued to Ainsworth's original infant classifications, the questionnaire is designed to map attachment patterns during two developmental periods (before and after age 12) and is intended for use in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Method: Pilot studies of the PASQ were conducted with a total of 441 college undergraduates. Over this period, test-retest analyses and factor analyses reduced the number of questionnaire items to the current 42-item version. Participants also responded to a variety of additional measures intended to assess the PASQ's validity. Results: In the first of three validity studies, investigators found moderate correlations between 120 college undergraduates' predominant attachment styles on the PASQ Before 12 and romantic attachment styles on Brennan, Clark, and Shaver's ECR. In the second study, 167 respondents' Axis I and Axis II scores on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory supported the hypothesis that particular insecure attachment styles before age 12 would be related to specific personality disorders and to PTSD. The third validity study demonstrated the PASQ's sensitivity to shifts in attachment security between childhood and adolescence in the presence of three types of events that might generate attachment-related distress: mother's death, parents' divorce, and disruption of mother's ability to provide adequate caregiving. Conclusion: Findings support the utility of the PASQ for use in attachment research and in clinical practice.