Eka Roivainen - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Eka Roivainen
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Oct 26, 2023
European Psychiatry, 2013
Introduction The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is used to measure novelty seeking (NS... more Introduction The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is used to measure novelty seeking (NS), harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence RD), and persistence (P). Objectives We will study temperament in individuals with psychosis and healthy controls. Aim We aim to study the stability of temperament in individuals with psychotic disorders (with onset of illness before and after first follow-up) and in healthy controls. Methods As part of the 31-year follow-up survey of the prospective population based Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort, the TCI was filled by a large sample of individuals. A subsample of psychotic individuals, with the onset of illness before (n=16) or after (n=15) the 31-year follow-up, and healthy controls (n=117) filled in these scales again at the age of 43. We studied also the association between psychotic symptoms and premorbid temperament. Results The 31-year and 43-year temperament scores correlated strongly among controls (Pearson's r: NS 0.68, HA 0.60, RD 0.56, P 0.54), whereas correlations among psychotic individuals with the onset of psychosis before first follow-up were weaker (NS 0.38, HA 0.50, RD 0.17, P 0.53). High HA before the onset of illness (at age of 31 years) associated significantly with a lower likelihood of remission and with more negative, disorganization and total symptoms in the PANSS. High NS before illness associated with a higher likelihood of remission according to the PANSS. Conclusions Temperament was stable among controls, and more unstable in individuals with psychoses. Premorbid harm avoidance and novelty seeking predicts the clinical outcome in schizophrenia.
European Psychiatry, 2016
IntroductionPersonality traits have been associated with risk for depressive disorders. Studies w... more IntroductionPersonality traits have been associated with risk for depressive disorders. Studies with premorbid measures on personality are uncommon.ObjectiveEstimate effect of premorbid personality as a predictor for remission in depressive disorders.AimTo study premorbid personality as a predictor for remission in depression in a population based sample.MethodsThe sample is based on the large Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. Temperament traits were measured at age 31 years using the Temperament and Character Inventory. At the age of 46 years depressive symptoms were measured using the Beck Depression Inventory – II (BDI). The sample included those with self-reported life-time depression history at age 46 years but not yet at age 31 years (n = 298). Temperament at age 31 years was used to predict remission (BDI≤13) at age 46 years using logistic regression analysis, with gender and educational level as confounders. Cohen's d was used as effect size measure.ResultsTwo hundred ...
Americans have a longer Digit span but a shorter Spatial span than FinnsObjectiveCross-national s... more Americans have a longer Digit span but a shorter Spatial span than FinnsObjectiveCross-national studies of test norms show American superiority in digit span (DS) length as compared to European norms. In our study, American and Finnish DS and Spatial span (SS) norms were analyzed to study the hypothesis that the differences in DS reflect a systemic difference in working memory and are not based on linguistic factors.MethodThe mean DS and SS scores from the Wechsler Memory Scale III US (n=1250) and Finnish (n=251) standardizations were compared.ResultsA significant difference between American and Finnish mean DS (16.5-14.2) and SS (14.7-15.9) raw scores was observed. For six out of seven age groups, the American sample had longer DS while for 4/7 age groups, the Finnish sample had longer SS.Conclusions It is concluded that differences in DS are based on other factors than a systemic difference in working memory. The results underline the need for establishing national test norms for ...
Journal of Language and Discrimination
There have been linguistic studies on the gendering mechanisms of adjectives and psychological st... more There have been linguistic studies on the gendering mechanisms of adjectives and psychological studies on the relationship between personality traits and gender, but the two fields have never entered into a dialogue on these issues. This article seeks to address this gap by presenting an interdisciplinary study that explores the gendering mechanisms associated with personality traits and personality trait-denoting adjectives. The findings of earlier work in this area and basic gendering mechanisms relevant to adjectives and personality traits are outlined. This is followed by a linguistic and a psychological analysis of the usage patterns of a set of personality trait adjectives. The linguistic section draws on corpus linguistics to explore the distribution of these adjectives with female, male and gender-neutral personal nouns in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The psychological analysis relates the usage frequencies of personality trait adjectives with the nouns man, ...
