Changes In Personal Characteristics Research Articles

A Patient-Centered Perspective on Changes in Personal Characteristics After Deep Brain Stimulation

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) results in improvements in motor function and quality of life in patients with Parkinson disease (PD), which might impact a patient's perception of valued personal characteristics. Prior studies investigating whether DBS causes unwanted changes to oneself or one's personality have methodological limitations that should be addressed. To determine whether DBS is associated with changes in characteristics that patients with PD identify as personally meaningful. This cohort study assessed changes in visual analog scale (VAS) ratings reflecting the extent to which patients with PD manifested individually identified personal characteristics before and 6 and 12 months after DBS at a large academic medical center from February 21, 2018, to December 9, 2021. The VAS findings were tailored to reflect the top 3 individually identified personal characteristics the patient most feared losing. The VASs were scored from 0 to 10, with 0 representing the least and 10 the most extreme manifestation of the trait. Change scores were examined at the individual level. Content analysis was used to code the qualitative data. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed from January 12, 2019 (initial qualitative coding), to December 15, 2023. Deep brain stimulation. The primary outcome variable was the mean VAS score for the top 3 personal characteristics. The secondary outcome was the incidence of meaningful changes on the patients' top 3 characteristics at the individual level. Fifty-two of 54 dyads of patients with PD and their care partners (96.3%) were recruited from a consecutive series approved for DBS (36 patients [69.2%] were male and 45 care partners [86.5%] were female; mean [SD] age of patients, 61.98 [8.55] years). Two patients and 1 care partner were lost to follow-up. Increases in the mean VAS score (indicative of greater manifestation of [ie, positive changes in] specific characteristics) were apparent following DBS for ratings of both the patients (Wald χ2 = 16.104; P < .001) and care partners (Wald χ2 = 6.746; P < .001) over time. The slopes of the changes for both the patient and care partners were correlated, indicating agreement in observed changes over time. The individual level analyses indicated that scores for most patients and care partners remained the same or increased. In this cohort study, participants reported greater (more positive) manifestations of individually identified, valued characteristics after DBS. These findings may be relevant to informing decision-making for patients with advanced PD who are considering DBS.

Changes in symptoms and characteristics of COVID-19 patients across different variants: two years study using neural network analysis

BackgroundConsidering the fact that COVID-19 has undergone various changes over time, its symptoms have also varied. The aim of this study is to describe and compare the changes in personal characteristics, symptoms, and underlying conditions of individuals infected with different strains of COVID-19.MethodsThis descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 46,747 patients who underwent PCR testing during a two-year period from February 22, 2020 to February 23, 2022, in South Khorasan province, Iran. Patient characteristics and symptoms were extracted based on self-report and the information system. The data were analyzed using logistic regression and artificial neural network approaches. The R software was used for analysis and a significance level of 0.05 was considered for the tests.ResultsAmong the 46,747 cases analyzed, 23,239 (49.7%) were male, and the mean age was 51.48 ± 21.41 years. There was a significant difference in symptoms among different variants of the disease (p < 0.001). The factors with a significant positive association were myalgia (OR: 2.04; 95% CI, 1.76 – 2.36), cough (OR: 1.93; 95% CI, 1.68—2.22), and taste or smell disorder (OR: 2.62; 95% CI, 2.1 – 3.28). Additionally, aging was found to increase the likelihood of testing positive across the six periods.ConclusionWe found that older age, myalgia, cough and taste/smell disorder are better factors compared to dyspnea or high body temperature, for identifying a COVID-19 patient. As the disease evolved, chills and diarrhea, demonstrated prognostic strength as in Omicron.

