Therapists' verbal behavior category system

This paper presents the theoretical and methodological basis of a therapist's verbal behavior category system that allows us to study clinical psychologists' language from a functional-analytic framework and with a rigorous observation method. The procedure to develop the coding system is explained in detail from a very early stage of exploratory observation, to the systematic observation through the use of The Observer XT software. An analysis of intra- and inter-rater reliability using the kappa coefficient and taking into account the factors that affect the values of Cohen's index was carried out. Results show high levels of observer accuracy (between approximately 87% and 93%) that justify the application of this category system to study therapists' verbal behavior in session.     

Social valuation and punishment assignment in transgressions of environment protection laws

The of breaches of environmental law is not always evident. This characteristic contributes to making the study of people's evaluation of anti-ecological behaviour of special interest for the understanding of environmental law compliance. In this study, 573 participants evaluated seven transgressions of environmental law, on seven scales. The results show that participants differentially evaluate the transgressions; that Indignation and the Severity of the consequences are the scales that best predict the punishment that participants think should be assigned to these transgressions; that women are stricter in evaluating; and that there are marginal differences related to area of residence and age.     

Test anxiety: associations with personal and family variables

Test anxiety is a common behavior among students facing social pressure centered on mastery. Only a few studies have analyzed the relations between test anxiety, academic procrastination, personal and family variables and math grades. This work focus on the analysis of the impact of students' social-personal variables such as parents' education level, number of siblings and under-achievement by performing ANOVAs in two samples of 533 and 796 students from junior high-school. Corroborating the findings in other studies, the data stress that test anxiety is higher in girls and decreases when students' parents have higher educational levels, with the number of courses flunked, and when students' math grades were lower. Test anxiety and procrastination correlate positive and significantly. Findings are discussed and compared with those of previous researches. The implications for teaching practice are also analyzed.     

The international adoption waiting period: waiting experience and coping strategies

The adoption waiting period is a powerful stressor that can affect the well-being and configuration of future family life. Adoption research and practice have not paid enough attention to this phase. The principal aim of this study is to address prospective adoptive parents' experience of and coping with this period. For this purpose, 63 families answered a feelings scale, a coping resources scale and a needs questionnaire, all elaborated for the study. Results show that a shorter length of waiting time, using cognitive and learning coping strategies and associative participation were related to a better general experience of adoption whereas process-centred strategies were related to a worse experience of adoption. Families would like to see more speed in the process, more warmth and humanity in their relation with institutions and better information about their expedients. We conclude by proposing some activities and services during the waiting period that could be useful for post adoption.     

Evaluation of three sensitivity measures in magnitude estimation tasks

Taking into account the studies about the measure of sensitivity in magnitude estimation tasks, we analyze the three most common measures used in this topic: Pearson's product-moment correlation between the logarithm of the stimulus and the logarithm of the response (R), the exponent of Stevens' power function (K), and the measure "M" proposed by Garriga-Trillo. Using a sample of participants greater than usual in psychophysical studies (180 participants), we designed an experiment with two sets of stimuli with different stimulus ranges. In each of these sets, we used two kinds of stimuli (line segments and squares). Our conclusions were: (1) we rejected the use of K as a sensitivity measure because the results provided by this index were the opposite of those expected when we compared the two stimulus ranges. (2) We also rejected the use of M because this measure is a linear transformation of Kendall's coefficient of concordance. (3) Lastly, we suggest the mathematical transformation proposed by Fisher to achieve a normal distribution, and recommend this transformation as the best sensitivity measure.     

Power and affordances: when the situation has more power over powerful than powerless individuals

Six studies examined how power affects responses to situational affordances. Participants were assigned to a powerful or a powerless condition and were exposed to various situations that afford different classes of behavior. Study 1 examined behavior intentions for weekdays and weekends. Studies 2 and 3 focused on responses to imaginary social and work situations. Study 4 examined planned behavior for winter and summer days. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 examined behavior and attention in the presence of situation-relevant and irrelevant information. Consistently across these studies, powerful individuals acted more in situation-consistent ways, and less in situation-inconsistent ways, compared with powerless individuals. These findings are interpreted as a result of the greater tendency for powerful individuals to process information selectively in line with the primary factors that drive cognition, such as affordances. One consequence of these findings is that powerful individuals change behavior across situations more than powerless individuals.     