Europe’s Journal of Psychology
Analysis of the age of acquisition (AoA) of personality terms represents a genetic method for the... more Analysis of the age of acquisition (AoA) of personality terms represents a genetic method for the study of the individual personality lexicon and offers a potential alternative to correlational analysis for identifying the fundamental personality descriptors among the thousands of terms that appear in language. In the present study, the relationship between AoA, word frequency, word desirability, and factor loading in the Big Five and Hexaco models of 274 and 408 personality adjectives was analyzed. It was found that young children (2nd graders or younger) acquire personality terms that represent traits at the core of the broad personality factors in the Big Five and Hexaco models slightly earlier than words that represent more peripheral traits. In older children beyond second grade, the correlation between factor loading and AoA is weak. Words that describe the broad openness and stability/emotionality aspects of personality are learned later than words for the other broad factors...
Supplemental Material for Generational Changes in Personality: The Evidence From Corpus Linguisti... more Supplemental Material for Generational Changes in Personality: The Evidence From Corpus Linguistics by Eka Roivainen in Psychological Reports
Duodecim; laaketieteellinen aikakauskirja, 2015
One of the criteria for mild mental retardation is a total level of less than 70 IQ points measur... more One of the criteria for mild mental retardation is a total level of less than 70 IQ points measured by an intelligence test. The results of intelligence tests are approximate. There are differences in the norms of test versions, and measurement error must be taken into account in individual testing. A total level of 80 measured by adult tests utilized in Finland does not exclude the possibility of mild mental retardation, and a total level of 60 does not confirm it. The test performance should be compared with other measures, such as school and work history, practical functional capacity and previous test results.
BMC Psychology, 2021
Background For unknown reasons, females outperform males on tests of psychomotor processing speed... more Background For unknown reasons, females outperform males on tests of psychomotor processing speed (PS), such as the Coding and Symbol Search subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Method In the present study, the effects of intelligence, memory, personality, fine motor speed, gross motor dexterity, height, weight, age, sex, and education on psychomotor processing speed were studied in an outpatient sample (n = 130). Results Moderate (r > .40) correlations were found between PS and verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, verbal memory, and fine motor speed. Weak (r > .20) correlations were found between PS and gross motor dexterity, extraversion, education, weight, and sex. Females outperformed males in PS and in fine motor speed. Stepwise linear regression analysis indicated nonverbal reasoning, fine motor speed, and sex as independent predictors of PS. Conclusions One interpretation of the results is that the factors underlying sex differences in processing speed a...
The Wartegg drawing completion test (Wartegg Zeichen Test, WZT) is a projective drawing test deve... more The Wartegg drawing completion test (Wartegg Zeichen Test, WZT) is a projective drawing test developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s by the AustroGerman psychologist Ehrig Wartegg (Wartegg, 1939). The standard DIN-A4sized test form has eight white, 4cm-by-4cm squares in two rows on a black background (Figure 1). Each square is blank except for a small sign, such as a dot or a line, that is given as the starting point of a drawing. For example, a dot is located in the centre of square 1. Subjects are instructed to complete the eight drawings, incorporating the given sign into the drawing. Like other projective drawing tests, Wartegg’s test is based on the assumption that the content and the qualitative aspects of the drawings reflect the personality of the person drawing. For example, a higher than average number of human drawings in the WZT protocol is generally interpreted as a sign of sociability (Gardziella, 1985).
International Journal of Testing, 2013
A psychological test may be defined as an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behav... more A psychological test may be defined as an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behaviour. The interpretation of test results is usually based on comparing an individual’s performance to norms based on a representative sample of the population. The present study examined the norms of popular adult tests. The validity of the Wartegg drawing test (WZT) was studied using two rating scales, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory as criterion tests. Weak to moderate correlations were found. It is concluded that the WZT has some validity in the assessment of Alexithymia. Efforts to develop a psychometrically valid and reliable method of interpreting the WZT should be continued. Crossnational and historical analyses of the norms of Wechsler’s adult intelligence scale (WAIS) were performed. The results show that the Finnish WAIS III test norms are distorted in the younger age groups. Significant cross-national and cross-generational differences in relati...
