The Impact of Family-Friendly Practices on Work–Family Balance in Spain

Not being able to combine work with family properly is negatively related to employees’ quality of life. Some firms are aware of this reality and provide their employees family-friendly practices, a set of practices designed to enable employees a work–family balance. Family-friendly practices are classified in three subsets: family support practices, flexible arrangement practices, and parental leave practices. Then, this paper analyzes the impact of different subsets of family-friendly practices on work–family balance for women and men subsamples, as well as to disentangle the mechanisms through with such effects occur. Based on a representative sample of 8,061 Spanish workers and using the Baron and Kenny procedure to test for mediation, the results show that the three subsets of family-friendly practices increase work–family balance for both genders, although some of them have different effects for women and men. In line with societal gender role expectation, family support practices better accommodate men’s need, increasing work–family balance almost for them, and parental leave practices women’s need, increasing work–family balance more for them. However, flexible arrangement practices increase work–family balance equally for both genders. Moreover, in all cases, the effect of family-friendly practices on work–family balance goes beyond the effect of time outside work and time at work, then this partial mediation indicates that time is an important mechanism in achieving work–family balance. In sum, offering employees family-friendly practices is a good starting point in order to increase people’s quality of life by helping them achieve work–family balance.     

Computerized games to study the development of attention in childhood

Children enjoy playing games. We can take advantage of this in the designs of computerized tasks that will engage their interest. These designs also serve to advance the study of chronometric measures, such as manual and saccadic reaction times and event related potentials, with young children. The goals of our method development are (1) to allow for comparable tasks across a wide variety of ages, (2) to make possible comparisons of child performance with data gathered in adult cognitive studies, and (3) to help to support inferences about the development of underlying mechanisms. We have designed a battery of computerized tasks in order to study the development of attention functions of alertness, orienting, and executive control during childhood. Our purpose is to describe each of these tasks in detail and present the results that have been obtained so far. The battery was tested using a sample of 5-year-old children as subjects.     

The prematurity stereotype revisited: Impact on mothers' interactions with premature and full‐term infants

Research exploring the effects of labeling on maternal perceptions and behaviors was extended by simultaneously examining the cognitive and behavioral effects of prematurity stereotyping with both mothers of full‐term and premature infants, and by examining the effects of an information‐based intervention on the stereotyped responses of mothers of premature infants. An experimental design wherein mothers of both full‐term and premature infants were randomly assigned to interact with, and then rate, either a full‐term or premature infant who was described as either full‐term or premature was employed to test several hypotheses. Two hypotheses related to prematurity stereotyping received support: mothers showed more positive responses to infants labeled full‐term than to infants labeled premature, and mothers of full‐term infants exhibited more prematurity stereotyping than did mothers of premature infants. The hypothesis concerning gender effects also was supported, with mothers showing more positive responses to male infants than to female infants. In contrast to expectations, a brief cognitive intervention provided to some mothers of premature infants failed to reduce stereotyping, and, indeed, appeared to increase stereotyping. These results are compared with the results of previous studies, most of which did not include actual interactions between mothers and infants, and the implications of these results are considered. © 2000 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Comprehensive community-based education and neurorehabilitation for children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury

Children and adolescents who experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI) typically have sensory, cognitive, behavioral, and functional skill challenges that must be addressed in acute and post-acute rehabilitation settings. This article describes a community-based school that combines educational, medical, nursing, family, residential-living, and psychological services in a comprehensive program of pediatric neurorehabilitation. The operational, administrative, and clinical features of these service components are presented. A critical aspect of the program is an emphasis on applied behavior analysis procedures for purposes of assessment, treatment formulation, and evaluation. Data are reviewed to demonstrate demographics, patterns of service delivery, and outcome. The school program represents an educational alternative for students with TBI who are discharged from acute-care settings and require comprehensive support services to facilitate their transition and re-entry to public school and community living. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bicriteria cost versus service analysis of a distribution network—a case study

