Relationships between work-related characteristics,needs satisfaction,motivation and mental health in midwifery students

The present study examined the relationships between work-related characteristics in internships, psychological needs satisfaction, motivation and mental health using a partial least squares path modeling. Midwifery students (N = 214; M_age = 22.8 years) from three French schools completed different questionnaires online. Results showed (1) the importance of work resources (work control and social support) as protective factors of psychological needs satisfaction; and (2) the role of competence need satisfaction through motivation in the relationships between work resources and mental health. Midwifery schools should pay more attention to these two results, and take them into account in midwifery students’ training.     

Using Automated Learning Devices for Monkeys (ALDM) to study social networks

Social network analysis has become a prominent tool to study animal social life, and there is an increasing need to develop new systems to collect social information automatically, systematically, and reliably. Here we explore the use of a freely accessible Automated Learning Device for Monkeys (ALDM) to collect such social information on a group of 22 captive baboons (Papio papio). We compared the social network obtained from the co-presence of the baboons in ten ALDM testing booths to the social network obtained through standard behavioral observation techniques. The results show that the co-presence network accurately reflects the social organization of the group, and also indicate under which conditions the co-presence network is most informative. In particular, the best correlation between the two networks was obtained with a minimum of 40 days of computer records and for individuals with at least 500 records per day. We also show through random permutation tests that the observed correlations go beyond what would be observed by simple synchronous activity, to reflect a preferential choice of closely located testing booths. The use of automatized cognitive testing therefore presents a new way of obtaining a large and regular amount of social information that is necessary to develop social network analysis. It also opens the possibility of studying dynamic changes in network structure with time and in relation to the cognitive performance of individuals.     

Group and individual stereotype threat and identity management strategies: An investigation of rugby women

The aim of this study was to test the gender identification effect on the stereotype threat (ST) experience felt, and whether the individual or group ST experience influenced the identity management strategies. Ninety‐six French rugby women were asked to imagine a training situation in which they practiced rugby in the presence of men. Results showed that the group identification did not affect Individual or Group ST and that the more women feel an individual ST the more they assess men's ability positively, and the less they assesses women's ability positively and that the more they feel a group ST the more they assess the ability of women positively. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Child-Oriented or Parent-Oriented Focused Intervention: Which is the Better Way to Decrease Children’s Externalizing Behaviors?

Research has tried to identify risk factors that increase the likelihood of difficulties with externalizing behavior. The relations between individual or environmental factors and externalizing behavior have been especially documented. Child-oriented and parent-oriented interventions have been designed in order to decrease externalizing behavior in preschoolers. To date, however, research has largely been compartmentalized. It is therefore not known whether child-oriented or parent-oriented intervention is more effective in reducing externalizing behavior. The aim of the current study was to answer this question by comparing two 8-week child with two 8-week parent-oriented group programs sharing a common experimental design. This was done in a pseudo-randomized trial conducted with 73 3–6-year-old children displaying clinically relevant levels of externalizing behavior who were assigned to one of the four interventions and 20 control participants who were allocated to a waiting list. The results indicate that the four programs focusing on a specific target variable, i.e., social cognition, inhibition, parental self-efficacy beliefs, or parental verbal responsiveness, are all effective in reducing externalizing behavior among preschoolers. Their effectiveness was moderated neither by their orientation toward the child or the parent nor by their content, suggesting that several effective solutions exist to improve behavioral adaptation in preschoolers. A second important highlight of this study is that, thanks to comparable effect sizes, brief focused programs appear to be a reasonable alternative to long multimodal programs, and may be more cost-effective for children and their families.     

Sensory and Postural input in the Occurrence of a Gender Difference in Orienting Liquid Surfaces

The Psychological Record - In the water-level task, both spatial skill and physical knowledge contribute to representing the surface of a liquid as horizontal irrespective of the container’s...     

Visuo‐spatial play experience: forerunner of visuo‐spatial achievement in preadolescent and adolescent boys and girls?

This cross‐sectional study explored whether participation, from early childhood, in play involving different cognitive abilities predicts visuo‐spatial achievement at ages 9, 12, and 15. Based on parental assessment, prior and present practice of spatial manipulation play was found to be consistently more frequent in boys than in girls; the reverse held true for verbal expression play. Whereas boys did not significantly outperform girls in three visuo‐spatial tasks, girls were superior on a contrastive vocabulary task. In general, with IQ statistically controlled, regression analyses showed that estimated past and present spatial manipulation play predicted both genders' proficiency in the water‐level task and Embedded Figures Test, as did mothers' socioeconomic status for Block Design performance. Contrastingly, a negative relation was established between spatial manipulation play and vocabulary scores. Similar to the activity‐ability association often identified among adults, the relation established here between spatial play experience and visuo‐spatial ability was only modest. Further research should aim at more definitive conclusions through augmenting both diversity in the visuo‐spatial skills measured and sophistication in play behaviour appraisal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Magnitude of force perception errors during static contractions of the knee extensors in healthy young and elderly individuals

The accuracy of force perception during muscular contraction has not been studied extensively, despite its importance in rehabilitation and training. The purpose of this study was to quantify the errors made by healthy young and elderly individuals in their perceptions of force produced at the knee. Four different tasks were used to evaluate the perception of force and the effect of a sensory-motor reference and simultaneous contraction on the accuracy of perception. The absolute errors were similar between groups, with values of 11.9% to 16.3%, depending on the task. The raw perception errors were greater for high levels of force (>50% of the maximal voluntary contraction, or MVC), indicating an overestimation of the forces produced for both groups. At 70% MVC, the sensory-motor reference reduced raw perception errors, and the simultaneous contraction improved the accuracy of force production. Healthy young and elderly individuals had about the same capacity to judge the muscular force of their knee extensors. Therapists involved in the training of active?elderly?individuals should be aware that the accuracy of force perception is not perfect and that these clients have the same ability as young individuals to perceive their knee extension strength.     

Facing Europe: visualizing spontaneous in-group projection

Individuals perceive their own group to be more typical of a shared superordinate identity than other groups are. This in-group projection process has been demonstrated with both self-report and indirect measures. The two studies reported here extend this research to the visual level, specifically, within the domain of faces. Using an innovative reverse-correlation approach, we found that German and Portuguese participants' visual representations of European faces resembled the appearance typical for their own national identity. This effect was found even among participants who explicitly denied that one nation was more typical of Europe than the other (Study 1). Moreover, Study 2 provides experimental evidence that in-group projection is restricted to inclusive superordinate groups, as the effect was not observed for visual representations of a category ("Australian") that did not include participants' in-group. Implications for the in-group projection model, as well as for the applicability of reverse-correlation paradigms, are discussed.