The relationship between age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, word desirability, and factor ... more The relationship between age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, word desirability, and factor loading in the Big Five and Hexaco models of 274 and 408 personality adjectives was studied. It was found that young children (2nd graders or younger) acquire personality terms that represent traits at the core of the broad personality factors in the Big Five and Hexaco models slightly earlier than words that represent more peripheral traits. In older children beyond second grade, the correlation between factor loading and AoA is weak. Words that describe the broad Openness and Stability aspects of personality are learned later than words for the other broad factors. Word frequency (in book texts) and desirability have a weak negative correlation with AoA. It is hypothesized that the age of acquisition of a personality term reflects the importance of the corresponding trait for children and may be used as one criterion for ranking facet level traits. Further analyses of age of acquisitio...
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
Cognition & emotion, Jan 6, 2018
In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatic... more In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants' demographic characteristics (such as, the raters' age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words). Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an ov...
Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 2015
Which personality facets should a general personality test measure? No consensus exists on the fa... more Which personality facets should a general personality test measure? No consensus exists on the facet structure of personality, the nature of facets, or the correct method of identifying the most significant facets. However, it can be hypothesized (the lexical hypothesis) that high frequency personality describing words more likely represent important personality facets and rarely used words refer to less significant aspects of personality. participants and procedure A ranking of personality facets was performed by studying the frequency of the use of popular personality adjectives in causal clauses (because he is a kind person) on the Internet and in books as attributes of the word person (kind person). results In Study 1, the 40 most frequently used adjectives had a cumulative usage frequency equal to that of the rest of the 295 terms studied. When terms with a higher-ranking dictionary synonym or antonym were eliminated, 23 terms remained, which represent 23 different facets. In Study 2, clusters of synonymous terms were examined. Within the top 30 clusters, personality terms were used 855 times compared to 240 for the 70 lower-ranking clusters. conclusions It is hypothesized that personality facets represented by the top-ranking terms and clusters of terms are important and impactful independent of their correlation with abstract underlying personality factors (five/six factor models). Compared to hierarchical personality models, lists of important facets probably better cover those aspects of personality that are situated between the five or six major domains.
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Oct 26, 2023
European Psychiatry, 2013
Introduction The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is used to measure novelty seeking (NS... more Introduction The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is used to measure novelty seeking (NS), harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence RD), and persistence (P). Objectives We will study temperament in individuals with psychosis and healthy controls. Aim We aim to study the stability of temperament in individuals with psychotic disorders (with onset of illness before and after first follow-up) and in healthy controls. Methods As part of the 31-year follow-up survey of the prospective population based Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort, the TCI was filled by a large sample of individuals. A subsample of psychotic individuals, with the onset of illness before (n=16) or after (n=15) the 31-year follow-up, and healthy controls (n=117) filled in these scales again at the age of 43. We studied also the association between psychotic symptoms and premorbid temperament. Results The 31-year and 43-year temperament scores correlated strongly among controls (Pearson's r: NS 0.68, HA 0.60, RD 0.56, P 0.54), whereas correlations among psychotic individuals with the onset of psychosis before first follow-up were weaker (NS 0.38, HA 0.50, RD 0.17, P 0.53). High HA before the onset of illness (at age of 31 years) associated significantly with a lower likelihood of remission and with more negative, disorganization and total symptoms in the PANSS. High NS before illness associated with a higher likelihood of remission according to the PANSS. Conclusions Temperament was stable among controls, and more unstable in individuals with psychoses. Premorbid harm avoidance and novelty seeking predicts the clinical outcome in schizophrenia.
European Psychiatry, 2016
IntroductionPersonality traits have been associated with risk for depressive disorders. Studies w... more IntroductionPersonality traits have been associated with risk for depressive disorders. Studies with premorbid measures on personality are uncommon.ObjectiveEstimate effect of premorbid personality as a predictor for remission in depressive disorders.AimTo study premorbid personality as a predictor for remission in depression in a population based sample.MethodsThe sample is based on the large Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. Temperament traits were measured at age 31 years using the Temperament and Character Inventory. At the age of 46 years depressive symptoms were measured using the Beck Depression Inventory – II (BDI). The sample included those with self-reported life-time depression history at age 46 years but not yet at age 31 years (n = 298). Temperament at age 31 years was used to predict remission (BDI≤13) at age 46 years using logistic regression analysis, with gender and educational level as confounders. Cohen's d was used as effect size measure.ResultsTwo hundred ...
