Cognitive–motivational antecedents of career decision-making processes in Portuguese high school students: A longitudinal study

In this study we propose an integrated framework of the antecedents of identity development and well/ill-being for high school students (N = 462) in the transition to higher education/job market. One study was conducted to investigate the effects of basic psychological need-satisfaction/frustration (as proposed within self-determination theory) and career decision-making self-efficacy (posited by social cognitive career theory) on the identity dimensions and experienced well/ill-being. Three longitudinal nested models were tested: a need-satisfaction/self-efficacy main effects model, an identity main effects model and a reciprocal main-effects model. The reciprocal effects between the variables were favored by the data. Basic need-satisfaction and career decision making self-efficacy positively predicted proactive exploration and commitment-making, while basic need-frustration predicted both diminished well-being and ill-being. Reciprocally, proactive exploration investments positively predicted whereas ruminative exploration negatively predicted, need-satisfaction and career decision-making self-efficacy. Implications for the design of career interventions are discussed and suggestions for future research proposed.     

Attachment Patterns as Mediators of the Link Between Combat Exposure and Posttraumatic Symptoms: A Study Among Portuguese War Veterans

We analyzed the role of both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance as a mediators of the effects of combat exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Participants were Portuguese veterans (N = 60) divided into 2 groups: 30 suffered from chronic PTSD (nonrecovered) and 30 had remission from PTSD (recovered). Combat exposure, attachment patterns, and PTSD symptoms were assessed through self-report measures. Mediation test was performed by conducting several hierarchical regression analyses. Results showed higher attachment anxiety among nonrecovered participants. We did not find statistically significant differences between groups for both attachment avoidance and combat exposure level scores. In mediation analysis, at first step, attachment avoidance was not a significant predictor of PTSD symptoms, and attachment avoidance did not enter in subsequent analysis. Attachment anxiety was a partial mediator of the effect of combat exposure on PTSD symptoms. Implications of the findings for both attachment theory and clinical intervention on trauma are discussed.     

Language Shift and the Inclusion of Indigenous Populations in Large-Scale Assessment Programs

Indicators of academic achievement for bilingual students can be inaccurate due to linguistic heterogeneity. For indigenous populations, language shift (the gradual replacement of one language by another) is a factor that can increase this heterogeneity and poses an additional challenge for valid testing. We investigated whether and how indigenous populations can be validly included in a large-scale assessment program. We gave Mexican preschool Mayan students aged 5 to 6 years the same set of mathematics items in three versions: (1) original in Spanish, (2) Mayan translation, and (3) content equivalent, developed from scratch in Mayan. Also, we collected information on the students’ and the teachers’ use of Spanish and Mayan, and on the communities’ support of the two languages. Students performed poorly on the three versions. Generalizability theory-based analyses revealed considerable performance inconsistency across items and language versions and low generalizability and dependability coefficients. This performance instability appears to stem from a dwindling support of the Mayan language in Mayan schools and communities. Fair, valid assessment of indigenous populations in either their languages or their countries’ dominant languages appears to be difficult to accomplish with current testing models and policies.     

Cognitive processes in writing during pause and execution periods

The present study investigated how writing processes are activated during pause and execution periods. In two experiments, handwriting demands were manipulated by asking participants to compose with their familiar handwriting or with a high-demanding cursive uppercase calligraphy. Experiment 1 investigated narrative writing, a task with low planning demands. Experiment 2 addressed essay writing, a task with stronger planning demands. Occurrences of processes and their cognitive effort were analysed by asking participants to respond to random auditory probes and then to report their ongoing mental activity according to learned categories referring to the planning, translating, and revising writing processes. All together, the findings indicate that demands on planning did not affect how writing processes were activated during pauses and execution periods but automaticity of handwriting did. When handwriting was effortless, translating was mostly activated in parallel with motor execution, whereas revising and planning were mainly activated during pauses. However, none of the writing processes could be characterised as being typical of pauses, since translating was activated to a similar extent as the other two processes. By contrast, when handwriting was effortful, participants shifted to a more sequential functioning and activated translating mainly during pauses.     

