Heidegger in Mexico: Emilio Uranga’s ontological hermeneutics

“Exiled” Spanish philosopher José Gaos was the first to translate, in its entirety, Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Emilio Uranga, a student of Gaos in Mexico City (exiled since 1938), appropriates Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics in an effort to expose the historico-existential structures making up “lo mexicano,” or Mexicanness. Uranga’s Análisis del ser del mexicano (1952) freely and creatively employs the methods of existential analysis, suggesting that the being-there of the Mexican being is ontologically “insufficient” and “accidental”—modes of being reflected in existential expressions of sentimentality, indifference, and angst particular to this form of life. As a work indebted to Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Analysis of the Being of the Mexican fails to be faithful to this method. This, however, is the source of its value. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: one, to introduce the Anglo–American philosophical readership to Uranga’s existential phenomenology; and, two, to disentangle the lines of thought that make up Uranga’s Análisis and in the process defend Uranga from the possible charge that he ignorantly misappropriates Heidegger’s method.

The socialization of prosocial behavioral tendencies among Mexican American adolescents: The role of familism values

This study investigates the role of familism values in fostering socialization experiences that promote prosocial behavioral tendencies among Mexican American adolescents. Two hundred and four Mexican American mothers and their adolescent children (104 girls, age M = 10.91 years) completed measures of familism values, prosocial parenting practices, and prosocial behavioral tendencies. Structural equation modeling tests indicated that mothers' familism values are related to parenting behaviors that promote prosocial behavioral tendencies, which in turn are related to adolescents' perception of prosocial parenting practices. Furthermore, adolescents' perception of prosocial parenting practices is related to familism values and prosocial behavior tendencies. Last, the relation between adolescents' perception of prosocial parenting practices and prosocial behavioral tendencies is partially mediated by familism values. These findings are consistent with the theoretical suggestion that the transmission of traditional familism values may serve as a social medium through which prosocial behavioral tendencies are fostered among Mexican American adolescents.     

Differences between girls and boys in emerging language skills: Evidence from 10 language communities

The present study explored gender differences in emerging language skills in 13,783 European children from 10 non‐English language communities. It was based on a synthesis of published data assessed with adapted versions of the MacArthur‐Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) from age 0.08 to 2.06. The results showed that girls are slightly ahead of boys in early communicative gestures, in productive vocabulary, and in combining words. The difference increased with age. Boys were not found to be more variable than girls. Despite extensive variation in language skills between language communities, the difference between girls and boys remained. This suggests that the difference is caused by robust factors that do not change between language communities.     

Vitamins E and C pretreatment prevents ovariectomy-induced memory deficits in water maze

We investigated whether the pretreatment with vitamins E (alpha-tocopherol) and C (ascorbic acid) would act on ovariectomy-induced memory deficits in Morris water maze tasks. Adult female Wistar rats were divided into three groups: (1) naive (control), (2) sham (submitted to surgery without removal of ovaries) and (3) ovariectomized. Thirty days after surgery, they were trained in the Morris water maze in order to verify ovariectomy effects both on reference and working memory tasks. Results show that ovariectomized rats presented impairment in spatial navigation in the acquisition phase, as well as in the time spent in target quadrant and in the latency to cross over the location of the platform in test session, when compared to naive and sham groups (controls), in the reference memory task. Ovariectomy did not affect performance in the working memory task. Confirming our hypothesis, ovariectomized rats pretreated for 30 days with vitamins E and C had those impairments prevented. We conclude that ovariectomy significantly impairs spatial reference learning/memory and that pretreatment with vitamins E and C prevents such effect. Assuming this experimental memory impairment might mimic, at least in part, the cognitive deficit sometimes present in the human condition of lack of reproductive hormones, our findings lend support to a novel therapeutic strategy, based on vitamins E and C, to cognitive impairments in post-menopausal women.     

Different ways of encoding geometric information by goldfish (Carassius auratus)

On the basis of results of a probe trial in 2 different experiments, K. Cheng (2005) has proposed a common mechanism for orientation in fish trained in both a map-like or relational procedure and a directly cued procedure. However, K. Cheng's model is inconsistent with previous results of goldfish (Carassius auratus) trained in these 2 tasks. Given that K. Cheng's proposal assumes that fish choose the goal by using a matching strategy in which they try to match as many properties as possible, including geometric and featural properties, future research is necessary to clarify what properties of the environmental space are codified and used for navigation.     

