Perceptual visual skills in young highly skilled basketball players

A simple method was designed to evaluate visual abilities such as disance visual acuity, binocular horizontal visual field, simple and choice visual reaction times, and stereoscopic vision in skilled 11- to 13-yr.-old basketball players participating in a 15-day summer training camp. On a test battery, visual abilities were monitored in 473 players of the Spanish Basketball Federation over a 5-yr. period. The players showed outstanding scores on distance visual acuity and stereoscopic vision, and good visual reaction times and horizontal visual fields. When scores were compared by sex and age, significant differences on certain visual measures were observed. Many layers showed crossed eye-hand dominance. Visual screening programs may help promote visual health among junior basketball players and could be used for performance training.     

Identifiability and Equivalence of GLLIRM Models

The generalized logit–linear item response model (GLLIRM) is a linearly constrained nominal categories model (NCM) that computes the scale and intercept parameters for categories as a weighted sum of basic parameters. This paper addresses the problems of the identifiability of the basic parameters and the equivalence between different GLLIRM models. It is shown that the identifiability of the basic parameters depends on the size and rank of the coefficient matrix of the linear functions. Moreover, two models are observationally equivalent if the product of the respective coefficient matrices has full column rank. Finally, the paper also explores the relations between the parameters of nested models. I would like to express my gratitude to the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of the paper. This work was supported by the Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) grant: CCG07-UAM/ESP-1615.     

The effect of stress on the linguistic generalization of bilingual individuals

Spanish-English coordinate bilinguals were subjects in a GSR linguistic conditioning experiment using strong and mild buzzer conditions and spoken stimuli. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of two lists of words and one of two levels of buzzer sounds. A Spanish word from the Spanish list and an English word from the English list functioned as a conditioned word (CS). The lists were Spanish and English words related semantically and phonemically and unrelated to the CS. Generalization was studied under conscious and unconscious conditions. We found that both buzzer conditions resulted in significantly greater GSR responses to semantic and phonemic words than to words unrelated to the CS. Generalization to semantic words was not significantly greater than to phonemic words. There was a tendency toward greater phonemic than semantic generalization in the strong buzzer condition. The opposite was observed regarding the mild buzzer. The results were the same in both lists and languages. Under a conscious and unstressful condition, generalization to semantic words was found to be more prominent than to phonemic words. This suggests that under normal condition semantic generalization is mediated by conscious cognition. We concluded that strong emotion produces an increase in phonemic, as compared to semantic, generalization in both languages. Hence, primitivization of the subjects' cognitive and linguistic functioning is assumed to have occurred. These results are important in understanding the deleterious effect that stressful situations may have on linguistic functioning and cognition in bilinguals.     

Developing a System for Processing Health Data of Children Using Digitalized Toys: Ethical and Privacy Concerns for the Internet of Things Paradigm

EDUCERE (Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders) is a government funded research and development project. EDUCERE objectives are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions for society to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. In the EDUCERE project, an ethical impact assessment is carried out linked to a minors’ data protection rights. Using a specific methodology, the project has achieved some promising results. These include use of a prototype of smart toys to detect development difficulties in children. In addition, privacy protection measures which take into account the security concerns of health data, have been proposed and applied. This latter security framework could be useful in other Internet of Things related projects. It consists of legal and technical measures. Special attention has been placed in the transformation of bulk data such as acceleration and jitter of toys into health data when patterns of atypical development are found. The article describes the different security profiles in which users are classified.     

