Physical and psychological aggression in dating relationships in Spanish university students

The presence of violent behaviors of a psychological and physical nature in dating relations was analyzed in a sample of Spanish university students between 18 and 27 years of age. The results indicate a high prevalence of both kinds of aggression in interpersonal relationships, revealing important typology differences between the sexes. Violent psychological behaviors (characterized by the presence of verbal aggression and coercive and jealous behaviors) and physical aggression were significantly higher in women, though the consequences of physical aggression were worse for the women's health. The implications of the results and their possible relation with more severe violent acts in more stable, emotional relationships are discussed.     

Contracting, prompting, and reinforcing substance use disorder continuing care: a randomized clinical trial.

Although continuing care is strongly related to positive treatment outcomes for substance use disorder (SUD), participation rates are low and few effective interventions are available. In a randomized clinical trial with 150 participants (97% men), 75 graduates of a residential Veterans Affairs Medical Center SUD program who received an aftercare contract, attendance prompts, and reinforcers (CPR) were compared to 75 graduates who received standard treatment (STX). Among CPR participants, 55% completed at least 3 months of aftercare, compared to 36% in STX. Similarly, CPR participants remained in treatment longer than those in STX (5.5 vs. 4.4 months). Additionally, CPR participants were more likely to be abstinent compared to STX (57% vs. 37%) after 1 year. The CPR intervention offers a practical means to improve adherence among individuals in SUD treatment.     

Genetic and environmental bases of childhood antisocial behavior: a multi-informant twin study

Genetic and environmental influences on childhood antisocial and aggressive behavior (ASB) during childhood were examined in 9- to 10-year-old twins, using a multi-informant approach. The sample (605 families of twins or triplets) was socioeconomically and ethnically diverse, representative of the culturally diverse urban population in Southern California. Measures of ASB included symptom counts for conduct disorder, ratings of aggression, delinquency, and psychopathic traits obtained through child self-reports, teacher, and caregiver ratings. Multivariate analysis revealed a common ASB factor across informants that was strongly heritable (heritability was .96), highlighting the importance of a broad, general measure obtained from multiple sources as a plausible construct for future investigations of specific genetic mechanisms in ASB. The best fitting multivariate model required informant-specific genetic, environmental, and rater effects for variation in observed ASB measures. The results suggest that parents, children, and teachers have only a partly "shared view" and that the additional factors that influence the "rater-specific" view of the child's antisocial behavior vary for different informants. This is the first study to demonstrate strong heritable effects on ASB in ethnically and economically diverse samples.     

Beyond the Conflict: Religion in the Public Sphere and Deliberative Democracy

Traditionally, liberals have confined religion to the sphere of the ‘private’ or ‘non-political’. However, recent debates over the place of religious symbols in public spaces, state financing of faith schools, and tax relief for religious organisations suggest that this distinction is not particularly useful in easing the tension between liberal commitments to equality on the one hand, and freedom of religion on the other. This article deals with one aspect of this debate, which concerns whether members of religious communities should receive exemptions from regulations that place a distinctively heavy burden on them. Drawing on Habermas’ understanding of churches as ‘communities of interpretation’, we explore possible alternatives to both the ‘rule-and-exemption’ approach and the ‘neutralist’ approach. Our proposal rests on the idea of mutual learning between secular and religious perspectives. On this interpretation, what is required is (i) the generation and maintenance of public spaces in which there could be discussion and dialogue about particular cases, and (ii) evaluation of whether the basic conditions of moral discourse are present in these spaces. Thus deliberation becomes a touchstone for the building of a shared democratic ethos.     

The impact of television,print, and audio on children's recall of the news.

Recent research has shown that children remember more from television news than from print news, a finding that has been explained by the extra mnemonic support offered by redundant television pictures (the dual‐coding hypothesis). The present study was designed to examine three alternative explanations, which attribute children's superior recall of television news to (a) underutilization of the print medium, (b) a recall advantage of listening compared with reading, and imperfect reading ability. A sample of 192 fourth and sixth graders was presented with children's news stories, either in (a) their original television form, (b) a bare print version, a print version supplemented with photo material or in (d) an audio version. Results indicated that the television presentation was remembered better than any of the other three versions. The results of the study were consistent with the dual‐coding hypothesis, whereas no support was found for the alternative explanations tested in the study.     

