New students' psychological well‐being and its relation to first year academic performance in a UK university

Aims: This study (1) profiled the well‐being of first year students entering one UK university, and (2) explored whether initial well‐being and year end academic performance were correlated. Method: A total of 117 students (mean age 21, 67% female) completed the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale, Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation‐General Population, and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale; academic achievement data were collected from academic records. Results: Almost a quarter of the sample reported quasi‐clinical levels of psychological distress and moderate to very severe social anxiety. Quasi‐clinical levels of psychological distress were associated with low self‐esteem and social anxiety. No statistically significant links were found between well‐being as assessed at the beginning of the first year and academic achievement at the end of the first year. Discussion: The failure to find a link in this study between initial well‐being and academic performance at the end of the first year suggests that further investigation is required to understand how academic achievement is related to student well‐being.     

Prevalence and associated factors with body image dissatisfaction among adults in southern Brazil: A population-based study

We investigated the prevalence of body image dissatisfaction (BID) and associated factors in Florianopolis, Brazil. BID was analyzed in a sample (N = 1720) of adults through the Figure Rating Scale. The independent variables were sociodemographic factors, health behaviors, and morbidities. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was used. More men (14.2%) than women (6.1%) presented BID by being lighter than ideal (LI). Conversely, more women (66.6%) than men (46.3%) showed BID by being heavier than ideal (HI). BID by being HI was higher among older women, those with high BMI and those with a partner. In men, lower BMI and the presence of common mental disorders were associated with BID due to being LI. Advanced ages, alcohol abuse, physical inactivity, and obesity were associated with BID due to being HI. We must consider different public health interventions for men and women to reduce BID in Brazilian adults.     

Salivary Cortisol as a Biomarker in Social Science Research

Cortisol, a neuroendocrine hormone measurable in saliva, responds to internal and external triggers. In providing a peripheral ‘window on the brain’, it has been increasingly incorporated into social psychological studies. Cortisol secretion can be studied in two main ways, examination of acute stress reactivity and examination of the basal circadian patterns. These can inform aspects of acute and chronic stress exposure and relationships with health. Within non‐clinical populations, cortisol effects are largely driven by differences in the perception of threat. For social psychologists, this provides an interesting avenue for the investigation of social factors that mediate perceptions of threat, such as social support, relationship processes, and group dynamics in acute and chronic stress. This paper provides a background to understanding the regulation and function of cortisol, and issues arising in relation to its measurement in saliva. It discusses and makes recommendations on the use of appropriate cortisol measures in the study of both acute and chronic stress. Used and interpreted appropriately, stress reactivity and basal ambulatory measures of salivary cortisol can provide a valuable adjunct to self‐report and observation in social psychological research. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

One-dimensional and multi-dimensional studies of the exocentric distance estimates in frontoparallel plane, virtual space, and outdoor open field

The aim of this study is twofold: on the one hand, to determine how visual space, as assessed by exocentric distance estimates, is related to physical space. On the other hand, to determine the structure of visual space as assessed by exocentric distance estimates. Visual space was measured in three environments: (a) points located in a 2-D frontoparallel plane, covering a range of distances of 20 cm; (b) stakes placed in a 3-D virtual space (range = 330 mm); and (c) stakes in a 3-D outdoors open field (range = 45 m). Observers made matching judgments of distances between all possible pairs of stimuli, obtained from 16 stimuli (in a regular squared 4 x 4 matrix). Two parameters from Stevens' power law informed us about the distortion of visual space: its exponent and its coefficient of determination (R2). The results showed a ranking of the magnitude of the distortions found in each experimental environment, and also provided information about the efficacy of available visual cues of spatial layout. Furthermore, our data are in agreement with previous findings showing systematic perceptual errors, such as the further the stimuli, the larger the distortion of the area subtended by perceived distances between stimuli. Additionally, we measured the magnitude of distortion of visual space relative to physical space by a parameter of multidimensional scaling analyses, the RMSE. From these results, the magnitude of such distortions can be ranked, and the utility or efficacy of the available visual cues informing about the space layout can also be inferred.     

Distance perception in a natural outdoor setting: is there a developmental trend to overconstancy?

