Development of the Spanish short version of Negative Attitudes Toward Masturbation Inventory

Background/Objective: Masturbation has historically been a sexual behaviour associated with negative connotations, as a consequence of traditional orthodox positions, despite its positive impact on health. The instruments developed to measure the attitude towards masturbation are scarce, and none of them have been validated in the Spanish adult population. This study aims to propose a short version of the Negative Attitudes Toward Masturbation Inventory (NATMI) and examine their psychometric properties (reliability and evidence of validity) in the Spanish adult population. Method: A total of 4,116 heterosexual adults aged 18-83 years (M = 40.58; SD = 12.24; 54.64% women) participated in the study. In addition to the NATMI, they answered other scales to assess sexual attitudes, sexual desire, propensity to become sexually excited/inhibited and sexual functioning. Results: Analysis of the construct validity of the NATMI resulted in a reduced version of ten items grouped into a single factor explaining 66% of the variance (ordinal alpha = .95). The evidence of validity is clear, as subjects with negative and positive attitude towards masturbation differed in religiousness, frequency of masturbation, erotophilia, positive attitude towards sexual fantasies, sexual inhibition and sexual functioning. Conclusions: The Spanish short version of NATMI provides reliable and valid measures in the Spanish adult population.     

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective on quantum mechanics

Continental Philosophy Review - Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on quantum mechanics offer a unique perspective on the relationship between scientific results and their interpretation. This article...     

Is there a genuine tension between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities?

Samuel Scheffler has recently argued that some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable; that such relationships give rise to “underived” special responsibilities; that there is a genuine tension between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities; and that we must consequently strike a balance between the two. We argue that there is no such tension and propose an alternative approach to the relation between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities. First, while some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable, no relationship is unconditionally valuable. Second, whether such relationships give rise to special responsibilities is conditional on those relationships not violating certain moral constraints. Third, these moral constraints arise from within cosmopolitan egalitarianism itself. Thus the value of relationships and the special responsibilities to which they give rise arise within the parameters of cosmopolitan egalitarianism itself. The real tension is not between cosmopolitan equality and special responsibilities, but between special responsibilities and the various general duties that arise from the recognition, demanded by cosmopolitan egalitarianism, of a multiplicity of other basic goods. Indeed, even the recognition of special relationships itself gives rise to general duties that may condition and/or weigh against putative special responsibilities.

Tablet Use in Young Children is Associated with Advanced Fine Motor Skills

Abstract

To evaluate whether frequent interactive tablet-use at preschool age is associated with improved fine motor skills and to describe tablet-use in young children. Cross-sectional study with 78 children, aged 24–42?months: group 1 with previous frequent tablet-use exposure (n?=?26), group 2 without previous tablet-use exposure (n?=?52). Fine motor skills were evaluated with the Bayley-III. Socioeconomic data and home environment quality were similar in both groups. Fine motor skills of group 1 were better than those of group 2 (p?=?0.013). Most participating children carried out passive and active tablet activities, usually accompanied by parents, not exceeding time recommendations for young age. We observed a difference in fine motor skills in young children slightly favoring those with tablet-use experience.     

Fear of success versus fear of gender-inappropriate behavior

To test the prediction that both males and females would show evidence of fear of success when success was achieved in a nontraditional field, male and female subjects wrote five-minute stories in response to cues depicting a male's or female's success in medical school or nursing school. Results showed that both sexes wrote more fear of success stories in gender-inappropriate than in gender-appropriate conditions. The need for a broader conception of fear of success motivation is discussed.Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May 1975.     

Working memory in the oldest-old: evidence from output serial position curves

In the present study, we examined adult age differences in short-term and working memory performance in middle-aged (45–64 years), young–old (65–74 years), old–old (75–89 years), and oldest–old adults (90 years and over) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Previous research suggests that measures of working memory are more sensitive to age effects than are simple tests of short-term memory Bopp and Verhaeghen (Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 60:223–233, 2005), Myerson, Emery, White, and Hale, (Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 10:20–27, 2003). To test this hypothesis, we examined output serial position curves of recall data from three span tasks: forward and backward digit span and size judgment span. Participants’ recall patterns in the size judgment span task revealed that the two oldest groups of adults showed the largest decreases in recall performance across output serial positions, but did not differ significantly from each other. Correlation analyses indicated the strongest negative correlation with age occurred with the size judgment span task. Implications of these findings for understanding strategic processing abilities in late life are discussed.