Multivariate repeated measures designs

In the social, behavioral, and health researches it is a common strategy to collect data along time on more than one group of participants on multiple dependent variables. To analyse this kind of data is very complicated due to the correlations between the measures taken in different points of the time, and between the answers. Usually to analyse these data the multivariate mixed model, or the doubly multivariate model, are the most frequent approaches. Both of them require combined multivariate normality, equal covariance matrices, independence between the observations of different participants, complete measurements on all subjects, and time-independent covariates. When one ore more of these assumptions are not accomplished these approaches do not control in the correct way the Type I error, and this affects the validity and the accuracy of the inferences. In this paper some solutions that solve the problems with the error Type I will be shown. Several programs for a correct realization of the analyses through the SAS Proc Mixed procedure are presented.     

Bias in visual attention behavior in a normal school-aged population

Hemi-field visual-spatial attention was studied on a timed letter cancellation task in proficient readers from 7th to 9th grades. Participants maintained greater accuracy in identifying targets in the left quadrants (top/bottom) when compared with the right quadrants (top/bottom), revealing a leftward bias in their responses. Effects of gender and age were evident on performance; females scored significantly higher than males, and 9th graders scored significantly higher than 7th and 8th graders. Thus, a substantial shift in brain maturation may take place from 8th to 9th grades or from the ages of 13.0 to 14.11. Discriminative characteristics of the task are analyzed by assigning greater value to targets located in the top left quadrant. The 9th graders, as compared to the younger students, and the girls, as compared to the boys, evidenced a reading-direction-related bias toward systematic preference for the upper-left to lower-right quadrants.     

From Corpora to Experiments: Methodological Triangulation in the Study of Word Order at the Interfaces in Adult Late Bilinguals (L2 learners)

This paper shows the need to triangulate different approaches in Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research to fully understand late bilinguals’ interlanguage grammars. Methodologically, we show how experimental and corpus data can be (and should be) triangulated by reporting on a corpus study (Lozano and Mendikoetxea in Biling Lang Cognit 13(4):475–497, 2010) and a new follow-up offline experiment investigating Subject–Verb inversion (Subject–Verb/Verb–Subject order) in L1 Spanish–L2 English (n = 417). Theoretically, we follow a recent line in psycholinguistic approaches to Bilingualism and SLA research (Interface Hypothesis, Sorace in Linguist Approaches Biling 1(1):1–33, 2011). It focuses on the interface between syntax and language-external modules of the mind/brain (syntax-discourse [end-focus principle] and syntax-phonology [end-weight principle]) as well as a language-internal interface (lexicon-syntax [unaccusative hypothesis]). We argue that it is precisely this multi-faceted interface approach (corpus and experimental data, core syntax and the interfaces, representational and processing models) that provides a deeper understanding of (i) the factors that favour inversion in L2 acquisition in particular and (ii) interlanguage grammars in general.     

The Development of Anaphora Resolution at the Syntax-Discourse Interface: Pronominal Subjects in Greek Learners of Spanish

This study explores the development of anaphora resolution (AR) in late sequential bilinguals, namely, adult Greek learners of Spanish at three proficiency levels (intermediate, lower advanced, upper advanced). The use of an overt/null pronominal subject anaphor is investigated in three discourse contexts: topic-continuity (a single antecedent requiring a null pronoun), contrastive-focus (two same-gender potential antecedents requiring an overt pronoun to avoid ambiguity) and emphatic (three same-gender potential antecedents showing unclear preference for either overt or null pronoun). Crucially, AR behaves similarly in Greek and Spanish. Results from an offline contextualised acceptability judgement task show that similarity between the learner’s first (L1) and second (L2) languages does not necessarily facilitate the learning task. Even very advanced learners show deficits, which are selective since not all discursive contexts are equally affected. The results are better accounted for by general pragmatic economy principles: Learners prefer being redundant (overuse of overt pronouns in topic-continuity contexts) to ambiguous (acceptance of null pronouns in contrastive-focus contexts). Such tolerance for redundancy may reflect a more general pragmatic tendency, as also reported in child L1 development, adult L2 development and also in native grammars.     

Attachment in donor‐conceived adults: Curiosity,search, and contact

Donor‐conceived (DC) people represent a unique population with atypical family structures. This study examined whether individual differences in attachment predict adults' self‐reported curiosity about their donor conception identity, as well as attempts to find the donor and establish contact. Data were collected from 488 DC people from the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR). People who were high in attachment‐related anxiety were more curious than others about their donor conception. Despite this curiosity, however, highly anxious people were more disengaged from donor conception and were not more likely than others to search for or have made contact with their donor. These findings suggest that insecure attachment—particularly attachment anxiety—may contribute to people's willingness to incorporate donor conception into their identities.