Screening utility of the social anxiety screening scale in Spanish speaking adolescents

The aim of this study was to analyse the screening utility of the Social Anxiety Screening Scale (SASS/EDAS) in a sample of 227 adolescents with social anxiety disorder and 156 Without it (14-17 years). Results showed that the EDAS subscales (Avoidance, Distress and Interference) scores were reliable in terms of internal consistency (alpha > .80). All the subscales discriminated between adolescents with and without the disorder. They also showed a positive and significant correlation with other empirically validated measures of social anxiety. The three subscales indicated relevant sensitivity (69.16-84.14%), specificity (63.46-66.03%) and areas under the curve (.74-.81%). Binary logistic regression analyses indicated the adequate predictive utility of EDAS subscales, with the Distress subscale as the best diagnostic predictor. The data provide empirical evidence of the usefulness of EDAS as a screener for adolescent social anxiety disorder in terms of reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, diagnostic accuracy and clinical usefulness.     

Bioethics and law: from the abundance of sources to the confusion of genders

The law of bioethics reveals frequent confusion in the definition and role devolved to the law and ethics. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of these confusions.     

Maturation of rapid auditory temporal processing and subsequent nonword repetition performance in children

According to the rapid auditory processing theory, the ability to parse incoming auditory information underpins learning of oral and written language. There is wide variation in this low-level perceptual ability, which appears to follow a protracted developmental course. We studied the development of rapid auditory processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by tone pairs presented at varying inter-stimulus intervals (25, 50, 100, 200, and 400 ms) in a sample of children (N = 103) aged 7-9 years initially and again at 9-11 years. We also assessed their ability to repeat nonsense words at both time-points. The amount of difference between the ERP to single tones and paired tones (as assessed by the intra-class correlation coefficient, ICC) provided a measure of the brain's capacity to discriminate auditory information delivered at different presentation rates. Results showed that older children showed greater neural discrimination to tone pairs than younger children at rapid presentation rates, although these differences were reduced at slower presentation rates. The ICC at time 1 significantly predicted nonword repetition scores two years later, providing support for the view that rapid auditory temporal processing ability affects oral language development in typically developing children.     

Social factors in the development of early executive functioning: a closer look at the caregiving environment

This study investigated prospective links between quality of the early caregiving environment and children's subsequent executive functioning (EF). Sixty-two families were met on five occasions, allowing for assessment of maternal interactive behavior, paternal interactive behavior, and child attachment security between 1 and 2 years of age, and child EF at 2 and 3 years. The results suggested that composite scores of parental behavior and child attachment were related to child performance on EF tasks entailing strong working memory and cognitive flexibility components (conflict-EF). In particular, child attachment security was related to conflict-EF performance at 3 years above and beyond what was explained by a combination of all other social antecedents of child EF identified thus far: child verbal ability and prior EF, family SES, and parenting behavior. Attachment security may thus play a meaningful role in young children's development of executive control.     

Top-down versus bottom-up attentional control: a failed theoretical dichotomy

Prominent models of attentional control assert a dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up control, with the former determined by current selection goals and the latter determined by physical salience. This theoretical dichotomy, however, fails to explain a growing number of cases in which neither current goals nor physical salience can account for strong selection biases. For example, equally salient stimuli associated with reward can capture attention, even when this contradicts current selection goals. Thus, although 'top-down' sources of bias are sometimes defined as those that are not due to physical salience, this conception conflates distinct--and sometimes contradictory--sources of selection bias. We describe an alternative framework, in which past selection history is integrated with current goals and physical salience to shape an integrated priority map.     

Congruent visual information improves traffic signage

In the last five decades, cognitive scientists and the psychologists of reasoning have dedicated a lot of effort designing usable traffic signs. This study investigated the interference effect produced by the position of the sign elements in traffic signage on response accuracy and reaction time. Sixteen drivers performed a flanker interference reaction time task. Incongruent graphical/space solutions, actually used for the airport stack-type sign, lead to increased reaction time and a reduction in the proportion of correct answers. These results suggest that incongruent visual information should be avoided, as this might impair drivers’ performance. These findings provide important information for the specification of future signage design guidelines and for improving road safety.     

Do child pedestrians deliberately take risks when they are in a hurry? An experimental study on a simulator

In order to ascertain whether or not child pedestrians voluntarily take risks, a street-crossing task in an urban environment with vehicle traffic was administered individually to 80 children aged 10 years using a pedestrian simulator. The task, which was presented as a contest, consisted of attaining two objectives in a limited time. The subjects were divided into three conditions that differed only in the number of constraints that had to be taken into account in order to win the contest. The data show that the degree of urgency felt, measured by the amount of time taken, increased as the number of constraints increased. At the same time, the frequency of two of the risky behaviors (not using the pedestrian crossing, running across the road) increased, whereas the frequency of observation failures was independent of the condition. Not using the pedestrian crossing and running across the road were therefore deliberately taken risks, whereas observation failures can be attributed to a control deficit. The discussion includes suggestions for training.     

Personal self and collective self: when academic choices depend on the context of social comparison

This research examines the impact of same-sex versus opposite-sex social comparisons on the perception of one’s own abilities at school and subsequent reported marks and academic choices. During their final year, male and female high school students were asked to describe themselves either in comparison with boys in their class, in comparison with girls in their class or without any explicit social comparison (control group). The interaction effects of gender and comparison context on academic selfconcept, school marks and academic choices indicated that gender differences depend on the comparison context. Particularly, as predicted, gender differences disappeared in the same-sex social comparison condition, and even became inverted for the intended academic choices. Here, boys intended to choose more than girls Preparatory Courses for Higher Education (PCHE) in the opposite-sex social comparison condition, while girls more often chose a prestigious PCHE than boys in the same-sex social comparison condition. The theoretical, methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Harcèlement moral au travail et pro/antisocialité du salarié victime : quels effets sur les jugements,les émotions et les intentions d’aide des témoins ?

Bullying at work is characterized by negative, repetitive and frequent acts towards a person, bearing reached with her physical and psychic health (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2003; Leymann, 1996). On the basis of research of Weiner (1996) and Rudolph, Roesch, Greitemeyer, and Weiner (2004), we postulated that the bullying acts, the behaviors of the bullied employee and it revictimisation would influence the judgments and the emotions of the witnesses. Research was carried out within the framework of the paradigm of the judges of 72 participants. The variance analyses show that the gravity of the acts decreases the feeling of equity, increases the attribution of responsibility towards the harcelor, decreases the attribution of responsibility to the victim and increases the help. The bullying acts always interact with the victim’s pro or antisocial behaviors. The emotions of the judges are mainly positive with regard to the victim and negative towards the harcelor except when bullied employee has emitted an antisocial behavior. The gravity of the bullying acts increases on the one hand sympathy, fear and sadness towards the victims, on the other hand, anger and dislike towards the harcelor.