Behavioural factors underlying innovative problem-solving differences in an avian predator from two contrasting habitats

Animal Cognition - Innovative behavior is considered one of the main factors facilitating the adaptation of animals to urban life. However, the relationship between urbanization and innovativeness...     

Behavioral and Emotional Problems on the Teacher’s Report Form: A Cross-National,Cross-Clinic Comparative Analysis of Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents

For gender dysphoric children and adolescents, the school environment may be challenging due to peer social ostracism and rejection. To date, information on the psychological functioning and the quality of peer relations in gender dysphoric children and adolescents has been studied via parental report, peer sociometric methods, and social interactions in laboratory play groups. The present study was the first cross-national investigation that assessed behavior and emotional problems and the quality of peer relations, both measured by the Teacher’s Report Form (TRF), in a sample of 728 gender dysphoric patients (554 children, 174 adolescents), who were referred to specialized gender identity clinics in the Netherlands and Canada. The gender dysphoric adolescents had significantly more teacher-reported emotional and behavioral problems than the gender dysphoric children. In both countries, gender dysphoric natal boys had poorer peer relations and more internalizing than externalizing problems compared to the gender dysphoric natal girls. Furthermore, there were significant between-clinic differences: both the children and the adolescents from Canada had more emotional and behavioral problems and a poorer quality of peer relations than the children and adolescents from the Netherlands. In conclusion, gender dysphoric children and adolescents showed the same pattern of emotional and behavioral problems in both countries. The extent of behavior and emotional problems was, however, higher in Canada than in the Netherlands, which appeared, in part, an effect of a poorer quality of peer relations. Per Bronfenbrenner’s (American Psychologist, 32, 513–531, 1977) ecological model of human development and well-being, we consider various interpretations of the cross-national, cross-clinic differences on TRF behavior problems at the level of the family, the peer group, and the culture at large.     

Harms and deprivation of benefits for nonhuman primates in research

The risks of harm to nonhuman primates, and the absence of benefits for them, are critically important to decisions about nonhuman primate research. Current guidelines for review and practice tend to be permissive for nonhuman primate research as long as minimal welfare requirements are fulfilled and human medical advances are anticipated. This situation is substantially different from human research, in which risks of harms to the individual subject are typically reduced to the extent feasible. A risk threshold is needed for the justification of research on nonhuman primates, comparable to the way risk thresholds are set for vulnerable human subjects who cannot provide informed consent. Much of the laboratory research conducted today has inadequate standards, leading to common physical, psychological, and social harms.     

El segundo sistema de funciones como marco definitorio de la escala psicológica

RESUMEN

El presente trabajo es de naturaleza filosófica y no psicológico-científico y apenas se habla del procesamiento de información. Los intereses de este artículo son de naturaleza filosófica muy general y, por descontado, de filosofía de la ciencia o epistemología, y en particular de epistemología de la psicología. Se intenta esbozar aquí algunas reflexiones epistemológicas conducentes a esclarecer ciertas características, a juicio del autor, esenciales del campo de la psicología científica, precisamente como un campo ya dado a la reflexión epistemológica. Estas reflexiones son de carácter general, aunque puedan parecer alejadas de muchos problemas específicos de los psicólogos actuales, lo cierto es que sólo en el contexto de tales problemas puede ser contrastado el valor que las ideas presentadas puedan tener. El presente trabaja comienza con un extenso desarrollo que pone en tela de juicio el concepto kuhniano de paradigma, así como el uso que de él viene haciéndose en gran parte de la comunidad psicológica misma, para seguir planteando después otra serie de reflexiones sobre la epistemología de la psicología.     

Semantic Processing of Foveally and Parafoveally Presented Words in a Lexical Decision Task

Using a lexical decision task in which two primes appeared simultaneously in the visual field for 150 msec followed by a target word, two experiments examined semantic priming from attended and unattended primes as a function of both the separation between the primes in the visual field and the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). In the first experiment significant priming effects were found for both the attended and unattended prime words, though the effect was much greater for the attended words. In addition, and also for both attention conditions, priming showed a tendency to increase with increasing eccentricity (2.3°, 3.3°, and 4.3°) between the prime words in the visual field at the long (550 and 850 msec) but not at the short (250 msec) prime-target SOA. In the second experiment the prime stimuli were either two words (W-W) or one word and five Xs (W-X). We manipulated the degree of eccentricity (2° and 3.6°) between the prime stimuli and used a prime-target SOA of 850 msec. Again significant priming was found for both the attended and unattended words but only the W-W condition showed a decrement in priming as a function of the separation between the primes; this decrement came to produce negative priming for the unattended word at the narrow (2°) separation. These results are discussed in relation to the semantic processing of parafoveal words and the inhibitory effects of focused attention.     

Comparative analysis of the perception of school violence in teachers, pupils, and families

The main aim of the present study is to analyze the opinion of pupils, families and teachers in four European countries (Spain, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic) on the prevalence of violent behavior and other problematic aspects related to coexistence in schools, and on the way in which individuals are personally affected by them. For this purpose, a single instrument was used. From the results obtained it emerges, first of all, that there are significant differences depending on who is analyzing the school problems. Generally, families perceive the problems analyzed as less common and feel less affected by them personally. Hungary was considered to be the country with the lowest levels of school violence. Pupils indicate their concern about the high levels of lack of motivation or boredom, whilst teachers are more preoccupied about the serious problems of coexistence, due in particular to the presence or use of weapons and drugs and to intercultural conflicts.     

Family predictors of moral internalization in childhood

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between parents' affection, acceptance, emotional communication, the transmission of values and moral intervention, on the one hand, and children's moral emotions and behaviors on the other (empathy, guilt, internalized behavior and reparation). It also aimed to identify the family variables that influence moral internalization in children. The sample comprised 485 children (244 boys and 241 girls) aged between 6 and 8. The results showed that the principal variable to predict internalized behavior in girls was maternal affection, whereas for boys, the principal variables were maternal emotional communication and transmission of values. The family variables that explain moral internalization in extreme groups of children are basically parents' affection, emotional communication, the transmission of values and moral intervention.     

Stereotypic horses (Equus caballus) are not cognitively impaired

Animal Cognition - Stereotypies in animals are thought to arise from an interaction between genetic predisposition and sub-optimal housing conditions. In domestic horses, a well-studied...     

Priming and interference effects can be dissociated in the Stroop task: new evidence in favor of the automaticity of word recognition

Recently, Besner, Stolz, and Boutilier (1997) showed that by coloring a single letter instead of the whole word, Stroop interference is reduced or even eliminated, a result that is at odds with the widely accepted assumption that word recognition is automatic. In a replication of the Besner et al. study, we computed priming effects in addition to the standard Stroop interference. Interference results replicated those of Besner et al. Also, negative priming in the all-letter-colored condition and positive priming in the single-letter-colored condition were obtained. Priming findings demonstrate that word processing can take place in the absence of interference effects. These results support the view of automatic processing of words in the Stroop task and call for priming as a more appropriate measure of word processing than interference.