Acceptability in France of Induced Abortion for Adolescents

Background: This study investigated the factors affecting the acceptability in France of abortions. Method: 80 study participants from Toulouse and 124 from Metz judged the acceptability of abortion in 64 vignettes composed of five factors: 1) the adolescent's age (15 or 17.5 years), 2) the adolescent's plans to continue schooling or not, 3) the fetus' age (1, 2, 3, or 4 months), 4) the adolescent's parents' agreement or not, and 5) the agreement or not of baby's father. Results: Three clusters were noted: 1) abortion is never acceptable (8% of participants), 2) abortion is always acceptable (23%), and 3) acceptability of abortion depends on the circumstances (63%). In the majority cluster (3), all five factors had significant effects, but the fetus's age accounted for most of the variance (78%). Conclusion: Most subjects in this study judged, in accordance with French law, that the acceptability of induced abortion in minors depends on the circumstances and, in particular, on the fetus' age.     

Eye movements when reading words with $YMβOL$ and NUM83R5: There is a cost

Recent evidence from masked priming experiments has revealed that readers regularize letter-like symbols and letter-like numbers into their corresponding base letters with minimal processing cost. However, one open question is whether the same pattern occurs when these items are presented during normal silent reading. In the present study, we respond to this question in an eye-movement experiment that included sentences with words that had symbols and numbers as letters, as in “YESTERDAY I SAW THE SECRE74RY WORKING VERY HARD”. Results revealed that there is a greater reading cost associated with letter-by-number replacements than with letter-by-symbol replacements, especially when the replaced letters occur at the beginning of the word. We examine the implications of these findings for models of visual word recognition and reading.     

An Account of the Democratic Status of Constitutional Rights

The paper makes a twofold contribution. Firstly, it advances a preliminary account of the conditions that need to obtain for constitutional rights to be democratic. Secondly, in so doing, it defends precommitment-based theories from a criticism raised by Jeremy Waldron—namely, that constitutional rights do not become any more democratic when they are democratically adopted, for the people could adopt undemocratic policies without such policies becoming democratic as a result. The paper shows that the reductio applies to political rights, yet not to non-political rights, such as reproductive, environmental, or privacy rights. The democratic status of the former is process-independent. The latter, by contrast, are democratic precisely when they are adopted by democratic means.     

Assessing Psychosocial Impairment in the Pediatric Emergency Department: Child/Caregiver Concordance

The objective of this study was to examine the level of agreement between child- and caregiver-reports of the child’s psychosocial problems presenting to a Pediatric Emergency Department (PED) using a validated screening tool. This was an anonymous, prospective, cross-sectional, multi-informant (child and caregiver) study assessing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems and physical complaints in children and adolescents presenting to a PED. Three-hundred and fifty-eight children and adolescents (8–18 years old) and their caregivers participated. Children completed the Youth-Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC-Y), while their caregivers completed the Pediatric Symptom Checklist–35 (PSC-35) to measure psychosocial impairment. The child’s physical complaints (e.g., chief complaint, chronicity, other medical problems, medications) and demographic information were assessed using an investigator-developed patient background questionnaire completed by the caregivers. Physical complaints (e.g., chief complaint, chronicity, other medical problems, medications) were assessed using an investigator-developed patient background questionnaire. Agreement between child- and caregiver- reports was analyzed using Cohen’s kappa coefficient. Differences between child and caregiver-reported scores were determined by t-tests. Poor to moderate agreement was found between child- and caregiver-reports of attention problems (κ = .355), externalizing problems (κ = .340), internalizing problems (κ = .065), and total PSC score (κ = .410). Both children and caregivers should complete the psychosocial screener to maximize the accuracy of assessment and the identification of impairment.     

Long-term aversive taste memory requires insular and amygdala protein degradation

Some reports have shown that the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) is necessary to degrade repressor factors to produce new proteins essential to memory consolidation. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that memory updating also relies on protein degradation through the UPS. To evaluate whether degradation of proteins is part of the cellular events needed for long-term storage of taste aversion, we injected lactacystin--an UPS inhibitor--into the amygdala and/or insular cortex 30 min before the first or second training trials. The results revealed that degradation of proteins in either the amygdala or insular cortex suffices for long-term stabilization of first-time encounter taste aversion. On the other hand, lactacystin applied in the insula, but not in the amygdala, before the second training prevented long-term storage of updated information. Our results support that degradation of proteins by means of the UPS is required every time taste aversion is to be stored in long-term memory.     

Taxonomy of the psychosocial consequences caused by the violence of persecution of ETA's network

This paper delimits and analyzes the effects of the harassment perpetrated by ETA's terrorist network in the Basque Country. The aim was to provide a taxonomy of the consequences of psychological violence and to validate this taxonomy, by means of a content analysis of 37 testimonies of victims of terrorist violence. The taxonomy of consequences of psychological violence is made up by four components: 1. the effects on the context of the persons affected, 2. on their emotional state, 3. on cognition and 4. on behavior. Results show a predominance of contextual consequences and negative cognitions. Intra-observer and inter-observer reliability analysis showed high stability and reproducibility coefficients. This study shows that harassment and psychological violence have major consequences not only for victims but also for family members, threatened collectives and even the society as a whole.     

Intelligence impairment, personality features and psychopathology disturbances in a family affected with CADASIL

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a small-vessel disease of the brain that is characterized by headache, recurring lacunar strokes, mood changes and progressive cognitive deterioration. The disease is transmitted with an autosomal dominant pattern and usually starts during midadulthood (at 30-50 years of age). Cognitive deficits in patients with CADASIL develop slowly. The dementia causes frontal-like symptoms and it typically develops after a history of recurrent stroke. We describe three patients from one Spanish family affected by this disease. All three cases underwent comprehensive clinical and neuropsychological examination, and were monitored for seven years. The results obtained in this study describe a) a significant loss of the intelligence quotient (IQ) and noticeable damage to abstract ability (g factor), b) mood and psychopathological disturbances (major depression and dysthymia), and c) a personality with neurotic features.     

Relationships among empathy, prosocial behavior, aggressiveness, self-efficacy and pupils' personal and social responsibility

The aim of this study was, on the one hand, to present/display the Spanish version of diverse instruments that assess Empathy, Prosocial behavior, Aggressiveness, Self-efficacy and Personal and social responsibility, and, on the other hand, to analyze which of these variables could predict responsibility. Participants were 822 pupils, ages 8 to 15 years, who studied in 11 educational centres of the Valencian Community. Measures include Spanish versions of the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents, Prosocial Behaviour, and Physical and Verbal Aggression, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Self-Efficacy, and the Contextual Self-Responsibility Questionnaire. Through structural equation modelling (SEM), the results showed positive relationships between Prosocial behaviour, Empathy, Self-efficacy, and Responsibility; and negative relationships between Aggressiveness and Responsibility. The results and implications for education are discussed.     

Sleep architecture in patients with fibromyalgia

The main objective of this work was to evaluate the characteristics of sleep in patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome. Sleep architecture in 32 patients with fibromyalgia and 20 healthy controls was evaluated. Following the recommendations of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology, polysomnographies were conducted with fibromyalgia patients and the control subjects. The fibromyalgia patients showed alterations in cyclic organization of sleep and an increased number of periodic leg movements associated with cortical arousals. No significant differences were found in respiratory and oximetry variables or in alpha-delta sleep. The results support that fibromyalgia patients present an increase of superficial sleep at the expense of deep sleep and also an increase of periodic leg movements, which could have a pathogenic effect, facilitating the onset of the illness. Lastly, we discuss the results and propose some future lines of research.