Filipino Personality Structure and the Big Five Model: A Lexical Approach

ABSTRACT In lexically based studies, we derived Filipino personality dimensions and related them to the Big Five model. In Study 1, Filipino high-school and college students (N= 629) rated themselves on a near-comprehensive list of 861 Filipino (Tagalog) trait adjectives. In Study 2, Filipino high-school and college students (N= 1,531) rated 280 markers of dimensions identified in Study 1. Some students (n= 473) also completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Seven comparable Filipino dimensions were identified in factor analyses in the two studies. We concluded that the dimensions we labeled Concern for Others (vs. Egotism), Conscientiousness. Gregariousness, and Intellect were quite similar to Big Five Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Intellect, respectively. The Filipino Self-Assurance dimension was most similar to Big Five Neuroticism. The Filipino Temperamentalness dimension was more complex in Big Five terms, overlapping Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. A final Filipino factor resembled a Negative Valence or Infrequency dimension. More than five factors had to be extracted to obtain Philippine dimensions resembling all of the Big Five.     

The gift of Mexican historicism

The focus of this paper is Mexican historicism. It has three objectives: first, to introduce English-speaking readers to the nature and history of Mexican historicism; second, to defend Mexican historicism against the charges of relativism usually raised against historicism in general and “Mexican” philosophy in particular; and third, to argue for what I call the transcendental, or alternatively, “liberatory,” nature of Mexican historicism—a nature with philosophical and political consequences. The hope is that by making the clarifications and determinations made here, the tradition of Mexican philosophy, of which Mexican historicism is a key moment, may find its place in the increasingly pluralistic US philosophical landscape.     

Prospective Memory Impairment in Mild Cognitive Impairment: An Analytical Review

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a heterogeneous condition characterized by the presence in an otherwise healthy elderly individual of cognitive deficits involving specific domains in the absence of significant functional impairments. Reports indicate that prospective memory (PM), that is, the ability to remember to execute delayed intentions, is impaired in individuals with MCI. The present review discusses the current debate in the literature on PM functioning in MCI by focusing on the relationship between prospective retrieval and retrospective memory functioning. Analysis of the reported evidence revealed that both the prospective component and the retrospective component of PM can be impaired in MCI. Declarative memory dysfunction may account for the retrospective memory impairment, while either reduced executive abilities or a deficit of reflexive mechanisms could explain the prospective component impairment.     

Psychological factors related to eating disordered behaviors: a study with Portuguese athletes

This study analyzes eating disordered behaviors in a sample of Portuguese athletes and explores its relationship with some psychological dimensions. Two hundred and ninety nine athletes (153 male, 51.2%) practicing collective (65.2%) or individual sports (34.8%) were included. The assessment protocol included the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (Fairburn & Beglin, 1994); the Sport Condition Questionnaire (Bruin et al., 2007; Hall et al., 2007); the Sport Anxiety Scale (Smith et al., 2006); the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda, 1992; Duda & Whitehead, 1998); the Cognitive Evaluation of Sport-Threat Perceptions (Cruz, 1994; Lazarus, 1991); and the Self-Presentation Exercise Questionnaire (Gammage et al., 2004). Results revealed that: i) no case of clinical significance was detected in the four dimensions of the EDE-Q simultaneously; ii) females scored higher on the EDE-Q Global Score, and athletes with the better sport results scored higher on the Restraint subscale; iii) athletes with a higher desire to weigh less scored higher on the EDE-Q Global Score; iv) athletes with lower scores on EDE-Q displayed more positive results on the psychological measures; v) several psychological dimensions were identified as predictors of eating disordered behaviors. In conclusion, the prevalence of eating disordered behaviors was negligible in this study, yet the relationship of this problem with personal, sport and psychological factors was evident.     

Third International Conference on Spatial Cognition: “Dynamics in Spatial Interactions”. Rome - Perugia, Italy: September 12th–15th 2006. www.icsc2006.org - committee@icsc2006.org

Call for Papers

Third International Conference on Spatial Cognition: “Dynamics in Spatial Interactions”. Rome - Perugia, Italy: September 12th–15th 2006. www.icsc2006.org - committee@icsc2006.org     

From models to rules: mechanization of reasoning as a way to cope with cognitive overloading in combinatorial problems

It is hypothesized that the transition from unfamiliar problems to familiar, well-learned problems coincides with the transition from a model-based style of reasoning to a rule-based style of reasoning; model-based style of reasoning helps understanding the problem structure, but can overload working memory when the number of models required increases; rule-based style of reasoning avoids cognitive overloading, at the cost of making individuals liable to mechanization errors. In Experiment 1, the number of models required to respond to a verification task affected response latencies with unfamiliar problems, but not with familiar problems, supporting the initial hypothesis. In Experiment 2, participants were prone to mechanization errors when confronted with slightly modified problems in the late stages of the experiment, supporting the hypothesis that they had developed a reasoning rule in the early stages and were blindly applying it. The findings suggest that model-based reasoning and rule-based reasoning serve different purposes and have different costs and benefits, are both available to human reasoners, and familiarization with a problem may induce the transition from the former to the latter. The findings also suggest that mechanization of reasoning may be the first step along a gradient of decreasing cognitive load, whose end-point is automatization, as discussed in theories of automatization of information processing.     

Personality disorders in patients with burning mouth syndrome

Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS) presents high rates of comorbid Axis I disorders while no controlled studies have addressed the question of Axis II comorbidities. The aim of the present study was to examine DSM-IV (APA, 1994) Axis II comorbidity in BMS patients and to control for the specificity of this association. Seventy BMS patients were compared to a nonpsychiatric population sample and to patients with other Somatoform Disorders for the presence of personality disorders (assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders [SCID-II; First, Gibbon, Spitzer, & Williams, 1997). Prevalence rates were compared using the Pearson's chi square test. At least one personality disorder (PD) was found in 85.7%, 24.3%, and 88.6% of subjects in the three groups, respectively. When examining PD subgroups, significant differences emerged even between the BMS and the somatoform disorder group, with BMS patients showing more Cluster A and fewer Cluster B PDs. Our results suggest that BMS is associated with a specific pattern of Axis II comorbidity.