İRRİTABL BARSAK SENDROMUNUN KİŞİLİK ÖZELLİKLERİ İLE İLİŞKİSİ

İrritabl barsak sendromu fiziksel, psikolojik ve sosyal boyutları olan bir hastalıktır. Kişilik ise bireyin doğuştan getirdiği ve yaşantıları sonucu kazandığı, onu diğer bireylerden ayıran özelliklerin tamamı olarak tanımlanır. Hastalıkların kontrolünde bütüncül yaklaşım, hastayı her yönüyle değerlendirme önemlidir. Etiyolojisi tam olarak açıklanamayan, psikosomatik bir hastalık olan irritabl barsak sendromunda hasta birey her yönüyle değerlendirilmelidir. Somatik yakınmaların kişilik özellikleriyle ilişkili olabileceği muhtemeldir. Kişilik özelliklerinin irritabl barsak sendromu oluşumunda ve hastalık sürecindeki etkisi, irritabl barsak sendromu gelişen hastalarda meydana gelebilecek kişilik özelliklerindeki değişim üzerinde durulması gereken bir konudur. Kişilik özellikleri ve irritabl barsak sendromu ilişkisi açıklandığında uygulanacak terapi ve tedavilerle daha etkili sonuçlar elde edilebilir, hastanın yaşam kalitesi artırılabilir.

Relationships between big-five personality factors and Alzheimer's disease pathology in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease.

IntroductionChanges in personality characteristics are associated with the onset of symptoms in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and may even precede clinical diagnosis. However, personality changes caused by disease progression can be difficult to separate from changes that occur with normal aging. The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) provides a unique cohort in which to relate measures of personality traits to in vivo markers of disease in a much younger sample than in typical late onset AD.MethodsPersonality traits measured with the International Personality Item Pool at baseline from DIAN participants were analyzed as a function of estimated years to onset of clinical symptoms and well‐established AD biomarkers.ResultsBoth neuroticism and conscientiousness were correlated with years to symptom onset and markers of tau pathology in the cerebrospinal fluid. Self‐reported conscientiousness and both neuroticism and conscientiousness ratings from a collateral source were correlated with longitudinal rates of cognitive decline such that participants who were rated as higher on neuroticism and lower on conscientiousness exhibited accelerated rates of cognitive decline.DiscussionPersonality traits are correlated with the accumulation of AD pathology and time to symptom onset, suggesting that AD progression can influence an individual's personality characteristics. Together these findings suggest that measuring neuroticism and conscientiousness may hold utility in tracking disease progression in AD.

Психолого-педагогические условия обучения иноязычному профессиональному общению студентов направления подготовки «Технология производства и переработки сельскохозяйственной продукции» на основе модели интегрированного предметно-языкового обучения

Content and language Integrated learning is one of the modern approaches to teaching a foreign language for professional communication to students of non-linguistic specialties. The im-plementation of the approach implies taking into account the specifics of each specific profile of training within the training direction when selecting the subject content of teaching a foreign lan-guage, as well as when choosing a system of exercises and assignments aimed at creating aspects of students' foreign-language professional communicative competence. The development of an appropriate teaching methodology will depend on the consideration of a number of psychological and pedagogical conditions, which are understood as a complex of interconnected possibilities of the educational environment aimed at quantitative or qualitative changes in personality characteristics. In the framework of this study, teaching foreign students professional communication in the “Technology for the production and processing of agricultural products” programme on the basis of an integrated content-language training model will be effective when taking into account the following psychological and pedagogical conditions: 1) motivation of students to study foreign language professional communication on the basis of an integrated content-learning model; 2) students have a foreign language level of B1 and above; 3) the competence of a foreign language teacher in a profile specialty; 4) taking into account the specifics of the learning profile when selecting the subject matter of teaching a foreign language for professional communication; 5) taking into account the specifics of professional activity in the development of a complex of educational communicative tasks. In this work, we substantiate and describe each of the conditions in detail.

Entrepreneurship Across the Lifespan

Aging comes along with changes in personal characteristics and motivations, social expectations and environmental support. These changes have consequences for the antecedents, processes and outcomes of Although previous studies have considered age as influencing factor in the context of entrepreneurship, we lack an overarching framework connecting the different underlying motivations, entrepreneurial processes, outcomes and external influence factors of entrepreneurship across the lifespan. With this symposium, we seek to contribute to a theoretical framework that unites the scattered field of age and entrepreneurship and is useful to explain entrepreneurship in various phases of life. Scholars from the field of entrepreneurship will present their views on age and entrepreneurship based on their research and will discuss age-related peculiarities and cross- generational commonalities of entrepreneurship.

