Salvatore A. Soraci

Patient satisfaction in performing activities of daily living (ADL) was assessed by using a self-administered questionnaire modified from the Stanford Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ). The HAQ includes questions to determine a patient's degree of difficulty and need for help and assistive devices in ADL. A modification of the HAQ (MHAQ) was developed to include questions concerning perceived patient satisfaction regarding the same ADL, along with perceived change in degree of difficulty. In order to add additional questions while maintaining the length of the questionnaire in a format suitable in routine care, the number of ADL included in the MHAQ was reduced from 20 to 8. Information regarding degree of difficulty derived from 8 questions in the MHAQ is comparable with that derived from 20 questions in the HAQ. The response of a patient that a specific activity is associated with difficulty in functional capacity was not inevitably associated with the absence of patient satisfaction; 43.7% of patients responding "with some difficulty" and 19.1% of patients responding "with much difficulty" expressed satisfaction with their functional capacity. A major determinant of expression of patient satisfaction was perceived change in difficulty: 81.4% of patients noting that their function was "less difficult now," in contrast to 16.9% of patients responding "more difficult now," expressed satisfaction. These studies suggest that data regarding patient satisfaction and perceived change in difficulty can be assessed to more completely characterize patients' functional status in ADL.

Forty-eight male subjects who had previously completed Berger's selfacceptance (self-esteem) scale worked on problem-solving tasks in four person groups. After completion of the tasks, bogus feedback was provided which indicated that the group as a whole had done very well, very poorly, or average. No feedback was provided about the quality of individual performances. As predicted, perceptions of personal responsibility for the group's performance were found to be directly related to the quality of the bogus feedback; subjects in the success conditions felt more responsible than did subjects in the failure conditions, with the average feedback conditions falling intermediate. Contrary to predictions, self-esteem was not related to perceptions of personal or environmental responsibility for the group's performance. However, an interaction was obtained between selfesteem and group performance feedback on how much subjects felt that their prior behaviors were influenced by the other group members. High self-esteem subjects felt that their solutions to the problems were not influenced by the other group members under success conditions, but that their solutions were influenced by the other group members under failure conditions. Thus, high self-esteem subjects managed to shift relative credit for a group success to themselves and relative blame for failure away from themselves. Low self-esteem subjects felt equally influenced in all conditions. The results extend the phenomenon of egocentric perception to face-to-face group situations, and several differences between the present results and results obtained in noninteracting group situations were noted.

Administered the Stanford-Binet and/or its downward extension the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale to 22 children in a school for severely behaviorally disordered boys and girls. Assessments also were made with the Vineland Social Maturity Scale and with a scale of language development. A subgroup of 17 children were assessed with Rimland's E-2 Scale, which is designed to assess the presence and degree of the condition of autism. Correlations among these commonly used assessment procedures are reported. Findings are discussed with respect to the construct validity of the tests and with respect to practical problems of implementation. Issues that concern the distinctiveness of specific classification dimensions and the heterogeneity of the syndrome of autism also are discussed.