Reliability Generalization Study of the Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale for Children and Adolescents

The Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale for children and adolescents (CY–BOCS) is a frequently applied test to assess obsessive–compulsive symptoms. We conducted a reliability generalization meta-analysis on the CY–BOCS to estimate the average reliability, search for reliability moderators, and propose a predictive model that researchers and clinicians can use to estimate the expected reliability of the CY–BOCS scores. A total of 47 studies reporting a reliability coefficient with the data at hand were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed good reliability and a large variability associated to the standard deviation of total scores and sample size.     

Individual differences in depression,induced mood,and perception of emotionally toned words

The associative network theory of emotion and memory, outlined by Bower (1981), predicts that depressed mood leads to biases which favour the perception of mood-congruent information. In this study, a lexical decision task was used to assess the effects of degree of depression and induced elation and depression on lexical decision times for positive and negative words. Subsequently, subjects were given a recall test for the words presented during the lexical decision task. The results partially offered support for perceptual bias. The data showed that in non-depressed and elation-induced subjects, decision times were differentially affected by hedonic tone. Words of positive nature were responded to significantly faster than were negative words. In mildly depressed and depression-induced, decision times were similar for both types of words (positive and negative). These findings are discussed in relation to the associative network model and a growing amount of empirical research on human emotion and cognition.     

The role of injection cues in the associative control of the US pre-exposure effect in flavour aversion learning

Two experiments, using rats as subjects, examined the role of contextual cues in producing the unconditioned stimulus (US) pre-exposure effect in conditioned taste aversion. Experiment 1 showed a significant US pre-exposure effect, when the pre-exposure was conducted in a familiar context, and that a change of context between the pre-exposure and conditioning phases did not attenuate this effect. Experiment 2 demonstrated that extinction of injection-related cues after the pre-exposure stage attenuated the US pre-exposure effect, when the pre-exposure was conducted in either a familiar or a novel context. Taken together, these results support the associative explanation of the US pre-exposure effect in terms of blocking, incorporating a role for injection-related cues in the context blocking analysis of the US pre-exposure effect.     

Does the type of judgement required modulate cue competition?

According to the comparator process hypothesis (Matute, Arcediano, & Miller, 1996), cue competition in the learning of between-events relationships arises if the judgement required involves a comparison between the probability of the outcome given the target cue and the probability of the outcome given the competing cue. Alternatively, other associative accounts (the Rescorla-Wagner model: Rescorla &Wagner, 1972) conceive cue competition as a learning deficit affecting the target cue-outcome association. Consequently, the comparator process hypothesis predicts that cue competition occurs in inference judgements but not in contiguity ones, for only the first type of judgement implicitly involves such a comparison. On the other hand, the Rescorla-Wagner model predicts cue competition in both inference and contiguity judgements, because it establishes no relevant role for the type of judgement in producing cue competition. In Experiments 1 and 2 we manipulated the relative validity of cues and the type of question (inference vs. contiguity) in a predictive learning task. In both experiments we found a cue competition effect, but no interaction between the relative validity of cues and the type of question, suggesting that the Rescorla-Wagner theory suffices to explain cue competition.     

Population Thinking in Epistemic Evolution: Bridging Cultural Evolution and the Philosophy of Science

Researchers in cultural evolutionary theory (CET) have recently proposed the foundation of a new field of research in cultural evolution named ‘epistemic evolution’. Drawing on evolutionary epistemology’s early studies, this programme aims to study science as an evolutionary cultural process. The paper discusses the way CET’s study of science can contribute to the philosophical debate and, vice versa, how the philosophy of science can benefit from the adoption of a cultural evolutionary perspective. Here, I argue that CET’s main contribution to an evolutionary model of scientific growth comes from the application of ‘population thinking’ to science. Populationism offers a ‘variation based’ understanding of scientists’ epistemic and socio-epistemic criteria that is able to better accommodate the variegated preferences that intervene in scientific epistemic decisions. A discussion of the so called theory choice context is offered as an example of the way a populationist approach can shed new light on the operation of scientists’ epistemic choices.

     

Chronic Illness and Child Behavior Problems in Low-SES Families: The Mediation of Caregivers’ Mental Health

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Childhood chronic illness is associated with deleterious effects on caregivers’ mental health and children’s socio-emotional development. This...     

Denotational Semantics for Languages of Epistemic Grounding Based on Prawitz’s Theory of Grounds

Studia Logica - We outline a class of term-languages for epistemic grounding inspired by Prawitz’s theory of grounds. We show how denotation functions can be defined over these languages,...     

Change of attitudes towards disability in primary school students

In this paper, the development and results of a program are presented, carried out with students in 3rd and 4th grade of primary school, 128 children aged from 8 y 10 years old, 75 assigned to the experimental group and 53 to the control group. In order to assess the changes achieved and whether they were maintained, a pre- and post-treatment Likert-scale of adjectives describing discapacities and a 3-year follow-up measure were applied. As in the previous applications of the program, the results suggest the efficacy of the program, that is, positive changes were achieved in the rating of terms related to disability as well as in the attitudes towards disabled people and these changes were maintained throughout the follow-up. In order to test their influence on attitudes, some variables considered determinants of attitudes toward disability were also contrasted, such as gender, age, acquaintance and experience with the topic of disability, disabled children's integration, and disability type.     

IQ heritability estimation: analyzing genetically-informative data with structural equation models

When analyzing genetic data, Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) provides a straightforward methodology to decompose phenotypic variance using a model-based approach. Furthermore, several models can be easily implemented, tested, and compared using SEM, allowing the researcher to obtain valuable information about the sources of variability. This methodology is briefly described and applied to re-analyze a Spanish set of IQ data using the biometric ACE model. In summary, we report heritability estimates that are consistent with those of previous studies and support substantial genetic contribution to phenotypic IQ; around 40% of the variance can be attributable to it. With regard to the environmental contribution, shared environment accounts for 50% of the variance, and non-shared environment accounts for the remaining 10%. These results are discussed in the text.