Positive experience in the use of art therapy techniques «Picture your illness» with the purpose of changing the internal picture of the disease

Currently, much attention is paid to the importance of studying the subjective features of the disease, noting that the nature of the patient's complaints, their analysis and changes in personality characteristics under the influence of the disease are no less important than the data of objective (instrumental) studies. The importance of the relationship of a person to one's health and illness, the cognitive and emotional components of these relationships, was shown to emphasize the importance of the internal picture of the disease when studying the mechanisms of the disease and the therapeutic process leading to recovery. It is shown that the character of the disease itself, and its severity, and the rate of development affect the formation of the internal picture of the disease; How sudden and unexpected was its beginning; This is an exacerbation of a chronic disease or acute pathology. It is proved that the influence of premorbid personal qualities and psychological characteristics of a person's personality on the development and course of the disease is as important as those changes in the psyche that arise in the suffering person under the influence of the pathological process. Art-therapeutic technique can be used as a diagnostic and therapeutic technique, as it allows to diagnose the internal picture of the disease; To separate man and illness; See yourself and the disease from the outside; Take responsibility for the current situation; Feel not a victim of the disease, but a master; Is a resource and increases the motivation for recovery.

Diverging Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access to Physician Care

To examine recent changes in racial and ethnic disparities in access to physician services in the United States, and investigate the economic factors driving the changes observed. Using nationally representative data on adults aged 25-64 from the 2000 and 2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we examine changes in two measures of access: whether the individual reported having a usual source of care, and whether he/she had any doctor visits during the past year. In each year, we calculate disparities in access between African Americans and Whites, and between Hispanics and Whites, applying the Institute of Medicine's definition of a disparity. Nonlinear regression decomposition techniques are then used to quantify how changes in personal characteristics, comparing 2000 and 2007, helped shape the changes observed. Large disparities in access to physician care were evident for both minority groups in 2000 and 2007. Disparities in no doctor visits during the past year diminished for African Americans, but disparities in both measures worsened sharply for Hispanics. Disparities in access to physician care are improving for African Americans in one dimension, but eroding for Hispanics in multiple dimensions. The most important contributing factors to the growing disparities between Hispanics and Whites are health insurance, education, and income differences.

Personality change following religious conversion: perceptions of converts and their close acquaintances

This study focuses on how converts and their close acquaintances perceive changes in personality characteristics after religious conversion and possible demographic influences of these perceptions. Sixty Slovakian respondents self-defined as having experienced conversions rated themselves twice on measures of Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, and meaningfulness in life. The first rating provided retrospective information concerning pre-conversion conditions and the second rating obtained data reflecting the convert's present self-understanding. In addition, every convert was rated on the same characteristics by someone who knew the person well during both pre- and post-conversion times. The convert and the rater both provided demographic information (age, education, religiosity, relationship to conversions and converts etc.). Analyses showed that the converts perceived several personality changes: neuroticism decreased while self-esteem, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion increased. They also reported a large increase in meaningfulness. Perceived changes were in part related to education level and age for converts, and to religiosity in both converts and close persons, suggesting a retrospective bias.

Identifying some critical changes required in adopting agile practices in traditional software development projects

