Moderating Role of the Experience of having had a Female Boss in Relationship between Neosexism and Unfavorable Attitudes toward Female Leaders

Modern sexist beliefs are currently emerging as one of the most important barriers to achieving gender equality in managerial positions in organizations. However, little research addresses the factors that can reduce or soften the negative effects that these beliefs have on unfavorable attitudes toward female leaders. In the present study, it is analyzed whether the experience of having a female leader moderates this relationship. Additionally, we sought to verify whether this moderation is found in both genders. A sample of 307 employees from various positions in Spanish companies participated in this study. We performed regression analyses in blocks. The results indicate that this moderating role emerges only among women. Nevertheless, the findings also indicate that coming into contact with female leaders can increase these attitudes when the level of neosexism is low. The results suggest that the organizational policies that are introduced with the aim of reducing unfavorable attitudes and discriminatory behaviors toward female leaders should take into account that the assignment of women to leadership positions may favor the achievement of this aim in, at least, female employees who highly adhere to neosexist beliefs. However, this could also lead to an increase of these attitudes in female employees who present a low adherence to them.     

Newborns are sensitive to multiple cues for word segmentation in continuous speech

Before infants can learn words, they must identify those words in continuous speech. Yet, the speech signal lacks obvious boundary markers, which poses a potential problem for language acquisition (Swingley, Philos Trans R Soc Lond. Series B, Biol Sci 364 (1536), 3617–3632, 2009). By the middle of the first year, infants seem to have solved this problem (Bergelson & Swingley, Proc Natl Acad Sci 109 (9), 3253–3258, 2012; Jusczyk & Aslin, Cogn Psychol 29 , 1–23, 1995), but it is unknown if segmentation abilities are present from birth, or if they only emerge after sufficient language exposure and/or brain maturation. Here, in two independent experiments, we looked at two cues known to be crucial for the segmentation of human speech: the computation of statistical co‐occurrences between syllables and the use of the language's prosody. After a brief familiarization of about 3 min with continuous speech, using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy, neonates showed differential brain responses on a recognition test to words that violated either the statistical (Experiment 1) or prosodic (Experiment 2) boundaries of the familiarization, compared to words that conformed to those boundaries. Importantly, word recognition in Experiment 2 occurred even in the absence of prosodic information at test, meaning that newborns encoded the phonological content independently of its prosody. These data indicate that humans are born with operational language processing and memory capacities and can use at least two types of cues to segment otherwise continuous speech, a key first step in language acquisition.     

Reading Difficulties in Low-SES Children: A Study of Cognitive Profiles

Reading difficulties of children growing up in poverty contexts have not received as much attention as those of children from middle-income families. This paper analyzes the reading-related cognitive profiles of Argentine, Spanish-speaking, low-SES children with reading difficulties (RD), by comparing them with chronological age- (CA) and reading age- (RA) matched children from the same socioeconomic background. Ninety children (30 in each group) participated in the study. Testing included reading, spelling, verbal memory, phonological sensitivity, rapid naming, letter knowledge, and vocabulary measures. Results showed that children from the RD group performed significantly worse than their same-age peers. These findings would suggest the presence of a cognitive vulnerability in children with reading difficulties. Interestingly, when compared with children from the RA-matched control group, children in the RD group only obtained significantly lower scores in phoneme segmentation and letter-sound recognition tasks. Cognitive profiles of low-income children growing in poverty differ from cognitive profiles described for middle-income children with dyslexia. Given that teaching of letter sounds is not included in Argentina’s mandatory curriculum, it is possible that letter-sound teaching constitutes an environmental factor that interacts with other risk factors to produce reading difficulties in poverty contexts.     

Motivation and self‐regulation: The role of want‐to motivation in the processes underlying self‐regulation and self‐control

Research on self‐regulation has largely focused on the idea of effortful self‐control, which assumes that exerting willpower will lead to greater success. However, in recent years, research has challenged this perspective and instead proposes that effortless self‐regulation is more adaptive for long‐term goal pursuit. Taking into consideration the burgeoning literature on effortless self‐regulation, here we propose that motivation—or the reasons why we pursue our goals—plays an integral role in this process. The objective of the present paper is to highlight how motivation can play a role in how self‐regulation unfolds. Specifically, we propose that pursuing goals because you want‐to (vs. have‐to) is associated with better goal attainment as a function of experiencing less temptations and obstacles. While the reason why want‐to motivation relates to experiencing fewer obstacles has yet to be thoroughly explored, here we propose some potential mechanisms drawing from recent research on self‐regulation. We also provide recommendations for future research, highlighting the importance of considering motivation in the study of self‐regulatory processes.     

