Narrative form and identity in the conventionalization of memories of national histories / Forma narrativa e identidad en la convencionalización del recuerdo de historias nacionales

This paper studies the effect of narrative forms on the remembering of historical accounts. Drawing on Bartlett’s method of repeated reproduction, we analyse how two different historical versions of the Irish conflict — constructed with the same historical events but through different narrative forms — are remembered in three recall sessions by subjects with different national feelings of belonging (Spanish and Basque) and positions in relation to that conflict. The conventionalization and rationalization of memories is also analysed by examining the transformation of the material in the three sessions. Results show two different recall profiles resulting from each version of the story. While in the pro-Irish version repressive events justifying the struggle for Irish independence were more remembered, the pro-British version is reconstructed on those more institutional events that legitimize the maintenance of the United Kingdom. The bias of the narrative form on the remembering of the stories is discussed in regard to history teaching.     

Measurement Invariance of Personal Well-Being Index (PWI-8) Across 26 Countries

This report examines the measurement invariance of the Personal Well-being Index with 8 items (PWI-8). University students (N = 5731) from 26 countries completed the measure either through paper and pencil or electronic mode. We examined uni-dimensional structure of PWI and performed a Multi-group CFA to assess the measurement invariance across the 26 countries, using conventional approach and the alignment procedure. The findings provide evidence of configural and partial metric invariance, as well as partial scalar invariance across samples. The findings suggest that PWI-8 can be used to examine correlates of life satisfaction across all included countries, however it is impossible to compare raw scores across countries.     

Estimating the effect of emotional intelligence in wellbeing among priests

Background/Objective: Emotional intelligence is a variable which has been the subject of significantly increased research in recent years. Relationships have been shown with both physical and psychological problems. The aim of this study is to analyse the direct and indirect effect that emotional intelligence exerts over the manifestation of physical and psychological clinical symptomatology and to severe disorders such as burnout syndrome in a professional group in which social function is fundamental. Method: So that, 881 Latin-American catholic priests (M_age = 45.89; SD_age = 11.58) were evaluated using the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-22 and the General Health Questionnaire-28. Results: Using path analysis, emotional intelligence, especially Attention and Emotional Clarity, shows a high effect on psychological and somatic issues. Conclusions: Thus, both specific disorders and general well-being are related to emotional intelligence. Providing effective emotional intelligence training sessions seems to be able to reduce possible physical and emotional disorders.     

Memory bias for threatening information related to anxiety: an updated meta-analytic review

The evidence for an anxiety-related memory bias is contradictory. We compiled 171 articles published until October 2016 including a group with clinical or subclinical anxiety and a control group in tasks involving implicit or explicit memory using threatening stimuli. There was an anxiety-related memory bias in free recall tasks, but it was not observed in another memory task. The between-groups differences showed that the anxious group recalled more threatening stimuli than the control group (d?=?0.321). When we compared the group differences (anxious vs. control participants) in the within-groups effect (threatening vs. neutral stimuli), a moderate effect size emerged (d_bw?=?0.714). This anxiety-related memory bias was observed with shallow processing, that is consistent with attentional biases related to anxiety. There was also evidence that high-anxious persons recall fewer positive stimuli. Future research is needed to investigate whether this result is a memory or encoding bias and explore other moderator variables.     

Cognitive and emotional covariates of violence exposure among former prisoners: links to antisocial behavior and emotional distress and implications for theory

In this study, formerly incarcerated men (N = 123) were assessed for their experiences with violence in the community as well as their current behavioral and mental health status (antisocial behavior and emotional distress). Participants also completed measures of two constructs theorized to moderate relations between exposure to violence and outcomes: cognitive beliefs supporting aggressive responding and negative emotional reactivity to witnessed violence. Data on key social-demographic background factors affecting outcomes were also collected. Analyses showed that, after controlling the effects of background factors, relationships between experiences with violence in the community and behavioral/mental health were moderated by cognitive beliefs and emotional reactivity. At high levels of support for aggressive responding, significant positive links were observed between exposure to violence and antisocial behavior as well as emotional distress. At high levels of negative reactivity to violence, a significant positive link was observed between exposure to violence and emotional distress (but not antisocial behavior). Findings are discussed with respect to research and theory on the effects of exposure to violence in high-risk adult populations.     

