Measuring Latinos' perceptions of depression: a confirmatory factor analysis of the Illness Perception Questionnaire

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire adapted for a clinical sample of low-income Latinos suffering from depression. Participants (N = 339) were recruited from public primary care centers. Their average age was 49.73 years and the majority was foreign born females of either Mexican or Central American descent. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the factor structure of this measure. Construct and discriminant validity and internal consistency were evaluated. After the elimination of three items because of low factor loadings (< .40) and the specification of seven error covariances, a revised model composed of 24 items had adequate goodness-of-fit indices and factor loadings, supporting construct validity. Each of the subscales reported satisfactory internal consistency. Intercorrelations between the 5 illness perception factors provided initial support for the discriminant validity of these factors in the context of depression. The establishment of the psychometric properties of this adapted measure will pave the way for future studies examining the role illness perceptions play in the help seeking and management of depression among Latinos.     

A General Theory of Location Based on the Notion of Entire Location

It would be a good thing to have at our disposal a general theory of location that is neutral with respect to (i.e. that does not rule out or entail) (i) the view that some objects have more than one exact location, (ii) the view that some objects are located without having an exact location, and (iii) the view that some objects are “spanners”—where a spanner is an object exactly located at a region that has proper parts but which has no proper part exactly located at a proper part of the region. As far as I know, no theory of location that can be found in the literature has this feature. I put forward a new theory that does—or so I argue. The theory takes as its sole locational primitive the notion of being entirely located at.

     

Should we reject the expertise hypothesis?

On the basis of a review of the literature and the results of three experiments with dog experts, Robbins and McKone [Robbins, R. A., & McKone, E. (2006). No face-like processing for objects-of-expertise in three behavioural tasks, Cognition] argue that there is little or no evidence supporting an expertise account of the differences in configural processing that are typically observed between faces and non-face objects. In the spirit of a debate that has become overly polarized, we believe that R&M often emphasized relatively unimportant controversial issues at the expense of bigger, more important questions. We also feel that some of R&M's arguments are rooted in methodological confusions that should be clarified because they have implications beyond this specific debate. In this commentary, we first clarify issues surrounding the proper statistical analysis of the composite paradigm, a methodology that is commonly used to assess configural and holistic effects in both face and non-face objects. We then discuss several theoretical issues that we feel are central to the debate regarding accounts of face-specificity. We also briefly review positive evidence for the correlation between measures of behavioral expertise and neural markers of face-selectivity. Unlike R&M, we believe the positive evidence for expertise effects, both behavioral and neural, greatly outweighs evidence stemming from null results and that it clearly motivates the importance of future work on the role of experience in the specialization of visual cortex.     

Genetic and environmental bases of childhood antisocial behavior: a multi-informant twin study

Genetic and environmental influences on childhood antisocial and aggressive behavior (ASB) during childhood were examined in 9- to 10-year-old twins, using a multi-informant approach. The sample (605 families of twins or triplets) was socioeconomically and ethnically diverse, representative of the culturally diverse urban population in Southern California. Measures of ASB included symptom counts for conduct disorder, ratings of aggression, delinquency, and psychopathic traits obtained through child self-reports, teacher, and caregiver ratings. Multivariate analysis revealed a common ASB factor across informants that was strongly heritable (heritability was .96), highlighting the importance of a broad, general measure obtained from multiple sources as a plausible construct for future investigations of specific genetic mechanisms in ASB. The best fitting multivariate model required informant-specific genetic, environmental, and rater effects for variation in observed ASB measures. The results suggest that parents, children, and teachers have only a partly "shared view" and that the additional factors that influence the "rater-specific" view of the child's antisocial behavior vary for different informants. This is the first study to demonstrate strong heritable effects on ASB in ethnically and economically diverse samples.     

Lupus Symptoms Inventory (LSI): Development and Validation of a Self-evaluation Inventory of the Subjective Symptoms of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

The goal of this study was to develop a simple, easy, and quick self-report measure, the Lupus Symptom Inventory (LSI), designed to evaluate subjective symptoms of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). The internal consistency of the LSI was tested, as well as its concordance with physician reports and serological indicators of disease activity by evaluating the self-reports of 46 patients with SLE who completed the LSI daily for a one-month period. Throughout this one-month period, parameters of serological activity and routine medical check-up were obtained. The results showed a high internal consistency of the LSI, with a Cronbach alpha of .86. Additionally, a contingency analysis showed agreement between medical report and patient self-report on the same day for six of seven lupus symptoms (difficulty breathing (p < .004), joint pain (p < .001), loss of appetite (p < .003), general malaise (p < .005), fatigue (p < .005), and skin rash (p < .018)) but not for abdominal symptoms. Finally, differences were found between LSI scores of patients with high versus low serological activity (χ²(1) = 5.302; p < .021), with the former presenting higher LSI scores than the latter. These results show that the LSI may be a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating the subjective symptoms of the disease as well as its fluctuations.     