Temporomandibular Disorder in Brazilian Patients: A Preliminary Study

The objective of the current study was to evaluate disease-related beliefs, adherence to treatment, quality of life, coping strategies and cognitive status in a group of Brazilian patients with Temporomandibular Disorder (TMD). Thirty patients were evaluated with a semi-directed interview, the Coping Strategies Inventory, and a Mini-Mental State Examination. Although half (50%) of the patients had known their diagnosis long term, 40% of the sample were not correctly following proposed treatment. All patients had a similar pattern of pain behavior related to TMD, while disease-related beliefs, quality of life and coping strategies were variable. Expectations about treatment also had significant association with treatment adherence. The findings of this study suggest that a more thorough understanding of individual differences in TMD is warranted.     

Maternal anxiety and depression and development of prematurely born infants in the first year of life

The purpose of this study was: (a) to assess and to compare anxiety and depression symptoms in mothers of preterm neonates during hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, after discharge, and at the end of the infants' first year of life; and (b) to assess the child's development at 12 months of chronological corrected age (CCA). Thirty-six mothers, with no psychiatric antecedents assessed with the SCID-NP, were evaluated by STAI and BDI. The infants were assessed with Bayley-II Scales. There was a significant decrease in clinical symptoms of state-anxiety in mothers (p = .008), comparing the period during hospitalization and after discharge of the infants. Clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression were observed in 20% of the mothers at the end of the infants' first year of age. The majority of the infants exhibited normal development on Bayley-II at 12 months CCA; however, 25% of the infants displayed cognitive problems and 40% motor problems. The mothers' anxiety and depression symptoms decreased at the end of the first year of life of the pre-term infants and the children showed predominately normal development at this phase.     

A comparison of the peers method and traditional methodologies, and risk behaviors in studies of the prevalence of drug consumption in a population of female, Chilean students

The present study investigates drug consumption and risk behaviors among female students between 8th and 12th grade in two communities in the city of Santiago, Chile. Based on studies of university populations, we hypothesize that the students' reports of their consumption of licit drugs will tend to be consistent with their actual use of said drugs using two methods to investigate consumption, while their consumption of illicit drugs will be susceptible, and will tend to be under-reported when evaluated through traditional self-report measures. In order to compare the two methods, a cross-sectional study was designed that would compare reported drug consumption, first using the peers method, and then by means of traditional self-report in a group of 350 students. The results show that women's reports of licit drug consumption converge using the two methods, while as earlier suggested, women's illicit drug consumption was found to be under-reported when traditional methodologies were used.     

Calculating Impact Factor: How Bibliographical Classification of Journal Items Affects the Impact Factor of Large and Small Journals

As bibliographical classification of published journal items affects the denominator in this equation, we investigated how the numerator and denominator of the impact factor (IF) equation were generated for representative journals in two categories of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). We performed a full text search of the 1st-ranked journal in 2004 JCR category “Medicine, General and Internal” (New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM, IF = 38.570) and 61st-ranked journal (Croatian Medical Journal, CMJ, IF = 0.690), 1st-ranked journal in category “Multidisciplinary Sciences” (Nature, IF = 32.182) and journal with a relative rank of CMJ (Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciencias, AABC, IF = 0.435). Large journals published more items categorized by Web of Science (WoS) as non-research items (editorial material, letters, news, book reviews, bibliographical items, or corrections): 63% out of total 5,193 items in Nature and 81% out of 3,540 items in NEJM, compared with 31% out of 283 items in CMJ and only 2 (2%) out of 126 items in AABC. Some items classified by WoS as non-original contained original research data (9.5% in Nature, 7.2% in NEJM, 13.7% in CMJ and none in AABC). These items received a significant number of citations: 6.9% of total citations in Nature, 14.7% in NEJM and 18.5% in CMJ. IF decreased for all journals when only items presenting original research and citations to them were used for IF calculation. Regardless of the journal’s size or discipline, publication of non-original research and its classification by the bibliographical database have an effect on both numerator and denominator of the IF equation. Preliminary results of the study were presented at the 2006 ORI Research Conference on Research Integrity, Tampa, FL, December 1–3, 2006.