PurposeAgile software development (ASD) is currently an emerging approach in software engineering for improving quality, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. Owing to the attractive claims of successes of the ASD approach, many traditional projects, which used to practice plan‐driven software development, are gradually transitioning into ASD‐based development. This paper seeks to report the results from a survey‐based ex‐post‐facto study aimed at determining the relative importance, if any, of the changes traditional plan‐driven software development projects have to undergo to adopt ASD practices.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted using a web‐based survey with ASD practitioners who had experience of practicing plan‐driven software development in the past. ASD practitioners from a wide range of industrial sectors participated in the study. Similarly, the study is not restricted to any specific organisation/project size, culture, or nationality – the respondents were widely geographically distributed across continents.FindingsThe study received 241 responses, of which 165 were usable. The study did not reveal any substantial difference in importance of the four classes of changes hypothesised – changes in culture, changes in management style, changes in knowledge management strategy and changes in development processes. The authors believe that this is an important finding because it is indicative of not isolating one class of changes from another in practical transition exercises. However, another noteworthy observation was that transitioning from heavily process‐centric to short, iterative, test‐driven, and people‐centric development was considered by the largest percentage (roughly 77 per cent) of respondents to be very important. The open‐ended questions in the study also revealed three additional classes of changes: changes in personal characteristics, changes in customer attitude, and changes in knowledge and education of stakeholders.Originality/valueIn this work an attempt was made to gain an understanding of the relative importance of the different critical changes that would be helpful to a project manager who is involved in the transition from traditional plan‐driven software development practices to agile software development practices.

Can a Task-Based Approach Explain the Recent Changes in the German Wage Structure?

Summary This paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the task-based approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition of the changes in the entire wage distribution between 1999 and 2006 into the separate effects of personal characteristics and task assignments. In line with the literature, we find a noticeable increase of wage inequality between 1999 and 2006. The decomposition results show that the changes in personal characteristics explain some of the increase in wage inequality whereas the changes in task assignments strongly work towards reducing wage inequality. The coefficient effect for personal characteristics works towards an increase in wage inequality at the top of the wage distribution. The coefficient effect for the task assignments on the contrary shows an inverted U-shaped pattern. We conclude that altogether the task-based approach can not explain the recent increase of wage inequality in Germany.

Can a Task-Based Approach Explain the Recent Changes in the German Wage Structure?

This paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the task-based approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition of the changes in the entire wage distribution between 1999 and 2006 into the separate effects of personal characteristics and task assignments. In line with the literature, we find a noticeable increase of wage inequality between 1999 and 2006. The decomposition results show that the changes in personal characteristics explain some of the increase in wage inequality whereas the changes in task assignments strongly work towards reducing wage inequality. The coefficient effect for personal characteristics works towards an increase in wage inequality at the top of the wage distribution. The coefficient effect for the task assignments on the contrary shows an inverted U-shaped pattern. We conclude that altogether the task-based approach can not explain the recent increase of wage inequality in Germany.

The growing evidence for personality change in adulthood: Findings from research with personality inventories

Theories of adult development all agree that adulthood is a time of important changes in goals, resources, and coping. Yet, impressed with the rank-order stability of individual differences in personality, many researchers interested in personality traits and personality assessment doubt that personality changes in meaningful and systematic ways during adulthood. This article reviews large studies of mean-level change in personality characteristics measured with broad-band personality inventories, and includes both cross-sectional and cross-cohort longitudinal research. The results show considerable generalizability across samples, cohorts, and studies. In particular, people score higher with age on characteristics such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and norm-adherence, and they score lower with age on social vitality. These findings provide evidence that personality does change during adulthood and that these changes are non-negligible in size, systematic, not necessarily linear, and theoretically important.

Changes in personality characteristics in women treated in a therapeutic community.

We examined changes in mood and personality characteristics in a sample of cocaine-dependent women being treated in a therapeutic community (TC). Forty-six women completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II) on admission and 12 months after discharge from the TC. On admission, the group was characterized by clinically significant scores on the BDI, HAM-A, and the MCMI-II Avoidant, Dependent, Antisocial, Passive-aggressive, Self-defeating, and Borderline scales. On follow-up, significant improvement in functioning was suggested by decreases in scale scores on the BDI, HAM-A, and MCMI-II Avoidant, Dependent, Self-Defeating, and Borderline Scales, but not for the MCMI-II Antisocial and Passive-Aggressive scales. These results suggest substantial positive effects of TC treatment on personality characteristics and functioning, but also indicate that TC treatment may not habilitate all critical personality deficits.

