Eye movement assessment of emotional processing in anxiety

Eye fixations of participants high or low in trait anxiety were monitored during reading of context sentences predicting threatening or nonthreat events, followed by sentences in which a target word represented the predictable event or an inconsistent event. No effects were found on the target word but on the regions following it. When this word represented a threatening event suggested by the context, high anxiety facilitated reading of the posttarget region. When the target word was inconsistent with a threatening event, high anxiety was associated with interference in the final region. No such effects occurred with nonthreat sentences. This reveals selective prediction of threat in high anxiety. However, rather than being automatic, this bias involves elaboration that takes time to develop.     

Short Form of the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents among community and institutionalized Portuguese youths

Background/Objective: Social anxiety is a common issue arising in adolescence that can cause significant impairment and have detrimental consequences for development in the absence of treatment. In this study we examined the factor structure and the psychometric properties of a 12-item short form of the Portuguese-Language Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A-SF). Method: A community adolescent sample (N = 835) and a young offender sample (N = 244) completed the SAS-A, the Basic Empathy Scale and the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency, cross gender and cross sample invariance, convergent and discriminant validity of the SAS-A-SF were analyzed. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the 3-factor second-order model obtained the best fit.The results provided evidence that the SAS-A-SF is a psychometrically sound instrument that shows measurement invariance across genders and across samples, good reliability and positive correlations with empathy. Conclusions: The Portuguese version of SAS-A-SF is a useful, time-efficient tool for both researchers and practitioners who need to assess social anxiety, a relevant construct in adolescent psychopathology.     

Centrality ratings,forensic relevance,and production frequency: Which one best identifies central and peripheral items?

Production frequency has often been used to identify central and peripheral information, under the assumption that high frequency implies that the item is central. However, no research to date has tested the relationship between centrality and frequency. Participants watched a video of a bank robbery and completed a free recall test, from which frequency for recalled items was computed. Two groups then watched the same video and rated centrality and forensic relevance for each item. Results showed that most, but not all, items with high frequency were rated as central and forensically relevant but that low frequency items were not diagnostic of either item centrality or forensic relevance. Forensic relevance was a better indicator of item centrality than frequency. We concluded that frequency measures should be avoided to determine centrality. Also, if centrality ratings cannot be collected, forensic relevance ratings may be more appropriate for this purpose.     

Application of the dual-component model of working memory to ADHD:Greater secondary memory deficit despite confounded cognitive differences

The dual-component model postulates that working memory capacity consists of two dissociable components: maintenance in primary memory (PM) and retrieval from secondary memory (SM). Recent application of this model to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has revealed that the SM component is more deficient than the PM component across both verbal and spatial modalities. The present study attempts to strengthen this conclusion by addressing two weaknesses in the previous study. First, the present study shows that the SM component continues to be more deficient than the PM component across both modalities under conditions in which (1) all participants were instructed to use the same recall strategy (resulting in the exclusion of fewer participants); and, (2) individual differences in this strategy were controlled. Second, the present study also documents a group difference in word reading efficiency that is confounded with diagnostic status and that might have influenced estimates of PM and SM capacities in the verbal modality. However, although the SM component is more deficient than the PM component in the ADHD group, the magnitude of this interaction does not vary as a function task modality. These findings are interpreted to suggest that the pattern of WM deficiencies observed are part of a causal pathway that can lead to the symptoms of ADHD, as well as to impairments in reading (and intelligence) due to overlapping cue-dependent retrieval mechanisms. These findings provide additional support for the notion that the SM component of WM is an important and neglected target for treatment.     

Aggression,anger and hostility: Evaluation of moral disengagement as a mediational process

This study examines how the mechanisms underlying moral disengagement serve as a mediator between anger and hostility and physical and verbal aggression. The study was carried out on 424 participants (61.1% females), aged 15 to 25 years, assessing the direct and indirect effects of the distinct variables using a hierarchical multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that anger and hostility contribute independently and positively to physical and verbal aggression. Moreover, the relationships between anger, hostility, and aggression appear to be mediated by moral disengagement. Indeed, this process of mediation was invariant across sexes, and it tended to be stronger for physical – as opposed to verbal – aggression.     

The development of the first symbolic uses in Mexican children from the pragmatics of object / Desarrollo de los primeros usos simbólicos en niños mexicanos desde la pragmática del objeto

This paper longitudinally studies the emergence and evolution of the first symbolic uses of objects in Mexican children. We observed eight children in triadic interaction with one of their parents and 10 objects in a semi-structured situation at nine, 12, 15 and 18 months old. The children began to use objects symbolically at 12 months, and the duration and frequency increased with age. The highest percentage of the total frequency of symbolic uses, of the four levels identified, was level 1. The frequency of level 4, where two or more symbolic actions occur one after the other, giving rise to ‘symbolic narratives’, increased according to age. These data confirm that knowledge of the rules of canonical uses of objects are the meanings which first symbols base themselves on and that children use the symbolic uses that they are aware of to create ‘symbolic narratives’.     

Personality Traits and Plagiarism: an Empirical Study with Portuguese Undergraduate Students

Academic dishonesty is a major problem and is thus a highly relevant area of inquiry. Considerable research has shown that key traits from the Big Five model of personality are associated with various forms of anti-social behaviour. To date, however, relatively little research interest has been devoted to study the relationship between personality traits and plagiarism. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and the inclination to commit plagiarism by undergraduate students. The main conclusion is that the inclination to plagiarize is negatively associated with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness traits. Neuroticism was not found to be related to the inclination to plagiarize. Implications of the findings are discussed.