Scale of reading fluency in Spanish: measuring the components of fluency / Escala de fluidez lectora en español: midiendo los componentes de la fluidez

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to design and validate a rating scale to measure reading fluency. As well as speed and accuracy, different dimensions of prosody were taken into account (volume, intonation, pauses and phrasing), aspects hardly considered in reading assessment. In addition, a measure of reading quality was included. 122 Spanish primary-school children (74 in Year 2 and 48 in Year 4) read aloud a narrative text. Using inter-rater criteria, children’s reading was assessed with this new rating scale (Scale of Reading Fluency in Spanish, SRFS) (Escala de Fluidez Lectora en Español, EFLE) and with the Multidimensional Fluency Scale (Rasinski, 2004). Standardized reading comprehension and prosodic reading tests were used as criterion measures. Results show acceptable reliability and validity coefficients. We conclude that SRFS appears to be a useful instrument for using in education and research contexts.     

Reply to Commentaries

Each discussant approached my paper on embedded levels of illusion from a different perspective, representing schools as diverse as those derived from Jung and Bion. It is interesting that, although my paper was not primarily about dreams or how to interpret them, but rather about the way in which multiple levels of illusion may open a potential space in treatment, each discussant centered his comments around a dream that I had reported in one of my cases. In this reply, I compare the discussants' approaches to the dream with mine. I also wonder whether the dream itself represents an embedded level of illusion within my paper. If so, it may function as a transitional space in which we may entertain different viewpoints around not only the nature of dream work, but also around questions including the nature of the mind and the therapeutic process.     

Can Ethical Ideologies Predict Prejudice?

Idealism and relativism were designed to assess different ethical ideological views. Their relation with attitudes toward a variety of outgroups has not been previously studied. Understanding how concerns over ethical principles and consequences are related to prejudiced attitudes could provide some insight into these constructs and into the nature of prejudice. In two studies totaling 311 participants, participants completed measures on ethical ideologies, right-wing authoritarianism, and attitudes toward various outgroups. The differential predictive validities of ethical ideologies, in comparison to right-wing authoritarianism, on prejudicial attitudes toward dangerous, derogated, and dissident outgroup members were examined. We found that both idealism and relativism contributed to predicting attitudes regarding outgroup members, over and above right-wing authoritarianism. As such, people’s personal moral standards and code of conduct for dealing with interpersonal problems and transgressions can partly explain their negative attitudes toward outgroup members. More research is required to determine the unique influence of ethical ideologies over other constructs previously shown to predict prejudice.     

Child Maltreatment,Emotion Regulation,and Posttraumatic Stress: The Impact of Emotional Abuse

This study examined the relationship of emotion regulation to multiple forms of child abuse and subsequent posttraumatic stress. Particular consideration was given to emotional abuse, which has received less attention in the literature. Results from a survey of 912 female college students revealed that women who reported a history of sexual, physical, or emotional abuse endorsed greater emotion regulation difficulties compared to women without abuse histories. Notably, emotional abuse was the strongest predictor of emotion deregulation. Mediation analyses indicated that emotion dysregulation partially explained the relationship between physical and emotional abuse and symptoms of posttraumatic stress, suggesting that intervention efforts aimed at improving emotion regulation strategies might be beneficial in decreasing posttraumatic stress among women with child maltreatment histories.     

Attachment Style and Early Maladaptive Schemas as Mediators of the Relationship between Childhood Emotional Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence

Theoretical and empirical research suggests possible pathways between women's experiences of childhood emotional abuse (CEA) and later intimate partner violence victimization (IPV-V) and perpetration (IPV-P), including attachment style and early maladaptive schemas. This study tested a model examining the unique mediating effects of insecure attachment and early maladaptive schemas on the relationship between CEA and IPV-V (n?=?396) or IPV-P (n?=?409) in college women. Contrary to hypotheses that both attachment style and maladaptive schema endorsement would mediate the relationship between CEA and IPV-V and IPV-P, regression analyses indicated the disconnection/rejection schema domain was the only significant mediator between CEA and IPV-V (p = .01). This same relation held for childhood emotional abuse and IPV-P (p < .001). These findings provide preliminary clinical utility for examining schema endorsement, the use of schema therapy (Young, Klosko, &; Weishar, 2003 Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S. and Weishar, M. E. 2003. Schema therapy: A practitioner's guide, New York: NY: Guilford.  [Google Scholar]), or both with women who have emotional abuse and IPV histories.     

