Young People and Volunteerism: A Model of Sustained Volunteerism During the Transition to Adulthood

A model of sustained volunteerism in young people is proposed. The longitudinal study addresses the questions “Why do young people decide to continue to volunteer over an extended period of time?” There were 158 volunteers (82 female and 76 male). The volunteers completed measures of motivation to volunteer, integration, and satisfaction with the organization, merged effects due to voluntary service, social support, identity, and intention to volunteer on a first (Time 1) and a second research wave (Time 2). Results show that both dispositional and organizational variables are important in determining long-term volunteerism in young people and confirmed that role identity is the best predictor of intention to volunteer.     

Infants infer intentions from prosody

Two studies were conducted to examine infants’ ability to discern intentions from lexical and prosodic cues. Two groups of 14-18-month-olds participated in these studies. In both studies, infants watched an adult perform a sequence of two-step actions on novel toys that produced an end-result. In the first study actions were marked intentionally with both lexical and prosodic cues. In the second study, the lexical markers of intention were presented in Greek, thus providing infants with prosodic but not lexical cues. In both studies, infants reproduced more intentional than accidental actions, suggesting that infants can infer intentions from prosodic cues.     

Fibromyalgia in men and women: comparison of the main clinical symptoms

The prevalence of fibromyalgia (FM) in males is much lower than in women. Thus, current knowledge about the syndrome has been developed from research with women. The aim of the present study is to analyze whether FM manifestations differ as a function of sex. Two clinical groups with FM (21 males and 21 women) and a control group of healthy men (n= 21) participated in the study. Several aspects of pain, sleep, fatigue, psychopathology, emotional distress and functional impact of FM were evaluated with an algometer and questionnaires. The clinical groups showed a significantly greater impairment than the control group in all the self-report measures. However, the FM patients only showed significant differences in the sensibility threshold to the pain, which was lower in the women. In addition, the best predictor of the experience of pain in males was sleep quality, and in the women, catastrofying pain. Our results suggest that the most effective therapeutic strategies to control pain may be different for men and women.     

CUE: The continuous unified electronic diary method

In the present article, we introduce the continuous unified electronic (CUE) diary method, a longitudinal, event-based, electronic parent report method that allows real-time recording of infant and child behavior in natural contexts. Thirty-nine expectant mothers were trained to identify and record target behaviors into programmed handheld computers. From birth to 18?months, maternal reporters recorded the initial, second, and third occurrences of seven target motor behaviors: palmar grasp, rolls from side to back, reaching when sitting, pincer grip, crawling, walking, and climbing stairs. Compliance was assessed as two valid entries per behavior: 97?% of maternal reporters met compliance criteria. Reliability was assessed by comparing diary entries with researcher assessments for three of the motor behaviors: palmar grasp, pincer grip and walking. A total of 81?% of maternal reporters met reliability criteria. For those three target behaviors, age of emergence was compared across data from the CUE diary method and researcher assessments. The CUE diary method was found to detect behaviors earlier and with greater sensitivity to individual differences. The CUE diary method is shown to be a reliable methodological tool for studying processes of change in human development.     

The Relationship Between the Fear-Avoidance Model of Pain and Personality Traits in Fibromyalgia Patients

This study examined the relationship between several cognitive-affective factors of the fear-avoidance model of pain, the big five model of personality, and functional impairment in fibromyalgia (FM). Seventy-four FM patients completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, the Pain Catastrophizing Scale, the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale-20, the Pain Vigilance and Awareness Questionnaire, and the Impairment and Functioning Inventory. Results indicated that the cognitive-affective factors of pain are differentially associated with personality traits. Neuroticism and conscientiousness were significant predictors of pain catastrophizing, and neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness were significant predictors of pain anxiety. Personality traits did not contribute significantly to vigilance to pain. The effect of neuroticism upon pain anxiety was mediated by pain catastrophizing, and neuroticism showed a trend to moderate the relationship between impairment and pain anxiety. Results support the fear-avoidance model of pain. Implications of the findings for the understanding and management of FM are discussed.     

Emergent Relations between Discriminative Stimuli,Responses, and Consequences in Intraverbals

The Psychological Record - We explored the emergence of relations between stimuli learned as discriminative, responses, and consequences with intraverbals. In Experiment 1, five 9- and 10-year-old...     

Living Well Together Online: Digital Wellbeing from a Confucian Perspective

The impact of social media technologies (SMTs) on digital wellbeing has become an increasingly important puzzle for ethicists of technology. In this article, we explain why individualised theories of digital wellbeing (DWB) can only solve part of this puzzle. While an individualised conception of DWB is useful for understanding online self-regulation, we contend that we must seek greater understanding of how SMTs connect us. To build an account of this, we locate the conceptual resources for our account in Confucian ethics. In contrast to individualised conceptions of human flourishing that are found in the Western tradition, Confucian thinkers strongly emphasise that individuals cannot flourish alone, but need wider social structures (partner, family, society, nation). Not only do strands of Confucian ethics explain how individuals are defined by the roles they take up in relationships, but this perspective also makes practical suggestions for how these roles can be cultivated. We conclude our article by identifying the Confucian notions that seem to have most promise for the future design of SMTs.     

Domestic chicks perceive stereokinetic illusions

Stereokinetic illusions occur when certain 2-D patterns are set in slow rotation in a plane perpendicular to the line of sight. Such phenomena have never been investigated in animal species other than our own. We used the domestic chick (Gallus gallus) to check whether these illusions are experienced by non-human species, taking advantage of filial imprinting. Newly hatched visually naive chicks were individually exposed for 4 h to 2-D stimuli producing, to a human observer, the perception of a stereokinetic cone (experiment 1) or of a stereokinetic cylinder (experiment 2). Thereafter, each chick underwent a free-choice test between a solid 3-D cone and a solid 3-D cylinder. A control group of newly hatched but not imprinted chicks underwent the same testing procedure, to check for the presence of any spontaneous preference for one or other of the two solid objects. Imprinted chicks approached the 3-D stimulus closely resembling the stimulus they had been exposed to during imprinting (the cone in experiment 1 and the cylinder in experiment 2). Non-imprinted chicks did not show any preference. These results suggest that domestic chicks experience stereokinetic illusions.     

Bidirectional links in the network of multiplication facts

In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that activation of multiplication operand nodes (e.g., 3 and 8) can occur through presentation of their product (e.g., 24). In Experiments 1 and 2 we found activation of the operands when the product was presented as a cue in a number-matching task. In Experiment 3, activation also occurred in a parity-matching task, where the product (24) was not relevant to the parity matching on its operands (3 and 8). We concluded that bidirectional links exist among the operands and their product for multiplication problems and these links can be activated in a purely stimulus-driven manner. We suggest this may constitute the basis for the solution of simple divisions by mediation through the complementary multiplication facts.