La Diversité Montréalaise à l’Épreuve de la Ségrégation : Pluralisme et Insertion Résidentielle des Immigrants

Residential segregation is becoming a complex phenomenon in a great number of cities, in which case, it becomes important to use methodological approaches that allow us to take this complexity into account. This article presents a case study of the Montreal situation using a method describing segregation along five dimensions identified by Massey and Denton (Social Forces 67:281–315, 1988): equality, concentration, aggregation, exposition and centralisation, as well as a set of fifteen segregation indices, and seven variables describing the immigrant population. Results indicate that Montreal, in 2001, appeared as a multicultural city characterized by a plurality of immigration patterns of urban insertion.     

Intentional action arises from early reciprocal exchanges

Intentionality is defined as the cognitive ability to represent goals beyond the here and now of perception. First signs of intentionality appear by the second month after birth. A major mechanism responsible for such development might be the unique reciprocal and intentional ways humans communicate with each other, particularly their young progenies. I argue that starting in the second month, reciprocal exchanges, affective mirroring, and mutual imitations with others provide infants with the unique opportunity to differentiate as well as to compare and conjugate first (self) and third (others') person perspectives. This ability is a prerequisite not only for referential communication but also of intentionality. It corresponds to the emergence of a new contemplative and "meta" stance toward the world. An argument is made that the developmental origins of this stance are primarily social, not to be found in the individual infant interacting solely with physical objects.     

From strengths use to work performance: The role of harmonious passion,subjective vitality,and concentration

Research has shown that strengths use and development can foster individual performance and well-being at work. However, to date little is known about the underlying psychological processes that might be operating in this relation. The purpose of this study was first to confirm the strengths use to work performance association and, second, to assess theoretical models of strengths use by testing a path model from strengths use to work performance, through harmonious passion, subjective vitality, and concentration. This study was conducted on a sample of 404 French-speaking Canadian workers and structural equation modeling analyses were performed in order to test the proposed model. Results show an association between strengths use and work performance. Further, this relation is completely mediated by the proposed variables. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

How self‐compassion moderates the effect of body surveillance on subjective happiness and depression among women

According to objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), being treated as an object leads women to engage in self‐objectification, which in turn increases body surveillance and body shame as well as impairs mental health. However, very little is known about what factors could act as buffers against the detrimental consequences of self‐objectification. This paper seeks to understand the role of self‐compassion (the ability to kindly accept oneself or show self‐directed kindness while suffering) in the perception that women have of their own bodies. Results indicate that self‐compassion moderated the effect of body surveillance on depression and happiness separately among women. More specifically, for women low in self‐compassion, body surveillance was negatively associated with happiness, which was explained by increased depression. In sum, our results indicate that self‐compassion protects against the detrimental consequences of body surveillance.     

Exploring the dynamics of design fluency in children with and without ADHD using artificial neural networks

The neuropsychology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been extensively studied, with a general focus on global performance measures of executive function. In this study, we compared how global (i.e., endpoint) versus process (i.e., dynamic) measures of performance may help characterize children with and without ADHD using a design fluency task as a case study. The secondary goal was to compare the sensitivity of standard versus connectionist statistical models to group differences in cognitive data. Thirty-four children diagnosed with ADHD and 37 children without ADHD aged 8–11 years old were tested on the Five-Point Test. The continuous process measure of performance, indexed as the number of produced designs at each consecutive 1 minute interval during 5 minutes, was analyzed against the discrete process measure, that is, the number of designs between first and last intervals and the standard global performance measure of total number of produced designs. Results show that the continuous process measure distinguished the two groups better than the two other measures. The detailed observation of production patterns revealed a decreasing linear trajectory in children without ADHD that contrasts with the flat, but fluctuating productivity pattern of children with ADHD. With regards to the second goal, results show that the connectionist and standard methods are equally sensitive to group differences for the three types of measures. This illustrates the utility of quantitative process measures together with the connectionist method in neuropsychological research and suggests great potential for a dynamical approach to cognition.     