Puzzling Over the Paradoxes of Caspi and Moffitt

It has been difficult for me to know what to make of Caspi and Moffitt's target article. It brings together an impressive array of experimental studies from diverse areas of psychology, suggests mechanisms underlying the coherence of personality, and makes interesting references to anthropological ideas and evolutionary theory. On the other hand, the reasoning underlying the structuring of all this evidence seems to me arbitrary and unsound. The first confusing premise is that individual differences, after early childhood, are very hard to detect because they are masked by social roles. Therefore, a pressing problem is to devise a strategy for removal of masks. It is true that, after early childhood, most of us do not sing songs to our physician or try to take turns with the stethoscope. We conform to the role of patient. But, we do not hide our hypochondriacal concerns, tension and irritability, intellectual curiosity, or stoic acceptance. Caspi and Moffitt quote Block (1981), but they do not listen to his full message, to McCrae and Costa (1990), or to many others. There is massive evidence for the validity and longitudinal stability of individual differences in personality. Individual differences (as assessed by inventories and other personality measures) are indeed affected by our work roles (Kohn & Schooler, 1978) and by other role configurations over time (Helson & Picano, 1990), but they are not masked, and they continue to influence behavior in important ways. The next step in Caspi and Moffitt's argument is to show what personality psychologists already knowthat differences in personality are more apparent in situations that do not pull for the same behavior from everybody. Caspi and Moffitt cite many pages of evidence that individual differences in dogs, monkeys, babies, and children are conspicuous in novel, ambiguous, and threatening situations. They do not mention that personality differences might also be reduced in such situations or that personality differences are apparent without such emergency. Rather, they fix on the idea that, to find personality differences when they are clear-cut, we should study them in life transitions that are novel, ambiguous, and threatening. This idea represents a fundamentally different perspective that Caspi and Moffitt describe as paradoxical. Although transitions have hitherto been regarded as times when people change, the authors say, transitions actually are times when people show their stripes. In my view, this apparent paradox is maintained by shifting meanings of terms. When it is suggested that people change in connection with the to parenthood, for example, one is referring primarily to mean level change in personality characteristics (Feldman & Aschenbrenner, 1983) or perhaps to general processes of adaptation to change (Stewart & Healy, 1985). The question of rank-order change in personality over the course of transitions, which is what Caspi and Moffitt studied in girls before and after menarche (if behavior problems count as an adequate assessment of personality), has received less attention, perhaps because, as these authors say, rank-order stability tends to be high. I know of no consensus or major theory holding that rank-order change is pronounced in transitions, so I have trouble seeing the paradox. It is true that some studies report less rank-order stability from adolescence to young adulthood than over other periods of the life span (Finn, 1986; Haan, Millsap, & Hartka, 1986; Helson & Moane, 1987). The change from the structured and sheltered environments of home and school to the heterogeneous wide world has often been an unprotected transition in which some young people do better and others do worse than previous adjustment leads one to expect. This evidence goes against Caspi and Moffitt's argument. Although there was less stability from ages 21 to 27 than from ages 27 to 43 in the Mills Longitudinal Study (Helson & Moane, 1987), stability was still high, and individual differences among the women in the senior year of college showed highly significant relations to subsequent role patterns. We have pointed out that our findings might be particularly striking because the participants were members of a transitional cohort for whom there were strong pressures to marry and have children along with new opportunities in the labor force and the gathering storm of the women's movement (Helson, Elliott, & Leigh, 1989; Helson & Picano, 1990). However, it was the social change in the whole country that made it possible for differences in personality among these women at their time of transition to the adult world to be expressed in different life-paths. Thus, the consequences (importance) of individual differences in a life transition depend on the social and historical context. The experimental model adopted by Caspi and Moffitt throughout most of their target article does not seem to me sufficient for the study of personality in

Consistency and Change in Personality Characteristics and Affect from Middle to Late Adolescence

Non clinical adolescents in a longitudinal study were examined at ages 16 and 18 to see whether or not there were changes in personality functioning, attitudes and affect over time, and whether or not these were related to each other. Personality functioning remained fairly consistent at both ages, with marked personality problems occurring in about one out of seven. As a group, the older adolescents demonstrated more anxiety and depression, as well as changes in certain attitudes such as more curiosity and interest in people. For individual adolescents it was found that there was considerable predictability of affect and attitudes at age 18 from the presentation at age 16. Furthermore, a relative increase in the amount of anger in middle adolescence was a predictor of personality problems in late adolescence.

