The twofold face of fatalism: collectivist fatalism and individualist fatalism

Fatalism has been a central framework for understanding the psychological processes in cultures with pronounced collectivism that are economically poorly developed. In this context, fatalism emerges as cognitive schema defined by passive and submissive acceptance of an irremediable destiny, governed by some natural force or the will of some God. This image has now lost such a clear profile. But currently, fatalism also accompanies the life of people from individualist cultures, who live in a highly developed, or even opulent, economic context. In this case, fatalism is like some mood of uncertainty, insecurity, and helplessness following the events that characterize the society of global risk. In this paper, we propose a theory to develop the two faces of fatalism.     

Multimodal intervention program to improve attention deficits

Is it possible to learn to attend? The purpose of this article is to provide information about the development, administration, and contrast of an intervention program to improve selective and sustained attention in students from 5 to 19 years of age, all attending school, and with difficulties to learn the academic materials corresponding to their age. Two groups participated in the study: one with difficulties in selective attention and the other with difficulties in sustained attention. The group with selective attention difficulties was made up of 102 students, of whom 59 made up the experimental group and 43 the control group. The group of students with difficulties in sustained attention was made up of 106 students, of whom 58 participated as the experimental group and 48 as the control group. The results indicate that this kind of intervention (which combines visual therapy, cortical activation, and training with activity banks) is effective to improve attentional deficits, both at the level of selective attention and of sustained attention.     

Depression and the complete state model of health

Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In order to specify the contents of this positive state, the Complete State Model of Health (CSMH) considers mental health as a series of symptoms of hedonia and positive functioning, operationalized by measures of subjective, psychological, and social well-being. This model has empirically confirmed two new axioms: (a) rather than forming a single bipolar dimension, health and illness are correlated unipolar dimensions, and (b) the presence of mental health implies positive personal and social functioning. In the present article, we have taken the CSMH as the theoretical framework for the study of depression. Confirmatory factor analyses did not support the first axiom. In fact, the model that posits that measures of mental illness and health form a single bipolar dimension provided the best fit to the data.     

Influence of the recording interval and a graphic organizer on the writing process/product and on other psychological variables

An experimental study of the influence of the recording interval and a graphic organizer on the processes of writing composition and on the final product is presented. We studied 326 participants, age 10 to 16 years old, by means of a nested design. Two groups were compared: one group was aided in the writing process with a graphic organizer and the other was not. Each group was subdivided into two further groups: one with a mean recording interval of 45 seconds and the other with approximately 90 seconds recording interval in a writing log. The results showed that the group aided by a graphic organizer obtained better results both in processes and writing product, and that the groups assessed with an average interval of 45 seconds obtained worse results. Implications for educational practice are discussed, and limitations and future perspectives are commented on.     

Evaluation of communicative and linguistic development using the Spanish version of the MacArthur-Bates inventories

The MacArthur-Bates Inventories are a valid and reliable method for assessing communicative and linguistic skills in infants (8-15 months) and young children (16-30 months), and have been adapted to many languages. This paper presents their adaptation to Spanish. Structure, innovations included in the Spanish version, and the standardisation process are described, and some results obtained from the analysis of a sample of 1150 children are presented. The advantages and limitations of the use of parental report inventories are highlighted. For children before three years of age, there are very few assessment tools of language and communicative development with sufficient guarantees produced and edited in Spain. The Spanish version of the MacArthur-Bates Inventories represents an important contribution for early identification of language delays or disorders, and for follow-up of these cases.     

IQ heritability estimation: analyzing genetically-informative data with structural equation models

When analyzing genetic data, Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) provides a straightforward methodology to decompose phenotypic variance using a model-based approach. Furthermore, several models can be easily implemented, tested, and compared using SEM, allowing the researcher to obtain valuable information about the sources of variability. This methodology is briefly described and applied to re-analyze a Spanish set of IQ data using the biometric ACE model. In summary, we report heritability estimates that are consistent with those of previous studies and support substantial genetic contribution to phenotypic IQ; around 40% of the variance can be attributable to it. With regard to the environmental contribution, shared environment accounts for 50% of the variance, and non-shared environment accounts for the remaining 10%. These results are discussed in the text.     

Psychometric evaluation of the Brazelton Scale in a sample of Spanish newborns

This study analyses the data obtained from a sample of 220 healthy full-term neonates evaluated with the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, NBAS, 3rd edition. Standard scores were obtained for each of the 35 behavioral items and analysis of the main components of all the clusters was performed. Similarly to the original scale, the five following factors were obtained: Autonomic and Motor Systems, Habituation, State Organization, State Regulation, and Social Interactive. The analysis of the reliability of these groupings reveals that it is between moderate and high (the average Cronbach's alpha coefficient was .78).     

Effect of incentives on retention in an outpatient treatment for cocaine addicts

The high drop-out rate in treatment programs is one of the most important problems in the area of drug addictions. This study evaluated the effect of the use of incentives on retention in an outpatient program for cocaine addicts. The effect of individual variables on program drop-out was also analysed. Participants were 66 subjects who were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: standard treatment, treatment with incentives I, and treatment with incentives II. The patients of these two groups received incentives contingent on cocaine abstinence with two different magnitudes. Retention rate at six months was 35% in the standard treatment, 78.6% in the treatment with incentives I, and 53.3% in the treatment with incentives II. The global prognostic capacity of the individual variables (sociodemographic, history and consumption pattern, psychopathological variables, and EuropASI scores) was 85.7%, with the psychopathological variables being more closely related to retention. These results suggest that the use of incentives may be an effective strategy to improve retention in outpatient treatments for cocaine addiction.     

Relationship between burnout, job strain, and sleep characteristics

The purpose of the present study is to analyse the relationship between sleep, burnout, and job strain in a sample of 316 healthy workers from various professional sectors. Multiple significant correlations between the principal sleep parameters, the dimensions of burnout, and job strain were found. The regression analyses show that sleep quality and various dimensions of job strain are significant predictors of several aspects of burnout. Sleep quality explains an even higher percentage of the variance in emotional exhaustion than the variance explained by more well-known variables such as job demands. Moreover, sleep quality interacts with aspects of job strain in its influence on the dimensions of burnout, although the exact relationship between these variables needs to be investigated in future longitudinal studies. Our results suggest that interventions to optimise sleep habits could prevent or alleviate burnout and could be a part of organisational work.     

Seven psychosocial principles to explain terrorism

Research approaches leading to the understanding of the terrorist phenomenon are suggested. Seven principles explaining terrorism are analysed from a psychosocial approach: They could complete the explanations of terrorism focused in socio-structural and psychological variables, the latter being insufficient and often erroneous. Thus, terrorism is presented as a strategy of political influence, and the psychological attributes of terrorists are explained as the result of several influential social processes. We considered that terrorist attacks and campaigns correspond to strategic reasons, but we also assume that the rationality of the terrorists perspective is limited. As far as the organisational parameters are concerned, we propose an analogy with ordinary social movements, especially relating to their ideological frameworks of legitimisation and resource mobilization processes.