Rorschach Comprehensive System data for a sample of 116 preadolescent and 117 adolescent nonpatients from Italy

This project provides information on how preadolescent and adolescent nonpatients perform on the Rorschach test, administered and scored following Exner's guidelines (2003). Lis, Salcuni, Parolin, and Superchi (2001) reported previously initial data for 51 adolescent nonpatients living in Italy who were administered this instrument by graduate and postgraduate students in a 2-year research course at the Psychotherapy School of the University of Padua, between July 1998 and February 2001. The current study is an extension of that work and includes information on additional adolescent nonpatients and preadolescent nonpatients, gathered between April 2001 and December 2006. The study thus includes information on 233 participants, 116 preadolescents (aged 12-14) and 117 adolescents (aged 15-18). Individuals were excluded if they had a major medical illness in the past 6 months, any psychiatric hospitalization, psychological treatment within the past 2 years, any felony conviction, or psychological testing within the past year. Interrater reliability statistics at the response level for scoring segments are reported both with percentage of agreement and iota. Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS) findings are presented.     

Disorders in planning and strategy application in frontal lobe lesion patients

The aim of this study was to investigate deficits in planning ability using an adapted version of the Modified Six Elements Test, from the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome—BADS [Wilson, B. A., Alderman, N., Burgess, P. W., Emslie, H., & Evans, J. J. (1996). Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS). Bury St Edmunds, U.K.: Thames Valley Test Company. Trans. Ricardo O Souza, Sergio L Schmidt. Rio de Janeiro: Cognição]. Subjects were left- and right-frontal lobe lesion patients. Other measures of executive dysfunctions used were verbal fluency, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and the Trail Making Test. These other instruments were sensitive to detect executive deficits in the left frontal lobe lesion group, except the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, which showed impairment only for the frontal lobe lesion group as a whole. The Modified Six Elements Test detected planning disorders in left frontal lobe lesion patients. The deficit of these patients was due to a greater likelihood to break the rules of the task, that is, in plan-following processes, rather than in planning the strategic approach to solve it.     

Transmission of Cultural Values among Mexican‐Origin Parents and Their Adolescent and Emerging Adult Offspring

The integration of the U.S. and Mexican culture is an important process associated with Mexican‐origin youths' adjustment and family dynamics. The current study examined the reciprocal associations in parents' and two offspring's cultural values (i.e., familism and respect) in 246 Mexican‐origin families. Overall, mothers' values were associated with increases in youths' values 5 years later. In contrast, youths' familism values were associated with increases in fathers' familism values 5 years later. In addition, developmental differences emerged where parent‐to‐offspring effects were more consistent for youth transitioning from early to late adolescence than for youth transitioning from middle adolescence to emerging adulthood. Finally, moderation by immigrant status revealed a youth‐to‐parent effect for mother–youth immigrant dyads, but not for dyads where youth were U.S.‐raised. Our findings highlight the reciprocal nature of parent–youth value socialization and provide a nuanced understanding of these processes through the consideration of familism and respect values. As Mexican‐origin youth represent a large and rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, research that advances our understanding of how these youth develop values that foster family cohesion and support is crucial.     

What Can We Learn from the Study of Mexican‐Origin Families in the United States?

Mexican‐origin families are a large and rapidly increasing subgroup of the U.S. population, but they remain underrepresented in family scholarship. This paper introduces a special section of four papers on Mexican‐origin families designed to contribute to the advancement of research on how cultural, family, and gender socialization processes unfold across key developmental periods and life transitions in this cultural context. Two longitudinal studies of Mexican‐origin families provided the data for these four papers: (a) The Juntos Project, an 8‐year longitudinal study of mothers, fathers, and adolescent sibling pairs in 246 Mexican‐origin families; and (b) The Supporting MAMI Project, a study following 204 adolescent mothers and their mother figures from the third trimester of pregnancy through their young children's 5th birthdays. In this introductory paper, we highlight four themes, including (a) differential acculturation and reciprocal socialization, (b) interdependence in families, (c) the intersection of culture and gender, and (d) methodological issues. We end with suggestions for future research.     

