Developing a System for Processing Health Data of Children Using Digitalized Toys: Ethical and Privacy Concerns for the Internet of Things Paradigm

EDUCERE (Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders) is a government funded research and development project. EDUCERE objectives are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions for society to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. In the EDUCERE project, an ethical impact assessment is carried out linked to a minors’ data protection rights. Using a specific methodology, the project has achieved some promising results. These include use of a prototype of smart toys to detect development difficulties in children. In addition, privacy protection measures which take into account the security concerns of health data, have been proposed and applied. This latter security framework could be useful in other Internet of Things related projects. It consists of legal and technical measures. Special attention has been placed in the transformation of bulk data such as acceleration and jitter of toys into health data when patterns of atypical development are found. The article describes the different security profiles in which users are classified.     

Cognitive-behavioral intervention among women with slight menopausal symptoms: a pilot study

Menopause is associated with a considerable variety of physical, psychological and social symptoms that can be treated using cognitive-behavioral techniques. In the present study, 21 women took part in an eight-week group intervention consisting of weekly two-hour sessions to address their slight symptoms related to the climacteric stage of life. The intervention included: psycho education on menopause, relaxation techniques, nutrition and fitness exercises, Kegel exercises, and problem-solving techniques. A control group was included that did not receive treatment and consisted of 28 women. The results revealed a significant reduction in most symptoms (including depression and anxiety) after intervention as compared to the baseline period. No changes appeared in the control group. The relevance of this work lies in the potential element of prevention this therapeutic package could offer to relieve various symptoms, slight and incipient, during the perimenopausal stage.     

Patterns of adaptation to conflict and schizoid personality scale scores

A previous investigation gave no evidence of a significant relationship of patterns of adaptation to conflict, as measured with the Serial Color-Word Test, with the Schizoid Personality Scale of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory. As a new scoring algorithm has subsequently been proposed for the latter scale, a replication was done with the modified schizoid scale. A group of 75 consecutive nonpsychotic women outpatients was given the Serial Color-Word Test and Coolidge's inventory. Both multiple and logistic regressions selected two significant predictors of schizoid personality, corresponding to high values of linear change in reading times during Trials 3 and 5 of the Serial Color-Word Test, i.e., to an increasingly rigid and inflexible style of the adaptive process. A multivariate analysis of variance yielded an effect size of .22 (partial eta2).     

Patterns of Parental Rearing Styles and Child Behaviour Problems among Portuguese School-Aged Children

The majority of studies investigating the effects of parental behaviour on the child’s adjustment have a dimensional approach. We identified the existence of various patterns in parental rearing styles and analysed the relationship between different parenting patterns and behavioural problems in a group of school-aged children. A longitudinal, multi-informant study was conducted. The sample consisted of 519 school-aged children from the Portuguese general population. Parental rearing styles were measured using the EMBU-C, a questionnaire that evaluates children’s perception of parental rearing dimensions. The assessment of child behavioural problems included the evaluation of internalizing and externalizing problems, and data from multiple reporters (parents and teacher). One year later, after a school transition, the adjustment of a sub-sample of 220 children was evaluated again. Cluster analysis identified four types of parental rearing styles: low support, supportive-controller, rejecting-controller, and supportive. In both assessment periods, low support and rejecting-controller parenting patterns showed higher levels of behavioural problems than the supportive and supportive-controller parenting patterns. These patterns show significant differences between them regarding behavioural problems and have a higher predictive value regarding externalizing problems (versus internalizing problems).     

Marital Relationship,Body Image and Psychological Quality of Life among Breast Cancer Patients: The Moderating Role of the Disease’s Phases

In this cross-sectional study we analyzed the links between marital quality and intimacy, body image, and psychological quality of life (PQoL) of breast cancer patients, as well as the moderating role of cancer phase (treatment, survivorship) on the aforementioned links. We also evaluated whether body image mediated the associations between marital relationship variables and PQoL. An analysis of the data from 128 patients (66 undergoing treatment, 62 survivors) indicated that the majority of links between variables were significant only during the treatment phase. Mediating effect of body image on the associations between relationship variables and PQoL was found only at the treatment phase.     

