Satisfaction with Spirituality, Satisfaction with Religion and Personal Well-Being among Spanish Adolescents and Young University Students

Young people in Catalonia are studied in order to better understand differences between satisfaction with spirituality and satisfaction with religion. Results suggest a reactive position on the part of most Spanish youngsters towards traditional religion; they consider it not very important either for their well-being or to give a sense of meaning to their own lives. While the importance given to spirituality is clearly higher, the concept seems to have several very different interpretations among young people. The discussion underlines the importance of discovering young people’s own points of view in order to understand the meaning they give to religion and spirituality in the context of an ever more rapidly changing society. The implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Maternal attitudes and attachment styles in mothers of obese children

This study evaluated categories of attachment style and the maternal attitude toward educational role in a sample of 30 mothers of obese children and a control group of 80 mothers of children of normal weight. All mothers completed the 1994 Attachment Style Questionnaire and the 1958 Parental Attitude Research Instrument. 30 mothers (M age 37.4 yr., range 31 to 54 years; M yr. of education 11.6, range 5 to 18 years) of obese children (range 30 to 60% above normal weight) and a control group of 80 mothers (M age 37.1 yr., range 29 to 52 years; M yr. of schooling 11.4, range 5 to 18 years) of children with normal weight were contacted at the primary school attended by their children and joined the project voluntarily. Age and number of years of education were not significantly different between the two groups of women. There was a significant prevalence of the Insecure Attachment Style in the group of mothers with obese children (66.6%) as compared to the control group of mothers of children of normal weight (38.5%) and significantly higher scores on 6 subscales of the Parental Attitude Research Instrument of Obese compared to Nonobese children. These data indicate that obese children's mothers tend to make the family their exclusive centre of interest. They also tend to dedicate themselves to their children with possessiveness and hyperprotection. They seem to have an insistent requirement of idealisation of their own role as parent and reward expectations that confirm the efficiency of the care they provide their children. Consequently, these findings suggest that in addition to dietetic treatment, it may be important to include a psychological intervention, which involves the mother and aims to modify the relational dynamics between the mother and her obese child.     

Tools for remote usability evaluation of Web applications through browser logs and task models

The dissemination of Web applications is extensive and still growing. The great penetration of Web sites raises a number of challenges for usability evaluators. Video-based analysis can be rather expensive and may provide limited results. In this article, we discuss what information can be provided by automatic tools able to process the information contained in browser logs and task models. To this end, we present a tool that can be used to compare log files of user behavior with the task model representing the actual Web site design, in order to identify where users’ interactions deviate from those envisioned by the system design.     

Do children realize that pretend emotions might be unreal?

This research is aimed at comparing children's understanding of the distinction between external and internal emotion in deception and pretend play situations. A total of 337 children from 4 to 12 years of age participated in the study. Previous research suggests that in deception situations this understanding is very rudimentary at the age of 4 years, whereas 6-year-olds can articulate it in words. In the present work the children were asked to make this distinction in pretend play or deception tasks. The results show that in pretend play situations children start making this distinction at the age of 6 years, and their performance is better when the simulated emotion is negative rather than positive. These findings suggest that 4-year-olds are not aware that the emotions expressed in pretend play situations might be different from internal emotions.     

Singing more,singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate’ song

Animal Cognition - Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) in animal vocalizations arise from irregularities in the oscillation of the vocal folds. Various non-mutually exclusive hypotheses have been put forward...