A Chilean version of the Efficient Personality Questionnaire for Adolescents

This investigation aims at adapting the test for Efficient Personality in educational contexts to Chilean reality. This instrument measures the construct efficient personality , made up of four levels of the self: strengths, requests, challenges and relationships. The original version has 58 items. In order to adapt it to our reality, 30 items were modified. The instrument was applied to a sample of 594 third and fourth secondary level students from four educational institutions of Vi?a del Mar. The new version of the instrument (23 items) presents a .85 reliability coefficient. The factorial analysis shows a structure of four basic factors which explain 50.42 % of the total variance. These factors, which are very similar those proposed in the original instrument, are named as academic self realization, social self realization, solving efficiency, and self steem. The second order factors analysis reveals a single factors structure that explains 43,28 % of the total variance, thus confirming the presence of the only factor that would correspond to the efficient personality construct presented.     

Use of the ten-point clock test to compare executive functioning across 24 months in patients with subcortical vascular dementia

The Ten-point Clock Test can be used to identify early forms of Alzheimer's disease because it is reliable, well accepted, and easily administered at the bedside. Nevertheless, its clinical role in the detection of early dementia and its correlations with other cognitive processes is still under investigation. Vascular dementia is an uncertain nosological entity, in which unevenly distributed patterns of cognitive deficits comprising slowing of cognitive processing and impairment of executive function occur. The present study assessed how the Clock Test scores correlated with a number of other neuropsychological and functional tests in a sample of 144 patients with vascular dementia, who were followed for a period of 24 mo. At baseline, at 12 mo. and at 24 mo. subjects were administered a battery of tests, including the Mini-Mental State Examination, word fluency, visuospatial skills, an evaluation of hetero- and autotopognosia (knowledge of self), the Proverbs Test, and the Ten-point Clock Test. For these patients scores on the Clock Test correlated significantly with semantic abilities, with abstract reasoning capacities, visuospatial perception, and with right and left recognition.     

Incorporating if...then...personality signatures in person perception: beyond the person-situation dichotomy

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed.     

Sensitivity to status-based rejection: implications for African American students' college experience

The authors proposed a process model whereby experiences of rejection based on membership in a devalued group can lead people to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to status-based rejection. To test the model, the authors focused on race-based rejection sensitivity (RS-race) among African Americans. Following the development and validation of the RS-Race Questionnaire (Studies 1 and 2), the authors tested the utility of the model for understanding African American students' experiences at a predominantly White university (Study 3). Students high in RS-race experienced greater discomfort during the college transition, less trust in the university, and relative declines in grades over a 2- to 3-year period. Positive race-related experiences, however, increased feelings of belonging at the institution among students high in RS-race.     

Compatible Functions in Algebras Associated to Extensions of Positive Logic

In [4], Caicedo and Cignoli study compatible functions on Heytingalgebras and the corresponding logical properties of connectivesdefined on intuitionistic propositional calculus. In this paperwe study some aspects of compatible functions on the algebrasassociated to positive propositional calculus and successiveextensions of it: intuitionistic calculus itself, the modalsymmetric propositional calculus of Moisil and n-valued ukasiewiczpropositional calculus.     

Networks of Meaning: Intergroup Relations, Cultural Worldviews, and Knowledge Activation Principles

In this article, we bring advances in the fields of social cognition, personality, and culture to bear on the topic of intergroup relations. Specifically, principles of knowledge activation ( Higgins, 1996 ), and of the architecture of knowledge networks ( Cervone, 2005; Mischel & Shoda, 1995 ) are applied to understanding how cultural groups develop divergent worldviews. We discuss these principles within a recently proposed model of culture and person dynamics, the Cultural Cognitive-Affective Processing System ( Mendoza-Denton & Mischel, 2007 ). It is argued that the underlying psychological principles that govern knowledge acquisition and activation may be universal, but that the manifestations of these processes are culture specific. More precisely, culture impacts the availability, applicability, and accessibility of knowledge, as well as the organizational relationships among constructs. Together, these processes give rise to complex networks of meaning that, despite diverging across cultures, can nevertheless be communicated and understood by non-natives of that culture.     

Springs,Nitre, and Conatus. The Role of the Heart in Hobbes's Physiology and Animal Locomotion

This paper focuses on an understudied aspect of Hobbes's natural philosophy: his approach to the domain of life. I concentrate on the role assigned by Hobbes to the heart, which occupies a central role in both his account of human physiology (which he names ‘vital motion’) and of the origin of animal locomotion (‘animal or voluntary motion’). With this, I have three goals in mind. First, I aim to offer a cross-section of Hobbes's effort to provide a mechanistic picture of human life. Second, I aim to contextualize Hobbes's views in the seventeenth-century debates on human physiology and animal locomotion. In particular, I will compare Hobbes's views with the theories put forth by Harvey, Descartes, the Galenic, and Peripatetic traditions. Also, I will show that Hobbes was receptive to advances within contemporary English physiology and chemistry. Third, by means of a comparison with Descartes, I advance some hypothesis to explain why Hobbes indentified the heart, and not the brain (as was increasingly common in his day), as the organ originating animal locomotion. In this regard, I trace out some possible implications of Hobbes's views on human physiology and locomotion for his psychology and political philosophy.     

Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: how the rich are different from the poor

Social class is shaped by an individual's material resources as well as perceptions of rank vis-à-vis others in society, and in this article, we examine how class influences behavior. Diminished resources and lower rank create contexts that constrain social outcomes for lower-class individuals and enhance contextualist tendencies--that is, a focus on external, uncontrollable social forces and other individuals who influence one's life outcomes. In contrast, abundant resources and elevated rank create contexts that enhance the personal freedoms of upper-class individuals and give rise to solipsistic social cognitive tendencies--that is, an individualistic focus on one's own internal states, goals, motivations, and emotions. Guided by this framework, we detail 9 hypotheses and relevant empirical evidence concerning how class-based contextualist and solipsistic tendencies shape the self, perceptions of the social environment, and relationships to other individuals. Novel predictions and implications for research in other socio-political contexts are considered.