Joint factor analysis of the Children's Depression Inventory and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale.

Used a joint factor analysis with the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1980/81, 1992) and Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS; C. R. Reynolds & Richmond, 1978, 1985) to identify items that uniquely measured depression and anxiety. Data from 750 youngsters in Grades 4 through 7 were analyzed using principal-axis factoring with an oblique rotation. Salient factors were identified using guidelines provide by Gorsuch (1997). Item overlap and the large negative affectivity component across instruments were evident. Items that overlapped or had nonsalient loadings were eliminated. The sample was randomly split into 2 groups of 375 and analyses were repeated. Results indicated that a unique 9-item depression factor composed largely of items representing a negative view of oneself existed. In addition, a unique 7-item anxiety factor emerged that consisted of items reflecting worry. The validity of these abbreviated scales was explored using a separate sample of 131 students in Grades 4 through 9. The abbreviated scales were correlated with scales of positive and negative affect consistent with predictions. Findings suggest exploring alternative scoring strategies for the CDI and RCMAS to eliminate problems associated with overlapping items.     

Supervisor Trustworthiness and Subordinates' Willingness to Provide Extra‐Role Efforts1

A laboratory experiment was used to determine the separate and joint effects of behaviors denoting supervisor trustworthiness on subordinate willingness to provide the supervisor with extra‐role efforts. Results indicate that a supervisor's demonstration of benevolence toward the subordinate outweighed the supervisor's work‐relevant ability and his or her benevolence toward the subordinate's peers in positively influencing subordinate willingness to provide the supervisor with extra‐role efforts. Also, benevolence toward the subordinate's peers moderated the effect of benevolence toward the subordinate, whereby benevolence toward the subordinate had a reduced positive effect when the supervisor was not benevolent toward the subordinate's peers.     

The influence of threat and aversive motivation on conflict processing in the Stroop task

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Motivated attention can be driven by the desire to maximize gains or escape punishment. In the Stroop task, when rewards can be obtained by responding...     

The study of locomotor pointing in virtual reality: The validation of a test set-up

The goal of this experiment was to validate an experimental set-up for studying locomotor pointing. The specific and also original element of this set-up was the interactive nature of virtual reality and movement production. This interaction was achieved through the coupling of a treadmill and a Silicon Graphics system. This latter system generated on a screen (3 × 2.3 m) an environmental array that moved according to the action produced by subjects on a treadmill. The task was to place either foot on a spatial target that appeared on the floor in front of the subject’s displacement trajectory. We analyzed the step length patterns of subjects approaching these targets, along with the current target-subject relationship. The results are in agreement with aperception-action coupling type of control mechanism that operates continuously as the subject approaches the desired target. Apparently, these findings mirror observations of real-life locomotion, indicating that the present set-up provides a valid and useful tool for examining human locomotion.     

Too fatigued to care: Ego depletion,guilt, and prosocial behavior

Although guilt feels bad to the individual, it is good for society because guilty feelings can prompt people to perform good deeds. This study tests whether fatigue decreases guilty feelings and subsequent prosocial behavior. Participants were randomly assigned to a depletion condition in which they watched a movie about butchering animals for their meat or skin and were told to express no emotions, or to a no-depletion condition in which they watched the same movie, but could express their emotions. Having participants play a game in which another person was punished for their errors induced guilt. Finally, participants played a dictator game in which they could leave money for the next participant. After the experiment, participants could also anonymously donate money to an anti-AIDS charity. The results showed that depleted participants felt less guilty than did non-depleted participants, and the less guilty participants felt the less helpful they were.     

Comparative interinstrument reliability of uniaxial and triaxial accelerometers in free-living conditions

The aim of this study was to measure the inter-instrument reliability of the ActiGraph and RT3 accelerometers in free-living conditions. 15 healthy adults wore eight ActiGraph accelerometers and five RT3 accelerometers fastened to their back with an elastic belt and adjustable buckle in free-living conditions. For both accelerometers, the inter-instrument coefficient of variation (CV) decreased with increasing physical activity intensity. The inter-instrument CV of the ActiGraph (3% to 10.5%) was significantly lower than that of the RT3 (12.6% to 35.5%; p < 0.05). This finding demonstrates that the ActiGraph has higher inter-instrument reliability than the RT3. For both accelerometers, the inter-instrument reliability was higher for moderate and vigorous physical activity, the two intensities recommended for public health purposes. Studies using these devices can be compared with a low risk of misclassification of participants who meet the recommendation to perform moderate to vigorous physical activity.     

L’impact du stress professionnel sur les intervenants SMUR

The aim of this work is to identify the situations of stress experienced by SAMU staff and to study the extent to which they can have an impact on burnout and the level of psychological distress observed in this population. Our sample consists of a group of 69 SAMU staff and a control group of 50 professionals working in hospital services. All subjects provided sociodemographic data and completed three clinical scales – the Job Stress Survey (JSS), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) – and the clinical interview. This study shows that SAMU staff have low levels of professional stress, burnout and psychological distress per report with the personnel of the services of hepato-gastroenterology, endocrinology and digestive surgery. We discuss these results by examining the ability of the SAMU staff to manage situations of stress.     

Response to bitter substances in primates: Roles of diet tendency and weaning age

In primates, the perception of bitter taste may be an essential mechanism for avoiding the ingestion of bitter, and often toxic, substances. Bitterness sensitivity varies across the different primate species and, for bitter thioure substances (e.g., phenylthiocarbamide—PTC), within species. Primates respond to bitterness by displaying aversive affective reactions, and whether these serve for conspecifics as information on the taste of food is still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the response to two bitter substances (quinine and PTC) in 11 primate species (N = 29 individuals) hosted at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, in relation to their main diet tendency and weaning age. We tested primate reactions to bitterness with a two-bottle method. The study individuals showed a strong aversion to bitter taste, minimizing consumption of both bitter solutions. All of the individuals were PTC-taster phenotypes, but the degrees of sensitivity to PTC varied among the individuals. Across-species comparisons revealed that whereas the degree of frugivory of the species had a negative effect on the consumption of bitter solutions by the individuals, a later weaning age seems to be a better predictor for the occurrence of aversive affective reactions. Although the low sample size does not allow for excluding interindividual variability, our results support the hypothesis that affective reactions to bitterness may be trustworthy information for conspecifics during the learning process. Thus, the evolution of the appropriate perceiver systems to convert affective displays into true affective signals could be a shared trait among human and nonhuman primates.