Risk and protective factors in adolescents' drug use, and differences by age and sex

Adolescents' drug use has huge social and personal implications, so it is essential to identify risk and protective factors. In this research, the CTCYS was used with 2440 adolescents to detect risk and protective factors for drug use in the community, family, school and peers/individual; differences in risk and protective factors by age and sex; and relationships between risk and protective factors and substance use. Protective factors are high. Risk factors are high in the community, the school and the individual. Older adolescents have more risks and less protection than the youngest; and there are sex differences, because males have less protection and more risks. The risk factors more closely related to drug use are availability of drugs in the community, family attitudes favourable to drug use, family history of antisocial behaviour, early start and use of drugs by friends, perceived risk and attitudes favourable to drug use. In the protective factors, the role played by social skills for alcohol use is important.     

Emotion and recognition memory: the discrimination of negative information as an adaptive process

We studied the effect of emotion generated by IAPS (International Affective Picture System) pictures on incidental recognition of these pictures for short retention periods (15 min). Memorization distraction tasks and reaction time tasks were used together with short exposure times (2 seconds per picture) in order to prevent a high recognition rate that would impede testing for the effect of emotion on discrimination parameters (A′) and response bias (B′′D) (ceiling effect). We used 80 pictures representing the medium and high levels of two-dimensional emotional space. The results showed greater discrimination and a more conservative response style to unpleasant and medium arousal level pictures. These pictures produced higher confidence and lower response times in the recognition phase. The results can be explained by the negative content of the pictures and activation level effects on attentional processing and memory, and can be interpreted as a phenomenon that is evolutionarily adaptive.     

Inventory of Overburden in Alzheimer's Patient Family Caregivers with no Specialized Training

Background/Objective: Alzheimer-type dementia is one of the most frequent causes of dependence in an aging population, which combines with a considerable demand for care. Furthermore, when the caregiver is a family member or person without specialized training, such care impacts on that person's health. The Inventory of Overburden in Alzheimer's Patient Family Caregivers with no Specialized Training (IPSO-CA24) was designed to find out the needs of these caregivers and evaluate the caregiver's burden or distress. Method: The psychometric properties of the questionnaire were analyzed (in a reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis) based on the responses of 255 caregivers. Results: The factor analyses showed a six-factor structure (Reaction to diagnosis, Physical health, Psychological symptomatology (caretaker), Behavioral symptomatology (patient), Knowledge of the illness, and Level of dependence) explaining 66.52% of the total variance with a reliability of .75 to .93. Support was also found for its convergent validity. Conclusions: The IPSO-CA24 responds to the need for an instrument enabling multidimensional evaluation of the burden on the family caregiver without specialized training.     

The Perceived Advantages and Disadvantages of Presymptomatic Testing for Machado-Joseph Disease: Development of a New Self-Response Inventory

This study describes the construction of a self-response inventory to evaluate the perception of advantages and disadvantages of the Machado-Joseph disease presymptomatic testing, in 44 individuals at-risk for this disease. The results showed that the reliability of this inventory was satisfactory. Factor analysis revealed a bidimensional structure: perceived advantages (pros) and perceived disadvantages (cons) of presymptomatic testing. Social desirability was found unrelated to the total scores of our inventory. Additional correlation studies, with other scales, confirmed the convergent validity of the instrument. These results suggest adequate construct validity. This inventory thus seems to be a proper instrument to assess expectations involved in the decision-making process of Machado-Joseph disease presymptomatic testing.     

