Validity of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form in a sample of Spanish fathers

The purpose of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form in a sample of 115 fathers of infants aged between ten and thirty-nine months old. The exploratory factor analysis revealed three reasonably distinct factors, as in the original version of the instrument. The three extracted factors: Parental Distress, Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction and Difficult Child accounted for 47.48 % of the variance. The internal consistency coefficients were high in each factor or subscale. These results provided empirical evidence in favour of the reliability and validity of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form in Spanish fathers, and can be useful to elucidate the mechanisms through which stress impacts parenting and permitting to develop more targeted interventions for infants and their families.     

Susceptibility to the flash-beep illusion is increased in children compared to adults

Audio-visual integration was studied in children aged 8-17 (N = 30) and adults (N = 22) using the 'flash-beep illusion' paradigm, where the presentation of two beeps causes a single flash to be perceived as two flashes (fission illusion), and a single beep causes two flashes to be perceived as one flash (fusion illusion). Children reported significantly more fission illusions than adults, indicating that auditory and visual information was integrated more often, and less selectively, than in adults. Within either group, illusion reports did not correlate with either age or motor coordination measures. The current results show that the form of multisensory integration indexed by the illusion is slow to mature in normally developing children.     

The time course of attentional capture under dual-task conditions

Several recent studies have shown that attentional capture is not an automatic process. For example, abrupt peripheral onsets do not affect the processing of targets presented subsequently at that location when participants have to concurrently perform a perceptually demanding task elsewhere. This result leaves open the question of whether peripheral onsets lose their effectiveness in capturing attention or whether, instead, the performance of a perceptually demanding task entails a faster disengagement of attention from the cued location. Here, we measured exogenous spatial attentional-orienting effects either while participants performed a concurrent perceptually demanding central-monitoring task (a rapid serial visual presentation of letters for a to-be-detected digit target; Experiments 1 and 2) or in isolation (the baseline condition in Experiment 2). The results showed that peripheral onsets captured participants' attention at both the 80- and 190-ms stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in the baseline condition. Crucially, however, during concurrent central monitoring, peripheral onsets were effective in capturing attention only at an 80-ms SOA, while the orienting effect disappeared as soon as a changing letter drew participants' attention back to the central stream (at an SOA of 190 ms). These findings demonstrate that task-irrelevant abrupt onsets cannot be entirely overridden by top-down attentional control, although attentional capture effects are dramatically reduced by an ongoing perceptually demanding task.     

进化心理学视角下的智力研究

进化心理学和差异心理学是心理学的两个分支。进化心理学认为智力是一种进化的适应。差异心理学中智力是个体差异变量。本文试图整合二者的观点。认为智力既是进化的适应,也是个体差异变量。这将启示进化心理学家去研究更广范围的心理特质,允许智力研究和差异心理学运用进化心理学的理论和概念。本文还介绍了与智力进化相关的热带草原法则和Kanazawa的Savanna—IQ互动假说。     

Reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A)

The aim of this study was to determine the test-retest reliability and internal consistency of the scales of the Spanish version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A; Butcher et al., 1992). Two samples of 939 and 109 Spanish adolescents ages 14 to 18 years were assessed with the MMPI-A in their school environment. The first sample responded to the inventory once, whereas the second sample responded to it on 2 occasions with a 2-week interval between sessions. Results showed no significant differences in means or variances between the first and the second test administration for most MMPI-A scales. Test-retest reliability ranged between .62 (Amorality, Ma(1)) and .92 (Immaturity, IMM); most correlations exceeded .70. Internal consistency values for the MMPI-A scales in the pretest and posttest were very similar overall. External validity of the MMPI-A was demonstrated through several significant correlations between its scales and YSR/11-18 syndromes and social interaction measures. The highest correlations were established between the Anxious/Depressed YSR/11-18 scale and other MMPI-A scales such as Schizophrenia (Sc), Welsh's Anxiety (A), Adolescent-Anxiety (A-anx) and Adolescent-Alienation (A-aln), and between the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale and the MMPI-A Adolescent-Social Discomfort (A-sod) scale.     

Analysis of movement patterns by elite male players of beach volleyball

The aim of this study was to analyse and compare movement pattems and direction of locomotion in professional men's beach volleyball. A quantitative analysis of beach volleyball play was carried out for 10 players in the European Beach Volleyball Championship 2005. Video recordings were made of the 1,997 movements in 4 matches. Analysis showed that male players used more offensive than defensive movement patterns. Defensive movement patterns were more blocks and defense than receptions. Offensive movement patterns were more attack and placements than attack preparation moves. Advance was the direction of locomotion most used. Identifying and understanding such movement patterns are vital to defining specific, effective training strategies for men's beach volleyball players.     

Prejudiced attitude measurement using the Rasch Rating Scale model

There have been two basic approaches for the study of minority group prejudice against the majority: to adapt instruments from the majority group, and to use qualitative techniques by analyzing the content of the discourse of the groups involved. Neither of these procedures solves the problem of measuring intergroup attitudes of majorities and minorities in interaction. This study shows the result of a prejudice scale which was developed to measure the attitude of both the minority and majority groups. Prejudice is conceived as an attitude which requires the beliefs or opinions about the out-group, the emotions it elicits, and the behavior or intentional behavior toward it to be known for its evaluation. The innovation in this work is that the psychometric development of the scale was based on the item response theory, and more specifically, the rating scale model.     

eCAT-Listening: design and psychometric properties of a computerized adaptive test on English Listening

In this study, eCAT-Listening, a new computerized adaptive test for the evaluation of English Listening, is described. Item bank development, anchor design for data collection, and the study of the psychometric properties of the item bank and the adaptive test are described. The calibration sample comprised 1.576 participants. Good psychometric guarantees: the bank is unidimensional, the items are satisfactorily fitted to the 3-parameter logistic model, and an accurate estimation of the trait level is obtained. As validity evidence, a high correlation was obtained between the estimated trait level and a latent factor made up of the diverse criteria selected. The analysis of the trait level estimation by means of a simulation led us to fix the test length at 20 items, with a maximum exposure rate of .40.     

Attitude towards women of gender schematic vs aschematic individuals

After the fourfold gender typology (1970s), a dual model--gender schematic versus aschematic individuals--emerged in the 1980s. In this research, the relationship between gender schemas and attitudes towards women's rights were tested. Two studies were carried out (2001 and 2009) with adolescents (boys and girls) from 12 to 14 years old, with 359 participants in 2001 and 224 in 2009, using two instruments: the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Attitudes Towards Women Scale. Factor analysis and ANOVAs were carried out. The results of both studies supported the hypothesis that girls maintain more favourable attitudes about themselves than boys do. Both studies supported the hypothesis that feminine and androgynous individuals display similar attitudes towards women, but they differ from the other gender categories. Masculine boys and feminine girls did not show differences in attitudes towards women in comparison to aschematic or cross-gendered adolescents. Inconsistent results were found between studies regarding the hypothesized differences between typical and atypical schematics in attitudes towards women, as well as between undifferentiated and gender schematic individuals. The implications of these results for the instruments used, as well as for theories, are considered.