Object-based perception mediates the effect of exogenous attention on temporal resolution

The effects of target distinctiveness, target placeholders, and target spatial separation on the relation between exogenous attention and temporal resolution were examined in a visual temporal order judgement (TOJ) task. When identical targets were presented at different locations within a cued or uncued placeholder, attention degraded temporal resolution (Experiment 1), but when distinct targets were presented at different locations that cueing effect disappeared (Experiment 2), and when the target placeholders were not used, attention enhanced temporal resolution for distinct targets presented at different locations (Experiment 3). Attention also degraded temporal resolution when distinct targets were presented at the same location (Experiment 4). The latter two results were then replicated in a task in which distinct targets appeared randomly at the same or different locations (Experiment 5). Clearly, the nature of the relation between exogenous attention and temporal resolution is not a straightforward one—the relative location of targets, the similarity of targets, and the presence of placeholders all qualitatively affect the cueing relation. We hypothesize a mediating role for object-related processes. Specifically, exogenous attention enhances feature binding and related object representations, which subsequently degrade temporal resolution.     

Minimal‐group membership influences children's responses to novel experience with group members

Children, like adults, tend to prefer ingroup over outgroup individuals, but how this group bias affects children's processing of information about social groups is not well understood. In this study, 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children were assigned to artificial groups. They observed instances of ingroup and outgroup members behaving in either a positive (egalitarian) or a negative (stingy) manner. Observations of positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors reliably reduced children's liking of novel outgroup members, while observations of negative ingroup and positive outgroup behaviors had little effect on liking ratings. In addition, children successfully identified the more generous group only when the ingroup was egalitarian and the outgroup stingy. These data provide compelling evidence that children treat knowledge of and experiences with ingroups and outgroups differently, and thereby differently interpret identical observations of ingroup versus outgroup members.     

Anesthesia Awareness: Narrative Review of Psychological Sequelae,Treatment, and Incidence

Awareness during general anesthesia occurs when patients recall events or sensations during their surgeries, although the patients should have been unconscious at the time. Anesthesiologists are cognizant of this phenomenon, but few discussions occur outside the discipline. This narrative review summarizes the patient recollections, psychological sequelae, treatment and follow-up of psychological consequences, as well as incidence and etiology of awareness during general anesthesia. Recalled memories include noises, conversations, images, mental processes, feelings of pain and/or paralysis. Psychological consequences include anxiety, flashbacks, and posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis. Limited discussion for therapeutic treatment after an anesthesia awareness experience exists. The incidence of anesthesia awareness ranges from 0.1 to 0.2% (e.g., 1–2/1000 patients). Increased recognition of awareness during general anesthesia within the psychological/counseling community, with additional research focusing on optimal therapeutic treatment, will improve the care of these patients.     

The development of numerical estimation: evidence against a representational shift

How do our mental representations of number change over development? The dominant view holds that children (and adults) possess multiple representations of number, and that age and experience lead to a shift from greater reliance upon logarithmically organized number representations to greater reliance upon more accurate, linear representations. Here we present a new theoretically motivated and empirically supported account of the development of numerical estimation, based on the idea that number‐line estimation tasks entail judgments of proportion. We extend existing models of perceptual proportion judgment to the case of abstract numerical magnitude. Two experiments provide support for these models; three likely sources of developmental change in children’s estimation performance are identified and discussed. This work demonstrates that proportion‐judgment models provide a unified account of estimation patterns that have previously been explained in terms of a developmental shift from logarithmic to linear representations of number.     

Racism in the consulting room: myth or reality?

This paper explores ways in which issues of race might impact on, and/or be ignored within, the practice of psychotherapy. Racial difference, that is being white as well as being black, taps into ingrained patterns of binary thinking that create hierarchies of "otherness." This generates anxiety which leads some therapists to avoid seeing race or naming its resonance in the therapeutic alliance. The origins of this splitting may lie in the unconscious, from whence it can be subtly nudged into more conscious awareness, as a seminal paper by Andrew Curry, published in this journal, suggested some forty-five years ago. Other modalities bring these dynamics more directly into the therapeutic space by exploring the patient's familial history or their daily lived experiences of racial (dis)advantage from an explicitly empowering standpoint. But whatever route is taken, racism is not an animal that can, or should, be left sleeping in the corner of the consulting room.