Americans have a longer Digit span but a shorter Spatial span than FinnsObjectiveCross-national s... more Americans have a longer Digit span but a shorter Spatial span than FinnsObjectiveCross-national studies of test norms show American superiority in digit span (DS) length as compared to European norms. In our study, American and Finnish DS and Spatial span (SS) norms were analyzed to study the hypothesis that the differences in DS reflect a systemic difference in working memory and are not based on linguistic factors.MethodThe mean DS and SS scores from the Wechsler Memory Scale III US (n=1250) and Finnish (n=251) standardizations were compared.ResultsA significant difference between American and Finnish mean DS (16.5-14.2) and SS (14.7-15.9) raw scores was observed. For six out of seven age groups, the American sample had longer DS while for 4/7 age groups, the Finnish sample had longer SS.Conclusions It is concluded that differences in DS are based on other factors than a systemic difference in working memory. The results underline the need for establishing national test norms for ...
Journal of Language and Discrimination
There have been linguistic studies on the gendering mechanisms of adjectives and psychological st... more There have been linguistic studies on the gendering mechanisms of adjectives and psychological studies on the relationship between personality traits and gender, but the two fields have never entered into a dialogue on these issues. This article seeks to address this gap by presenting an interdisciplinary study that explores the gendering mechanisms associated with personality traits and personality trait-denoting adjectives. The findings of earlier work in this area and basic gendering mechanisms relevant to adjectives and personality traits are outlined. This is followed by a linguistic and a psychological analysis of the usage patterns of a set of personality trait adjectives. The linguistic section draws on corpus linguistics to explore the distribution of these adjectives with female, male and gender-neutral personal nouns in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The psychological analysis relates the usage frequencies of personality trait adjectives with the nouns man, ...
Europe’s Journal of Psychology
Analysis of the age of acquisition (AoA) of personality terms represents a genetic method for the... more Analysis of the age of acquisition (AoA) of personality terms represents a genetic method for the study of the individual personality lexicon and offers a potential alternative to correlational analysis for identifying the fundamental personality descriptors among the thousands of terms that appear in language. In the present study, the relationship between AoA, word frequency, word desirability, and factor loading in the Big Five and Hexaco models of 274 and 408 personality adjectives was analyzed. It was found that young children (2nd graders or younger) acquire personality terms that represent traits at the core of the broad personality factors in the Big Five and Hexaco models slightly earlier than words that represent more peripheral traits. In older children beyond second grade, the correlation between factor loading and AoA is weak. Words that describe the broad openness and stability/emotionality aspects of personality are learned later than words for the other broad factors...
Supplemental Material for Generational Changes in Personality: The Evidence From Corpus Linguisti... more Supplemental Material for Generational Changes in Personality: The Evidence From Corpus Linguistics by Eka Roivainen in Psychological Reports
Duodecim; laaketieteellinen aikakauskirja, 2015
One of the criteria for mild mental retardation is a total level of less than 70 IQ points measur... more One of the criteria for mild mental retardation is a total level of less than 70 IQ points measured by an intelligence test. The results of intelligence tests are approximate. There are differences in the norms of test versions, and measurement error must be taken into account in individual testing. A total level of 80 measured by adult tests utilized in Finland does not exclude the possibility of mild mental retardation, and a total level of 60 does not confirm it. The test performance should be compared with other measures, such as school and work history, practical functional capacity and previous test results.
BMC Psychology, 2021
Background For unknown reasons, females outperform males on tests of psychomotor processing speed... more Background For unknown reasons, females outperform males on tests of psychomotor processing speed (PS), such as the Coding and Symbol Search subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Method In the present study, the effects of intelligence, memory, personality, fine motor speed, gross motor dexterity, height, weight, age, sex, and education on psychomotor processing speed were studied in an outpatient sample (n = 130). Results Moderate (r > .40) correlations were found between PS and verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, verbal memory, and fine motor speed. Weak (r > .20) correlations were found between PS and gross motor dexterity, extraversion, education, weight, and sex. Females outperformed males in PS and in fine motor speed. Stepwise linear regression analysis indicated nonverbal reasoning, fine motor speed, and sex as independent predictors of PS. Conclusions One interpretation of the results is that the factors underlying sex differences in processing speed a...