Effects of fimbria lesions on trace two-way active avoidance acquisition and retention in rats

The fimbria-fornix (FF) is the main subcortical input to the hippocampus. It has been shown that FF lesions facilitate performance on a standard-delay two-way active avoidance task (AA2), thought to involve implicit memory. The hippocampal region is required for explicit or relational memory. It has been proposed that the hippocampus and related structures might associate events that are separated in space or time and detect elements shared in common by such discontiguous episodes. Therefore, FF lesions would be expected to impair performance on a trace paradigm, which introduces an interval between the CS (conditioned stimulus) and the US (unconditioned stimulus) and is generally considered a model of explicit memory. We predicted that FF lesions would impair memory in a trace AA2 procedure, while the same lesions would facilitate memory in a standard delay version of the task. To test this hypothesis, two experiments were carried out in 102 male Wistar rats. The first experiment characterized the trace paradigm using this kind of conditioning and demonstrated that control rats were able to acquire and retrieve (24 h and 11 days postacquisition) the association between the CS (tone) and the US (electric foot shock) when a trace interval (5, 10, or 20 s) was interposed between both stimuli. In the second experiment, we investigated the effects of FF electrolytic lesions on the same task using delay and trace (10-s trace interval) paradigms. Surprisingly, FF lesions facilitated the acquisition and the 24-h retention of the AA2 not only on the standard delay paradigm, but also with the trace paradigm. We suggest that facilitative effects could be a result of impairment in contextual learning.     

Single-band amplitude demodulation of Müller-Lyer illusion images

The perception of the Müller-Lyer illusion has previously been explained as a result of visual low band-pass spatial filtering, although, in fact, the illusion persists in band-pass and high-pass filtered images without visible low-spatial frequencies. A new theoretical framework suggests that our perceptual experience about the global spatial structure of an image corresponds to the amplitude modulation (AM) component (or its magnitude, also called envelope) of its AM-FM (alternatively, AM-PM) decomposition. Because demodulation is an ill-posed problem with a non-unique solution, two different AM-FM demodulation algorithms were applied here to estimate the envelope of images of Müller-Lyer illusion: the global and exact Daugman and Downing (1995) AMPM algorithm and the local and quasi-invertible Maragos and Bovik (1995) DESA. The images used in our analysis include the classic configuration of illusion in a variety of spatial and spatial frequency content conditions. In all cases, including those of images for which visual low-pass spatial filtering would be ineffective, the envelope estimated by single-band amplitude demodulation has physical distortions in the direction of perceived illusion. It is not plausible that either algorithm could be implemented by the human visual system. It is shown that the proposed second order visual model of pre-attentive segregation of textures (or "back-pocket" model) could recover the image envelope and, thus, explain the perception of this illusion even in Müller-Lyer images lacking low spatial frequencies.     

Underlying dimensions of ecocentric and anthropocentric environmental beliefs

This study focuses on the cognitive components of general environmental attitudes. Taking as a starting point the scale of Thompson and Barton (1994) to identify ecocentric and anthropocentric motives in environmental conservation, the beliefs that guide attitudes in the person-environment relationship are analyzed. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to contrast the tripartite structure of these beliefs--based on egoistic, socioaltruistic, and biospheric aspects-with a two-dimensional structure that confronts ecocentric and anthropocentric orientations. The results obtained from two samples, a student sample (n = 212) and a sample from the general population of Madrid (n = 205), indicate the existence of a three-dimensional structure of environmental beliefs: an anthropocentric dimension based on the instrumental value of the environment for human beings, a biospheric dimension that values the environment for its own sake, and, lastly, an egobiocentric dimension that values the human being within nature as a whole.