Assessing the Rising Emphasis on Muscularity for Women: Psychometric Properties of the Brazilian Version of the Female Muscularity Scale

The female appearance ideal has undergone considerable changes in recent years, resulting in increases in drive for muscularity among Brazilian women. The Female Muscularity Scale (FMS) was developed to assess muscularity concerns among U.S. women and was shown to be a promising measure of muscularity-related attitudes and behaviors. The present studies aimed to translate and culturally adapt the FMS to Brazilian Portuguese and to explore its factorial structure among Brazilian women (Study 1: n = 202, M_age = 24.40, SD = 5.03) and to confirm the factor structure as well as evaluate convergent and divergent validity and reliability of the FMS for young adult Brazilian women (Study 2: n = 382, M_age = 22.71, SD = 4.32). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factor structure (Attitudes and Behaviors subscales), each comprising five items. Confirmatory factor analysis upheld the original two-factor structure with good fit indices. The full scale and its subscales presented convergent validity through associations with measures of body dissatisfaction, drive for muscularity, body-ideal internalization, body checking and avoidance behaviors, disordered eating, and exercise engagement. Evidence of divergent validity was obtained in relation to self-esteem and depressive symptoms. The Brazilian version of FMS also presented adequate values for internal consistency and 2-week test-retest reliability. These findings support the Brazilian version of the FMS as a useful tool for investigating muscularity-related aspects of body image and body change behaviors that are increasingly a source of concern for women.

     

幸福感的稳态与跃迁：一个新的整合视角

以往的实证和理论研究对幸福感稳定性与变化性问题持有不同观点。设定点理论认为幸福感通常保持在设定点位置, 动态平衡理论(及其变式——主观幸福感稳态理论)进一步强调幸福感在围绕设定点的某个范围内波动而呈动态平衡状态, 享乐适应理论在动态平衡理论基础上从情绪适应的角度分析了幸福感维持稳定的原因, 这三个理论均强调幸福感维持在某个平衡水平。相反, 持续幸福理论强调幸福感是可以提升的, 能发生长期的变化。这些理论观点的差异本质在于如何看待幸福感的稳定性与变化性, 我们借用生物学中的“稳态”“稳态应激”概念及物理学中的“跃迁”思想, 认为幸福感不仅存在稳态, 也会出现稳态应激, 并可由此引起幸福感稳态的跃升。这一整合视角为幸福感研究提供了新的解释框架, 也对幸福感的持续提升有启发意义。     

The effects of the constancy of location and order in working memory visual–phonological binding of children with dyslexia

It has been suggested that children with dyslexia have difficulties in visual–phonological working memory (WM) binding, supporting the hypothesis that this ability is crucial in the formation of associations between written forms and phonological codes required by reading. However, research on this topic is currently scarce and has not clarified to what extent binding may be supported by spatial and temporal information. The present study examined visual–phonological WM binding performance in a group of children with dyslexia compared to a control group of typically developing children matched for age, gender, and grade. Children had to memorize ephemeral associations between meaningless shapes and nonwords, with stimuli presented in either fixed or variable spatial locations, and in either fixed or variable temporal order across trials; performance was assessed using a recognition task. Results showed that children with dyslexia have a deficit in visual–phonological WM binding in every presentation condition and that, unlike control children, they are not able to use fixed spatial locations as an aid to bind information. Crucially, however, children with dyslexia still benefit from the presentation of stimuli in a fixed temporal order. These findings support the hypothesis that a WM binding deficit is crucial in children with dyslexia, and have potential implications for treatment strategies.     

Harmony Between Humanity and Nature: Natural Vs. Synthetic Drug Preference in Chinese Atheists and Taoists

Journal of Religion and Health - A commonplace observation across many cultures is that humans show a strong preference for natural items on drug choice in the medical domain. Despite an emerging...     

