Academic Self-concept and Educational Attainment Level: A Ten-year Longitudinal Study

The purpose of this study was to test children's academic self-concept, family socioeconomic status, family structure (single parent vs. two parent family) and academic achievement in elementary school as predictors of children's educational attainment level in young adulthood within a ten-year longitudinal design. Participants (254 girls, 211 boys) were three cohorts of students in Grades 3, 4, and 5 from ten elementary schools. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that academic self-concept predicted educational attainment level ten years later over and above prior achievement. Moreover, this pattern of results was invariant across cohorts. In addition, regression analyses based on a restricted sample (n?=?243) indicated that the academic self-concept/educational attainment level relation was still significant while controlling for family SES, family structure (single parent vs. two parent family), and academic achievement. Discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of the results.     

Characteristics of illness intrusions in a non-clinical sample

This study examines whether illness intrusions can be distinguished from obsessional intrusions and worries. It also assesses the relationship between strategies, thought characteristics, and appraisal of illness intrusions. Two hundred and forty-three non-clinical participants identified an obsessive intrusive thought, a worry, and an illness intrusion. They evaluated each thought using items from the Cognitive Intrusions Questionnaire. The comparisons of intrusions showed that illness intrusions share characteristics of worries and obsessional intrusions, but also have their own characteristics. Illness intrusions seem to be particularly egosyntonic. The relationships between the strategies used to counter illness intrusions and their appraisal were also tested. Results support the idea that there are specific links between the evaluation of cognitive intrusions and the way they are processed. It demonstrated that escape/avoidance strategies are associated with the egodystonic nature of the thought and that problem-focused strategies are associated with the thought's basis in reality. Illness intrusions may be conceptualised as either obsessions or worries. This study demonstrated that the category of an intrusive thought might not be as important as the way it is processed. It seems more important to consider appraisal of the disturbing thought and the way in which the person subsequently reacts and behaves.     

Using "Bubbles" with babies: a new technique for investigating the informational basis of infant perception

The 'Bubbles' technique (Gosselin, F. & Schyns, P.G. (2001). Bubbles: A technique to reveal the use of information in recognition tasks. Vision Research, 41, 2261-2271) has been widely used to reveal the information adults use to make perceptual categorizations. We present, for the first time, an adapted form of Bubbles, suitable for use with young infants.     

Interpretation mistakes in statistical methods: their importance and some recommendations

Interpretation mistakes in statistical methods: Their importance and some recommendations. Prior research has identified some of the most common misconceptions on how researchers interpret the results of significance tests. In this study, we examine the scope of these misconceptions in a sample of university professors and researchers from Spain on the basis of a short questionnaire. The obtained results provide important information: i) to prevent wrong interpretation from the data, ii) to correct the wrong use of statistical testing, iii) to suggest new ways of examining the data, and iv) to propose some modifications on the editorial criteria to publish scientific work.     

Quality service in supermarkets: a proposal of measurement

This assignment has the aim of going deeply into the study of service quality perception in supermarkets. The research tries to find the criterion used when rating the services received in a supermarket and also to elaborate an instrument to measure the service quality in this context. From the review of the existing bibliography, four theoretical factors and a thirteen items scale have been composed. These four factors are: price, product, service and image and fresh product. In order to check the psychometrical properties of the questionnaire we carried out a computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) with a sample of 300 interviews. The results obtained allow us to show a scale with a factorial structure of 4 dimensions that throws up optimal indexes of reliability and validity. At the same time we conclude that the variable called establishment global rate is an important variable in the perceptive structure of the consumers.     

Women abuse: beliefs and attitudes in university students

Beliefs and attitudes positives toward domestic violence are one of the risks factors for his occurrence. Among his most studied predictors are gender, gender role attitudes or educational level. In this paper, domestic violence beliefs and attitudes are analysed in 1395 university students. "Inventory of Thoughts Distorted on the Woman and the Violence" (Echeburúa and Fernández-Montalvo, 1997) and "Inventory of Social Desirability" by Crowne and Marlowe (Form C, Reynolds, 1982) were administrated. Boys and students without specific formation about this subject show more positive beliefs and attitudes toward domestic violence. Though social desirability introduces some limitations, these results suggest the importance of incorporating matters on this subject in the curriculum of university students in general and, especially, in future professional that will work with these groups.     

Spatial dependence of color assimilation by the watercolor effect

Color assimilation with bichromatic contours was quantified for spatial extents ranging from von Bezold-type color assimilation to the watercolor effect. The magnitude and direction of assimilative hue change was measured as a function of the width of a rectangular stimulus. Assimilation was quantified by hue cancellation. Large hue shifts were required to null the color of stimuli < or = 9.3 min of arc in width, with an exponential decrease for stimuli increasing up to 7.4 deg. When stimuli were viewed through an achromatizing lens, the magnitude of the assimilation effect was reduced for narrow stimuli, but not for wide ones. These results demonstrate that chromatic aberration may account, in part, for color assimilation over small, but not large, surface areas.     

Assessing and interpreting personality change and continuity in patients treated for major depression

Structural, mean- and individual-level, differential, and ipsative personality continuity were examined in 599 patients treated for major depression assigned to 1 of 6 forms of a 6-month pharmaco-psychotherapy program. Covariation among traits from the Five Factor model remained invariant across treatment, and patients described themselves as slightly more extraverted, open to experience, agreeable and conscientious, and substantially more emotional stable after treatment. Trait changes were only to a small extent explained by changes in depression severity. There was evidence for differential, individual-level, and ipsative stability, with stable personality profiles in terms of shape and to a lesser extent in terms of scatter and elevation. Traits remain relatively stable, except for emotional stability, despite the depressive state and the psychopharmacological interventions.     

Mental rotation in schizophrenia

Motor imagery provides a direct insight into action representations. The aim of the present study was to investigate the level of impairment of action monitoring in schizophrenia by evaluating the performance of schizophrenic patients on mental rotation tasks. We raised the following questions: (1) Are schizophrenic patients impaired in motor imagery both at the explicit and at the implicit level? (2) Are body parts more difficult for them to mentally rotate than objects? (3) Is there any link between the performance and the hallucinating symptom profile? The schizophrenic patients (n = 13) displayed the same pattern of performance as the control subjects (n = 13). More particularly, schizophrenic patients’ reaction time varied as a function of the angular disparity of the stimuli. On the other hand, they were significantly slower and less accurate. Interestingly, patients suffering from hallucinations made significantly more errors than non-hallucinatory patients. We discussed these latter results in terms of deficit of the forward model. We emphasized the necessity to distinguish different levels of action, more or less impaired in schizophrenia.