In order to improve the distribution system for the Nordic countries the BASF AG considered 13 alternative scenarios to the existing system. These involved the construction of warehouses at various locations. For every scenario the transportation, storage, and handling cost incurred was to be as low as possible, where restrictions on the delivery time were given. The scenarios were evaluated according to (minimal) total cost and weighted average delivery time. The results led to a restriction to only three cases involving only one new warehouse each. For these, a more accurate model for the cost was developed and evaluated, yielding results similar to a simple linear model. Since there were no clear preferences between cost and delivery time, the final decision was chosen to represent a compromise between the two criteria. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Different Disgust Domains Specifically Relate to Mental and Contact Contamination Fear in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Evidence From a Path Analytic Model in an Italian Clinical Sample

Both contact contamination (CC) and mental contamination (MC) fears—which combined represent the most common manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)—have been widely associated with disgust propensity. However, extant research explored this relationship using measures assessing only pathogen-related disgust, not taking into account the potential role played by sexual and moral disgust, despite literature about MC suggesting that this might be particularly relevant. In Study 1, the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Three Domains of Disgust Scale (TDDS) were assessed in a large Italian community sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the three-factor structure of the TDDS. The scale also showed good internal consistency and construct validity. In Study 2, the differential patterns of relationships between CC and MC and the three disgust domains were explored in an Italian clinical OCD sample using a path analytic approach. The TDDS-Pathogen subscale was a unique predictor of CC while the TDDS-Sexual subscale was a unique predictor of MC, after controlling for anxiety and depression. Surprisingly, the TDDS-Moral subscale was not a predictor of either domain of contamination fear. Limitations and clinical implications are discussed.     

Is Heightened Disgust Propensity Truly a Risk Factor for Contamination-Related Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Disgust propensity (DP) has been conceptualized as a stable personality trait that confers risk for contamination-related OCD (C-OCD). However, the extent to which DP leads to the subsequent development of C-OCD is unclear. In fact, the presence of C-OCD might lead to an increase in DP rather than the inverse. The present study was aimed to test this hypothesis in a large clinical sample of OCD patients (≥ 21 years of age) with (C-OCD; n = 56) and without (NC-OCD; n = 103) contamination-related symptoms that completed measures of OCD symptoms, depression, anxiety, and DP. DP was assessed twice, in reference to the present situation (T1) and to when the participant was 18 years old (T0). The two groups did not significantly differ in DP at T0. However, C-OCD participants reported higher DP scores than NC-OCD at T1. Furthermore, the T1 vs T0 difference in DP was significant only in the C-OCD group. Subsequent analyses also showed that T1 DP levels, but not T0 levels, significantly predicted contamination-related symptoms. Despite study limitations, these findings question the role of DP as a risk factor for C-OCD.     

Sex differences in facial emotion perception ability across the lifespan

Perception of emotion in the face is a key component of human social cognition and is considered vital for many domains of life; however, little is known about how this ability differs across the lifespan for men and women. We addressed this question with a large community sample (N?=?100,257) of persons ranging from younger than 15 to older than 60 years of age. Participants were viewers of the television show “Tout le Monde Joue”, and the task was presented on television, with participants responding via their mobile devices. Applying latent variable modeling, and establishing measurement invariance between males and females and across age, we found that, for both males and females, emotion perception abilities peak between the ages of 15 and 30, with poorer performance by younger adults and declining performance after the age of 30. In addition, we show a consistent advantage by females across the lifespan, which decreases in magnitude with increasing age. This large scale study with a wide range of people and testing environments suggests these effects are largely robust. Implications are discussed.     

Variability of attention bias in socially anxious adolescents: differences in fixation duration toward adult and adolescent face stimuli

Prior research on attention bias in anxious youth, often utilising a visual dot probe task, has yielded inconsistent findings, which may be due to how bias is assessed and/or variability in the phenomenon. The present study utilises eye gaze tracking to assess attention bias in socially anxious adolescents, and explores several methodological and within-subject factors that may contribute to variability in attention bias. Attention bias to threat was measured in forty-two treatment-seeking adolescents (age 12–16 years) diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. Bias scores toward emotional stimuli (vigilant attention) and bias scores away from emotional stimuli (avoidant attention) were explored. Bias scores changed between vigilance and avoidance within individuals and over the course of stimulus presentation. These differences were not associated with participant characteristics nor with self-reported social anxiety symptoms. However, clinician rated severity of social anxiety, explained a significant proportion of variance in the bias scores for adult, but not the adolescent, stimuli. Variability in attention bias among socially anxious adolescents is common and varies as a function of stimulus duration and type. Results may inform stimulus selection for future research.