Promoting Optimal Parenting and Children’s Mental Health: A Preliminary Evaluation of the How-to Parenting Program

Parenting quality is widely accepted as a primary predictor of children’s mental health. The present study examined the effectiveness of a parenting program in fostering optimal parenting and child mental health. The selected program was How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk (How-to Parenting Program). This program was selected because its content corresponds closely to what the parenting style literature suggests is optimal parenting (i.e., includes structure, affiliation and autonomy support). Eleven groups of six to twelve parents were conducted in 7 local grade schools. The program, offered by two trained leaders, consisted of eight weekly sessions and taught a total of 30 skills. A total of 82 parents completed questionnaires both prior to and after the program. Participants’ children between eight and 12 years old (N = 44) completed questionnaires at school, at both assessment points. Repeated measures ANOVAs using parent reports indicated that structure, affiliation and autonomy support were increased after the program, compared to baseline. The level of child internalizing and externalizing problems also decreased significantly. Importantly, children reports confirmed that parental autonomy support increased from pre to post-test and child-reported well-being improved as well. The preliminary evidence from this pre-test versus post-test repeated measures design suggests that the How-to Parenting Program is effective in improving parenting style and in promoting children’s mental health and that future evaluation research examining the potential of this program is warranted.     

Psychometric Properties of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire-Preschool Revision (APQ-Pr) in 3 Year-Old Spanish Preschoolers

Parenting practices should be assessed and taken into account at an early age, since it is well documented that they are strongly related to children’s development. This study provides data on the psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire for Preschool children (APQ-Pr). A community sample of 622 (310 boys and 312 girls) 3 year-old children and their parents, participated in the study. Data were obtained from parents’ reports and correspond to a semi-structured diagnostic interview and self-report questionnaires evaluating parenting and children’s psychological states. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor solution: positive parenting, inconsistent parenting and punitive parenting. These scales scores showed moderate to good internal consistence (omega values ranged from .54 to .86). Inconsistent parenting scores achieved the strongest associations with external measures of psychopathology, especially for externalizing and conduct problems, as well as for functional impairment, the poorest associations being for the positive parenting scores. Results support the validity of the Spanish APQ-Pr, which is potentially a useful measure for the study of parenting practices regarding preschool children and their relation to conduct problems.     

Lunacy and Scepticism: Notes on the Logic of Doubt Concerning the Existence of an External World

This article develops a logical (or semantic) response to scepticism about the existence of an external world. Specifically, it is argued that any doubt about the existence of an external world can be proved to be false, but whatever appears to be doubt about the existence of an external world that cannot be proved to be false is nonsense, insofar as it must rely on the assertion of something that is logically impossible. The article further suggests that both G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein worked towards the same solution but left their work unfinished.

     

We are made,not born: Empiricism is existentially useful

The perennial “nativist-empiricist” debate in developmental science has far-reaching relevance in our existence. Two studies conducted under the terror management framework tested whether the empiricist developmental conception serves distal defensive purposes. Experiment 1 highlights the palliative existential effect of the empiricist conception since participants who read an empiricist essay exhibited less death thoughts than participants who read a nativist essay or a control essay. Experiment 2 gives support to the distal defensive function of the empiricist conception by showing that, unlike with the nativist or the control essay, people under mortality salience exhibited a higher need to rely on empiricism than participants in the control pain condition. The existential advantage of empiricism is explained by the fact that human development is shaped by a meaningful cultural blueprint. Our results are discussed in terms of the ontological and existential benefits of contemplating human intrinsic identity, ranging from its biology to its social behaviors as primarily influenced by the cultural environment.     

Influence of emotional valence and arousal on the spread of activation in memory

Controversy still persists on whether emotional valence and arousal influence cognitive activities. Our study sought to compare how these two factors foster the spread of activation within the semantic network. In a lexical decision task, prime words were varied depending on the valence (pleasant or unpleasant) or on the level of emotional arousal (high or low). Target words were carefully selected to avoid semantic priming effects, as well as to avoid arousing specific emotions (neutral). Three SOA durations (220, 420 and 720 ms) were applied across three independent groups. Results indicate that at 220 ms, the effect of arousal is significantly higher than the effect of valence in facilitating spreading activation while at 420 ms, the effect of valence is significantly higher than the effect of arousal in facilitating spreading activation. These findings suggest that affect is a sequential process involving the successive intervention of arousal and valence.     