Improving Route Directions: The Role of Intersection Type and Visual Clutter for Spatial Reference

In this study, we ask whether references to paths and landmarks in route directions (RDs) are influenced by environmental complexity, zooming in on two aspects of the visual surroundings, namely intersection structure and visual clutter. Speakers are asked to produce (Experiment 1), understand (Experiment 2) and evaluate (Experiment 3) turn‐by‐turn RDs in a naturalistic setting (Google Street View panoramic pictures). We find that increased levels of visual clutter and intersections with complex structures trigger more references to landmarks and paths when participants produce RDs, longer decision times to determine what the next correct step in a route is and increased preference for landmarks. Finally, we discuss possible implications for automatic RD generation.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychometric Properties of the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form: A Study of Portuguese Speaking Children/Youths

The development of measures of children and adolescents’ subjective well-being is crucial to the conceptualization and evaluation of positive mental health. The aim of this study was to investigate the factorial structure and invariance of the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF—adolescents) across children and youths. Participants were from two different samples: 208 elementary school children (sample 1) and 216 middle school youths (sample 2). Results confirmed the three-dimensional structure of subjective well-being in both samples. The three sub-scales of the MHCSF yielded high internal consistency and results from the HTMT85 indicated discriminant validity. Measurement invariance testing across three different age groups (7–8, 9–10 and 11–14 years) confirmed the full metric and approximate scalar invariance of the MHC-SF. Full scalar invariance was achieved across gender. The study also compared the latent means for mental well-being in the three age groups, and found that the younger groups showed significantly higher levels of wellbeing. The present research study strongly suggests that the MHC-SF (adolescents) is an appropriate instrument to measure the positive mental health and well-being of children and pre-adolescents as multidimensional construct.     

Attentional capture by items that match episodic long-term memory representations

A remarkable ability of the human visual system is the implementation of attentional control settings (ACSs) that govern what stimuli capture or hold attention. We provide evidence that ACSs can be specified by episodic long-term memory representations. In all experiments, participants memorized 30 images of objects that they then monitored for in an attention task, inducing an episodic-based ACS. In Experiments 1a and 1b, only studied cues in a cueing task captured attention. We confirmed these cueing effects reflect capture by testing for inhibition of return in Experiment 2a, and controlled for perceptual masking by cues in Experiment 2b. In Experiment 3 we determined that ACSs are specifically supported by episodic retrieval, by dividing studied images into two sets and designating one as the targets in a rapid serial visual presentation task: Only target-set matching distractors produced a spatial blink (captured attention). These results extend our understanding of the representations specifying ACSs.     

Health-Related Quality of Life,Functioning and Social Experiences in People with Psychotic Disorders

Applied Research in Quality of Life - To inform development of a model for health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in people with psychotic disorders, we aimed to assess correlations between...     

Emotion Regulation of Events Central to Identity and Their Relationship With Concurrent and Prospective Depressive Symptoms

Dispositional emotion regulation is related to the severity and maintenance of depressive symptoms. However, whether emotion regulation specific to an event highly central for an individual’s identity is predictive of depressive symptoms has not been examined. Nonclinical participants (N = 220) reported the extent to which they employed a selection of emotion regulation strategies when recalling low- and high-centrality events. Dispositional emotion regulation and depressive symptoms were also assessed. A 7-week follow-up was conducted. High-centrality events were associated with more emotion regulation efforts. Greater brooding and expressive suppression in relation to high-centrality memories predicted concurrent depressive symptoms after controlling for event valence and dispostional emotion regulation. Effects were absent for low-centrality memories. Emotion regulation in response to high-centrality memories did not predict depressive symptoms at follow-up beyond baseline depressive symptoms. Overall, the findings showed that maladaptive emotion regulation in response to memories of high-centrality events is important for explaining depressive symptomatology.