Measurement Invariance of Personal Well-Being Index (PWI-8) Across 26 Countries

This report examines the measurement invariance of the Personal Well-being Index with 8 items (PWI-8). University students (N = 5731) from 26 countries completed the measure either through paper and pencil or electronic mode. We examined uni-dimensional structure of PWI and performed a Multi-group CFA to assess the measurement invariance across the 26 countries, using conventional approach and the alignment procedure. The findings provide evidence of configural and partial metric invariance, as well as partial scalar invariance across samples. The findings suggest that PWI-8 can be used to examine correlates of life satisfaction across all included countries, however it is impossible to compare raw scores across countries.     

Posttraumatic Growth and Sexual Violence: A Literature Review

Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is the positive psychological growth that a person might experience after enduring a traumatic event. PTG is a relatively new area of research identified by researchers because it represents a shift in thinking. Rather than focusing on the negative consequences of trauma, it explores the potential for positive outcomes associated with trauma. Although PTG is well documented across different types of traumas, it is unclear how this kind of growth stems from sexual violence, specifically. This review provides an overview of the literature concerning PTG that is associated with sexual violence. Results across the literature indicate that sexual violence is consistently associated with PTG. However, given the inconsistency in research designs, assessment, and operational definitions used to study PTG, many researchers suggest that it might be difficult to determine how and when PTG occurs. This study provides a literature review of the research on PTG in the aftermath of sexual violence. Important implications for future directions and trauma-based therapy are discussed and include the identification of relevant predictors, the importance of context, and how service providers might benefit from a better understanding of PTG.     

The Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Children: Cross-Cultural Assessment with a New Self-Report Measure

This study describes a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses that were conducted with the 44-item Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Children- 4th version (SAQ-CIV) to identify a reduced set of items that might be used to construct a new abbreviated instrument for measuring social anxiety in children and adolescents. The fourth version of the Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Children (SAQ-CIV) was administered to 12,801 non-clinical participants (ages 9 to 15 years) from 12 Latin American countries and Spain. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported a 6-factor structure of social anxiety in children, replicating a similar structure to that of adults (Caballo et al. in Behavioral Psychology/Psicología Conductual, 18(1), 5–34, 2010; Caballo et al. in Behavior Therapy, 43(2), 313–328, 2012): 1) Interactions with the opposite sex, 2) Criticism and embarrassment, 3) Speaking in public/Talking to teachers, 4) Assertive expression of annoyance and disgust, 5) Performing in public, and 6) Interactions with strangers. Each of the factors contains 4 items, yielding an abbreviated 24-item instrument, the Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Children (SAQ-C). The present results suggest this is a reliable, valid, and culturally sensitive instrument to assess social anxiety in youth.     

Neighborhood Environment, Sexual Risk Behaviors and Acquisition of Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Adolescents Diagnosed with Psychological Disorders

The association between neighborhood environment and prevalence of STIs, sexual partner variables and condom use among adolescents with psychological disorders was examined. Cross-sectional data in three urban areas of the US (Southeast, Northeast and Midwest) were obtained from 384 sexually active male and female participants who provided urine samples for laboratory-confirmed testing of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Chlamydia trachomatis and Trichomonas vaginalis. A total of 15.4% of participants tested positive for one of the three STIs. Results indicated that relative to adolescents living in low risk neighborhood environments, those living in high risk environments were significantly more likely to have a STI and to report having casual partners. Findings suggest that in high risk neighborhoods, STI acquisition may be less dependent on condom use and more dependent on other contextual factors. The importance of expanding public health research to include assessment of neighborhood context as a determinant of sexual risk-taking is emphasized.     

Extension Properties and Subdirect Representation in Abstract Algebraic Logic

This paper continues the investigation, started in Lávi?ka and Noguera (Stud Log 105(3): 521–551, 2017), of infinitary propositional logics from the perspective of their algebraic completeness and filter extension properties in abstract algebraic logic. If follows from the Lindenbaum Lemma used in standard proofs of algebraic completeness that, in every finitary logic, (completely) intersection-prime theories form a basis of the closure system of all theories. In this article we consider the open problem of whether these properties can be transferred to lattices of filters over arbitrary algebras of the logic. We show that in general the answer is negative, obtaining a richer hierarchy of pairwise different classes of infinitary logics that we separate with natural examples. As by-products we obtain a characterization of subdirect representation for arbitrary logics, develop a fruitful new notion of natural expansion, and contribute to the understanding of semilinear logics.     

Hand Position and Response Assignment Modulate the Activation of the Valence‐Space Conceptual Metaphor

Conceptual metaphor is ubiquitous in language and thought, as we usually reason and talk about abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones via metaphorical mappings that are hypothesized to arise from our embodied experience. One pervasive example is the conceptual projection of valence onto space, which flexibly recruits the vertical and lateral spatial frames to gain structure (e.g., good is up ‐bad is down and good is right ‐bad is left ). In the current study, we used a valence judgment task to explore the role that exogenous bodily cues (namely response hand positions) play in the allocation of spatial attention and the modulation of conceptual congruency effects. Experiment 1 showed that congruency effects along the vertical axis are weakened when task conditions (i.e., the use of vertical visual cues, on the one hand, and the horizontal alignment of responses, on the other) draw attention to both the vertical and lateral axes making them simultaneously salient. Experiment 2 evidenced that the vertical alignment of participants’ hands while responding to the task—regardless of the location of their dominant hand—facilitates the judgment of positive and negative‐valence words, as long as participants respond in a metaphor–congruent manner (i.e., up responses are good and down responses are bad). Overall, these results support the claim that source domain representations are dynamically activated in response to the context and that bodily states are an integral part of that context.