Multiply Victimized Women: How Do They Change?

Recent studies have demonstrated that women are frequently victims of several types of violent actions via different agents throughout their life spans. Furthermore, multiple victimizations have been associated with psychological difficulties. The present study aimed to understand the change processes, in a self-directed way, of 19 female victims of multiple violent actions during their lifetimes. The women were evaluated for one year using a depression scale and a qualitative interview. The interviews were analyzed using the innovative moments (IMs) model. The results evidenced three groups, according to the evolution of their depressive symptoms during the one-year evaluation period. There were two unchanged groups, one being the symptomatic group (N = 6), which continuously presented symptoms at a clinical level, and the other the asymptomatic group (N = 7), which did not report depressive symptoms at any assessment moment. The change group (N = 6) exhibited a reliable decrease in clinically significant symptoms. Regarding IMs, the majority of the women were able to develop innovative moments regarding the dominant problem over a one-year evaluation period. Those women mobilized alternative ways to address multiple victimization experiences primarily through reflection IMs. Although there were several exceptions to the problematic narratives during the one-year assessment, the change group had a higher proportion and diversity of IM types—namely, a higher reconceptualization and reflection subtype II—compared with the unchanged groups. Moreover, reconceptualization differentiated the change group from the other two groups. These latter IMs may reflect the concept of “postvictimization growth” and the positive changes that arise from experiences of victimization.     

Electrophysiological evidence for colour effects on the naming of colour diagnostic and noncolour diagnostic objects

In this study, we investigated the level of visual processing at which surface colour information improves the naming of colour diagnostic and noncolour diagnostic objects. Continuous electroencephalograms were recorded while participants performed a visual object naming task in which coloured and black-and-white versions of both types of objects were presented. The black-and-white and the colour presentations were compared in two groups of event-related potentials (ERPs): (1) The P1 and N1 components, indexing early visual processing; and (2) the N300 and N400 components, which index late visual processing. A colour effect was observed in the P1 and N1 components, for both colour and noncolour diagnostic objects. In addition, for colour diagnostic objects, a colour effect was observed in the N400 component. These results suggest that colour information is important for the naming of colour and noncolour diagnostic objects at different levels of visual processing. It thus appears that the visual system uses colour information, during naming of both object types, at early visual stages; however, for the colour diagnostic objects naming, colour information is also recruited during the late visual processing stages.     

Semantic Processing of Foveally and Parafoveally Presented Words in a Lexical Decision Task

Using a lexical decision task in which two primes appeared simultaneously in the visual field for 150 msec followed by a target word, two experiments examined semantic priming from attended and unattended primes as a function of both the separation between the primes in the visual field and the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). In the first experiment significant priming effects were found for both the attended and unattended prime words, though the effect was much greater for the attended words. In addition, and also for both attention conditions, priming showed a tendency to increase with increasing eccentricity (2.3°, 3.3°, and 4.3°) between the prime words in the visual field at the long (550 and 850 msec) but not at the short (250 msec) prime-target SOA. In the second experiment the prime stimuli were either two words (W-W) or one word and five Xs (W-X). We manipulated the degree of eccentricity (2° and 3.6°) between the prime stimuli and used a prime-target SOA of 850 msec. Again significant priming was found for both the attended and unattended words but only the W-W condition showed a decrement in priming as a function of the separation between the primes; this decrement came to produce negative priming for the unattended word at the narrow (2°) separation. These results are discussed in relation to the semantic processing of parafoveal words and the inhibitory effects of focused attention.     

Grammatical category-specific deficits in bilingual aphasia

We report the naming performance of an early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilingual (JPG) suffering from Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). JPG's performance revealed a grammatical category-specific deficit, with worse performance in naming verbs than nouns. This dissociation was present in oral and written naming and in his two languages, and it seems to stem from damage to, at least, the lexical level. Despite the fact that JPG's performance was qualitatively very similar across languages, his second language seemed to be more affected than his first language. These results indicate that the cortical organization of the two languages of highly proficient bilinguals follow similar organizational principles, one of this principles being grammatical class.