The main purpose of the present study was to investigate whether in natural environment, using very large physical distances, there is a trend to overconstancy for distance estimates during development. One hundred and twenty-nine children aged 5 to 13 years old and twenty-one adults (in a control group), participated as observers. The observer's task was to bisect egocentric distances, ranging from 1.0 to 296.0 m, presented in a large open field. The analyses focused on two parameters, constant errors and variable errors, such as measuring accuracy and precision, respectively. A third analysis focused on the developmental pattern of shifts in constancy as a function of age and range of distances. Constant error analysis showed that there are two relevant parameters for accuracy, age, and range of distances. For short distances, there are three developmental stages: 5-7 years, when children have unstable responses, 7-11, underconstancy, and 13 to adulthood, when accuracy is reached. For large distances, there is a two-stage development: 5-11 years, with severe underconstancy, and beyond this age, with mild underconstancy. Variable errors analyses indicate that precision is noted for 7 year-old children, independently of the range of distances. The constancy analyses indicated that there is a shift from constancy (or slightly overconstancy) to underconstancy as a function of physical distance for all age groups. The age difference is noted in the magnitude of underconstancy that occurs in larger distances, where adults presented lower levels of underconstancy than children. The present data were interpreted as due to a developmental change in cognitive processing rather than to changes in visual space perception.     

Within-subject testing of the signaled-reinforcement effect on operant responding as measured by response rate and resistance to change

Response rates under random-interval schedules are lower when a brief (500 ms) signal accompanies reinforcement than when there is no signal. The present study examined this signaled-reinforcement effect and its relation to resistance to change. In Experiment 1, rats responded on a multiple random-interval 60-s random-interval 60-s schedule, with signaled reinforcement in only one component. Response resistance to alternative reinforcement, prefeeding, and extinction was compared between these components. Lower response rates, and greater resistance to change, occurred in the component with the reinforcement signal. In Experiment 2, response rates and resistance to change were compared after training on a multiple random-interval 60-s random-interval 60-s schedule in which reinforcer delivery was unsignaled in one component and a response-produced uncorrelated stimulus was presented in the other component. Higher response rates and greater resistance to change occurred with the uncorrelated stimulus. These results highlight the significance of considering the effects of an uncorrelated signal when used as a control condition, and challenge accounts of resistance to change that depend solely on reinforcer rate.     

Are students' perceptions of parental acceptance of academic dishonesty associated with its occurrence?

The study explored the association between the perceptions 175 Chilean business students held about their parents' acceptance of academic dishonesty and their self-reports of academic dishonesty. Regressing scores for parental acceptance onto self-reported academic dishonesty indicated it accounted for a small (2.2%) but significant amount of variance beyond demographic and academic performance variables. Effect size analysis based on structure coefficients indicated that parental acceptance was the second best predictor in the equation, suggesting that parental acceptance is a correlate that merits further study.     

Improving perception of letters and visual structure of language.

Information about letters and the physical structure of language printed in Roman characters was given to children beginning to read. Experimental investigations coupled three alternative graphic modes of printing upper- and lower-case letters with an instructional intervention termed "Alpha-Beta" which provides practice in letter sorting, matching of letters, associative matching, and memory matching. In respect to graphics, Mode A letters were in standard alphabet form. Mode B provided standard letters with each backed by a unique half-tone (Visually Stippled Alphabet); Mode C provided standard letters with each backed by a unique visual texture (Visually Patterned Alphabet). Pre-posttest change in reading readiness was measured using the Metropolitan Readiness Test. In the first study 224 English-speaking 5- to 6-yr.-old children were tested. In the second there were 158 Spanish-speaking girls and boys 6 to 7 years old. It was predicted that Alpha-Beta intervention involving visually patterned alphabet would lead to the greatest increases in readiness scores. This is confirmed in both studies for children low in reading readiness preexperiment. Children high in reading readiness are less affected. The second experiment involved Spanish-speaking children and investigated intervention by Alpha-Beta against a no-intervention control. This confirms the value of Alpha-Beta per se. Possible explanations for the improvements are identified.     

Psychometric appraisal of Eysenck's revised Psychoticism scale: a cross-cultural study

Psychometric characteristics of Eysenck's revised P scale were studied in a cross-cultural research. The Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) was administered to a Spanish sample of 527 males and 583 females. Maximum-likelihood factor analyses of the item intercorrelations and Direct Oblimin rotations of the extracted factors were carried out separately for males and females. The results revealed four factors identified as psychoticism (P), extraversion (E), neuroticism (N) and dissimulation/conformity (L). Internal consistency and test–retest reliability coefficients were satisfactory and very similar to the ones found in the original study. Skewness and kurtosis of the P scale distribution were closer to normal than on the original British revised P scale.