Predicting school achievement: The role of inductive reasoning,sleep length and morningness–eveningness

Adolescents move to evening orientation just when school schedule becomes earlier. Whereas school achievement has been associated to morningness orientation during morning school schedule, some studies have indicated that evening people are more intelligent. In this study the relative contribution of Morningness–Eveningness (M–E) in the prediction of school achievement, after controlling for age, sex/gender, inductive reasoning and sleep length was analyzed. Participants were 887 adolescents (aged 12–16). School achievement was evaluated using Grade Point Average (GPA), inductive reasoning was evaluated by reasoning subtest of Primary Mental Abilities (PMA-R), sleep length was calculated from rise time and bedtime questions, and M–E was evaluated by Morningness–Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC). Evening adolescents scored higher on PMA-R and obtained lower GPA. Inductive reasoning, age, sex/gender, sleep length and M–E accounted for 19% variance percentage on GPA. M–E was a significant predictor of school achievement even after controlling for traditional predictors, albeit slightly.     

Conditioned fear is modulated by D2 receptor pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area and basolateral amygdala

Excitation of the mesocorticolimbic pathway, originating from dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), may be important for the development of exaggerated fear responding. Among the forebrain regions innervated by this pathway, the amygdala is an essential component of the neural circuitry of conditioned fear. The functional role of the dopaminergic pathway connecting the VTA to the basolateral amygdala (BLA) in fear and anxiety has received little attention. In vivo microdialysis was performed to measure dopamine levels in the BLA of Wistar rats that received the dopamine D(2) agonist quinpirole (1 μg/0.2 μl) into the VTA and were subjected to a fear conditioning test using a light as the conditioned stimulus (CS). The effects of intra-BLA injections of the D(1) antagonist SCH 23390 (1 and 2 μg/0.2 μl) and D(2) antagonist sulpiride (1 and 2 μg/0.2 μl) on fear-potentiated startle (FPS) to a light-CS were also assessed. Locomotor performance was evaluated by use of open-field and rotarod tests. Freezing and increased dopamine levels in the BLA in response to the CS were both inhibited by intra-VTA quinpirole. Whereas intra-BLA SCH 23390 did not affect FPS, intra-BLA sulpiride (2 μg) inhibited FPS. Sulpiride's ability to decrease FPS cannot be attributed to nonspecific effects because this drug did not affect motor performance. These findings indicate that the dopamine D(2) receptor pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area and the basolateral amygdala modulates fear and anxiety and may be a novel pharmacological target for the treatment of anxiety.     

Reconsidering Life Domains that Contribute to Subjective Well-Being Among Adolescents with Data from Three Countries

Several theoretical models and testing procedures are presented with the aim of identifying the most relevant items and domains to include in a model for evaluating adolescents’ subjective well-being, above and beyond those usually included in adults’ scales. Data were collected in three countries based on a list of 30 items regarding adolescents’ satisfaction with different domains or facets of life. Responses to these 30 items (including Personal Well-Being Index and Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale items) have been analysed by means of Confirmatory Factor Analysis using different Structural Equation Models (SEM) on a pooled sample comprising 5,316 twelve to sixteen-year-olds from Spain, Brazil and Chile. Several models have shown good enough fit statistics. A model using 14 items shows excellent fit statistics and is conceptually coherent. However, the inclusion or non-inclusion of items related to satisfaction with religion or spirituality results in both advantages and disadvantages when comparing the alternative models analysed. The relevance of including these items may therefore depend on the socio-cultural context where data are collected and their inclusion makes cross-country comparison more statistically challenging. The 14-item model has also been tested using multigroup SEM in order to check comparability of data among the three countries. All things considered, multigroup models have shown good fit with constrained loadings, but not with constrained loadings and intercepts, suggesting we can compare correlations and regressions among countries, but not means. Additional multigroup SEM with the five age groups available from the pooled sample have demonstrated that responses—and means—are comparable across different age groups during early adolescence.