Motor imagery in spinal cord injury patients: Moving makes the difference

Both real action control and execution and motor imagery abilities require knowledge of the spatial location of body parts, in other words efference copy information and feedbacks from the sensory system (Frith et al., 2000, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci., 355, 1771). Spinal cord injuries induce severe motor disability, due to a damage of the descending motor pathways (Cramer et al., 2007, Exp. Brain. Res., 177, 233). Patients' motor imagery competences are variably reported as either normal or defective (Decety & Boisson, 1990, Eur. Arch. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci., 240, 39; Lacourse et al., 1999, Behav. Brain Sci., 104, 73). We explored biomechanical constraint effects in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) patients, as they are considered the most reliable indexes of motor imagery abilities (Parsons, 1987b, Cogn. Psychol., 19, 178). Sixteen spinal cord injuries patients and 16 neurologically unimpaired subjects have been administered with (1) the Hand Laterality Task (HLT), in which subjects were asked to judge the laterality of a rotated hand; and (2) the Mirror Letter Discrimination Task (MLD), in which subjects were asked to judge if a rotated character was in its correct upright position or mirror‐reversed form. Our patients did not present the effect of stimulus orientation, neither did they show any effect related to biomechanical constraints. Based on these data, the hypothesis is that SCI patients' performance may be ascribed to the use of a different strategy to solve the tasks, based on memory rather than on mental rotation.     

Medical Trainees’ Readiness for the Promotion of Sexual Health in Tunisia: A Cross Sectional Study

In the Arab and Muslim countries, there are several taboos of sexuality. To overcome the latter, and to distinguish between cultural and scientific data, sexual education is a key measure, especially during medical studies. The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge of the Tunisian medical trainees and to identify their sources of information concerning sexuality. We conducted a survey among medical trainees of the faculty of medicine of Sfax, in Tunisia. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed to 171 and completed by 157 trainees (91.8%). The sources of knowledge about sexuality were: friends (81.5%; N = 128), internet (77.1%; N = 121), television and movies (68.2%; N = 107), courses at the faculty (40.1%; N = 63) and parents (22.9%; N = 36). The score of correct answers was higher than or equal to 75% for 28 trainees (17.8%). It was on average 63.3%. It was correlated with male gender (p = 0.006), being a second-year trainee (p = 0.017) and television and movies as a source of knowledge about sexuality (p = 0.008). Masturbation was considered pathological by 17.2% of participants (N = 27). A 5-min period of intercourse was deemed sufficient to have a female orgasm by 44 trainees (28%). Andropause and menopause are inconsistent with a satisfying sexuality according to 44.6% (N = 70) and 56.1% (N = 88) of the participants respectively.     

Can spatialisation be extended to episodic memory and open sets?

The SPoARC effect (Spatial Positional Associated Response Codes) has only been observed in working memory (WM) using closed sets. It is interpreted as showing that individuals spatialise to-be-remembered items in a left-to-right fashion, using spatialisation as context. Given that context is crucial for episodic memory (EM), we tested if this effect could be observed in EM by using 15-word lists taken from an open set. After each list, 30 probes were sequentially displayed to test recognition. The left/right-hand key assignment for yes/no answers was varied. No SPoARC effect was observed. However, as all previous SPoARC experiments had used short lists and closed sets, it was not possible to know if this absence of SPoARC was due to the open set feature or the length of the lists. A second experiment was thus run using open sets and short 5-word lists, which do not necessitate EM to be remembered. A SPoARC effect was observed indicating that Experiment 1 result was due to the involvement of supra-span lists and that SPoARC effects do not extend to EM with open sets. Experiment 2 also enabled us to generalise the SPoARC effect to open sets in WM for the first time.