Validation of the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale in a Portuguese sample

In line with self-determination theory (SDT: Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002) the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness has been identified as an important predictor of behavior and optimal functioning in various contexts including exercise. The lack of a valid and reliable instrument to assess the extent to which these needs are fulfilled among Portuguese exercise participants limits the evaluation of causal links proposed by SDT in the Portuguese exercise context. The aim of the present study was to translate into Portuguese and validate the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale (BPNES: Vlachopoulos & Michailidou, 2006). Using data from 522 exercise participants the findings provided evidence of strong internal consistency of the translated BPNES subscales while confirmatory factor analysis supported a good fit of the correlated 3-factor model to the data. The present findings support the use of the translated into Portuguese BPNES to assess the extent of basic psychological need fulfilment among Portuguese exercise participants.     

Relative age effect in Olympic Taekwondo athletes

Relative age effects refer to the effects of age differences among individuals who have been grouped together for a performance activity. This study aimed to investigate the relative age effect on Olympic Taekwondo athletes, in several Olympic Games, and in both sexes. The study sample consisted of 291 athletes who had competed in Atlanta, Sydney, and Beijing Olympic Games. The relative age effect was examined for the general distribution of athletes by quartile, for each of the individuals, and for male and female athletes. There were no discernable effects of relative age on Olympic Taekwondo athletes.     

Differential diagnosis between apraxia and dysarthria based on acoustic analysis

Acoustic analysis provides objective quantitative measures of speech that enable a comprehensive and accurate understanding of motor disorders and complement the traditional measures. This paper aims to distinguish between normal and pathological speech, more specifically between apraxia of speech and spastic dysarthria in native Spanish speaking patients using acoustic parameters. Participants (4 aphasic with apraxia of speech, 4 with spastic dysarthria, and 15 without speech disorders) performed three different tasks: repeating the syllable sequence [pa-ta-ka], repeating the isolated syllable [pa] and repeating the vowel sequence [i-u]. The results showed that the normative values of motor control, in general, coincide with those obtained in previous research on native English speakers. They also show that damage to motor control processes results in a decrease in the rate of alternating and sequential movements and an increase in the inter-syllabic time for both types of movements. A subset of the acoustic parameters analyzed, those that measure motor planning processes, enable differentiation between normal population and apraxic and dysarthric patients, and between the latter. The differences between the pathological groups support the distinction between motor planning and motor programming as described by van der Merwe's model of sensorimotor processing (1997).     

Psychometric properties of the Shared Decision-Making Questionnaire (SDM-Q-9) in oncology practicePropiedades psicométricas del Questionnaire Shared Decision-Making (SDM-Q-9) en oncología

Background/Objective: This study sought to assess the psychometric properties of the 9-item Shared Decision-Making Questionnaire (SDM-Q-9) in patients with resected, non-metastatic cancer and eligible for adjuvant chemotherapy. Method: A total of 568 patients were recruited from a multi-institutional, prospective, transversal study. Patients answered the SDM-Q-9 after visiting their medical oncologist who, in turn, completed the SDM-Q–Physician version. Reliability, factorial structures [exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)], and convergent validity of the SDM-Q-9 scores were explored. Results: SDM-Q-9 showed a clear factorial structure, compatible with a strong and replicable general factor and a secondary group factor, in patients with resected, non-metastatic cancer. Total sum scores derived from the general factor showed good reliability in terms of omega coefficient: .90. The association between patient and physician perception of SDM was weak and failed to reach statistical significance. Males and patients over 60 years of age displayed the greatest satisfaction with SDM. Conclusions: SDM-Q-9 can aid in evaluating SDM from the cancer patients’ perspective. SDM-Q-9 is helpful in studies examining patient perspectives of SDM and as an indicator of the degree of quality and satisfaction with health care and patient-physician relationship.     

Effects of different practice conditions on acquisition, retention, and transfer of soccer skills by 9-year-old schoolchildren

This study was designed to examine effects of three practice models, blocked, variable, and combined, on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of new motor skills. 67 subjects (M age = 9.5 yr., SD = .3) from the fourth year of primary school (31 boys and 26 girls) were assigned at random to three different practice groups (Blocked = 22, Variable = 23, Combined = 22) to study acquisition of two skills, dribbling a soccer ball and kicking a soccer ball at a stationary target using the dominant foot. All participants received a pretest and posttest, a transfer test, and a retention test 2 wk. later. Analysis showed significant improvement after practice of kicking skills by the three groups but not in the dribbling skills, for which only the combined practice group showed any notable improvement. At the end of acquisition, the combined practice group had significantly better performance on the dribbling task than the other two groups. However, the only differences noted in performance of kicking the ball with the dominant foot were by combined practice and blocked groups.