The Wartegg drawing completion test (Wartegg Zeichen Test, WZT) is a projective drawing test deve... more The Wartegg drawing completion test (Wartegg Zeichen Test, WZT) is a projective drawing test developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s by the AustroGerman psychologist Ehrig Wartegg (Wartegg, 1939). The standard DIN-A4sized test form has eight white, 4cm-by-4cm squares in two rows on a black background (Figure 1). Each square is blank except for a small sign, such as a dot or a line, that is given as the starting point of a drawing. For example, a dot is located in the centre of square 1. Subjects are instructed to complete the eight drawings, incorporating the given sign into the drawing. Like other projective drawing tests, Wartegg’s test is based on the assumption that the content and the qualitative aspects of the drawings reflect the personality of the person drawing. For example, a higher than average number of human drawings in the WZT protocol is generally interpreted as a sign of sociability (Gardziella, 1985).
International Journal of Testing, 2013
A psychological test may be defined as an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behav... more A psychological test may be defined as an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behaviour. The interpretation of test results is usually based on comparing an individual’s performance to norms based on a representative sample of the population. The present study examined the norms of popular adult tests. The validity of the Wartegg drawing test (WZT) was studied using two rating scales, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory as criterion tests. Weak to moderate correlations were found. It is concluded that the WZT has some validity in the assessment of Alexithymia. Efforts to develop a psychometrically valid and reliable method of interpreting the WZT should be continued. Crossnational and historical analyses of the norms of Wechsler’s adult intelligence scale (WAIS) were performed. The results show that the Finnish WAIS III test norms are distorted in the younger age groups. Significant cross-national and cross-generational differences in relati...
The relationship between age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, word desirability, and factor ... more The relationship between age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, word desirability, and factor loading in the Big Five and Hexaco models of 274 and 408 personality adjectives was studied. It was found that young children (2nd graders or younger) acquire personality terms that represent traits at the core of the broad personality factors in the Big Five and Hexaco models slightly earlier than words that represent more peripheral traits. In older children beyond second grade, the correlation between factor loading and AoA is weak. Words that describe the broad Openness and Stability aspects of personality are learned later than words for the other broad factors. Word frequency (in book texts) and desirability have a weak negative correlation with AoA. It is hypothesized that the age of acquisition of a personality term reflects the importance of the corresponding trait for children and may be used as one criterion for ranking facet level traits. Further analyses of age of acquisitio...
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
Cognition & emotion, Jan 6, 2018
In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatic... more In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants' demographic characteristics (such as, the raters' age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words). Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an ov...
Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 2015
Which personality facets should a general personality test measure? No consensus exists on the fa... more Which personality facets should a general personality test measure? No consensus exists on the facet structure of personality, the nature of facets, or the correct method of identifying the most significant facets. However, it can be hypothesized (the lexical hypothesis) that high frequency personality describing words more likely represent important personality facets and rarely used words refer to less significant aspects of personality. participants and procedure A ranking of personality facets was performed by studying the frequency of the use of popular personality adjectives in causal clauses (because he is a kind person) on the Internet and in books as attributes of the word person (kind person). results In Study 1, the 40 most frequently used adjectives had a cumulative usage frequency equal to that of the rest of the 295 terms studied. When terms with a higher-ranking dictionary synonym or antonym were eliminated, 23 terms remained, which represent 23 different facets. In Study 2, clusters of synonymous terms were examined. Within the top 30 clusters, personality terms were used 855 times compared to 240 for the 70 lower-ranking clusters. conclusions It is hypothesized that personality facets represented by the top-ranking terms and clusters of terms are important and impactful independent of their correlation with abstract underlying personality factors (five/six factor models). Compared to hierarchical personality models, lists of important facets probably better cover those aspects of personality that are situated between the five or six major domains.