Emotional intelligence in women caregivers with depressive symptoms

The emotional intelligence of a sample of 59 women caregivers (M age = 51.1 yr.) with depressive symptoms was compared with that of a sample of adult women from the general population (M age = 50.7 yr.). No group differences were observed on the Trait Meta-Mood Scale's three dimensions of emotional intelligence across age, socioeconomic status, or education level. Compared with the general population sample, the caregivers group scored significantly lower on Attention to Feelings and Mood Repair.     

Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale in women

This instrumental study was designed to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS). The total sample was made up of 582 female college students, with a mean age of 21.68 (SD= 4.45). The results of confirmatory factor analysis identified the six-factor solution proposed by the original authors as the best factor structure, with acceptable fit indices. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was .93 for the FMPS total score and ranged from .74 to .91 for the subscales. Test-retest reliability suggested a good temporal stability of the FMPS total score [ICC= .89 (95% CI= .80-.94)] and its subscales. Results showed moderate to high associations between the Spanish version of the FMPS and other measures of perfectionism. The Spanish version of FMPS has shown satisfactory psychometric properties to be used in women. Future research should replicate these findings in broader samples, in clinical populations, and use longitudinal designs to determine whether perfectionism is a risk factor for psychopathology in women.     

An Index of Progress Towards the MDG1 in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa

In this article we present a new proposal for measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, applied to a group of countries particularly affected by poverty in the context of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Our index is novel in that it has been constructed taking into account a larger number of variables defined in the UN Millennium Declaration which are generally considered to determine countries’ levels of underdevelopment. As technique applied to the data, provided by the UN, we used the P₂ distance of Pena method and applied it to the year 2007; the last year for which data are available. This index incorporates variables that permit a ranking of the countries of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa in terms of those partial indicators. To sum up, the objective is to produce a global indicator of fulfilment of the MDG1.     

Habituation of exploratory activity to new stimuli, to the absence of a previously presented stimulus and to new contexts, in rats

Rats trained to run a shuttle-alleyway for food exhibited exploratory behaviour to a novel visual/tactual stimulus presented in a specific place of the alley. Intermittent presentation of the same stimulus in the same place resulted in reduction of the exploratory activity (habituation), both within and between sessions. The animals also directed exploratory activity to the absence of the previously presented stimulus at the place where the stimulus had been presented before; this latter response also habituated. The presentation (1) of the same stimulus to which the animals had already habituated in another place in the alleyway or when the animals were running in an opposite direction to the previous trials of stimulus presentation, or (2) of another stimulus, resulted, again, in the appearance of exploratory activity. These results lead to the conclusion that the animals code external events, store this information, and use it to detect spatial- and directional-contextual changes and to generate predictions about that specific environment.     

A Capacitarian Account of Culpable Ignorance

Ignorance usually excuses from responsibility, unless the person is culpable for the ignorance itself. Since a lot of wrongdoing occurs in ignorance, the question of what makes ignorance culpable is central for a theory of moral responsibility. In this article I examine a prominent answer, which I call the ‘volitionalist tracing account,’ and criticize it on the grounds that it relies on an overly restrictive conception of responsibility‐relevant control. I then propose an alternative, which I call the ‘capacitarian conception of control,’ and on the basis of it I advance an account of culpable ignorance that avoids the skeptical upshots of the volitionalist proposal. If correct, my account establishes three important truths: agents can be directly in control of their ignorance, they can be directly responsible for more than actions and omissions, and their moral obligations extend beyond the performance of intentional actions and omissions.     

Aphasic naming in Spanish: predictors and errors

Sixteen Spanish aphasic patients named drawings of objects on three occasions. Multiple regression analyses were carried out on the naming accuracy scores. For the patient group as a whole, naming was affected by visual complexity, object familiarity, age of acquisition, and word frequency. The combination of variables predicted naming accuracy in 15 of the 16 individual patients. Age of acquisition, word frequency, and object familiarity predicted performance in the greatest number of patients, while visual complexity, imageability, animacy, and length all affected performance in at least two patients. High proportions of semantic and phonological errors to particular objects were associated with objects having early learned names while high proportions of no-response errors were associated with low familiarity and low visual complexity. It is suggested that visual complexity and object familiarity affect the ease of object recognition while word frequency affects name retrieval. Age of acquisition may affect both stages, accounting for its influence in patients with a range of different patterns of disorder.