Rules We Live by: How Religious Beliefs Relate to Compliance with Precautionary Measures Against COVID-19 in Tibetan Buddhists

Journal of Religion and Health - The present studies investigated how particular religious beliefs shape compliance with preventive measures in adherents of Gelug and Nyingma schools of Tibetan...     

抑制功能在疼痛中的作用

自生物心理社会模型提出以来, 利用心理因素预防和治疗疼痛备受关注, 越来越多的研究表明抑制功能在疼痛发展和恢复阶段起关键作用。疼痛诱发的自我防御机制通过争夺认知资源影响抑制功能, 反之低抑制功能个体在应对疼痛干扰中表现较差, 进而影响着疼痛的预期和学习。现有关于抑制功能影响疼痛的研究主要基于相关设计, 未来应进一步明确二者的因果关系。深入理解疼痛与抑制功能相互作用的认知机制有助于指导抑制功能对慢性疼痛的靶向干预。     

Post-traumatic Growth in Breast Cancer Survivors: New Insights into its Relationships with Well-Being and Distress

Research investigating possible relations between Post-traumatic growth (PTG) and clinical indexes—such as psychosocial distress, physical and psychological well-being—is lacking in medical settings. The aim of this study was to look into such relationships in breast cancer survivors (Bcs) and in healthy control subjects who experienced other stressful events. Sixty Bcs and 60 healthy women reporting other stressful events were compared according to the following scales: Post-traumatic Growth Inventory, Psychological Well-being Scales (PWB), Symptom Questionnaire and Psychosocial Index. Bcs reported significantly higher levels of PTG and distress, and lower levels of PWB compared to healthy women. Bcs with high levels of PTG showed increased levels of physical well-being and decreased distress. Healthy women under stressful circumstances reporting high levels of PTG showed increased levels of PWB. PTG levels were higher in Bcs and associated with decreased psychological distress and somatisation. These results carry important implications for clinical assessment, as well as for planning interventions to improve well-being and resilience in oncology.     

Construction and validation of an ecological version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test applied to an elderly population

ABSTRACT

The goal of this project was to construct and validate an ecological version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) aimed at the elderly. This was accomplished by replacing the geometric stimuli of the traditional version with stimuli belonging to the semantic category of transport vehicles, and by elimination of the color yellow. The results showed the ecological WCST version was preferred over the traditional version and older people felt less tired during test performance. In the two independent normal elderly groups, all pairs of scores that can be derived from the WCST correlated significantly with each other. Six of 11 outcome measures of the traditional WCST-128 (long) version were significantly influenced by age. By contrast, in the WCST-64 (short) version and in the ecological WCST-54 version only one measure was affected by the age variable. No significant effect of education level or gender emerged from the results in any WCST version. Again, the subjects with cognitive deterioration had lower performance in the ecological WCST-54 version than in the two traditional WCST versions. It seems reasonable to assume that the ecological version of WCST is more discriminating and has more advantages than the traditional versions. Further research on individual differences in the performance on this task will increase understanding of the components of the test, and of the variety of factors and possible deficits that could lead to an impaired performance of the test.     

The Cognitive Effectiveness of Subtitle Processing

In an experimental study, we analyzed the cognitive processing of a subtitled film excerpt by adopting a methodological approach based on the integration of a variety of measures: eye-movement data, word recognition, and visual scene recognition. We tested the hypothesis that the processing of subtitled films is cognitively effective: It leads to a good understanding of film content without requiring a significant tradeoff between image processing and text processing. Following indications in the psycholinguistic literature, we also tested the hypothesis that two-line subtitles whose segmentation is syntactically incoherent can have a disruptive effect on information processing and recognition performance. The results highlighted the effectiveness of subtitle processing: Regardless of the quality of line segmentation, participants had a good understanding of the film content, they achieved good levels of performance in both word and scene recognition, and no tradeoff between text and image processing was detected. Eye-movement analyses enabled a further characterization of cognitive processing during subtitled film viewing. This article discusses the theoretical implications of the findings for both subtitling and multiple-source communication and highlights their methodological and applied implications.