Rorschach Comprehensive System data for a sample of 409 adult nonpatients from Brazil

This is a normative study with 409 adult nonpatients living in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Rorschach was administered by a team of nine psychologists; eight had had further training in the Rorschach method by the Brazilian Rorschach Society and one intensively was prepared by the project coordinator. Of the study participants, 200 lived in the state capital (Sao Paulo) and the other 209 were in other large and small cities in the state, including a coastal city and one in the mountains. Previous psychological or psychiatric treatments were criteria for exclusion. Each protocol was coded independently by two examiners, and then agreement of the two codings was checked. Differences between the two codings were discussed in a meeting of the whole team, which was supervised by the project coordinator to guarantee codification quality control. Upon completion of the codings, an analysis of examiner differences was undertaken, the results of which are in the text. Interrater reliability statistics among examiners were calculated, including percentage of agreement and kappa. Reliability statistics among examiners at the response level are presented as are Comprehensive System (CS; 1999, 2003) findings.     

Construction and validation of a multidimensional model of students' adjustment to college context

This article presents a model of interaction of personal and contextual variables in the prediction of academic performance and psychosocial development of Portuguese college students. The sample consists of 560 first-year college students of the University of Minho. The path analysis results suggest that initial expectations of the students' involvement in academic life constituted an effective predictor of their involvement during their first year; as well as the social climate of the classroom influenced their involvement, well-being and levels of satisfaction obtained. However, these relationships were not strong enough to influence the criterion variables integrated in the model (academic performance and psychosocial development). Academic performance was predicted by the high school grades and college entrance examination scores, and the level of psychosocial development was determined by the level of development showed at the time they entered college. Though more research is needed, these results point to the importance of students' pre-college characteristics when we are considering the quality of their college adjustment process.     

Effect of scene complexity on colour constancy with real three-dimensional scenes and objects

The effect of scene complexity on colour constancy was tested with a novel technique in which a virtual image of a real 3-D test object was projected into a real 3-D scene. Observers made discriminations between illuminant and material changes in simple and complex scenes. The extent of colour constancy achieved varied little with either scene structure or test-object colour, suggesting a dominant role of local cues in determining surface-colour judgments.     

Sentence comprehension and production in children with cochlear implants: Errorless procedures and equivalence-based instruction

Research supports equivalence-based instruction (EBI) and matrix training for increased listening and speaking skills in children with cochlear implants (CI). We incorporated errorless procedures to optimize the EBI and evaluated the effects on the auditory comprehension and verbal responding at-sentences level in six CI children who were readers and showed inaccurate tacting. Subject-verb-object sentences were arranged in two matrices; diagonal combinations were trained and evaluated non-diagonal combinations. EBI included stimulus fading and exclusion to directly teach the dictated sentence-picture matching; written-sentences construction upon dictation also was taught. Probes assessed the derived stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response relations. All participants learned the auditory-visual discriminations and the exclusion resulted in fewer errors than on a stimulus fading procedure. Five participants formed equivalence classes and increased verbal responding to equivalent stimuli, especially pictures tacting. They also showed recombinative generalization for both matrices. Professionals can incorporate errorless procedures to EBI for improving sentence comprehension, tacting, and productivity in CI children.     

A model to study orienting responses in zebrafish,and applications towards the emotion–cognition interaction

Animal Cognition - Orienting responses (ORs) are whole-organism reflexes that are elicited by innocuous stimuli, and which decrease in magnitude after stimulus repetition. ORs represent relatively...     

Major life events and major chronic difficulties are differentially associated with history of major depressive episodes

Major life events have been found to precede onsets of a 1st lifetime episode of depression more commonly than subsequent recurrences. Despite general empirical support for this finding, few data directly address how the role of major life events may change over successive recurrences. Further, little research has examined major chronic difficulties in relation to a 1st lifetime episode versus a recurrence of depression. The present study tested the associations between major life events and major difficulties in relation to lifetime history of depressive episodes in a sample of 96 individuals diagnosed with major depression. Using investigator-based measures of life stress, the authors found that, whereas major life events were associated with fewer lifetime episodes, major chronic difficulties were related to more prior episodes. These findings are discussed in terms of underlying mechanisms that may account for the changing role of major life stress over successive recurrences of depression.     

Test development and use in five Iberian Latin American countries

The abundance of scholarship on test development and use generally is higher in English‐speaking than in Iberian Latin American countries. The purpose of this article is to help overcome this imbalance by describing and identifying similarities and differences in test development and use in two Iberian (Portugal and Spain) and three of the largest Latin American (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela) countries. The stages of test development in each country, roles of professional associations, presence of standards for test use, professionals' educational training, commonly used tests, together with prominent challenges to continued progress are discussed. Test development and use in these five countries are transitioning from a dependence on the use of translated tests to greater reliance on adapted and finally nationally constructed tests. Continued growth requires adherence to international standards guiding test development and use. Stronger alliance among professional associations in the Iberian Latin American countries could serve as a catalyst to promote test development in these regions.     

Solidification thermal parameters,microstructural evolution and dendritic growth in an AlCuNi alloy

ABSTRACT

Unsteady-state upward solidification experiment was carried out with the Al-3Cu-3Ni (wt.%) alloy. Temperature profiles were obtained through a water-cooled directional solidification device. Analysis on the resulting as-cast microstructure and its adaptation to thermal solidification parameter, such as growth and cooling rates and solidification local time, V_L, T_R and t_SL, respectively, was carried out. The results showed that the resulting microstructure is constituted by an Al-rich primary phase (Al _α ), characterised by a dendritic network, and by second phases that take place within the interdendritic regions, forming a eutectic mixture composed by the β-Al₃Ni?+?θ-Al₂Cu intermetallic compounds (IMCs), whose size and morphology have been affected by V_L and T_R. The length of the microstructural scale of the Al _α phase was measured by the secondary dendritic spacing (λ ₂). The experimental mathematical expression of λ ₂ obtained in this work was compared with mathematical models proposed in the literature that associate t_SL-λ ₂ for non-equilibrium and equilibrium solidification conditions.     

Information limits on identification of natural surfaces by apparent colour

By adaptational and other mechanisms, the visual system can compensate for moderate changes in the colour of the illumination on a scene. Although the colours of most surfaces are perceived to be constant ('colour constancy'), some are not. The effect of these residual colour changes on the ability of observers to identify surfaces by their apparent colour was determined theoretically from high-resolution hyperspectral images of natural scenes under different daylights with correlated colour temperatures 4,300 K, 6,500 K, and 25,000 K. Perceived differences between colours were estimated with an approximately uniform colour-distance measure. The information preserved under illuminant changes increased with the number of surfaces in the sample, but was limited to a relatively low asymptotic value, indicating the importance of physical factors in constraining identification by apparent colour.     

Relative age effect in Olympic Taekwondo athletes

Relative age effects refer to the effects of age differences among individuals who have been grouped together for a performance activity. This study aimed to investigate the relative age effect on Olympic Taekwondo athletes, in several Olympic Games, and in both sexes. The study sample consisted of 291 athletes who had competed in Atlanta, Sydney, and Beijing Olympic Games. The relative age effect was examined for the general distribution of athletes by quartile, for each of the individuals, and for male and female athletes. There were no discernable effects of relative age on Olympic Taekwondo athletes.