Skipping breakfast,sedentarism and overweight in children

To show by use of path analysis how in children of 9 and 10 years of age the known relationship between breakfast and high body mass index (BMI) is mediated by sedentary leisure time activities. A random sample of 291 9-year-old and 10-year-old school children from the Principality of Asturias (Spain) was taken. A transversal design was used, their weight and height were measured and an individual standardized interview was carried out in which they were asked about their breakfast habits and the time they spent each week on sedentary leisure activities. Using path analysis, a model was tested in which breakfast habits and leisure time were the independent variables and the BMI was the dependent variable. The results showed that there was an inverse correlation between number of breakfasts and BMI and a direct correlation between the time spent on sedentary leisure activities and BMI. Path analysis showed that the relationship between the frequency with which breakfast was eaten and BMI was mediated by the time spent on sedentary leisure activities. The above appears to confirm the direct role played by failing to have breakfast in the pandemic of obesity as this habit tends to increase children’s BMI. This relationship is, however, mediated by sedentary leisure. According to the data compiled, being overweight in children can only be prevented by modifying not just one of the habits that have been associated with it, but rather the whole group of habits as these appear to make up an obesogenic cluster in which sedentary leisure and not having breakfast are included.     

Semiotic Regulation through Inhibitor Signs: Creating a Cycle of Rigid Meanings

This study aims to analyze the process of semiotic regulation in youth transition to adulthood from the perspectives of cultural developmental psychology and dialogical self theory. The focus is on the transformations that occur in youth’s self-system configurations during a critical developmental period. In this paper, we will advance the idea that semiotic regulation may lead to the construction of strong signs (i.e. those signs that bring rigidity to personal meaning systems)—and more specifically, of strong inhibitor signs—that block the emergence of alternative meanings, leading to rigidity in the self-system. We present a longitudinal case study of a young man who participated in a social project in Salvador, Bahia to illustrate the process. Data was collected through two rounds of in-depth interviews at ages 18 (1st round) and 21 (2nd round) years. Analysis followed a mapping of positions and counter-positions, as well as emerging tensions and their resolution over time and in different spheres of life (i.e. work, school, and family life). The idea is to show how negotiations of self-positions evolve and activate a mechanism of inhibition of hierarchical integration and construction of alternative future meanings, in which rigid meanings are created and do not allow for emergence of alternative life trajectories.     

Contextualised behavioural measurements of personality differences obtained in behavioural tests and social observations in adult capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

We applied a new framework for behavioural research on personality differences in 26 adult tufted capuchin monkeys. Using the Behavioural Repertoire x Environmental Situations Approach, we generated systematically 20 non-lexical emic personality constructs that have high ecological validity for this species. For construct operationalisation, we obtained 146 contextualised behavioural measures repeatedly in 15 experimental situations and 2 group situations using computerised and video-assisted methods. A complete repetition after a 2–3-week break within a 60-day period yielded significant test–retest reliability from individual-oriented and variable-oriented viewpoints at different levels of aggregation. In accordance with well-established findings on cross-situational consistency, internal consistency was only moderate. This new and important finding highlights fundamental differences between behavioural approaches and judgment-based approaches to personality differences.     

Coping with the Media at the Vancouver Winter Olympics: “We All Make a Living Out of This”

The purpose of this study was to examine the journalist-athlete relationship at a major competitive event to better understand how the media may be perceived as a source of strain and how elite athletes cope with the media demands. Ten participants were interviewed after the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. Intrusive questioning may negatively affect and influence the athlete's preparation for events. The use of coping strategies to deal with the media demands and reporting becomes important. In addition, the team support personnel should employ mastery motivational strategies to keep the athlete task involved.     

Diphones-fr: A French database of diphone positional frequency

The aim of this article is to describe a database of diphone positional frequencies in French. More specifically, we provide frequencies for word-initial, word-internal, and word-final diphones of all words extracted from a subtitle corpus of 50 million words that come from movie and TV series dialogue. We also provide intra- and intersyllable diphone frequencies, as well as interword diphone frequencies. To our knowledge, no other such tool is available to psycholinguists for the study of French sequential probabilities. This database and its new indicators should help researchers conducting new studies on speech segmentation.