Telephone versus mail interventions for maintenance of physical activity in older adults.

Although telephone and mail are often used to promote physical activity adoption, their ability to produce long-term maintenance is unclear. In this study, 140 men and women aged 50-65 years received 1 year of telephone counseling to adopt higher (i.e., more vigorous) versus lower intensity (i.e., moderate) exercise. After 1 year, participants were rerandomized to a 2nd year of contact via (a) telephone and mail or (b) predominantly mail. Participants who were prescribed higher intensity exercise and received predominantly mail had better exercise adherence during the maintenance year than those who received telephone and mail. Both strategies were similarly effective in promoting maintenance in the lower intensity condition. Results suggest that after successful adoption of physical activity with the help of telephone counseling, less intensive interventions are successful for physical activity maintenance in older adults.     

Prosocial tendencies predict friendship quality, but not for popular children

Is prosocial behavior a prerequisite for having good-quality friendships? This study (N = 477, mean age = 12.2 years) examined whether the link between children’s prosocial tendencies and their perceived friendship quality was dependent on children’s level of popularity in the peer group. Children’s prosocial tendencies were assessed both as observed behavior in a standardized setting and as a self-reported predisposition to act in prosocial ways. Across measures, the results showed that prosocial tendencies are associated with higher perceived friendship quality among nonpopular children (i.e., children holding average or lower levels of popularity), but not among popular children. Thus, even if they lack prosocial qualities, popular children are still able to hold good-quality friendships. Popular children may have other compensating characteristics, such as popularity by association, that make them attractive for peers to be friends with.     

When voices get emotional: A corpus of nonverbal vocalizations for research on emotion processing

Nonverbal vocal expressions, such as laughter, sobbing, and screams, are an important source of emotional information in social interactions. However, the investigation of how we process these vocal cues entered the research agenda only recently. Here, we introduce a new corpus of nonverbal vocalizations, which we recorded and submitted to perceptual and acoustic validation. It consists of 121 sounds expressing four positive emotions (achievement/triumph, amusement, sensual pleasure, and relief) and four negative ones (anger, disgust, fear, and sadness), produced by two female and two male speakers. For perceptual validation, a forced choice task was used (n = 20), and ratings were collected for the eight emotions, valence, arousal, and authenticity (n = 20). We provide these data, detailed for each vocalization, for use by the research community. High recognition accuracy was found for all emotions (86 %, on average), and the sounds were reliably rated as communicating the intended expressions. The vocalizations were measured for acoustic cues related to temporal aspects, intensity, fundamental frequency (f0), and voice quality. These cues alone provide sufficient information to discriminate between emotion categories, as indicated by statistical classification procedures; they are also predictors of listeners’ emotion ratings, as indicated by multiple regression analyses. This set of stimuli seems a valuable addition to currently available expression corpora for research on emotion processing. It is suitable for behavioral and neuroscience research and might as well be used in clinical settings for the assessment of neurological and psychiatric patients. The corpus can be downloaded from Supplementary Materials.     

Crime and violence in Brazil: Systematic review of time trends,prevalence rates and risk factors

Between 1980 and 2010 there were 1 million homicides in Brazil. Dramatic increases in homicide rates followed rises in inequality, more young men in the population, greater availability of firearms, and increased drug use. Nevertheless, disarmament legislation may have helped reduce homicide rates in recent years. Despite its very high rate of lethal violence, Brazil appears to have similar levels of general criminal victimization as several other Latin American and North American countries. Brazil has lower rates of drug use compared to other countries such as the United States, but the prevalence of youth drug use in Brazil has increased substantially in recent years. Since 1990, the growth of the Brazilian prison population has been enormous, resulting in the fourth largest prison population in the world. Through a systematic review of the literature, we identified 10 studies assessing the prevalence of self-reported offending in Brazil and 9 studies examining risk factors. Levels of self-reported offending seem quite high among school students in Brazil. Individual and family-level risk factors identified in Brazil are very similar to those found in high-income countries.     

Ecumenism and Evangelicalism: Where Are We?

While the ecumenical movement, and particularly the World Council of Churches, must always be an inclusive forum where the richness of the total life of the Christian church is manifest, this article argues that evangelicals cannot give up the quest for church unity because that would mean ignoring a central aspect of the prayer of Jesus Christ. Looking at areas of convergence between the evangelical and the ecumenical movement, four areas are identified for further cooperation and dialogue: the authority of the Bible; mobilizing all churches for the evangelization of the whole world; the perspective of the poor; and the challenge of justice and peace.     

Parents' Emotion‐Related Beliefs,Behaviours, and Skills Predict Children's Recognition of Emotion

Children who are able to recognize others' emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school‐aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents' own emotion‐related beliefs, behaviours, and skills. We examined parents' beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents' emotion labelling and teaching behaviours, and parents' skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school‐aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty‐nine parent–child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents' beliefs, behaviours, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age‐related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family-Friendly Environments and U.S. Army Soldier Performance and Work Outcomes

This study examined how perceptions of a family-friendly environment relate to physical fitness, efficacy beliefs, and intentions to remain in the military. Survey data and actual performance measures from 230 U.S. Army soldiers were examined. Findings indicated that a perceived family-friendly environment was positively related to intentions to remain in the military upon fulfillment of obligation. Additionally, perceptions of family-friendly environments were positively related to collective efficacy perceptions. These findings provide strong support for the need to create and maintain a strong family-friendly work environment, not only to improve the well-being of employees but also to benefit the organization's retention efforts, obtained from employees being more willing to remain with the organization.     

The Short Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale (NDSS-S) in Spanish smokers

We present a brief scale derived from the Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale (NDSS). We used a sample of 1.061 daily smokers, which was obtained from five Primary Care Health Centers, a Unit of Alcoholism, and a Smoking Cessation Unit. All smokers were evaluated with the NDSS and the SCID to assess nicotine dependence according to DSM-IV criteria. The results indicate the existence of a general factor of nicotine dependence according to the NDSS. We selected the items with a higher factor loading (>.50), obtaining a short scale of 6 items. With this brief scale, we obtained results similar to those of the total scale in the diverse variables (sociodemographic and smoking) of the study. Scale reliability is satisfactory (a= .79), the correlation between the short and the total scale is very high (r=.95, p<.001) and the short scale discriminates the smokers in terms of cigarette consumption and nicotine dependence, as assessed with the SCID. The operation under the ROC curve is excellent (area under the curve .84). The data indicate the usefulness of this brief scale (NDSS-S) to assess nicotine dependence in smokers.