A visual short-term memory advantage for faces

What determines how much can be stored in visual short-term memory (VSTM)? Studies of VSTM have focused largely on stimulus-based properties such as the number or complexity of the items stored. Recent work also suggests that capacity is severely reduced for items within the same category. However, the importance for VSTM capacity of more qualitative differences in processing for different categories has not been investigated. For example, faces are processed more holistically than other objects. In Experiments 1 and 2, we show that the processing of faces, objects that are crucial socially and for which we possess considerable expertise, overcomes these limitations. More faces can be stored in VSTM than objects from other complex nonface categories. As in prior studies, at short encoding durations we found that capacity for faces was less than that for other categories. However, at longer encoding durations, capacity for faces exceeded that for nonface objects, and this advantage was specific to upright faces. Because inversion reduces holistic processing, the interaction of orientation with VSTM capacity—which occurred for faces but not objects in Experiment 3—suggests that it is holistic processing that confers an advantage for face VSTM when sufficient encoding time is allowed.     

Cholinergic activity in the insular cortex is necessary for acquisition and consolidation of contextual memory

Experiences with a high emotional content (aversive) tend to be stored as long-term memories; however, there are also contextual recollections, which form a significant part of our memories. Different research has shown that the insular cortex (IC) plays an important role during aversive memory formation, yet its role during incidental/non-aversive learning like pre-exposure contextual memory formation has received little attention. The objective of this research was to establish the role of cholinergic activity in the IC through its muscarinic receptors during the formation of inhibitory avoidance (IA) memory, as well as during pre-exposure contextual memory, using a paradigm such as latent inhibition (LI). Rats with bilateral cannulae directed into the IC were trained in the LI paradigm of IA or IA task alone. The muscarinic antagonist receptor scopolamine was infused bilaterally into the IC 5 min before the pre-exposure into the dark chamber of the IA cage, one day before the conventional IA training or during the IA training day. During the IA test, the entrance latency into the dark chamber of the IA cage was measured as an index of contextual memory. The results showed that scopolamine infused before and after IA training disrupts inhibitory avoidance memory. Also, it showed that the pre-exposed saline-infused animals (LI) had a lower entrance latency compared to the group not pre-exposed (IA). However, the group that received scopolamine into the IC before, but not after, the pre-exposure to the dark chamber, presented a similar latency to the IA group, showing a blockade of the latent inhibition of the IA. These results suggest that cholinergic activity in the insular cortex is necessary during the acquisition and consolidation of avoidance memory, but appears necessary only during the acquisition of pre-exposure non-aversive contextual memory.     

Modality,Quantification, and Many Vlach-Operators

Consider two standard quantified modal languages \(\textbf{\textsf{A}}\) and \(\textbf{\textsf{P}}\) whose vocabularies comprise the identity predicate and the existence predicate, each endowed with a standard S5 Kripke semantics where the models have a distinguished actual world, which differ only in that the quantifiers of \(\textbf{\textsf{A}}\) are actualist while those of \(\textbf{\textsf{P}}\) are possibilist. Is it possible to enrich these languages in the same manner, in a non-trivial way, so that the two resulting languages are equally expressive—i.e., so that for each sentence of one language there is a sentence of the other language such that given any model, the former sentence is true at the actual world of the model iff the latter is? Forbes (1989) shows that this can be done by adding to both languages a pair of sentential operators called Vlach-operators, and imposing a syntactic restriction on their occurrences in formulas. As Forbes himself recognizes, this restriction is somewhat artificial. The first result I establish in this paper is that one gets sameness of expressivity by introducing infinitely many distinct pairs of indexed Vlach-operators. I then study the effect of adding to our enriched modal languages a rigid actuality operator. Finally, I discuss another means of enriching both languages which makes them expressively equivalent, one that exploits devices introduced in Peacocke (1978). Forbes himself mentions that option but does not prove that the resulting languages are equally expressive. I do, and I also compare the Peacockian and the Vlachian methods. In due course, I introduce an alternative notion of expressivity and I compare the Peacockian and the Vlachian languages in terms of that other notion.     

Beyond egoism and group identity: empathy toward the other and awareness of others in a social dilemma

In three experiments, participants were faced with a social dilemma in which they could benefit themselves, the group, or other group members as individuals. The results showed that participants who felt high empathy toward a certain individual allocated more resources to the target of empathy, but without reducing the collective good. Then, we adapted the measure of empathy developed by Batson and colleagues (Batson, Ahmad, et al., 1999; Batson, Batson, et al., 1995) to the Spanish context. The results of Experiment 3 supported the existence of a new process: awareness of other individuals present in the social dilemma. It is proposed that this process is independent of those typically studied in research of this field: self-interest, group identification, and the empathy for a specific individual.     

Impact of parenting styles on adolescents' self-esteem and internalization of values in Spain

The relationship of parenting styles with adolescents' outcomes was analyzed within a sample of Spanish adolescents. A sample of 1456 teenagers from 13 to 16 years of age, of whom 54.3% were females, reported on their parents' child-rearing practices. The teenagers' parents were classified into one of four groups (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful). The adolescents were then contrasted on two different outcomes: (1) priority given to Schwartz's self-transcendence (universalism and benevolence) and conservation (security, conformity, and tradition) values and (2) level of self-esteem (appraised in five domains: academic, social, emotional, family and physical). The results show that Spanish adolescents from indulgent households have the same or better outcomes than adolescents from authoritative homes. Parenting is related with two self-esteem dimensions--academic and family--and with all the self-transcendence and conservation values. Adolescents of indulgent parents show highest scores in self-esteem whereas adolescents from authoritarian parents obtain the worst results. In contrast, there were no differences between the priority given by adolescents of authoritative and indulgent parents to any of the self-transcendence and conservation values, whereas adolescents of authoritarian and neglectful parents, in general, assign the lowest priority to all of these values.