Further Validation for the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire

This study further investigates the validity of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith (SCSORF) questionnaire. Building and expanding upon prior research, the SCSORF, existing religiosity measures, mood, and personality adjustment scales were administered to three samples. Subjects included 290 university students and 232 recovering substance abusers. The results further validate the SCSORF as being a valid measure of strength of religious faith.     

Findings on the relationship between Internet addiction and psychological symptoms in Brazilian adults

This study evaluated the prevalence of Internet addiction (IA) and its association with negative psychological symptoms in Brazilian adults. A network analysis was conducted to estimate specific variables and their expected influence on IA. In this cross-sectional study, 15,476 adults (M_age = 37.5, SD = 9.59) completed an open web-based survey. Three questionnaires were used: the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Based on IAT scores, participants were classified as No-Risk user (NRU), Low-Risk user (LRU) or High-Risk user (HRU). We observed that 4.8% of the participants were classified in the HRU group. In addition, their risk for severe symptoms of depression was 10 times higher and, for anxiety, seven times higher than that in the NRU group (p < .001). Time spent using smartphones was also significantly higher in the HRU group (M_hours = 5.1, p < .001). The main factors associated with IA were depression, gender and anxiety, but the variable “having children” was the most influential in the IA network. These findings suggest that psychiatric symptoms are the main factors associated with IA among the adult population.     

Validation of the Italian Remote Associate Test

The scientific approach to the study of creative problem-solving has shifted from using classic insight problems (e.g., the Nine-dots problem), toward sets of problems that have more robust psychometric properties, such as the Remote Associate Test (RAT). Because it is homogeneous, compact, quickly solvable, and easy to score, the RAT has been used more frequently in recent creativity studies. We applied the Item Response Theory (IRT) to develop an Italian version of this task. The final 51-item test was reliable (α = .89) and provided information over a wide range of ability levels, as revealed by the IRT analysis. The RAT correlated with five measures of creative performance: The Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM), three classic insight problems, a set of anagrams purposefully developed, the fluency and flexibility scores of the Alternative Uses Task (AUT), and the Creative Achievements Questionnaire (CAQ). The new measure provided is meant to encourage the study of creativity and problem-solving in the Italian language.     

Bilingualism Is Associated with a Delayed Onset of Dementia but Not with a Lower Risk of Developing it: a Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses

Neuropsychology Review - Some studies have linked bilingualism with a later onset of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Not all studies have observed...     

Neural recruitment related to threat perception differs as a function of adolescent sleep

Detecting threat cues in the environment is an important aspect of social functioning. This is particularly true for adolescents as social threats become more salient and they navigate increasingly complex relationships outside of the family. Sleep relates to socioemotional processing throughout development, but the neurobiological relevance of sleep for threat perceptions in adolescence remains unknown. In the present study, 46 human adolescents (aged 14–18 years; 26 female) made judgments while undergoing a brain scan about whether unfamiliar, affectively neutral, computer‐generated faces were threatening. Prior to the scan, several indices of sleep were assessed nightly for two‐weeks using actigraphy. Sleep duration and poor sleep quality (defined as less efficiency, more awakenings, longer awakenings), factors influenced by biological and psychosocial changes during adolescence, elicited distinct neural activation patterns. Sleep duration was positively associated with activation in visual and face processing regions (occipital cortex, occipital fusiform gyrus), and this activation was linked to increased threat detection during the threat perception task. Sleep quality was negatively related to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation, which moderated the relation between reaction time (RT) and exposure to faces. Findings suggest reduced threat perception for adolescents with shorter sleep durations and more impulsive responding (as evinced by less consistent RT) for adolescents experiencing worse quality sleep. This study identifies an association between sleep and neural functioning relevant for socioemotional decision making during adolescence, a time when these systems undergo significant development.     

Equivalence classes with requirements for short response latencies

Five adult humans were tested for emergent conditional discriminations under rapid-responding contingencies. During four-comparison matching-to-sample baseline training (AB and AC), limited-hold contingencies for responding to samples and comparisons were gradually restricted to the shortest duration consistent with at least 95% accuracy and no more than 5% failures to respond. The final limited-hold values were 0.4-0.5 s for samples and 1.2-1.3 s for comparisons; mean response latencies were 0.15-0.28 s for samples and 0.59-0.73 s for comparisons; inter-trial intervals were 0.4 s. With these fast-responding requirements, test blocks presented 72 probe trials interspersed among 72 baseline trials, all without programmed differential consequences. Four equivalence test blocks (BC and CB probes, which tested simultaneously for both symmetry and transitivity) were followed by four symmetry (BA and CA probes) test blocks. Three subjects' results documented emergent performances indicative of equivalence classes despite fast-responding requirements that severely limited the time available for mediating vocal or subvocal responses. For these three subjects, mean latencies were slightly shorter in baseline trials than in probes, and shorter on symmetry than on equivalence probes. These differences, however, were usually less than the differences among mean latencies on the different types of trials within the baseline and probed performances.     

Exploring the Complexities of Familism and Acculturation: Central Constructs for People of Mexican Origin

We examined the relationships between three dimensions of familism: importance of family, family support, and family conflict with acculturation, assessed orthogonally (Mexican and American cultural contributions assessed independently), and the relative contribution these factors make to psychological adjustment among 248 (124 women, 124 men) adults of Mexican origin. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, positive associations were found between importance of family and the biculturalism of Mexican and American cultural identity; family support and Mexican cultural identity; but no associations between family conflict and level of acculturation. Psychological well-being was positively associated with Mexican cultural identity and family support, whereas psychological distress was associated with greater family conflict and lower family support. The greater relative contribution of Mexican cultural identity to familism and well-being, and the importance of assessing acculturation orthogonally are discussed. This research was supported in part by a Minority Supplement to National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH47193 to the Research Center on the Psychobiology of Ethnicity, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and by a research award from Pitzer College to Norma Rodriguez.     

Compatible Functions in Algebras Associated to Extensions of Positive Logic

In [4], Caicedo and Cignoli study compatible functions on Heytingalgebras and the corresponding logical properties of connectivesdefined on intuitionistic propositional calculus. In this paperwe study some aspects of compatible functions on the algebrasassociated to positive propositional calculus and successiveextensions of it: intuitionistic calculus itself, the modalsymmetric propositional calculus of Moisil and n-valued ukasiewiczpropositional calculus.     

Rorschach Comprehensive System data for a sample of 116 preadolescent and 117 adolescent nonpatients from Italy

This project provides information on how preadolescent and adolescent nonpatients perform on the Rorschach test, administered and scored following Exner's guidelines (2003). Lis, Salcuni, Parolin, and Superchi (2001) reported previously initial data for 51 adolescent nonpatients living in Italy who were administered this instrument by graduate and postgraduate students in a 2-year research course at the Psychotherapy School of the University of Padua, between July 1998 and February 2001. The current study is an extension of that work and includes information on additional adolescent nonpatients and preadolescent nonpatients, gathered between April 2001 and December 2006. The study thus includes information on 233 participants, 116 preadolescents (aged 12-14) and 117 adolescents (aged 15-18). Individuals were excluded if they had a major medical illness in the past 6 months, any psychiatric hospitalization, psychological treatment within the past 2 years, any felony conviction, or psychological testing within the past year. Interrater reliability statistics at the response level for scoring segments are reported both with percentage of agreement and iota. Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS) findings are presented.