The comorbidity of ADHD in a community sample of children aged 6 through 16 years

Secondary analyses of the data from the Puerto Rico Child Psychiatry Epidemiologic Study were undertaken to provide information on the comorbidity patterns of ADHD. A high level of comorbidity was found among ADHD and other diagnostic categories, particularly the conduct/oppositional group. Comorbidity was associated with level of impairment and with service utilization.     

The Role of Simple Emotion Recognition Skills among School Aged Boys at Risk of ADHD

Poor social skills and behavioral problems are a major component of ADHD. The different explanations offered so far, such as cognitive deficits and deficient self regulation, have not been able fully to account for the various aspects of the social dysfunction, suggesting that other mechanisms might underlay this impairment. Our study sought to assess the emotion recognition of Israeli boys at risk of ADHD, and to evaluate its associations with their social skills. A group of 111 boys (grades 4 and 5) were assigned to an At-risk (n=50) and a control (n=61) group based on their scores in an ADHD symptoms questionnaire. The two groups were matched on age, socio-economic status and class and school environment. Group comparisons revealed that compared to their non-At-risk counterparts, At-risk boys have impaired emotion recognition. Finally, multiple groups Structural Equation Modeling analyses (SEM) demonstrated that emotion misrecognition plays a significant role in the At-risk children's social functioning and behavioral problems compared to its role in the social competence and behavioral problems among the comparison group. Implications for the understanding and treatment of social skills problems among children at risk of ADHD are proposed.     

A multisource approach to self-critical vulnerability to depression: the moderating role of attachment

The present study investigated the effects of self-criticism, dependency, and attachment variables in depression among couples. We utilized a multisource design that involved self-reports and spouse reports of personality and depression. This approach enabled us to explore the patterns of relations between self-reported and the spouse's report of the partner's view of self-criticism, dependency, and attachment dimensions, as well as the contribution of the latter to the moderation of distress. Participants were 120 couples in their first marriages. It was found that: (1) Self- and spouses' reported self-criticism are both associated with depression; (2) negative assessments of personality factors and attachment models by the self and spouse contribute uniquely in predicting depressive symptomatology; and (3) beyond the covariation between target's depression and marital maladjustment, attachment models of self and of other as reported by both the self and spouse moderate the effects of self-reported personality vulnerability on depressive symptomatology. Our results indicate that self-ratings and ratings by others must both be considered in the context of depression in close interpersonal relationships. Beyond the methodological implications of multisource data, our findings support the view of depression as an interpersonal process.     

Efficiency and accuracy of visual search develop at different rates from early childhood through early adulthood

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Most studies of visual search across the life span have focused on classic feature and conjunction searches in which observers search for a fixed, simple shape...     

The Association Between Strength of Religious Faith and Coping with Daily Stress

Recent research has examined the positive relationship between religious faith and both physical and mental health. The current study investigated the association between strength of religious faith and the ability to cope with daily stress over a 7-day period. The participants consisted of 68 students and 64 faculty or staff from a Catholic, liberal arts university. Measures included the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, the Symptom Check List-90-Revised, the Weinberger Low Self Esteem Scale, and a 10-point daily stress, coping, and strength of faith scale. Results suggest that religious faith was not associated with coping with daily stress.     

Working memory effects in speeded RSVP tasks

The present paper examines the effects of memory contents and memory load in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) speeded tasks, trying to explain previous inconsistent results. We used a one target (Experiment 1) and a two-target (Experiment 2) RSVP task with a concurrent memory load of one or four items, in a dual-task paradigm. A relation between material in working memory and the target in the RSVP impaired the identification of the target. In Experiments 3 and 4, the single task was to determine whether any information in memory matched the target in the RSVP, while varying the memory load. A match was detected faster than a non-match, although only when there was some distance between targets in the RSVP (Experiment 4). The results suggest that memory contents automatically capture attention, slowing processing when the memory contents are irrelevant to the task, and speeding processing when they are relevant.     

