Increasing safety-belt use in Spanish drivers: a field test of personal prompts

A variation of the ABAB experimental design was used to assess the impact of a verbal prompt on safety-belt use for those traveling by urban roads and highways in Spain. The personal prompt resulted in an increase (29.6%) in safety-belt use among drivers traveling on urban roads. This research shows that the impact of personal prompts can be generalized to cultures outside the United States.     

Irritation: analysis of an instrument to assess stress at work

The aim of this investigation is to verify the factorial validity of the "Scale Irritation" in a sample of 181 teachers of Secondary Education from the center of Spain. At the same time, the investigation tries to verify the validity of construct of the scale correlating the results with the burnout evaluated through the Brief Questionnaire of Burnout adapted for teachers. The results obtained by means of the exploratory factor analysis of the Scale Irritation confirm the presence of two factors, as it appears in other international investigations. The confirmatory analysis verifies the proposal of a model of two factors. The significant correlation obtained among the Irritation Scale and the burnout confirms the validity of construct and verifies that a high irritation is associated significantly to the burnout, as it is foreseen by the theory, which considers both aspects related to the process of stress at work.     

Hardy personality as moderator variable of burnout syndrome in firefighters

In last years, theorists and researchers have pointed to the relevance of personal factors in resilience and vulnerability on burnout. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of hardy personality as moderator of the relationship between job stressors and burnout. A total of 405 firefighters of the Community of Madrid participated in the study. The results of the hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the challenge component of hardy personality buffer the influence of job stressors on the occurrence of burnout. Results support the hypothesis that hardy personality may have moderator effects on burnout. Furthermore, commitment appeared as a mediator of the relationships between burnout and its associated symptomatology. Finally, discussion emphasized the need to focus on the interaction between personal and contextual factors in order to make advances in understanding the burnout process.     

Pragmatic skills predict online counterfactual comprehension: Evidence from the N400

Counterfactual thought allows people to consider alternative worlds they know to be false. Communicating these thoughts through language poses a social-communicative challenge because listeners typically expect a speaker to produce true utterances, but counterfactuals per definition convey information that is false. Listeners must therefore incorporate overt linguistic cues (subjunctive mood, such as in If I loved you then) in a rapid way to infer the intended counterfactual meaning. The present EEG study focused on the comprehension of such counterfactual antecedents and investigated if pragmatic ability—the ability to apply knowledge of the social-communicative use of language in daily life—predicts the online generation of counterfactual worlds. This yielded two novel findings: (1) Words that are consistent with factual knowledge incur a semantic processing cost, as reflected in larger N400 amplitude, in counterfactual antecedents compared to hypothetical antecedents (If sweets were/are made of sugar). We take this to suggest that counterfactuality is quickly incorporated during language comprehension and reduces online expectations based on factual knowledge. (2) Individual scores on the Autism Quotient Communication subscale modulated this effect, suggesting that individuals who are better at understanding the communicative intentions of other people are more likely to reduce knowledge-based expectations in counterfactuals. These results are the first demonstration of the real-time pragmatic processes involved in creating possible worlds.     

Exploration and learning in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.): the role of action–outcome contingencies

Animals have a strong propensity to explore the environment. Spontaneous exploration has a great biological significance since it allows animals to discover and learn the relation between specific behaviours and their consequences. The role of the contingency between action and outcome for learning has been mainly investigated in instrumental learning settings and much less in free exploration contexts. We tested 16 capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) with a mechatronic platform that allowed complex modules to be manipulated and to produce different outcomes. Experimental subjects could manipulate the modules and discover the contingencies between their own specific actions and the outcomes produced (i.e., the opening and lighting of a box). By contrast, Control subjects could operate on the modules, but the outcomes experienced were those performed by their paired Experimental subjects (“yoked-control” paradigm). In the exploration phase, in which no food reward was present, Experimental subjects spent more time on the board and manipulated the modules more than Yoked subjects. Experimental subjects outperformed Yoked subjects in the following test phase, where success required recalling the effective action so to open the box, now baited with food. These findings demonstrate that the opportunity to experience action–outcome contingencies in the absence of extrinsic rewards promotes capuchins’ exploration and facilitates learning processes. Thus, this intrinsically motivated learning represents a powerful mechanism allowing the acquisition of skills and cognitive competence that the individual can later exploit for adaptive purposes.     

A topographical map approach to representing treatment efficacy: a focus on positive psychology interventions

A recent meta-analysis by Bolier et al. indicated that positive psychology interventions have overall small to moderate effects on well-being, but results were quite heterogeneous across intervention trials. Such meta-analytic research helps condense information on the efficacy of a broad psychosocial intervention by averaging across many effects; however, such global averages may provide limited navigational guidance for selecting among specific interventions. Here, we introduce a novel method for displaying qualitative and quantitative information on the efficacy of interventions using a topographical map approach. As an initial prototype for demonstrating this method, we mapped 50 positive psychology interventions targeting well-being (as captured in the Bolier et al. [2013] meta-analysis, [Bolier, L., Haverman, M., Westerhof, G. J., Riper, H., Smit, F., & Bohlmeijer, E. (2013). Positive psychology interventions: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies. BMC Public Health, 13, 83]). Each intervention domain/subdomain was mapped according to its average effect size (indexed by vertical elevation), number of studies providing effect sizes (indexed by horizontal area), and therapist/client burden (indexed by shading). The geographical placement of intervention domains/subdomains was determined by their conceptual proximity, allowing viewers to gauge the general conceptual “direction” in which promising intervention effects can be found. The resulting graphical displays revealed several prominent features of the well-being intervention “landscape,” such as more strongly and uniformly positive effects of future-focused interventions (including, goal-pursuit and optimism training) compared to past/present-focused ones.     

Efficacy of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy on Depression Among Children with Learning Disabilities: Implications for Evaluation in Science Teaching

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - Owing to the prevalence of mental health issues among Nigerian in-school children, the effect of Rational Emotive Behavior...