Paternal absence and international migration: stressors and compensators associated with the mental health of Mexican teenagers of rural origin

Mexico-U.S. migration creates situations that may cause psychological distress. The purpose of this research project was to study the impact of father's physical absence due to international migration (FPAIM) on adolescent offspring of rural immigrants from Zacatecas, Mexico. Stressors and compensators were studied from the adolescent's perspective and were analyzed using a stress-mediator-consequences theoretical framework. Qualitative (n = 24) and quantitative (n = 310) methodologies were used with a nonrandom sample of adolescents. Results show that the FPAIM is an ambivalent experience for adolescents that has positive and negative elements. Though migrants' children seem to be more vulnerable to psychosocial stress than are the offspring of nonmigrants, gender, not father's absence, appears to be the most important risk factor for psychological distress.     

On the Representation of Inflections and Derivations: Data from Spanish

The four experiments reported in this paper were designed to determine to what extent words are lexically represented in terms of their morphological structure. The experiments are carried out in Spanish, a language with rich morphological resources, using a priming paradigm and a lexical decision task. In particular, they examined the pattern of priming effects in regular inflected words with gender and in derived words, in comparison to those produced by orthographically and semantically related words, by manipulating form similarity and semantic transparency. The results showed, on the one hand, that regular inflected words produced reliable facilitatory effects which are not driven just by form relatedness (Experiments 1 and 2). On the other hand, they showed that both transparent and nontransparent derived forms produced facilitatory effects distinct from purely orthographic and semantic effects (Experiments 3 and 4.). In general, these findings suggest that morphological information is represented in the mental lexicon and may play a central role in the individuation and retrieval of lexical entries.     

A fMRI study of word retrieval in aphasia

The neural mechanisms underlying recovery of cognitive functions are incompletely understood. Aim of this study was to assess, using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), the pattern of brain activity during covert word retrieval to letter and semantic cues in five aphasic patients after stroke, in order to assess the modifications of brain function which may be related to recovery. Four out of five patients had undergone language recovery, according to standard testing, after at least 6 months of rehabilitation. The cerebral activation of each patient was evaluated and compared with the activation pattern of normal controls studied with the same fMRI paradigm. In the patients, the pattern of brain activation was influenced by the site and extent of the lesion, by the degree of recovery of language, as reflected by task performance outside the scanner, and by task requirements. In the case of word retrieval to letter cues, a good performance was directly related to the activation in Broca's area, or in the right-sided homologue. On the other hand, in the case of semantic fluency, the relationship between performance level and activation was less clear-cut, because of extensive recruitment of frontal areas in patients with defective performance. These findings suggest that the performance in letter fluency is dependent on the integrity of the left inferior frontal cortex, with the participation of the homologous right hemispheric region when the left inferior frontal cortex is entirely of partially damaged. Semantic fluency, which engages the distributed network of semantic memory, is also associated with more extensive patterns of cerebral activation, which however appear to reflect retrieval effort rather than retrieval success.     

Effects of iron deficiency in infancy on patterns of motor development over time

This longitudinal study of the effects of iron deficiency in infancy assessed motor development over time in 185 healthy Costa Rican children who varied in iron status at 12-23 months. Longitudinal analyses (hierarchical linear modeling) used the Bayley Psychomotor Index before and both 1 week and 3 months after iron treatment in infancy and the Bruninks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency - long form at 5 years and short form at 11-14 years. Children with chronic severe iron deficiency in infancy had lower motor scores at the beginning of the study and a lower but parallel trajectory for motor scores through early adolescence. Thus, there was no evidence of catch-up in motor development, despite iron therapy in infancy that corrected iron deficiency anemia in all cases.     

Early mother-infant interaction and factors negatively affecting parenting

The social information-processing model contributes to identifying the psychological processes underlying the construct "sensitivity" in early mother-child interaction. Negative emotional states associated with inadequate self-regulation in coping with stressors affect the mother's attention skills and the processing of the baby's signals. This leads to less synchronous parental practices, particularly unsatisfactory when the baby is unhappy, or crying because the required self-regulation is not provided. This micro-social research studies the sequential profile of maternal reactions to the baby's positive/neutral vs. difficult behaviours and compares them in two groups of dyads, one with mothers who reported high levels of distress and other negative factors for parenting and another group with low levels. The unfavourable circumstances of the high stress group and their negative effects on interaction were observed in some indiscriminate maternal responses and particularly as they reacted to their baby's difficult behaviour, when the mother's regulatory role is more necessary.     

