Career adapt-abilities scale — Icelandic form: Psychometric properties and construct validity

This study examined the psychometric characteristics and construct validity of the Icelandic form of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS-Iceland). The CAAS consists of four scales that measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence as psychosocial resources for managing occupational transitions, developmental tasks, and work traumas. The 24-item measure was translated from English and administered to 1566 Icelandic students aged 14–30. Internal consistency estimates of reliability for the subscale and total scores ranged from .77 to .92. The construct validity of the measure was tested using confirmatory methods. The results indicated that the four-factor hierarchical model of career adaptability shows an acceptable fit in Iceland. The mean scores on the scales are high compared to the other countries, indicating that there may be problems with the translation of the response scale. The results indicate that the CAAS-Icelandic Form is reliable and valid and can be used with minor modifications in career counseling and research in Iceland.     

Clinical utility of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) in the Spanish transsexual and nontranssexual population

The aim of the study is to evaluate the usefulness of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974), an overall measurement of the cultural construct of masculinity and femininity, in the psychological assessment of Spanish transsexuals. Seventy male-to-female transsexuals (MF), 51 female-to-male transsexuals (FM), 77 control men, and 79 control women completed the Spanish version of the BSRI. Statistically significant differences between groups were only found on the femininity scale, on which MF transsexuals and control women scored significantly higher than FM transsexuals and control men. The results indicate that (a) only the femininity scale of the BSRI appears to be useful today for evaluating differences in the sex-role identification in Spanish controls and transsexuals; and (b) MF and FM transsexuals score as a function of their gender identity instead of their anatomical sex on the BSRI femininity scale.     

Gender and work-family conflict: testing the rational model and the gender role expectations model in the Spanish cultural context

Gutek, Searle, and Klepa (1991) proposed two models to explain the gender differences in work-family conflict: the rational model and the gender role expectations model. Both models have mostly been tested on American and Canadian samples, and have obtained partial support. Given the cultural differences between North American countries and Spain, we should question whether the two models are equally applicable to Spanish society or whether one of them captures Spanish men and women's experience of work-family conflict better than the other. So, the aim of this study is to test which of the models better explains the gender differences in work-family conflict in the Spanish cultural context (or if, indeed, the two models apply equally well). Given the typical cultural dimensions of Spanish society, we expected to find greater support for the gender role expectations model than for the rational model. However, the results obtained in this study indicated that, while the rational model can explain the gender differences that were found, the gender role expectations model cannot capture Spanish people's work-family conflict experiences. The results are interpreted in terms of cultural dimensions characteristic of the Spanish context.     

Recognition of extraversion level based on handwriting and support vector machines

This study investigated whether it is possible to train a machine to discriminate levels of extraversion based on handwriting variables. Support vector machines (SVMs) were used as a learning algorithm. Handwriting of 883 people (404 men, 479 women) was examined. Extraversion was measured using the Polish version of the NEO-Five Factor Inventory. The handwriting samples were described by 48 variables. The support vector machines were separately trained and tested for each sex, using 10-fold cross-validation. Good recognition accuracy (around .7) was achieved for 10 handwriting variables, different for men and women. The results suggest the existence of a relationship between handwriting elements and extraversion.     

Recognition of emotional facial expressions: the role of facial and contextual information in the accuracy of recognition

Recognition of emotional facial expressions is a central area in the psychology of emotion. This study presents two experiments. The first experiment analyzed recognition accuracy for basic emotions including happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and disgust. 30 pictures (5 for each emotion) were displayed to 96 participants to assess recognition accuracy. The results showed that recognition accuracy varied significantly across emotions. The second experiment analyzed the effects of contextual information on recognition accuracy. Information congruent and not congruent with a facial expression was displayed before presenting pictures of facial expressions. The results of the second experiment showed that congruent information improved facial expression recognition, whereas incongruent information impaired such recognition.     