Trait anxiety, sense of coherence and medical school stressors: Observations at three stages

Abstract Changes in personality characteristics during young adulthood were evaluated in a three-stage study of perceptions of stressors, trait anxiety and sense of coherence among students in a six-year medical school. Data were collected during the orientation program prior to the beginning of the first year of studies, and in the middle of the first and second years. No differences on perceptions of stressors, anxiety and sense of coherence were found between different classes tested during the same stage in their medical school careers. Changes in these variables were found, however, over the stages. Overall stressor scores increased significantly in the second year (third stage), due primarily to students' assessments of two clusters of stressors as more threatening: academic demands and professional status. Only certain groups of stressors correlated with anxiety and sense of coherence. Anxiety scores increased and sense of coherence scores decreased over time. These results indicate that exposure to a stressful environment during young adulthood, such as the early years of medical school, is manifested in significant personality changes.

パースナリティ発達の縦断的研究

With the purpose of assessing the development of dynamic nature of personality with individual differences, we have been gathering, by repeated tests and observations, the data from the same groups of subjects in the Attached Schools and Kindergarten of Kobe University Faculty of Education. This longitudinal study which began in 1968, will eventually cover a span of twelve years when one of our groups of subjects (aged 3 at the beginning of this study) have reached the age of fifteen (in the third and the last grade in the Attached Junior High Schaol). However, in the present reports the results of our analyses of the data obtained from the three-year period of personality development of the Junior High School Subjects were presented.In order to determine the relationship between sexual maturation and the subsequent changes in personality characteristics, we divided the whole sample of 121 junior high school subjects into five Type-groups, and for each of these groups, the longitudinal data obtained before and after the beginning of maturation (identified on the basis of changing of voice for boys and beginning of menstruation for girls) such as measures of physical growth, self-concept,general and vocational interests, interests in school subjects and personality traits were compared. The results revealed:1) As to the growth in stature, the same regular growth trend was found formost subjects, regardless of the differende in time of the beginning of puberescence. For an instance, maximum growth rate in standing hight was indicated in the growth-period just before the beginning of puberescence.2) Self-concept measured by Semantic Differential technique indicated a trend toward stabilization in 40% of the subjects while the reverse trend was found in other 30%. The remaining 30% indicated no marked change in their self-concept. However, there was no regular change in accordance with the arrival of puberescence.3) Measures of general and vocational interests indicated, as in the case of self-concept, irregular individual variations after puberescence. But, interests in school subjects tended to be stabilized in the course of the three years.4) Measures of personality traits obtained by means of two personality tests showed also a trend toward stabilization. But, no marked changes which were directly related to the arrival of puberescence could be found in our data.From these findings, it was concluded that such aspects of personality as interests, selfconcept and traits in personality do not change in a uniform and regular way just after the beginning of puberescence, as shown in the development of physical side of personality.

Changes in personal characteristics of men, over five years, following first diagnosis of coronary heart disease.

Changes in personal characteristics of men, over five years, following first diagnosis of coronary heart disease.

Personal Change As A Concommitant of Counselor Education

Three groups of students at various levels of counselor preparation were selected to determine if significant changes in personal characteristics took place as a result of a semester of counselor education. The California Psychological Inventory, Rokeach's Dogmatism Scale (Form D), Berger's Acceptance of Self and Others Scale, and Porter's Test of Counselor Attitudes were employed as instruments to ascertain change. Results indicated a significant difference between advanced groups and beginning groups and between pre‐ and posttest measures in a direction perceived as desirable by authorities in the field.