Sociodemographic and psychological features of social phobia in adolescents

The objective of this study is to analyze the demographic and clinical features of adolescent with social phobia based on the subtype. The sample included 120 adolescents diagnosed of Social Phobia (specific or generalized). The results show statistically significant differences between both subtypes of social phobia; so much in gender as on each measure that evaluate anxiety, social avoidance, fear of negative evaluation and other correlates. These data are consistent with results informed by several studies with adult population and provide useful information for the investigation and the clinical practice.     

GITAI GO: The Art of Deepening Everyday Life Through Exceeding Codes

The present commentary is focused on exploring holistic ways to approach sense-making processes by following the usage of specific Japanese mimic words, Gitai go, and describing how its functioning cannot be disengaged from an embodied lens to approach language-in-use. In fact, according to Komatsu’s (2010) discussion about the extension of meaning derived from Gitai go and its intrinsic flexible characteristics, it is possible—in terms of semiotics—to inquire into vaguely coded systems of mutual understanding, trying to make sense of the general functioning of signs through their peculiar ambiguity as well as their potential to evoke a vivid negotiation of meaning. This seems to show the openness of meaning highlighted by Gitai go, as it is to be referred to the logic of multiplicity deeply linked with the actors’ feelings in the setting that could in general terms be labeled as the carnal knowledge. Furthermore, it has been arguing about the complexity of daily life experience and its close relation to a concept of “ordinary art”, as the active involvement people show in imagining, changing and creating their personal experience of the world is always performed in their day-by-day frameworks, deeply suggesting a unique strive for appropriating-negotiating-contesting networks of meanings. And this is to be approached as an artistic mode of experiencing, since art too is just embedded in this ever-emerging ambivalence coming from the complex we call “ordinary life” and relating to our deep feelings of facing our futures. Along these lines I suggest that a particular role exists in communicative messages for what is labeled as “redundant” or “superfluous”—since the ambivalence of those messages explicates the dialogical frame of sense-making, in everyday life as a concept of art.     

The Relationship Between Overeducation and Job Satisfaction Among Young Spanish Workers: The Role of Salary,Contract of Employment,and Work Experience

The increase of education in younger generations and the relative scarcity of qualified jobs available for them makes overeducation of young employees a social issue. We explored the relationships between overeducation and job satisfaction (extrinsic, intrinsic, social facet), as well as the direct and moderating role of salary, contract of employment, and work experience in these relationships using hierarchical regression analyses. Data were collected from a sample of 643 young Spanish employees. As expected, there were negative relationships between overeducation and all 3 satisfaction facets. Moreover, high work experience emerged as a moderating factor that buffered the negative effect of overeducation on extrinsic satisfaction. Contract of employment and salary did not moderate these relationships.     

The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26): reliability and validity in Spanish female samples

This paper focuses on the validation of the Spanish form of the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; Garner, Olmsted, Bohr & Garfinkel, 1982) across two studies. Participants in Study 1 were 778 females recruited from community settings (aged 12-21). Study 2 included 86 females recruited from clinical and 86 females from community settings (aged 12-35). Results from Principal and Simultaneous Component Analyses showed a unidimensional structure of the EAT-26 item scores. Reliability analyses supported the internal consistency of the scale. Study 1 also explores the ability of the EAT-26 to discriminate between subjects with Eating Disorder (ED), Symptomatic or Asymptomatic by means of ROC analyses and using results from the Questionnaire for Eating Disorder Diagnoses (Q-EDD; Mintz, O'Halloran, Mulholland, & Schneider, 1997) as criterion. The EAT-26 demonstrated good specificity but insufficient sensitivity to detect a full or partial ED. Study 2 explores the ability of the questionnaire to discriminate between subjects with and without ED. The EAT-26 demonstrated good specificity and moderate sensitivity to detect ED. Clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

When lack of control enhances closeness to others: The case of unemployment and economic threat

When personal control is threatened, people often turn to their own group and show negativity towards others. In three studies, we tested an alternative prediction that the salient lack of personal control (vs. control) experienced in the context of unemployment can lead to connectedness and more positive perception of similar others (e.g., members of groups affected by unemployment or the economic crisis). In two European countries, we found experimental (Study 1: Poland) and correlational (Study 2: Spain) evidence that a lowered sense of control of unemployed people was related to more favorable intergroup evaluations. Furthermore, when lack of control related to unemployment threat was experimentally induced, participants perceived a Greek outgroup more positively, and this effect was mediated by identification with and similarity to this group (Study 3). We discuss the role of the shared experience of collective uncontrollability in promoting positive intergroup relations.