Bullying-victimization problems and aggressive tendencies in Spanish secondary schools students: the role of gender stereotypical traits

This paper presents data concerning culturally prescribed gender traits and their influence on bullying/victimization problems and aggressive tendencies from a wide sample of 1,654 Spanish adolescents. The aims of this study were to clarify the effect of masculine traits on male and female secondary students’ aggression, and also to explore the role of feminine traits in either the inhibition of aggression or the use of more covert forms. Results show that masculine stereotypical traits are related more strongly with bully perpetration, proneness to aggression and experience of anger and hostility in both sexes. In contrast, traditional feminine traits are negatively related with bullying perpetration and proneness to aggression. However, feminine traits are linked to male students’ victimization. Results are discussed in the light of previous findings and are taken into consideration in the design of intervention practices in secondary schools.     

An Embodied‐Socio‐Psychological Perspective in Health Psychology?

The author introduces an alternative perspective to the biopsychosocial model in health psychology. In the first part of her article, she presents the major critiques levelled at mainstream research in health psychology. In the second part, she reviews fundamental studies on the place of emotions in corporeality, then studies that are more psycho‐socially oriented and focus on the relationship between health and the social. This literature review shows the necessity of an alternative perspective. The Embodied‐Socio‐Psychological (ESP) perspective which is presented here is based on a historico‐cultural and developmental approach, drawing from Wallon and Vygotsky’s work and supported by current research in neuroscience on mirror neurons as well as by early interaction psychology. The ESP perspective enables accounting for the articulation between embodied emotional development and the development of superior psychological functions within the social and cultural field; during the crisis of serious illness, this articulation is strongly disrupted in its embodied emotional, embodied social as well as socio‐psychological foundations. This perspective proposes going beyond a notion of the ill human being as a juxtaposition of BPS variables, in order to account for the complementary, indissociable and complex articulation of the corporeal, the social and the psychological. It refers to a theoretical approach that is clearly psychological and no longer anchored in a biomedical definition.     

An integrating approach to the study of burnout in university professors

The aim of this paper is to use an integrative approach to identify the main correlates and/or predictors at different levels (personal, psychosocial, occupational and outside the workplace) of the burnout dimensions. The sample consists of 813 university professors. Results from statistical analyses show that there are, indeed, both common and specific predictors for the different facets of the syndrome. Specifically, while social support and optimism are selected to confirm all manifestations of burnout, other factors (work hours per week, time in the profession, hardiness, Type A behavioural pattern, life events, daily hassles) do increase the emergence of differential profiles. Lastly, findings are discussed and the main conclusions are presented.     

Determinants of instrumental extinction in terrestrial toads (Bufo arenarum)

Previous research in a water-reinforced instrumental training situation with toads (Bufo arenarum) has shown that performance in both acquisition and extinction is poorer after partial, rather than continuous reinforcement training. In Experiment 1, the performance of a group receiving 24 trials on a 50% partial reinforcement schedule was poorer in acquisition and extinction than that of continuously reinforced groups matched for trials or reinforcements. However, partially reinforced toads extinguished at the same rapid rate as a continuously reinforced group that received training only on the days in which the partial toads received water reinforcement. In Experiment 2, extinction was faster after 10 reinforced acquisition trials than after 30 trials. This evidence suggests that the deleterious effects of partial reinforcement in toads can be explained by a combination of two factors, namely, the distribution of reinforced trials across days and the total number of reinforcements.     

Scaling relative incentive value in anticipatory behavior

Papini and Pellegrini (Papini, M. R., & Pellegrini, S. Scaling relative incentive value in consummatory behavior. Learning and Motivation, in press) observed that, within limits, the level of consummatory responding of rats exposed to incentive downshifts in the concentration of sucrose solutions was similar when the ratio of test/training solutions was the same. For example, 32 → 4% and 16 → 2% downshifts (1:8 test/training ratios) lead to similar levels of consummatory behavior, despite differences in the absolute concentrations of the solutions involved in the downshift. This suggests the applicability of Weber’s law to spaced-trial, incentive-downshift situations. Experiment 1 extended these results to runway performance using food pellets as reward, and Experiment 2 to lever pressing performance, using an autoshaping procedure and sucrose solutions as rewards. The results conform well to the test/training ratio suggesting that Weber’s law is applicable to anticipatory behavior. A simple mathematical rule that can be easily incorporated into models based on linear operators describes the results of consummatory and anticipatory behavior experiments.     

Perceptual Bias in Speech Error Data Collection: Insights from Spanish Speech Errors

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than word-medial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors “in the wild” seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.     

Referral Source Differences in Functional Impairment Levels for Children Served in the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program

We report one of the first multi-site investigations into referral source variation in functional impairment for children with serious emotional disturbance served in systems of care settings. Baseline data collected as part of the national evaluation for the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program was used to assess the comparability of functional status for children referred from traditional mental health versus non-mental health agencies. Results indicate that children referred from child welfare and family groups have significantly lower levels of overall dysfunction than those referred from mental health, while children referred from school and juvenile justice agencies have comparable levels. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

Illusions of Optimal Motion,Relationism, and Perceptual Content

Austere relationism rejects the orthodox analysis of hallucinations and illusions as incorrect perceptual representations. In this article, I argue that illusions of optimal motion (IOMs) present a serious challenge for this view. First, I submit that austere‐relationist accounts of misleading experiences cannot be adapted to account for IOMs. Second, I show that any attempt at elucidating IOMs within an austere‐relationist framework undermines the claim that perceptual experiences fundamentally involve relations to mind‐independent objects. Third, I develop a representationalist model of IOMs. The proposed analysis combines two ideas: Evans' dynamic modes of presentation and Fine's relational semantics for identity.     

Monkey memory: same/different concept learning, serial probe acquisition, and probe delay effects

Three rhesus monkeys were trained and tested in a same/different task with six successive sets of 70 item pairs to an 88% accuracy on each set. Their poor initial transfer performance (55% correct) with novel stimuli improved dramatically to 85% correct following daily item changes in the training stimuli. They acquired a serial-probe-recognition (SPR) task with variable (1-6) item list lengths. This SPR acquisition, although gradual, was more rapid for the monkeys than for pigeons similarly trained. Testing with a fixed list length of four items at different delays between the last list item and the probe test item revealed changes in the serial-position function: a recency effect (last items remembered well) for 0-s delay, recency and primacy effects (first and last list items remembered well) for 1-, 2-, and 10-s delays, and only a primacy effect for the longest 30-s delay. These results are compared with similar ones from pigeons and are discussed in relation to theories of memory processing.