Depressive symptoms in Friedreich ataxiaSíntomas depresivos en la ataxia de Friedreich

Background/Objective: Almost no attention has been paid to depression in Friedreich ataxia (FRDA), a highly disabling cerebellar degenerative disease. Our aim was to study the presence and the profile of depressive symptoms in FRDA and their relationship with demographic-disease variables and cognitive processing speed. Method: The study groups consisted of 57 patients with a diagnosis of FRDA. The Beck Depression Inventory-II was used to assess symptoms of depression. Speed of information processing was measured with a Choice Reaction time task. Results: The mean BDI score for patients was significantly higher than the mean score in the general population. Twenty one percent of participants scored in the moderate/severe range. A Cognitive-Affective score and a Somatic-Motivational score was calculated for each patient. Patients’ scores in both dimensions were significantly higher than the scores in the general population. Demographic and disease variables were not related with symptoms of depression, except for severity of ataxia. Depressive symptoms predict cognitive reaction times. The greater proportion of variance was explained by the Cognitive-Affective dimension. Conclusions: Our data show that both somatic-motivational and cognitive affective symptoms of depression are frequent in individuals with FRDA. In addition, depressive symptoms may influence cognition, especially, the cognitive and affective symptoms.     

Animacy in the adjunction of Spanish RCs to complex NPs

The present paper focuses on the role of animacy in the processing of relative clauses (RCs) after complex NPs. We follow research by the Desmet et al. team on Dutch in exploring the role of animacy in Spanish RCs. We present data from a corpus study and two self-paced experiments and we compare the three studies and the Dutch and Spanish results. Our main objective is to fill important gaps in past research on the processing of adjunction ties in Spanish and to offer a more detailed exploration of grain effects in exposure-based accounts. In particular, we have sought both to analyse the match between corpus studies and online processing in Spanish much more closely than it has been until now and to see whether animacy could revert the well-established tendency of Spanish RCs to attach high inside the complex noun phrase.     

Updating mental models in predictive reasoning

Abstract

A mental model account for predictive judgement is proposed. According to this view, solving a predictive task involves the foundation ad updating of a mental he work as the relevant data are provided. The final model state determines the subject's predictive outcome. Two experiments examine the temporal course of reasoning in novices (Experiment 1) and experts (Experiment 2). Each task provided in succession a quantitative source (e.g. “Last year, of the vehidts that stopped at the cafe, 80% were cars and 20% were trucks”), a diagnostic source (e.g. “This vehide is mksy”) and a categorical choice (e.g. “What kind of vehicle was it?”). Two factors were manipulated: The order of sources aimed at analysing the contextual dependence of the updating processes, and the between-sources congruence (congruent or incongruent) in order to explore the integrative processes in model building. The pattern of the sources reading times, the choice times and the categorical choices suggested that: (1) the processing of a source depends on the previous one, (2) subjects try to integrste both sources into a single mental framework, and (3) experts and novices have a similar performance, although experts give more importance to the quantitative source in the diagnostic-quantitative order. These results are better accounted for by the mental model framework than both the heuristic and the formal view of prediction.     

The state of the psychological contract and its relation with employees' psychological health

In the present paper the role of the state of the psychological contract to predict psychological health results is studied in a sample of 385 employees of different Spanish companies. Results indicate that the state of the psychological contract significantly predicts life satisfaction, work-family conflict and well-being beyond the prediction produced by the content of the psychological contract. In addition, trust and fairness, two dimensions of the state of psychological contract, all together contribute to explain these psychological health variables adding value to the role as predictor of fulfillment of the psychological contract. The results support the approach argued by Guest and colleagues.     

Human behaviour and development under high-altitude conditions

Although we are far from a universally accepted pattern of impaired function at altitude, there is evidence indicating motor, perceptual, memory and behavioural deficits in adults. Even relatively low altitudes (2500 m) may delay reaction time, and impair motor function. Extreme altitude exposure (>5000 m) may result in more pronounced impairment that can persist after returning to the lowlands. Research into the effects of altitude exposure earlier in development is lacking by comparison. Un-acclimatized children can suffer from acute mountain sickness, and, in native populations born at altitude, subtle cognitive and behavioural deficits suggest incomplete adaptation to hypoxia. The study of neurobehavioural functioning at altitude may provide important information about the effects of clinical hypoxia on the human brain and behavioural development.