Comorbidity between SCARED anxiety factors and depressive symptomatology in 8- to 12-year-old children

The aim of this study was to examine the comorbidity between the SCARED anxiety factors and depressive symptoms in 8-12-year-old children. Participants were 792 girls and 715 boys, who completed: the 41-ítem version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorder (SCARED), the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and a Socio-demographic questionnaire. Of the sample, 47% showed anxiety symptoms and 11.5% showed depressive symptoms. Heterotypic comorbidity was 82% in children at risk of depression and 20% in children at risk of anxiety. Homotypic Comorbidity between anxiety factors was 87%. Homotypic comorbidity and heterotypic comorbidity were high; their early detection will prevent the continuity of an anxious disorder and the development of depression.     

Psychological care demand in clinical practice: treatment and results

With the aim of describing the usual clinical context as opposed to the academic or research context, the characteristics of patients and psychological treatments applied in a sample of 856 patients from the Clinic of Psychology of the Complutense University is analyzed. The disorders that require attention, the characteristics of the therapists and their interventions are identified. Out of the total patients, 24.3% withdrew from treatment; 68.3% of the patients who started treatment completed it with therapeutic success. 83% of patients were assessed in 4 sessions or fewer (median=4). 75.3% of patients who finished the treatment received 18 or fewer treatment sessions (median=11). The generalization of the results and their implications for professional clinical practice and for training clinical psychologists are discussed.     

Successful aging: criteria and predictors

In the Anglo-Saxon scientific literature, successful aging has been consolidated during the last four decades. Nevertheless, several terms have been used as synonymous: healthy, active, productive, optimal, positive aging. Although, all these terms have been described through a broad set of bio-psycho-social factors, usually, research in this field reduces successful aging to daily life functioning and physical health. Also, in spite of the fact that authors consider that determinants might be multi-domain, empirical research usually reduces them to life styles. Logically, the prevalence of this kind of ageing found empirically is not very consistent and research of its determinants or predictors refers to biomedical conditions. In this study, data from 458 participants (170 males and 288 females; mean age: 66.47, range: 55-75) from ELEA ("Longitudinal Study of Active Aging") were examined. The results show (depending on the simple or multidimensional definitions used) a very varied range of proportions of successfully aging older persons as well as a large number of multi-domain predictors of successful ageing, among which are intelligence, personality and motivational psychological characteristics.     

Syndromes or symptoms in the assessment of aphasic patients?

The procedure generally used to diagnose aphasic patients consists of classifying them in one of the classic syndromes on the basis of the analysis of their symptoms. However, this taxonomy has several important problems, the main one being that it does not take into account the variability of aphasic patients, as there are many more disorder profiles than those included in the syndromes. In order to test the homogeneity of a sample of patients diagnosed with the classic taxonomy, 15 aphasic patients (5 Broca, 5 Wernicke and 5 Conduction) and 5 healthy controls were tested with nine comprehension and production tasks. Participants were aged 38 to 81 years old. The results indicate the existence of great variability in patients labeled with the same diagnosis, as revealed by the differences in within-group scores in each task, and a limited adjustment to the expected profile, with some patients showing symptoms allegedly corresponding to other syndromes. Our results call attention to the need to study each patient individually and interpret their disorders regardless of the syndromes.     

Effect of stimulus opening size in global dominance with orientation classification task

The aims of this study is to examine whether global dominance depends on the opening size of the stimulus with concentric hierarchical figures and orientation classification task and to determine the role of the salience of global opening and its coincidence with vertical symmetry axis of context. In the first experiment, participants had to indicate the opening direction of stimuli, which were open-left and open-right figures. Three openings were included: 10, 25 and 50% of the total circle perimeter. The results showed a local advantage with stimuli of 10%, absence of global or local advantage with stimuli of 25% and global advantage with stimuli of 50%. In the second experiment, stimuli with an opening of 50% were presented randomly in several positions in the visual field in order to avoid the coincidence of global opening with the vertical symmetry axis of context. The results showed an absence of global or local advantage. These findings indicate that global dominance with orientation classification task depends on stimulus characteristics such as opening size, and strategies used in visual recognition.     

