Working memory and cognitive styles in adolescents' attainment

Background. Working memory, the ability to store and process information, is strongly related to learning outcomes. Aims. The aim of the present study is to extend previous research on early learning and investigate the relationship between working memory, cognitive styles, and attainment in adolescents using both national curriculum tests and teacher‐based assessments. Sample. A group of 164 13‐year‐olds from a school in England were recruited. Methods. They took tests of working memory and cognitive styles. The school provided the attainment scores. Results. Working memory was found to be the predictor of learning outcomes in English, Maths, and Science, as well as all teacher assessments. There was also a significant interplay between working memory, styles, and attainment. For students with high working memory, their style preference does not impact attainment. Students most at risk were analytics with low working memory as they performed worse in the most subjects. Conclusions. The findings suggest that the interplay between working memory and cognitive styles can be useful in developing suitable interventions to support students.     

The Dimensions of Politics Perceptions and Their Organizational and Individual Predictors1

This study addresses limitations of prior research on politics by first addressing the multidimensionality of politics perceptions through assessing the confirmatory fit of 1-, 3-, and 5-factor models. Secondly, the study examines the relative effects of organizational and personal characteristics on politics perceptions, as well as their interactions. Results indicate that 5 underlying dimensions of polities perceptions demonstrate the best fit to the data, and that these dimensions are differentially influenced by organizational and individual-level factors and their interactions. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Emotional intelligence and aggression among South African adolescents: Preliminary evidence

We investigated gender differences in emotional intelligence and aggression among South African adolescents. Four hundred and forty-four adolescents (female =51.4 %; mean age =15.5 years, SD= 1.42 years; rural residence = 35.5%, urban residence = 65.5%) completed an emotional intelligence scale and an aggression expression survey. Exploratory independent sample t-test analysis revealed female adolescents to score higher on perception of and management of emotions than male adolescents. Female adolescents also scored higher on verbal aggression than their male peers, whereas male adolescents scored higher on physical aggression than the female adolescents.     

The face-specific proportion congruency effect: social stimuli as contextual cues

Previous research shows that larger interference is observed in contexts associated with a high proportion of congruent trials than in those associated with a low proportion of congruent trials. Given that one of the most relevant contexts for human beings is social context, researchers have recently explored the possibility that social stimuli could also work as contextual cues for the allocation of attentional control. In fact, it has been shown that individuals use social categories (i.e., men and women) as cues to allocate attentional control. In this work, we go further by showing that individual faces (instead of the social categories they belong to) associated with a high proportion of congruent trials can also lead to larger interference effects compared to individual faces predicting a relatively low proportion of congruent trials. Furthermore, we show that faces associated with a high proportion of congruent trials are more positively evaluated than faces associated with a high proportion of incongruent trials. These results demonstrate that unique human faces are potential contextual cues than can be employed to apply cognitive control when performing an automatic task.     

Taking Care of Each Other: How Can We Increase Compliance with Personal Protective Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile?

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, personal protective measures (e.g., social distancing, handwashing, and mask wearing) have been adopted as a cornerstone to limit the spread of the disease. Yet, the effectiveness of these measures depends on people's levels of adherence. In this article, we apply social-psychological research to the study of compliance with personal protective measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. We consider three possible models underlying adherence: (1) sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors, (2) instrumental factors, and (3) normative factors. We draw on data from a longitudinal nonrepresentative panel study (Study 1, n = 32,304) and a cross-sectional representative survey (Study 2, n = 1,078) to explore the impact of these different factors on personal protective measures compliance. Findings show the strongest support for the role of instrumental and normative factors, in that people who comply with protective measures report to a greater extent that relatives and friends comply too and tend to perceive high risk of COVID-19. We finish by proposing policy recommendations to promote effective strategies to contain the spread of the virus.     

Mental Health Research in Correctional Settings: Perceptions of Risk and Vulnerabilities

With more than half of individuals incarcerated having serious mental health concerns, correctional settings offer excellent opportunities for epidemiological, prevention, and intervention research. However, due to unique ethical and structural challenges, these settings create risks and vulnerabilities for participants not typically encountered in research populations. We surveyed 1,224 researchers, Institutional Review Board (IRB) members, and IRB prisoner representatives to assess their perceptions of risks and vulnerabilities associated with mental health research conducted in correctional settings. Highest ranked risks were related to privacy, stigma, and confidentiality; lowest ranked risks were related to prisoners’ loss of privileges or becoming targets of violence due to having participated in research. Cognitive impairment, mental illness, lack of autonomy, and limited access to services emerged as the greatest sources of vulnerability; being male, being female, being older than age 60, being a minority, and being pregnant were the lowest ranked sources of vulnerability. Researchers with corrections experience perceived lower risks and vulnerabilities than all other groups, raising the question whether these researchers accurately appraise risk and vulnerability based on experience, or if their lower risk and vulnerability perceptions reflect potential bias due to their vested interests. By identifying areas of particular risk and vulnerability, this study provides important information for researchers and research reviewers alike.     

The role of phonology in reading comprehension: Implications of the effects of homophones on processing sentences with referentially dependent categories

Two experiments investigated whether phonological representations are activated in the processing of anaphors in reading, and if they are, whether they play a role in the initial (first-pass) processing of the sentence or in review (second-pass) processes. Subjects made sentence acceptability judgements for sentences that contained either verb-gaps or indefinite and personal pronouns (overt anaphors). All sentences contained homophones. Half of the semantically unacceptable sentences were phonologically plausible if the homophones were inserted in the gap (e.g. The children sleighed in the winter, and the murderer in cold blood) or used as the referent of the pronoun (e.g. There is a sale on at the store and I have one at the boat). The other half of the semantically unacceptable sentences were phonologically implausible. In both experiments, half of the subjects saw the sentences under normal viewing conditions (whole sentence condition); for the other half of the subjects the words of each sentence were presented sequentially in the centre of the video screen at the rate of 250 msec/word (RSVP condition). A large proportion of the phonologically implausible sentences in the first experiment contained phrases in the second clause which resulted in semantic “oddities” (e.g. The children sleighed in the winter, and the murderer in the jar); the sentences in Experiment 2 did not contain such oddities. In Experiment 1 subjects made more errors on the phonologically plausible than implausible unacceptable sentences with both verb-gaps and pronouns in the whole sentence but not in the RSVP condition. There was no effect of phonological plausibility in Experiment 2. As the effect of phonological plausibility was only seen in the whole sentence condition, and only when the sentences contained semantic oddities, these data suggest that phonological information was not used in the first-pass analysis of the sentence, but rather when the subject re-read the sentence to find the referent.     

Cross-national evidences of a school-based universal programme for promoting prosocial behaviours in peer interactions: Main theoretical communalities and local unicity

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of prosocial behaviour against aggression in a school-based universal intervention adapted in two different (non-Western) countries, Colombia and Chile. Using a randomised pretest–post-test design (and controlling for participants' gender and parents' level of education), current results highlighted different effects of a similar programme in both sites. First, the school-based universal programme designed for promoting prosocial behaviours in the peer context obtained a positive cross-national effect on prosocial behaviour rated by three informants (i.e. self, peer and teacher reports). In Colombia, this effect was moderated by the initial level of prosociality of the participants and their level of education. Mediational two-wave model corroborated that the improvement on prosocial behaviours in both countries (moderated in the case of Colombia) predicted significantly lower level of physical aggression. Characteristics of the implementation considering different cultural and historical backgrounds were discussed.