Back to the basics: Rethinking partial correlation network methodology

The Gaussian graphical model (GGM) is an increasingly popular technique used in psychology to characterize relationships among observed variables. These relationships are represented as elements in the precision matrix. Standardizing the precision matrix and reversing the sign yields corresponding partial correlations that imply pairwise dependencies in which the effects of all other variables have been controlled for. The graphical lasso (glasso) has emerged as the default estimation method, which uses ℓ₁-based regularization. The glasso was developed and optimized for high-dimensional settings where the number of variables (p) exceeds the number of observations (n), which is uncommon in psychological applications. Here we propose to go ‘back to the basics’, wherein the precision matrix is first estimated with non-regularized maximum likelihood and then Fisher Z transformed confidence intervals are used to determine non-zero relationships. We first show the exact correspondence between the confidence level and specificity, which is due to 1 minus specificity denoting the false positive rate (i.e., α). With simulations in low-dimensional settings (p ≪ n), we then demonstrate superior performance compared to the glasso for detecting the non-zero effects. Further, our results indicate that the glasso is inconsistent for the purpose of model selection and does not control the false discovery rate, whereas the proposed method converges on the true model and directly controls error rates. We end by discussing implications for estimating GGMs in psychology.     

Reversible Verbal Memory Integration Deficits in Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

When presented with novel but semantically related elements after learning verbal material, healthy participants tend to endorse these items as previously learned. This reflects the normal integration and association of novel verbal information into long-term memory. How obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) negatively impacts verbal memory performance, and whether deficits are reversible following positive airway pressure (PAP) treatment, remain elusive. We investigated immediate and delayed OSA- and PAP treatment-related effects on verbal memory integration, using a false memory paradigm. Twenty-three patients with OSA learned lists of words semantically related to target non-presented words (1) at baseline after a polysomnography diagnosis night, (2) after a consecutive polysomnography night under PAP titration, and (3) after three months of compliant PAP treatment. At each session, participants learned 10 different lists of words, each list comprising 15 semantically related items. They had then to recognize 15 minutes later (after an intermediate vigilance task) previously learned words within a list including studied words (learned), unstudied but semantically related items (lures), and non-related unstudied items (controls). Sleep quality and fatigue questionnaires, and psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT) were administered at each session. PAP treatment led to OSA remission and improvement in objective and subjective sleep quality. Crucially, recognition of learned and lure words increased after the first night under treatment and remained stable three months later, suggesting successful memory integration and restoration of semantic processes. No treatment-related outcome was found on PVT performance. OSA exerts a detrimental but PAP-reversible effect on verbal learning and semantic memory integration mechanisms underlying the acquisition of novel memory representations.     

Humiliated fury is not universal: the co-occurrence of anger and shame in the United States and Japan

It has been widely believed that individuals transform high-intensity shame into anger because shame is unbearably painful. This phenomenon was first coined “humiliated fury,” and it has since received empirical support. The current research tests the novel hypothesis that shame-related anger is not universal, yet hinges on the cultural meanings of anger and shame. Two studies compared the occurrence of shame-related anger in North American cultural contexts (where shame is devalued and anger is valued) to its occurrence in Japanese contexts (where shame is valued and anger is devalued). In a daily-diary study, participants rated anger and shame feelings during shame situations that occurred over one week. In a vignette study, participants rated anger and shame in response to standardised shame vignettes that were generated in previous research by either U.S. or Japanese respondents. Across the two studies, and in line with previous research on humiliated fury, shame predicted anger for U.S. participants. Yet, neither in the daily diary study nor for the Japanese-origin vignettes, did we find shame-related anger in Japanese participants. Only when presented with U.S.-origin vignettes, did Japanese respondents in the vignette study report shame-related anger. The findings suggest that shame-related anger is a culture-specific phenomenon.