Nationwide survey of contraceptive and sexually transmitted infection knowledge,attitudes and skills of university students in Portugal

Sexually transmitted infections and (STIs) unintended pregnancies are contemporary public health concerns. Understanding factors (e.g. knowledge, attitudes and skills) influencing sexual behaviours of university students are critical to develop targeted and tailored risk-reduction interventions for this vulnerable population. Thus, the goals of this study were to describe sexual behaviours and analyze differences between genders for sexual behaviours; to identify whether differences exist between genders and age groups regarding knowledge, attitudes and skills concerning contraceptive methods and STIs, and to evaluate the association of knowledge with attitudes and skills with sexual behaviour among university students in Portugal. The sample included 3278 students. Results show that the majority were sexually active and use condoms and oral contraceptives. In general, university students have high knowledge, positive attitudes and skills about contraception and STIs. Gender analyses indicated that women had greater knowledge, and more favourable attitudes, and higher skills toward contraceptive and STI preventive behaviour College students, in particular, face new challenges in sexual health and would benefit from more comprehensive education aimed at promoting healthy decision-making about family planning and STI prevention.     

Meaning Coconstruction in Group Counseling: The Development of Innovative Moments

This study discusses a model of group counseling, the narrative mediation path (NMP), which is a unique narrative, multimodal approach that combines four narrative modes (metaphoric, iconographic, writing, and bodily) and the narrative group. The purpose of the NMP is to foster reflexive processes with underachieving university students and to improve their academic performance. The study analyzes a single case of group counseling for seven underachieving economics students at an Italian university and the process of meaning construction among NMP narrative modes and the follow-up session. It applies the innovative moments coding system, a reliable method for studying change by tracking narrative innovations in sessions. More specifically, we focus on how innovative moments (IMs: action, reflection, protest, and reconceptualization) evolve during the four different narrative modes and the follow-up session. The findings suggest that the NMP fosters narrative innovations, mainly of a reflexive nature (reflection and reconceptualization). Moreover, during counseling and the follow-up session, the pattern of change is primarily characterized by reconceptualization IMs, the most complex form of narrative innovation.     

Comparison of pausing behavior in children who stutter and children who have Asperger syndrome

Purpose

The objective of this research was to compare the number and types of grammatical and non-grammatical silent pauses presented by stutterers and subjects with Asperger syndrome in their narratives.

Method

Ten children who stutter and four participants with Asperger syndrome (mean ages of both groups 10 years) were assessed at the Speech and Language Disorders Department of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo/Brasil. They narrated a story based on a pre-selected sequence of pictures. They were filmed and their productions were analyzed using version 5.0.47 of Praat (http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/download_win.html). Silent intervals in the speech that ranged from 0.25 to 4 s were considered pauses. The pauses were classified as grammatical and non-grammatical, depending on the words that preceded and followed them.

Results

Both groups presented grammatical and non-grammatical pauses and the former predominated. The children with Asperger syndrome produced a greater number of pauses than the stutterers.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) characterize the use of pauses in the oral narrative; (2) distinguish a grammatical pause from a non-grammatical pause regarding the use and function; (3) recognize the pattern of pause found in the two populations.     

Information and attitudes about HIV/AIDS in Portuguese adolescents: state of art and changes in a four year period

The incidence of infection with HIV/AIDS among the heterosexual population has been increasing in young adults. The goal of this research was to deepen knowledge of preventive sexual behavior in Portuguese adolescents, including knowledge and attitudes about HIV/AIDS, and assessing whether they changed from 2002 to 2006. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from the Portuguese sample of the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC), a collaborative WHO study. The study provides national representative data of 7093 Portuguese adolescents, randomly chosen from those attending 8th and 10th grade of high school. Results showed there was an increase in the age of first sexual intercourse and a decrease in the number of teenagers who reported having had sexual intercourse, also in the level of information regarding HIV/AIDS transmission/prevention and in positive attitudes towards people with HIV/AIDS. In general, adolescents have good knowledge about how to protect themselves from becoming infected. However, comparing to 2002, there was a reduction of knowledge and consequent increase in the doubts regarding HIV/AIDS. Given the incipient state of sex education in 2006, the results cannot be attributed to sex education, but they will be relevant for comparison with the 2010 HBSC results.     

The differential similarity of positive and negative information – an affect-induced processing outcome?

People judge positive information to be more alike than negative information. This good-bad asymmetry in similarity was argued to constitute a true property of the information ecology (Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2017). Why good is more alike than bad: Processing implications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 69–79). Alternatively, the asymmetry may constitute a processing outcome itself, namely an influence of phasic affect on information processing. Because no research has yet tested whether phasic affect influences perceived similarity among stimuli, we conducted 5 Experiments that also tested whether phasic affect can account for the higher judged similarity among positive compared to negative stimuli. In three experiments, we affectively charged pictures of different Pokemon by pairing them with monetary gains and losses (Exp. 1a, 1b) as well as positive and negative trait words (Exp. 2); yet, the evaluative charge did not differentially influence perceived similarity among the Pokemon. Experiment 3 replicated the basic similarity asymmetry among positive and negative words, and found that it was unaffected by externally induced phasic affect. Experiment 4 showed that phasic affect had no influence on perceived similarity of non-evaluative words either. We conclude that albeit a weak influence of phasic affect on perceived similarity of stimuli cannot be ruled out entirely, it can most likely not account for the typically medium to large sized asymmetry in similarity among positive and negative stimuli.     

Extending Montague's system: a three valued intensional logic

In this note we present a three-valued intensional logic, which is an extension of both Montague's intensional logic and ukasiewicz three-valued logic. Our system is obtained by adapting Gallin's version of intensional logic (see Gallin, D., Intensional and Higher-order Modal Logic). Here we give only the necessary modifications to the latter. An acquaintance with Gallin's work is pressuposed.     

Television and aggression: a test of a mediated model with a sample of Portuguese students

We examined the role of identification with violent TV heroes, enjoyment of TV violence, and perceived reality in TV violence as mediators of the relationship between viewing TV violence and subsequent physical and verbal aggression. A sample of 722 4th, 6th, and 8th grade students from schools in the central region of Portugal completed measures assessing enjoyment of TV violence, perceived reality, aggression, identification with violent TV heroes, and exposure to TV violence. The results showed that the relationship between TV violence and physical aggression is mediated by enjoyment of TV violence, perceived reality in TV violence, and identification with violent TV heroes. The TV violence to verbal aggression relationship was also mediated by enjoyment of TV violence.     

Validation of the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale in a Portuguese sample

In line with self-determination theory (SDT: Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002) the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness has been identified as an important predictor of behavior and optimal functioning in various contexts including exercise. The lack of a valid and reliable instrument to assess the extent to which these needs are fulfilled among Portuguese exercise participants limits the evaluation of causal links proposed by SDT in the Portuguese exercise context. The aim of the present study was to translate into Portuguese and validate the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale (BPNES: Vlachopoulos & Michailidou, 2006). Using data from 522 exercise participants the findings provided evidence of strong internal consistency of the translated BPNES subscales while confirmatory factor analysis supported a good fit of the correlated 3-factor model to the data. The present findings support the use of the translated into Portuguese BPNES to assess the extent of basic psychological need fulfilment among Portuguese exercise participants.