Emotion and recognition memory: the discrimination of negative information as an adaptive process

We studied the effect of emotion generated by IAPS (International Affective Picture System) pictures on incidental recognition of these pictures for short retention periods (15 min). Memorization distraction tasks and reaction time tasks were used together with short exposure times (2 seconds per picture) in order to prevent a high recognition rate that would impede testing for the effect of emotion on discrimination parameters (A′) and response bias (B′′D) (ceiling effect). We used 80 pictures representing the medium and high levels of two-dimensional emotional space. The results showed greater discrimination and a more conservative response style to unpleasant and medium arousal level pictures. These pictures produced higher confidence and lower response times in the recognition phase. The results can be explained by the negative content of the pictures and activation level effects on attentional processing and memory, and can be interpreted as a phenomenon that is evolutionarily adaptive.     

Types of responses in 4-5-year-old children in conservation, classification, and theory of mind tasks

This study analyzes the type of responses that children between 4 and 5 years of age give to different tasks: conservation, classification and tasks of the theory of mind (ToM). Types of responses were observed with the Observation of Cognitive and Meta-cognitive Skills Inventory, which identifies: attention, receptive and expressive language, planning processes, and meta-cognitive processes. Significant differences were found according to the variable age in: (a) the use of attentional strategies in performance of ToM tasks, (b) the use of receptive and expressive language in the performance of all tasks, (c) the use of planning processes in the performance of conservation tasks; and (d) the use of meta-cognitive processes to solve ToM tasks.     

Educational inequalities in quantity, duration and type of tobacco consumption among lung cancer patients in Asturias: epidemiological analyses

Socioeconomic inequalities cause different tobacco consumption patterns. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between educational level and smoking behaviour, including type of tobacco consumption, in lung cancer patients. To this end, epidemiological analyses of 801 lung cancer patients recruited for a case-control study in four public hospitals in Asturias, Spain, between October 2000 and April 2006 were carried out. Smoking behaviour and educational level data were obtained through personal interview. Analyses indicated that the probability of heavy smoking among low educational-level patients was approximately twice as high as for high educational-level patients (RRR>31.2 packs/years=2.04; CI 95%=1.15-3.62; RRR>52packs/years=2.14; CI 95%=0.98-4.64). Low-educated patients were more than three times as likely to be long-time smokers (RRR>40 years=3.30; CI 95%=1.43-7.62). The probability of smoking exclusively black tobacco was almost four times greater in low educational-level patients (RRRblack only=3.72; CI 95%=1.23-11.19). The results show that there are broad educational inequalities with regard to the quantity, duration and type of tobacco consumption among lung cancer patients in Northern Spain.     

Assessment of the global intelligence and selective cognitive capacities in preterm 8-year-old children

The aim of this study was to assess various cognitive abilities such as attention, IQ, reasoning, and memory related to academic achievement in 8- and 9-year-old preterm children. A total of 141 children were assessed. The preterm group (=37 weeks) comprised 63 children and was compared to 78 full-term children. Attention was evaluated using the d2 Selective Attention test, and the IQ by the L-M form of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, establishing a profile of abilities: perception, memory, comprehension, reasoning, and verbal fluency. Significant differences in IQ were found between the preterm and full-term children. Of the cognitive abilities assessed, the only significant differences were found in verbal fluency, with preterm boys showing lower verbal fluency scores than full-term children. In conclusion, all preterm groups have attention ability similar to that of full-term children. However, preterm children obtain lower scores in intelligence measures. In addition, preterm boys have verbal fluency difficulties. Taking into account the increase in preterm births, suitable intervention programs must be planned to attend the difficulties found.     

Staffing Services Quality and Innovativeness in Pharmaceutical Companies

This paper examines whether the main dimensions of staffing services quality have any effect on innovativeness. A resource‐based view of human resource management is used as theoretical approach. A questionnaire was sent to the CEOs of an international sample of pharmaceutical companies. A regression analysis was used to test hypotheses about the influence of the staffing services quality dimensions on innovativeness. The main findings are that all but one of the staffing services quality dimensions considered have significant, positive effects on innovativeness. Candidate quality is the dimension that affects innovativeness most, while timeliness has no significant effect.