Comparative interinstrument reliability of uniaxial and triaxial accelerometers in free-living conditions

The aim of this study was to measure the inter-instrument reliability of the ActiGraph and RT3 accelerometers in free-living conditions. 15 healthy adults wore eight ActiGraph accelerometers and five RT3 accelerometers fastened to their back with an elastic belt and adjustable buckle in free-living conditions. For both accelerometers, the inter-instrument coefficient of variation (CV) decreased with increasing physical activity intensity. The inter-instrument CV of the ActiGraph (3% to 10.5%) was significantly lower than that of the RT3 (12.6% to 35.5%; p < 0.05). This finding demonstrates that the ActiGraph has higher inter-instrument reliability than the RT3. For both accelerometers, the inter-instrument reliability was higher for moderate and vigorous physical activity, the two intensities recommended for public health purposes. Studies using these devices can be compared with a low risk of misclassification of participants who meet the recommendation to perform moderate to vigorous physical activity.     

Number processing and calculation in Brazilian children aged 7-12 years

Numerical cognition is based on two components - number processing and calculation. Its development is influenced by biological, cognitive, educational, and cultural factors. The objectives of the present study were to: i) assess number processing and calculation in Brazilian children aged 7-12 years from public schools using the Zareki-R (Battery of neuropsychological tests for number processing and calculation in children, Revised; von Aster & Dellatolas, 2006) in order to obtain normative data for Portuguese speakers; ii) identify how environment, age, and gender influences the development of these mathematical skills; iii) investigate the construct validity of the Zareki-R by the contrast with the Arithmetic subtest of WISC-III. The sample included 172 children, both genders, divided in two groups: urban (N = 119) and rural (N = 53) assessed by the Zareki-R. Rural children presented lower scores in one aspect of number processing; children aged 7-8 years demonstrated an inferior global score than older; boys presented a superior performance in both number processing and calculation. Construct validity of Zareki-R was demonstrated by high to moderate correlations with Arithmetic subtest of WISC-III. The Zareki-R therefore is a suitable instrument to assess the development of mathematical skills, which is influenced by factors such as environment, age, and gender.     

Time knowledge difficulties following treatment for malignant cerebellar tumors

In children treated for malignant cerebellar tumors, there are only a few studies investigating temporal skills, despite the role of the cerebellum in time processing being generally acknowledged. Children’s time knowledge has been defined as the correct representation and use of familiar time units. The present study compares time knowledge in 38 children treated for malignant cerebellar tumors (mean age 11.6 years) with 105 typically-developing (TD) children. The performances on all time knowledge subtests were significantly lower in the tumor group. The results also confirm a lower mean IQ in the children treated for cerebellar tumors, related to slower processing speed and poorer performance on working memory and non-verbal tasks. However, the lower IQ does not explain the considerable difficulties in the acquisition of time knowledge. These results are discussed in the light of the role of the cerebellum in time processing and in the context of two different models of temporal processing: the internal clock model and the neural network state model.     

The Angry Juror: Sentencing Decisions in First‐Degree Murder

A great deal of research in legal decision making has overlooked the influence of affect on the decision‐making process. The present study measured the fluctuation of emotions across five time points of a capital trial and tested the overall relationship between changes in emotion and sentencing decisions. The results showed that across all participants, anger initially increased and then decreased during the course of a capital punishment trial. Most importantly, the more individual mock jurors' anger increased during any stage of the trial, the more likely they were to assign a death sentence. Furthermore, when jurors' anger increased, they rated mitigating factors presented by the defense as weaker and the weaker mitigation mediated the relationship between change in anger and sentencing. The paper ends with a discussion of theoretical explanations and policy implications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF ORGASM

Orgasm itself, along with its specific psycho dynamic, has stimulated few reflections and little research in the psychoanalyticalfield to date. In this regard, perspectives relating to orgasm are generally placed within a wider context covering desire, arousal and, of course, satisfaction. Freud himself seemed to show no particular or systematic interest in an orgasmic psychodynamic per se. This article, the aim of which is to consider the specific nature of orgasm, proposes a two-stage reflection. First, it considers the specific aspects of orgasm in order to arrive at a phenomenology of the orgasm itself-within a clearly defined framework. Second, it explains this phenomenology from a psychoanalytical point of view. These reflections lead us to suggest that while the erogenous zones in men and women respectively are at the root of the sexual arousal that leads to orgasm, it is most probably in fantasy that the female orgasm finds its major trigger. This is all the more relevant given that the existence of a real qualitative difference between clitoral and vaginal orgasm is now being challenged. This would tend to confirm the idea of a predominance of fantasy over bodily location, given that, quite clearly, it is not possible to attribute the former role to a precise area of the body. In this respect, only the analytical process is able to lead us to the primary sources of orgasmic problems—both male and female—and, above all, to reconstruct the origin of a satisfactory or unsatisfactory orgasm.     

Action research,emancipation and design thinking

This article evaluates the notion and practice of action research, as defined by contributors to the recent special issue ‘Action Research and Emancipation’ in this journal. The author argues that, although action research implicitly has a design orientation, it largely draws on the humanities and sciences as its main role models. As a result, action researchers nowadays do not see themselves as design professionals. Idealized design methods serve to illustrate how design research can help realize the emancipatory intentions of action researchers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

LES RAPPORTS ENTRE LE LANGAGE ET LA PENSÉE POINT DE VUE d'UN LINGUISTE

The author first wonders whether it was necessary to re-examine now the old problem of the relations between language and thought, as they are still too much related to traditional philosophical formulations, even among psychologists. He gives the reasons why, since Whitney, the scientific linguists, because of their epistemological prudence, voluntarily discarded this problem which they were not armed to study. Then he surveys some of the issues which, after a century of healthy anti-mentalistic views, an interdisciplinary scientific study could presently approach in a more valid and less ambitious experimental frame of work: thought without language, Whorf's hypothesis, relations between language and “splitting of the world”, lessons from experiences of translators, learning of language and pathology of language. Eventually, even though he seems to be avoiding it, he outlines the very complex problem of evaluating the still altogether unstructured draft of model with which Chomsky proposes to explain the relations between language and thought. The validity of this model is related to epistemological presuppositions and to a use of the notion of hypothetical-deductive models which it is difficult, but necessary to scrutinize at first.     

Le “droit au travail” et la revolution de 1848 en France

Sans résuméCommunication faite à la seconde Conference Internationale de Linguistique Psychologique (Naarden, Pays-Bas, Août 1946).     

Application of signal detection theory to perception of differences in line length

This paper is an attempt to specify the equinormal model for application to different tasks which are currently used in psychophysics (i.e. phenomenal report, detection, and 2AFC). The same set of stimuli (pairs of horizontal colinear lines) is presented in procedures which differ by the task, the probability of the signal, and the succession of the stimuli of the set. This approach leads to the specification of the sensorial and the decisional aspects of the model.The data indicate that (1) the sensitivity index d' to differences in line length is the same function of the physical stimulus independently of paradigm, as far as the same task is concerned. However, and according to the predictions, its value becomes larger by a factor of 2 in a two alternative forced choice task; (2) d' increases with stimulus exposure time; (3) latency of responses generally decreases with increasing d', and are dissimilar for correct and incorrect responses; (4) when the temporal succession of the stimuli is random the subject's criterion, x_c, is not chosen to optimize the percentage correct, which would require a dependance of criterion upon stimulus amplitude and prior probabilities.