Assessment of a sexual coercion prevention program for adolescents

This study's focus is to evaluate a sexual coercion prevention program in adolescents. Using a before-and-after design with both a treatment group (n = 93) and a control group (n = 76), an intervention of seven sessions was completed. Said sessions included such content as conceptualizing sexual freedom, sexual coercion and voluntary consent, analyzing different sexual coercion tactics and the contexts in which they occur, empathy toward the victim, and developing abilities to avoid risky situations. Other risk factors for coercive behavior and sexual victimization are explored as well, such as alcohol use, sexist attitudes and inadequate communication, among others. The intervention's results include a decrease in stereotypical beliefs about the opposite sex and increased empathy toward victims of sexual coercion. These changes were maintained with the passage of time. Also, in the treatment group, a more acute decline was observed in the proportion of young people engaging in sexually coercive behaviors, This article emphasizes the importance, necessity and efficacy of such interventions, and discusses and analyzes possible improvements to the program for its future implementation.     

Evil Revisited

Books reviewed in this article:
Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy
William L. Rowe (ed.), God and the Problem of Evil
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Many Faces of Evil: Historical Perspectives     

Stereotypes and beliefs about different ethnic groups in Spain. A study with Spanish and Latin American children living in Madrid

96 Spanish and Latin American children from 3 grades in Madrid reported their knowledge of positive and negative stereotypes regarding Spaniards, Gypsies, Latin American and Chinese people. Their personal beliefs about these four ethnic groups were also assessed. Stereotypes about Spaniards were perceived as overwhelmingly positive and least negatively while stereotypes about Gypsies were rarely positive and often negative. Spanish children attributed more positive and fewer negative stereotypes to Chinese immigrants than Latin American children did. Older children reported more positive stereotypes about Gypsies than younger children and older Spanish children reported fewer positive stereotypes for their own group than their younger counterparts. Older children's personal beliefs about Gypsies were less consistent with negative stereotypes than younger children's. Older children also showed greater discrepancy of their personal beliefs with positive stereotypes of Spaniards than younger children did. Findings are discussed within the context of socio-cognitive approaches.     

Lexical competition is enhanced in the left hemisphere: evidence from different types of orthographic neighbors

Two divided visual field lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the role of the cerebral hemispheres in orthographic neighborhood effects. In Experiment 1, we employed two types of words: words with many substitution neighbors (high-N) and words with few substitution neighbors (low-N). Results showed a facilitative effect of N in the left visual field (i.e., right hemisphere) and an inhibitory effect of N in the right visual field (left hemisphere). In Experiment 2, we examined whether the inhibitory effect of the higher frequency neighbors increases in the left hemisphere as compared to the right hemisphere. To go beyond the usual N-metrics, we selected words with (or without) higher frequency neighbors (addition, deletion, or transposition neighbors). Results showed that the inhibitory effect of neighborhood frequency is enhanced in the right visual field. We examine the implications of these findings for the orthographic coding schemes employed by the models of visual word recognition.     

Extension of the Job Demands-Resources model in the prediction of burnout and engagement among teachers over time

Our purpose was to extend the Job Demand-Resources Model (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004) by including personal resources, job demands and job resources to predict burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, depersonalization) and work engagement (vigour and dedication). The sample comprised 274 teachers from 23 secondary schools of the Valencian Community (Spain). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses have revealed: (1) the predictor effect of quantitative overload on exhaustion and dedication at T2, (2) role conflict on cynicism and (3) role ambiguity on dedication. Lastly, the mediating role of burnout and engagement at T2. Practical implications and directions of future research are discussed.     

Glucocorticoids enhance taste aversion memory via actions in the insular cortex and basolateral amygdala

It is well established that glucocorticoid hormones strengthen the consolidation of hippocampus-dependent spatial and contextual memory. The present experiments investigated glucocorticoid effects on the long-term formation of conditioned taste aversion (CTA), an associative learning task that does not depend critically on hippocampal function. Corticosterone (1.0 or 3.0 mg/kg) administered subcutaneously to male Sprague–Dawley rats immediately after the pairing of saccharin consumption with the visceral malaise-inducing agent lithium chloride (LiCl) dose-dependently increased aversion to the saccharin taste on a 96-h retention test trial. In a second experiment, rats received corticosterone either immediately after saccharin consumption or after the LiCl injection, when both stimuli were separated by a 3-h time interval, to investigate whether corticosterone enhances memory of the gustatory or visceral stimulus presentation. Consistent with the finding that the LiCl injection, but not saccharin consumption, increases endogenous corticosterone levels, corticosterone selectively enhanced CTA memory when administered after the LiCl injection. Suppression of this training-induced release of corticosterone with the synthesis-inhibitor metyrapone (35 mg/kg) impaired CTA memory, and was dose-dependently reversed by post-training supplementation of corticosterone. Moreover, direct post-training infusions of corticosterone into the insular cortex or basolateral complex of the amygdala, two brain regions that are critically involved in the acquisition and consolidation of CTA, also enhanced CTA retention, whereas post-training infusions into the dorsal hippocampus were ineffective. These findings provide evidence that glucocorticoid effects on memory consolidation are not limited to hippocampus-dependent spatial/contextual information, but that these hormones also modulate memory consolidation of discrete-cue associative learning via actions in other brain regions.     

Spanish adaptation of the Stepparent Role Strain Index

Stepparent role strain refers to the fragile position of these family members in stepfamilies due to the lack of clear social expectations about their roles. This ambiguity facilitates family conflict and a lack of stepparents' integration into the family system. The aim of this paper is to adapt a pioneer measure of stepparent role strain--the Stepparent Role Strain Index of Whitsett and Land (1992)--in a Spanish sample and to analyze its construct validity. The final instrument is made up of 26 items which have good internal consistency (alpha = .89) and an underlying six-factor structure, explaining 64.50% of the total variance.     

The ‘Flexible’ Immigrant? Human Capital Discourse, the Family Household and Labour Market Strategies

As Canadian immigration policy increasingly selects ‘flexible’ immigrants based on their human capital, it correspondingly problematises immigrant families. In drawing on interviews, conducted over a 5-year period in two different neighbourhoods in the Greater Vancouver area, we followed the paths of family households that recently immigrated to Canada. We argue that households not only provide fundamental support in the migration process, but also enable immigrants to adopt flexible strategies to deal with precarious circumstances and thereby begin the process of integration. Rather than being a ‘problem’, immigrant households, and particularly women’s support roles within them, may be a critical lynchpin to successful integration.     

Affective ratings of sound stimuli

This article present the Spanish assessments of the 111 sounds included in the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS; Bradley &; Lang, 1999b). The sounds were evaluated by 159 participants in the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, using a computer version of the Self-Assessment Manikin (Bradley &; Lang, 1994). Results are compared with those obtained in the American version of the IADS, as well as in the Spanish adaptations of the International Affective Picture System (P. J. Lang, Bradley, &; Cuthbert, 1999; Moltó et al., 1999) and the Affective Norms for English Words (Bradley &; Lang, 1999a; Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, &; Comesaña, 2007).