Complementarity in relationships of couples affected by HIV

Psychological interventions with patients with HIV infection may affect the stability of the patient's relationship with others. Two clinical cases are described to illustrate this. Both the impact of AIDS on patients and their relationships, and the impact of psychological interventions on the index patient and others, should always be considered when HIV-infected patients are referred to psychiatrists and other mental health care workers.     

A systems approach to AIDS counselling

The initial tasks of a systemic AIDS Counsellor in accepting a referral are described. These include: (a) describing the context of the problem; (b) obtaining a clear definition of the problem; (c) responding to changing views of the problem over time; and (d) identifying whom the problem affects. Failure to consider these issues can give rise to extraneous difficulties in counselling sessions,     

Validity and Effectiveness of Ambiguity: A Famous Argument by Socrates

An argument can be superficially valid and rhetorically effective even if what is plausibly meant, what is derived from what, and how it is derived is not at all clear. An example of such an argument is provided by Socrates??s famous refutation of Euthyphro??s second definition of holy, which is generally regarded as clearly valid and successful. This paper provides a stricter logical analysis than the ones in the literature. In particular, it is shown that the argument contains a syntactically ambiguous expression, a passage that needs to be read charitably, and a previously unnoticed but crucial shift between two notions of unholy. Different analyses may be provided, depending on how these interpretation problems are solved. The conditions under which the refutation is valid and successful are far from obvious, and are here explicitly specified.     

Repetition priming within and between languages in verb generation: evidence for shared verb concepts

Although translation equivalents for concrete nouns are known to have shared core conceptual representations in bilingual memory (Francis, 1999), the status of translation-equivalent verbs has not been systematically tested. Three repetition-priming experiments using a verb generation task were used to determine whether verbs have shared representations across languages and to identify the processes facilitated in repeated verb generation. In Experiment 1 fluent Spanish-English bilingual speakers exhibited repetition priming both within and between languages, but between-language priming was weaker. In Experiment 2 performance of non-bilingual English and Spanish speakers was equivalent to that of bilingual speakers responding in their dominant language. Experiment 3 used manipulations meant to isolate noun comprehension, verb concept selection, and verb production. The between-language priming in Experiments 1 and 3 indicates that verb concepts are shared across languages and that verb concept selection exhibits facilitation. Experiment 3 showed that the greater within-language priming was due primarily to facilitation of verb production processes.     

Am I my avatar? A tool to investigate virtual body image representation in adolescence

The assessment of body image in adolescence plays a key role in investigating self-esteem development and social adjustment. In particular, these days, adolescents use more and more online tools to communicate with other people, and virtual body image represents a critical aspect for understanding the avatar development. This study aims at investigating the virtual body representation by using the "Drawing Me" graphical test with a group of Italian adolescents. Specifically, we compared body image representation in real (drawings) and virtual (avatar) life by taking gender differences into consideration. Results show that virtual body representation is more characterized by the sexual features related to body, face, and clothes and by a major number of context elements than real body representation. Gender differences confirm that girls tend to represent themselves in greater detail than boys and their avatars are rich with sexual characters. To conclude, our study illustrates that the Drawing Me test is an effective tool that analyzes the virtual body representation in an unobtrusive way, and intervention implications are discussed.     

Vultures as an overlooked model in cognitive ecology

Animal Cognition - Despite important recent advances in cognitive ecology, our current understanding of avian cognition still largely rests on research conducted on a few model taxa. Vultures are...     

Conditional Random Quantities and Compounds of Conditionals

In this paper we consider conditional random quantities (c.r.q.’s) in the setting of coherence. Based on betting scheme, a c.r.q. X|H is not looked at as a restriction but, in a more extended way, as \({XH + \mathbb{P}(X|H)H^c}\) ; in particular (the indicator of) a conditional event E|H is looked at as EH +  P(E|H)H ^c . This extended notion of c.r.q. allows algebraic developments among c.r.q.’s even if the conditioning events are different; then, for instance, we can give a meaning to the sum X|H + Y|K and we can define the iterated c.r.q. (X|H)|K. We analyze the conjunction of two conditional events, introduced by the authors in a recent work, in the setting of coherence. We show that the conjoined conditional is a conditional random quantity, which may be a conditional event when there are logical dependencies. Moreover, we introduce the negation of the conjunction and by applying De Morgan’s Law we obtain the disjoined conditional. Finally, we give the lower and upper bounds for the conjunction and disjunction of two conditional events, by showing that the usual probabilistic properties continue to hold.     

The Psychometric Properties of the Italian Translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity: A Study among Catholic Adolescents

The Italian translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was developed and tested among a sample of 575 young people between 16 and 17?years of age attending secular secondary schools in Rome, Italy. The data supported the unidimensionality, internal consistency reliability and construct validity of this instrument and commend it for further use in contributing to comparative empirical research within the psychology of religion.