The Short Dark Triad (SD3): Adaptation and Psychometrics among At-Risk Male and Female Youths

The dark triad is a term used to describe a constellation of three socially harmful personality traits: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. The main aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Short Dark Triad (SD3) scale, a brief measure of the dark triad, among a sample (N = 412) of male (n = 200) and female (n = 212) at-risk Portuguese youths. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed the three-factor structure of the SD3 obtained an adequate fit, and measurement invariance across gender was demonstrated, although two items per dimension had to be removed. The Portuguese version of the SD3 scale demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, specifically the properties of internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and known-groups validity, which overall justifies its use among this population. Findings are discussed in terms of the use of the SD3 scale with male and female at-risk youths.     

Transitioning from recruit to officer: An investigation of how stress appraisal and coping influence work engagement

This study investigated stress, coping, and work engagement among Portuguese police officers while undergoing academy training and then 1 year later, when on duty. It was hypothesized that stress appraisal and coping preferences predicted engagement. Additionally, in order to test a full cross‐lagged prediction model, it was hypothesized that stress, coping, and engagement in recruits predicted these variables later when working as police officers. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. Results suggest that coping and stress appraisals do not seem to be strong predictors of work engagement among recruits and police officers on duty. With the exception of self‐blame, that seems to be a strong predictor of work engagement among police officers on duty. These results highlight the need to investigate other potential variables such as working conditions that may better explain work engagement. Considering the positive influence of engagement on health, wellbeing, and performance of police recruits and officers future applied and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Assessing the Influence of Psychosocial and Career Mentoring on Organizational Attractiveness

Past research on mentoring in organizational settings has focused on psychosocial and career mentoring functions more senior employees provide to new hires. In this study, we examined whether the perceived quality of psychosocial and career functions of pre‐hire mentoring and realistic job previews (RJPs) provided to students through mentoring impact organizational attraction and potential applicants' intentions to pursue or accept jobs at their mentors' organization, and ultimately their acceptance of positions with their mentors' organization. We compared face‐to‐face mentoring with online mentoring. A field study was conducted (n=194 European graduate students). Findings indicate that the quality of psychosocial mentoring plays a larger role in organizational attraction and intentions to pursue jobs than the perceived level/quality of career mentoring functions, with RJPs functioning as a suppressor variable. Obtaining a job with the mentors' organization was related to career, but not to psychosocial mentoring functions or RJPs.     

Virtual Reality Exposure in the Treatment of Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia: A Case Study

In this work we present a case example of the use of virtual reality exposure for the treatment of panic disorder with agoraphobia. The assessment protocol and procedure (including a baseline period) and the cognitive-behavioral treatment program are described. The clinical measures were categorized into target behaviors, panic and agoraphobia measures, global functioning, and general psychopathology measures. The patient’s expectations and satisfaction with regard to the virtual treatment were also assessed. The results showed an important reduction in all clinical measures after treatment with virtual exposure and the patient reached the therapeutic goals established during the pretreatment assessment. The patient also reported a good acceptance of virtual exposure. The goals achieved in the virtual environment generalized to real agoraphobic situations and to other real situations not treated. Three-, 6-, and 12-month follow-up assessments were conducted and long-term therapeutic gains were maintained.     

Validity of virtual reality as a method of exposure in the treatment of test anxiety

This is a validation study, aiming to explore the effectiveness of a set of virtual environments forproducing emotionally significant responses in students with high levels of test anxiety in order to be able to implement them later in treatment. Twenty-one students agreed to take part, 11 with high test anxiety and 10 with low test anxiety. The virtual environments were prepared in chronological order: the student's home, then the metro, and finally the corridor and lecture hall where the examination takes place. The results showed that the high-test-anxiety group presented higher levels of anxiety and depression than the low-test-anxiety group during exposure to the virtual environments. This study shows that virtual reality is able to provoke emotional responses in students with high test anxiety. This validation study should be followed up with treatment studies to evaluate the efficacy of virtual reality therapy for treating testanxiety.     

What causes the effect of age of acquisition in lexical processing?

Three hypotheses for effects of age of acquisition (AoA) in lexical processing are compared: the cumulative frequency hypothesis (frequency and AoA both influence the number of encounters with a word, which influences processing speed), the semantic hypothesis (early-acquired words are processed faster because they are more central in the semantic network), and the neural network model (early-acquired words are faster because they are acquired when a network has maximum plasticity). In a regression study of lexical decision (LD) and semantic categorization (SC) in Italian and Dutch, contrary to the cumulative frequency hypothesis, AoA coefficients were larger than frequency coefficients, and, contrary to the semantic hypothesis, the effect of AoA was not larger in SC than in LD. The neural network model was supported.     

Acting and planning on the basis of a false belief: its effects on 3-year-old children's reasoning about their own false beliefs

This study examined 3-year-olds' explanations for actions of theirs that were premised on a false belief. In Experiment 1, children stated what they thought was inside a crayon box. After stating "crayons," they went to retrieve some paper to draw on. Children were then shown that the box contained candles and were asked to (a) state their initial belief and (b) explain their action of getting paper. Children who were unable to retrieve their false belief were unable to correctly explain their action. Experiments 2 and 3 ruled out several alternative interpretations for these findings. In Experiment 4, children planned and acted on their false belief. Again, children who were unable to retrieve their false belief were unable to correctly explain their action.     

Regularity and/or consistency in the production of the past participle?

In the present study we have investigated the acquisition of the past participle of Italian verbs of the second (including mostly irregular verbs) and third (including mostly regular verbs) conjugations in school age children, and with simulations with an artificial neural network. We aimed to verify the extent to which children are sensitive to regularity, as opposed to the consistency in the mapping from the infinitive to the past participle. In particular, we predicted that children would learn at some point that verbs of the second conjugation tend to be irregular, and therefore they would be more likely to produce irregularizations for verbs of this class, compared to the verbs of the third conjugation. However, they should also show sensitivity to the phonological mapping consistency within each subclass, learning to produce correct forms on the basis of phonological similarity. In contrast, children should be more likely to produce regular forms for verbs of the third conjugation. Thus, a larger regularity effect would be expected for verbs of the third than of the second conjugation, leading to the prediction of a regularity by conjugation interaction.     

We saw it all along: visual hindsight bias in children and adults

Abstract— We traced the developmental origins and trajectory of the hindsight bias. Three-, 4-, and 5-year-old children and adults identified gradually clarifying images of degraded common objects on a computer. Half the time, observers did not know in advance what the object would become. The rest of the time, observers knew the object's identity in advance and estimated when a naive same-age peer would identify the clarifying object. In two experiments, children and adults demonstrated hindsight bias by using advance knowledge to overestimate their same-age peers' ability to identify the objects. The magnitude of this bias declined across age in one experiment, but remained relatively stable over age in the other experiment. These findings link developmental psychology and adult cognitive science.