When group membership gets personal: a theory of identity fusion

Identity fusion is a relatively unexplored form of alignment with groups that entails a visceral feeling of oneness with the group. This feeling is associated with unusually porous, highly permeable borders between the personal and social self. These porous borders encourage people to channel their personal agency into group behavior, raising the possibility that the personal and social self will combine synergistically to motivate pro-group behavior. Furthermore, the strong personal as well as social identities possessed by highly fused persons cause them to recognize other group members not merely as members of the group but also as unique individuals, prompting the development of strong relational as well as collective ties within the group. In local fusion, people develop relational ties to members of relatively small groups (e.g., families or work teams) with whom they have personal relationships. In extended fusion, people project relational ties onto relatively large collectives composed of many individuals with whom they may have no personal relationships. The research literature indicates that measures of fusion are exceptionally strong predictors of extreme pro-group behavior. Moreover, fusion effects are amplified by augmenting individual agency, either directly (by increasing physiological arousal) or indirectly (by activating personal or social identities). The effects of fusion on pro-group actions are mediated by perceptions of arousal and invulnerability. Possible causes of identity fusion--ranging from relatively distal, evolutionary, and cultural influences to more proximal, contextual influences--are discussed. Finally, implications and future directions are considered.     

Syntactic processing in the human brain: what we know, what we don't know, and a suggestion for how to proceed

For every claim in the neuroimaging literature about a particular brain region supporting syntactic processing, there exist other claims implicating the target region in different linguistic processes, and, in many cases, in non-linguistic cognitive processes (e.g., Blumstein, 2009). We argue that traditional group analysis methods in neuroimaging may obscure functional specificity because of inter-subject anatomical variability (Fedorenko & Kanwisher, 2009). In Fedorenko, Hsieh, Nieto-Castanon, Whitfield-Gabrieli, and Kanwisher (2010) we presented a functional localizer that allows quick and reliable identification of key language-sensitive regions in each individual brain. This approach enables pooling data from corresponding functional regions across subjects rather than from the same locations in stereotaxic space that may differ functionally due to inter-subject anatomical variability. In the current paper we demonstrate that the individual-subjects functional localization approach is superior to the traditional methods in its ability to distinguish among conditions in a brain region’s response. This ability is at the core of all neuroimaging research and is critical for answering questions of functional specialization (e.g., does a brain region specialize for processing syntactic aspects of the linguistic signal), which is in turn essential for making inferences about the precise computations conducted in each brain region. Based on our results, we argue that supplementing existing methods with an individual-subjects functional localization approach may lead to a clearer picture of the neural basis of syntactic processing, as it has in some other domains, such as high-level vision (e.g., Kanwisher, 2010) and social cognition (e.g., Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003).     

Brain potentials for derivational morphology: an ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish

This study investigates brain potentials to derived word forms in Spanish. Two experiments were performed on derived nominals that differ in terms of their productivity and semantic properties but are otherwise similar, an acceptability judgment task and a reading experiment using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in which correctly and incorrectly formed derived words were presented in sentence contexts. The first experiment indicated productivity differences between the different nominalization processes in Spanish. The second experiment yielded a pattern of ERP responses that differed from both the familiar lexical-semantic and grammatical ERP effects. Violations of derivational morphology elicited an increased N400 component plus a late positivity (P600), unlike gender-agreement violations, which produced the biphasic LAN/P600 ERP pattern known from previous studies of morpho-syntactic violations. We conclude that the recognition of derived word forms engages both word-level (lexical-semantic) and decompositional (morpheme-based) processes.     

Association of maternal interaction with emotional regulation in 4- and 9-month infants during the Still Face Paradigm

This study used the Still Face Paradigm to investigate the relationship of maternal interaction on infants' emotion regulation responses. Seventy infant-mother dyads were seen at 4 months and 25 of these same dyads were re-evaluated at 9 months. Maternal interactions were coded for attention seeking and contingent responding. Emotional regulation was described by infant stress reaction and overall positive affect. Results indicated that at both 4 and 9 months mothers who used more contingent responding interactions had infants who showed more positive affect. In contrast, mothers who used more attention seeking play had infants who showed less positive affect after the Still Face Paradigm. Patterns of stress reaction were reversed, as mothers who used more attention seeking play had infants with less negative affect. Implications for intervention and emotional regulation patterns over time are discussed.     

The use of a screening device to assess psychopathy in young offenders

The aim of this research was to determine to what extent a psychopath screening device (the APSD) is useful in forensic assessments to predict general and violent offending. For this purpose, a cross-sectional study was done and 238 young people serving a sentence were assessed. The gold standard instrument used to measure psychopathy was the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth, Kosson & Hare, 2003). The results indicate that the association found between the screening device scores and several indicators of risk is low if compared with those obtained with the PCL:YV, suggesting that it is less useful as a tool in order to predict offending or violent offences. However, an Area Under the Curve of .784 and a validity index of 62.5 support its use as a screening device or as a preliminary approach to assess psychopathy in this population. The usefulness of this instrument to make assessments with young people in the forensic setting is discussed.