Pautas de adquisición y uso del pronombre personal en lengua española. Un estudio longitudinal

Resumen

El estudio sobre los pronombres personales, constituye también una manera de investigar la adquisición del lenguaje y su desarrollo, dado que son categorías lingüísticas. El niño no adquiere el dominio de estas categorías tan pronto como lo hace con otros aspectos del lenguaje, aunque los usa desde muy temprana edad. De esta manera suponemos que al comienzo el niño utiliza las formas pronominales únicamente como deícticos. Esto es, sólo puede comprenderse el significado de estos términos en las expresiones infantiles con referencia al tiempo y al contexto comunicativo presente y concreto. Por esta razón autores como Clark, (1974, 1978), Charney (1980), afirman que le pronombre personal, en su sentido lingüístico, no es adquirido por los niños hasta los ocho o nueve años de edad.

En el presente estudio intentamos poner de manifiesto cómo adquieren los niños españoles estos términos y cómo evolucionan en su desarrollo. Para ello, se realizó un análisis de la producción verbal de varios niños, en sus aspectos: sintáctico, semántico y pragmático. Dicha producción se recogió a través de observación natural. Los sujetos de este estudio de medios ambientales diferentes.     

‘What Would You Say if You Were Guilty?’ Suspects' Strategies During a Hypothetical Behavior Analysis Interview Concerning a Serious Crime

Previous research has shown that the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) indicators of guilt or innocence are merely commonsense notions. In this study, we examined whether this would lead suspects of a serious crime to try to manipulate their behavior during a BAI in order to look innocent. A serious crime was described to 74 undergraduates who were asked to imagine that they were guilty or innocent. They then completed a questionnaire about the strategies that they would use during a BAI. Both guilty and innocent suspects were more willing to show the innocence rather than guilt indicators of the BAI. Innocent suspects had a blind faith in the power of innocence to demonstrate that they were not guilty. The general (non‐BAI) strategies coincided with those of previous studies; this indicates that prior findings on strategies can be generalized to serious crimes and that strategies can be examined with uncomplicated procedures such as the one used in this study. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neuropsychological impairments on the NEPSY-II among children with FASD

Background: We examined the pattern of neuropsychological impairments of children with FASD (compared to controls) on NEPSY-II measures of attention and executive functioning, language, memory, visuospatial processing, and social perception.

Methods: Participants included 32 children with FASD and 30 typically developing control children, ranging in age from 6 to 16 years. Children were tested on the following subtests of the NEPSY-II: Attention and Executive Functioning (animal sorting, auditory attention/response set, and inhibition), Language (comprehension of instructions and speeded naming), Memory (memory for names/delayed memory for names), Visual-Spatial Processing (arrows), and Social Perception (theory of mind). Groups were compared using MANOVA.

Results: Children with FASD were impaired relative to controls on the following subtests: animal sorting, response set, inhibition (naming and switching conditions), comprehension of instructions, speeded naming, and memory for names total and delayed, but group differences were not significant on auditory attention, inhibition (inhibition condition), arrows, and theory of mind. Among the FASD group, IQ scores were not correlated with performance on the NEPSY-II subtests, and there were no significant differences between those with and without comorbid ADHD.

Conclusions: The NEPSY-II is an effective and useful tool for measuring a variety of neuropsychological impairments among children with FASD. Children with FASD displayed a pattern of results with impairments (relative to controls) on measures of executive functioning (set shifting, concept formation, and inhibition), language, and memory, and relative strengths on measures of basic attention, visual spatial processing, and social perception.     

A longitudinal study of temperament continuity through IBQ,TBAQ and CBQ

The aim of this work was to study the continuity of temperament in a Spanish sample (n = 60), covering the developmental stages of infancy, toddlerhood and childhood. Temperamental dimensions showed, with few exceptions, as much homotypic as heterotypic continuity as was to be expected. At the level of latent superconstructs continuity, we found that Anger and Fear followed different developmental paths and showed continuity over all the periods evaluated. Positive Affect/Regulation superconstruct showed continuity from infancy to toddlerhood. From toddlerhood, Positive Affect/Regulation showed continuity with the superconstruct of Effortful Control but not with the superconstruct of Surgency/Extraversion. At an ipsative level, we found two groups of subjects, labeled ‘nonexpressive/controlled’ and ‘noncontrolled/expressive’. Generally, these results confirm the stability of temperament in the periods analyzed and underline the importance of toddlerhood as a transitional period in the maturity of self-regulatory capabilities shown in childhood.     

On the relationship between mobbing factors,and job content,social work environment,and health outcomes

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between mobbing, job characteristics, social environment variables, and psychological ill-health. The Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terrorization (LIFT) was factor analysed and led to seven factors in two samples of mobbing victims (N = 50 and N = 99): Mobbing by organizational measures, social isolation, attacking the victim's private life, attacking the victim's attitudes, physical violence, verbal aggression, and rumours. Mobbing was correlated with bad job content, a bad social environment, and psychological ill-health. The findings suggest that the more social support supervisors gave, the less the victims reported being shouted at, being constantly criticized, and receiving verbal threats. In contrast, the more social support the victims received from their colleagues the less they reported being socially isolated or being ridiculed with regard to their private life. Moreover, having private life attacked showed the strongest correlation with psychological ill-health. The data suggest that organizational factors are potential causes of mobbing at work.     

Limits in controlling the focus of attention

Abstract

In a series of five experiments, we attempted to answer three questions concerning the flexibility of visuospatial attention: Is it possible to exert control on the shape of the attentional focus? Can attention be distributed not uniformly but in a gradient fashion within the focus? Does the way in which attentional resources are distributed within the focus affect the way in which they are distributed outside its borders? We provide evidence indicating that observers successfully allocated attention to the cued region. When the cued region was demarcated by a polygon, target detection was speeded up within the polygon. The results also show that the observers were unable to suppress information arising from an irrelevant location falling between two relevant locations (Experiments 1, 2, 3A and 3B). In accord with the zoom lens model, we interpret these results as suggesting that attention forms a unitary zone that may expand to encompass multiple relevant locations but must also include the area between them. In addition, we found that some sort of lateral masking effect occurred when the borders were close to the target location. In Experiment 4, we obtained a gradient inside     

Can Word Puzzles be Tailored to Improve Different Dimensions of Verbal Fluency? A Report of an Intervention Study

Verbal fluency is commonly used as a proxy measure of executive functioning, as it involves cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Previous research has demonstrated that crosswords can be a useful means of improving verbal fluency, results consistent with the cognitive reserve hypothesis; the form of verbal fluency affected has, however, differed across studies. The present study sought to assess the extent to which it was possible to target phonemic (PVF) and semantic verbal fluency (SVF) separately through word puzzles designed to focus on semantic/thematic and structural clues respectively. Fifty-three university students were randomly assigned to one of three groups: semantic/thematic, structural, or a daily diary control group. They were assessed on PVF and SVF at baseline, and immediately following a four-week intervention. Age, sex, and depression scores were controlled for. A 2 × 3 mixed ANCOVA showed that the structural group improved significantly more in PVF during the intervention period than did the semantic/thematic or control groups, with the improvement linked to improved switching performance. The effect size was large. No significant difference in improvement in SVF emerged, although the effect size was moderate. The findings support the notion that it is possible to improve specific forms of verbal fluency through tailored brief word-puzzle interventions.