An exploratory study on the development of beliefs about symptoms as signals of arterial hypertension

An exploratory study on the development of beliefs about symptoms as signals of arterial hypertension. In spite of hypertension is known as an asymptomatic health problem, most of the people with such a diagnosis are convinced of experiencing very specific symptoms associated to specific changes in blood pressure (BP). In addition, such beliefs may affect treatment adherence. Previous studies have shown that hypertensive patients use the information they considered right about BP symptoms to regulate the type of decisions they follow in adhering to treatment. The aim of this study is to explore specific variables related with the formation of beliefs about symptoms in a sample of 171 hypertensive patients. Results show that 81,3% of the patients perceived specific symptoms related to changes in hypertension as well as that variables related with the development of these beliefs were mostly: (1) the presence of symptoms during the diagnosis process, (2) the occurrence of hypertensive crisis, and (3) the information provided by others concerning the relationships between symptoms and BP changes. The importance of paying attention to the beliefs of specific symptoms as well as to the circumstances related with the formation process of such beliefs is discussed.     

Mobbing: its relationships with organizational culture and personal outcomes

A study dealing with the effects of both organizational culture and mobbing on personal and organizational outcomes of a sample of Spanish emergency workers, is reported here. It was found that there is a strong impact of organizational culture dimensions on mobbing, and that mobbing affects job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. Results concerning organizational commitment show that this variable is not a mere effect of mobbing in general, but rather that it is also a direct impact of culture on this outcome.     

Effects of subchronic administration of gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB) on spatial working memory in rats

GHB, a popularly known drug as "liquid ecstasy", is a substance with abuse potential. Among the possible described side-effects after the continued consumption of GHB are amnesia and deterioration of memory. Likewise, recent studies indicate the existence of neurotoxicity in certain brain regions after its prolonged treatment. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of the subchronic administration of GHB (10 and 100 mg/kg) on spatial memory and sensoriomotor reflexes in male rats, using the Morris water maze and a battery of sensoriomotor tests, respectively. The results indicated that animals treated with GHB (10 mg/kg) showed a greater latency of escape during the phase of acquisition in the days first and third of tests, as compared with the control group (p<0.05), as well as a deterioration of grasping reflex with the two doses of GHB (p<0.01). Numerous studies indicated that the medial prefrontal cortex is a crucial neuronal substrate in the working memory and grasping reflex modulation. These results suggest that prolonged administration of GHB could alter structure and/or function of the medial prefrontal cortex, as well as its interconnections with other brain regions involved in the evaluated cognitive and neurological processes.     

Daily life activity patterns among the elderly: is what they claim to do what they wish to do?

This study is aimed at exploring daily and desired activity patterns in a sample of older people, as well as at examining some influence factors and their relationships to life satisfaction. Our sample was made of 154 retired people living in urban areas and whose age was greater than 60 years old. Data about activities were gathered by means of an interview while life satisfaction scores were obtained by applying LSI scale. Our results show how the pattern of activities that our participants say to have done yesterday is quite similar to an ideal pattern, although in the ideal day time spent with other people is far greater. Factors like gender and economic and educational level have an influence on patters of activity, especially on instrumental and leisure ones. The difference between yesterday and ideal activities was negatively related to life satisfaction. Such a relationship was modest, but reached statistical significance.     

Individual differences in the linguistic competence of referential and expressive subjects

The aim of this work was to examine individual differences in referential and expressive style through a longitudinal study. The composition of the first 50 words, communicative gestures, the conversational style of dyads and the percentage of vocabulary produced from 12 to 24 month-olds were analyzed. The vocabulary was collected through interviews to parents and sessions of mother-infant interaction in the laboratory. Significant differences in the proportion of common nouns and frozen phrases between referential and expressive children in the frequency of communicative gestures and style conversation were found. Thus, referential children and their mothers used more pointing gestures than the expressive children and their mothers. Additionally, mothers of referential children used completing more frequently.     

Memories of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: a study of the consistency and phenomenal characteristics of flashbulb memories

In this study, I investigated students' memories of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, carried out by Al Qaeda terrorists against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Participants completed on two occasions (2 weeks and 8 months after the events took place) a memory questionnaire that included an assessment of the phenomenal richness of their memories. The results showed that the participants remembered very well the circumstances in which they first heard about the terrorist attacks, that they were very confident about this information, and that these memories were characterized by a high phenomenal richness. Over time, there was a decrease in all of these variables, but people's ratings of phenomenology and confidence were still very high.