Death anxiety and death obsession in Spanish students

This study examined the dimensional structure of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and Abdel-Khalek's Death Obsession Scale. The responses of 289 Spanish students to the Spanish forms of both scales were evaluated by means of a principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Three significant factors were identified: Death Obsession, Cognitive-Affective, and Death Anxiety. The distribution of the factor loadings for the items of both scales on Factors 1 and 3 supported the discriminant validity of the constructs specific to each of the scales, while Factor 2 showed a common component in both scales characterized by cognitive and affective aspects in relation to the idea of death.     

Iberian rock lizards (Lacerta monticola) assess short-term changes in predation risk level when deciding refuge use

Prey might assess that risk level estimated in the first encounter with a predator was fixed in subsequent responses, whereas prey using flexible behavior would track short-term changes in risk. The authors examined, in the field, refuge use of Iberian rock lizards (Lacerta monticola) after simulated predator attacks and tested (a) how risk was assessed when multiple sources of risk were present simultaneously, (b) how short-term changes in risk level of successive attacks affected refuge use, and (c) whether the interval between attacks was important, insofar as attacks were considered to be coming from the same or different predators. Results suggest that lizards have a flexible estimate of risk that is based on multiple sources and flexibly dependent on previous estimates.     

Ethnicity, expressed emotion, attributions, and course of schizophrenia: family warmth matters

The authors examined the role of family factors and the course of schizophrenia by carrying out additional assessments and analyses in 2 previously published studies of Mexican American and Anglo American patients and families. The authors found partial support for an attributional model of relapse for families who are low in emotional overinvolvement. Attributions of control, criticism, and warmth together marginally predicted relapse. The data also indicated that for Mexican Americans, family warmth is a significant protective factor, whereas for Anglo Americans, family criticism is a significant risk factor. These findings suggest that the sociocultural context shapes the pathways by which family processes are related to the course of illness. Moreover, the warmth findings suggest that families may contribute to preventing relapse.     

Quality of life assessment in Turkish patients with schizophrenia and their relatives

Quality of life of first-degree relatives living in the same household with patients having schizophrenia has not been sufficiently explored. 30 patients with schizophrenia (16 women, 14 men), diagnosed using DSM-IV criteria, 31 of their relatives (15 women, 16 men), and 34 control subjects (21 women, 13 men) were included in the study. The mean age of the patients, their relatives, and the control subects were 39.8 +/- 10.9, 58.1 +/- 12.5 and 37.3 +/- 17.0, respectively. The World Health Oranization Quality of Life-Brief Form was administered to all subjects. Quality of life was worse for the patient group than for their relatives and control subjects, but relatives of the patients and control subjects were not significantly different on Quality of life. Quality of life was negatively correlated with the severity of psychopathology and extrapyramidal side effects induced by antipsychotic drugs in the patients.     

Psychological reactions in Icelandic earthquake survivors

The aim of this study was to explore the psychological consequences of two earthquakes in Iceland in two probability samples of subjects--residents in the exposed area and a control group from an unexposed area. The sample was composed of 52 adults exposed to the earthquakes and 29 adults in a control group. Three months after the earthquakes, both groups were approached with questions from a survey consisting of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC), the Coping Styles Questionnaire (CSQ), the World Assumption Scale (WAS), and the Crisis Support Scale (CSS). The results revealed that 24% in the exposed group had Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and none in the control group had PTSD. Earthquake-related anxiety, inability to express one's thoughts and feelings, and emotional coping predicted 81% of the HTQ variance for both groups. Previous life events, low self-worth, and luck attributions, together with numbing and the feeling of being let down, predicted 56% of the symptom variance for both groups. When degree of traumatization and emotional coping were added to the model, another 30% of the variance could be explained.     

Morphological family size in a morphologically rich language: the case of Finnish compared with Dutch and Hebrew

Finnish has a very productive morphology in which a stem can give rise to several thousand words. This study presents a visual lexical decision experiment addressing the processing consequences of the huge productivity of Finnish morphology. The authors observed that in Finnish words with larger morphological families elicited shorter response latencies. However, in contrast to Dutch and Hebrew, it is not the complete morphological family of a complex Finnish word that codetermines response latencies but only the subset of words directly derived from the complex word itself. Comparisons with parallel experiments using translation equivalents in Dutch and Hebrew showed substantial cross-language predictivity of family size between Finnish and Dutch but not between Finnish and Hebrew, reflecting the different ways in which the Hebrew and Finnish morphological systems contribute to the semantic organization of concepts in the mental lexicon.     

Influence of neighborhood size and exposure duration on visual-word recognition: evidence with the yes/no and the go/no-go lexical decision tasks

We present two experiments in which we measured lexical decision latencies and errors to words with few or many orthographic neighbors (ie., Coltheart's N). The main goal of the study was to examine whether or not the neighborhood size effect in a lexical decision task could be affected by the exposure duration of the stimulus item (unlimited vs. limited time exposure, 150 msec plus a backward mask) and the type of decision involved in the task (yes/no vs. go/no-go lexical decision tasks). In the yes/no task, the results showed a facilitative neighborhood size effect for low frequency that did not interact with exposure duration (Experiment 1). In contrast, in the go/no-go task (in this task, participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented), the neighborhood size effect for low-frequency words (and for nonwords) was greater under limited viewing time (Experiment 2). In addition, the word frequency effect was greater in the go/no-go task than in the yes/no task, replicating Hino and Lupker (1998, 2000). The results were interpreted in terms of the interaction of decision and lexical factors in visual-word recognition.     

Practice variability and transfer of training: the role of self-efficacy generality

Practice variability has been shown to enhance transfer of training. The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of self-efficacy generality as a motivational mechanism in explaining the relationship between practice variability and transfer. Undergraduate students (N = 82) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 training conditions (constant or variable) for a computer decision-making task. Measures of self-efficacy (intensity and generality) and transfer (near and far) were assessed. The results provided support for some of the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, practice variability led to increased self-efficacy generality. Both self-efficacy intensity and generality influenced far transfer performance, although only self-efficacy generality served as a mediator between practice variability and far transfer.     

The gendered nature of family structure and group-based anti-egalitarianism: a cross-national analysis

Using 4 samples of adolescents from 3 nations (Australia, Sweden, and the United States), the authors explored whether the gendered nature of the family socialization environment affected young people's level of group-based social egalitarianism. It was hypothesized that the greater the father's influence in the family, the greater the children's level of group-based social anti-egalitarianism. The results were consistent with the authors' expectations. Children from father-headed households had the highest level of group-based social anti-egalitarianism; children from mother-headed households had the lowest level of group-based anti-egalitarianism; and children from dual-parent households were in between. Similarly, children from homes in which the father had the greatest decision-making power tended to exhibit the highest levels of anti-egalitarianism, whereas children from homes in which the mother had the greatest decision-making power displayed the lowest levels of social anti-egalitarianism. Family structure did not interact with either the nationality or gender of the child.     

Development of a Spanish version of the Participation Motivation Inventory for young competitive swimmers

The present study examined the validity of a Spanish version of the Participation Motivation Inventory, modified for swimming by Gould, Feltz, and Weiss in 1985, and investigated whether young swimmers differing in sex and age vary in their objectives for participation. Swimmers (204 boys and 224 girls, ranging in age from 8 to 22 years) were administered the inventory. Factor analysis with varimax rotation identified seven factors fairly consistent with previous research. Differences were found across age and sex. Females placed greater emphasis than males on Friendship and Fun and indicated lower importance rating to Status. Younger children (8-10 years) rated Fun/Friendship, Competition/Skills, Significant Others, and Status significantly higher in importance than did the other age groups.