Gastroesophageal reflux disease: attachment style and parental bonding

The attachment styles and parental bonding of 72 patients (M age= 45.3 yr., SD=13.5) suffering from Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease were compared with those of 105 healthy subjects (M age =44.9 yr., SD = 5.8). A clinical interview and two questionnaires, the Attachment Style Questionnaire and the Parental Bonding Instrument, showed that the scores on the ASQ Confidence subscale were significantly lower in the clinical group. Similar results were obtained for the Discomfort with Closeness subscale in the subsample with Pure Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. The results indicate Insecure Attachment in the clinical sample. The results obtained from the Parental Bonding Instrument indicate that scores on the Protection Mother scale were significantly higher in the clinical subjects, suggesting a Low Care-High Protection combination (Affectiveless Control), at least for patients with pure Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. These characteristics can be considered important factors in the tendency to somatization. The symptoms may have a paradoxically normalising function while the patient shows an emotional detachment towards intimate relationships. The illness appears to act as a bond through which the relationship with the caregivers is maintained.     

Girls' soccer performance and motivation: games vs technique approach

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the Technique and Games approaches on girls' soccer performance and motivation. The Technique approach focuses on technique instruction using drills, whereas the Games approach places emphasis on tactic instruction with modified games. 37 girls, 12 to 13 years old, were taught 15 soccer lessons by the Technique approach and 35 girls by the Games approach. At the beginning and at the end of the research soccer matches were videotaped and evaluated by Oslin, Mitchell, and Griffin's Game Performance Assessment Instrument. Girls' motivation was assessed on the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. The Games group had significantly better scores after training on tactical behaviour and intrinsic motivation than the Technique group. There were no significant differences in skill execution between groups trained under the two approaches. Considering the importance of intrinsic motivation for a lifelong, physically active lifestyle, researchers could focus study on the approaches and girls' motivation.     

How to hit Scylla without avoiding Charybdis: comment on Perruchet, Tyler, Galland, and Peereman (2004)

M. Pe?a, L. L. Bonatti, M. Nespor, and J. Mehler argued that humans compute nonadjacent statistical relations among syllables in a continuous artificial speech stream to extract words, but they use other computations to determine the structural properties of words. Instead, when participants are familiarized with a segmented stream, structural generalizations about words are quickly established. P. Perruchet, M. D. Tyler, N. Galland, and R. Peereman criticized M. Pe?a et al.'s work and dismissed their results. In this article, the authors show that P. Perruchet et al.'s criticisms are groundless.     

How the mind understands other minds: cognitive psychology, attachment and reflective function

Jung's epistemological relativistic attitude was very advanced for his time and very much in line with the contemporary philosophy of science. Further, Jung states that the patient's unconscious has the capacity to represent itself by creating metaphors which give the therapist all the help he might need in treating his patient. As such, Jungian analysts have not been encouraged to embark on theoretical work and as a result, the Jungian movement has been lacking those theories that connect general psychological principles with clinical practices. In an attempt to enlarge our 'middle-range theories', we shall discuss Peter Fonagy's concept of reflective function. In our opinion, the theoretical hypothesis regarding the instinct of reading the mind (Baron-Cohen 1995) and Fonagy's idea of reflective function are extremely useful in our Jungian clinical practice and these concepts are utilizable because they are not at odds with analytical psychology's general epistemological and theoretical framework.     

Language input and child syntax

Existing work on the acquisition of syntax has been concerned mainly with the early stages of syntactic development. In the present study we examine later syntactic development in children. Also, existing work has focused on commonalities in the emergence of syntax. Here we explore individual differences among children and their relation to variations in language input. In Study 1 we find substantial individual differences in children's mastery of multiclause sentences and a significant relation between those differences and the proportion of multiclause sentences in parent speech. We also find individual differences in the number of noun phrases in children's utterances and a significant relation between those differences and the number of noun phrases in parent speech. In Study 2 we find greater syntactic growth over a year of preschool in classes where teachers' speech is more syntactically complex. The implications of our findings for the understanding of the sources of syntactic development are discussed.     

Solving spatial tasks with unaligned layouts: the difficulty of dealing with conflicting information

Previous research has shown that preschool children have difficulty using relational information in spatial tasks. The present study investigates whether this difficulty is due, in part, to children's inability to deal with situations of conflict where both objective and egocentric cues are available and point to different responses. Two studies were conducted to compare performance in the presence versus absence of conflicting cues. In Study 1, 40 four-year-olds had to locate an object in a single layout presented from different perspectives. In Study 2, 39 four-year-olds had to transfer locational information between two unaligned layouts. The presence of conflict significantly affected children's performance in both studies. The results are discussed in the context of similar findings in other cognitive domains.