Consequences of job insecurity and the moderator role of occupational group

In recent decades, transformations in organizations and the labour market have produced an increase in employee job insecurity. In response to this situation, workers present different negative reactions. However, the intensity of these reactions varies across studies that have investigated the outcomes of job insecurity. One possible explanation for this inconsistency may lie in the influence of other factors, such as the occupational group (Sverke et al., 2002). The aim of this study is to provide additional evidence about the relationship between job insecurity and its outcomes (i.e., life satisfaction, job satisfaction, perceived performance and organizational commitment), and examine the moderator role of occupational group in this relationship. The sample was composed of 321 employees from different Spanish organizations. The results showed that job insecurity was directly and negatively related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and they suggest that occupational group moderated relations between job insecurity and three studied outcomes. In the case of life satisfaction and perceived performance, this relationship was stronger among blue collar workers. The relationship between job insecurity and job satisfaction was stronger in white collar workers. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.     

Decomposition of repetition priming processes in word translation

Translation in fluent bilinguals requires comprehension of a stimulus word and subsequent production, or retrieval and articulation, of the response word. Four repetition-priming experiments with Spanish–English bilinguals (N = 274) decomposed these processes using selective facilitation to evaluate their unique priming contributions and factorial combination to evaluate the degree of process overlap or dependence. In Experiment 1, symmetric priming between semantic classification and translation tasks indicated that bilinguals do not covertly translate words during semantic classification. In Experiments 2 and 3, semantic classification of words and word-cued picture drawing facilitated word-comprehension processes of translation, and picture naming facilitated word-production processes. These effects were independent, consistent with a sequential model and with the conclusion that neither semantic classification nor word-cued picture drawing elicits covert translation. Experiment 4 showed that 2 tasks involving word-retrieval processes--written word translation and picture naming--had subadditive effects on later translation. Incomplete transfer from written translation to spoken translation indicated that preparation for articulation also benefited from repetition in the less-fluent language.     

Sociometric types and social interaction styles in a sample of Spanish adolescents

This study analyzed the relationship between social interaction styles and sociometric types in a sample of 1,349 (51.7% boys, and 48.3% girls) Spanish adolescents. The results revealed that the proportion of prosocial adolescents nominated as liked by peers was significantly higher than prosocial with social anxiety, whereas the proportion of aggressive adolescents nominated by peers as rejected was significantly higher than the proportion of rejected-prosocial and rejected-with social anxiety. The percentages of sociometric types and social interaction styles varied significantly according to gender and academic grade. Logistic regression analyses showed that being prosocial was 48% more likely when adolescents are nominated by peers as liked, whereas being prosocial was 41% and 79% less likely when adolescents were nominated as rejected and neglected, respectively. Furthermore, prosocial adolescents were 67% more likely nominated by peers as liked, and were less likely nominated as rejected (42%) and neglected (78%). Finally, being neglected was 83% more likely in aggressive adolescents.     

Illusory conjunctions reflect the time course of the attentional blink

Illusory conjunctions in the time domain are binding errors for features from stimuli presented sequentially but in the same spatial position. A similar experimental paradigm is employed for the attentional blink (AB), an impairment of performance for the second of two targets when it is presented 200–500 msec after the first target. The analysis of errors along the time course of the AB allows the testing of models of illusory conjunctions. In an experiment, observers identified one (control condition) or two (experimental condition) letters in a specified color, so that illusory conjunctions in each response could be linked to specific positions in the series. Two items in the target colors (red and white, embedded in distractors of different colors) were employed in four conditions defined according to whether both targets were in the same or different colors. Besides the U-shaped function for hits, the errors were analyzed by calculating several response parameters reflecting characteristics such as the average position of the responses or the attentional suppression during the blink. The several error parameters cluster in two time courses, as would be expected from prevailing models of the AB. Furthermore, the results match the predictions from Botella, Barriopedro, and Suero’s (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 1452–1467, 2001) model for illusory conjunctions.