On-the-spot study of pedestrian crashes on Brazilian Federal District rural highways crossing urban areas

Knowledge of the factors that contribute to pedestrian crashes is fundamental to the design of engineering, enforcement and education measures to decrease the number and severity of these crashes. To identify the factors that contribute to pedestrian crashes on rural highways crossing urban areas in the Federal District, Brazil, an investigatory procedure was developed. The procedure was implemented by the Federal District Road Department (DER–DF) for a period of 6 months. This study presents the investigatory method and the results. Data analysis indicated the importance of conducting detailed studies of the factors that contribute to pedestrian crashes. The main contributory factors identified are presented and discussed.     

Free associate norms for 139 European Portuguese words for children from different age groups

In the present study, we present normative ratings of free association for 139 European Portuguese (EP) words among 7- to 8-, 9- to 10-, and 11- to 12-year-old children attending the 3rd, 5th, and 7th grades of elementary and middle school in Portugal. For each word, five indices are presented: (a) the percentage of associates, (b)?the strength of the first associate, (c)?the strength of the second associate, (d) the distance between the first and second associates, and (e)?the percentage of idiosyncratic responses. Additionally, grade-level frequency values for each word from the ESCOLEX database (Soares et al., in press) are also provided. As expected, the results revealed developmental changes in the knowledge organization of the children, which occurred at the ages of 9–10 (5th grade) and remained stable in the 11- to 12-year-old children (7th grade). Specifically, we observed a decrease in the percentages of associates and idiosyncratic responses, as well as an increase in the strengths of the first and second associates from the 3rd to the 5th grade. Moreover, a comparative analysis with the previous work of Carneiro, Albuquerque, Fernandez, and Esteves (2004) on EP and Macizo, Gómez-Ariza, and Bajo (2000) on Spanish, for the subsets of common words (16 and 58, respectively), showed that the present norms fit well with previous EP data, but differ from the Spanish data.     

The impact of COVID-19 concerns on perceiving others' faces

Unlike most infectious diseases, COVID-19 is characterised by an absence of facial disease-signalling cues. Yet, it is still unclear whether it has influenced face perception. Understanding this may help clarify if and how our motivation toward social interactions is conditional on situational pathogen threats. The present study investigated if priming disease concerns about COVID-19 would change people's perception of neutral faces on perceived disease, social discomfort and arousal elicited by such faces; this condition was compared with other infectious/non-infectious diseases and a non-disease priming condition. One-hundred sixty-six participants recruited nationally performed the online task. When compared with the non-disease condition, participants primed for COVID-19 perceived faces as sicker and tended to view them as eliciting more social discomfort; no difference occurred in arousal. No other difference was found between conditions. These findings suggest that the pandemic context can shape how we perceive others' apparent sickness. Overall, these might reflect adaptations intertwined with the behavioural immune system's defence mechanisms.     

The co-constructed therapy alliance and the technical and tactical quality of the therapist interventions in psychotherapy

This study sought to describe a brief review of studies conducted on the therapeutic alliance, taking into consideration therapeutic process and outcomes. We seek to reflect about the need to encourage the communities who engage in and conduct research on clinical practice not only to implement surveys of empirically validated measures of therapeutic outcomes, but also make them a regular practice among all clinical mental health psychotherapists. We therefore suggest the following paradigm – the Practice Based on Evidence of Results (PBER) – as a way to improve the quality of technical and tactical interventions of psychotherapists     

Entrevista con Julián de Ajuriaguerra

RESUMEN

En esta entrevista Julián de Ajuriaguerra describe su historia científica desde que era interno en hospitales psiquiátricos y alumno de Thomas y Lhermitte, comentando los trabajos que realizó con adultos, ancianos y dementes aunque su interés estuviese desde un principio en los niños. Responde, entre otras, a cuestiones tales como si lo biológico se complementa con lo social en el desarrollo, cómo son los vínculos de los padres con el niño, cuál es su posición respecto al psicoanálisis, si es necesaria la interdisciplinariedad para hacer psicología o qué opina del problema de los estadios. También realiza un balance del estado actual de la psicomotricidad, ejemplifica qué entiende por “diálogo tónico” y explica las diferencias entre los juegos de niños y niñas de siete, ocho y nueve años, admitiendo la distinta organización tónica de los sexos. Por último el autor se centra en el trabajo clínico, ofreciendo sugerencias para aquéllos que empiezan a llevarlo a cabo en España. Los comentarios que Ana María Pardo y Ángel Rivière realizan del autor y su obra introducen esta entrevista.     

Comparative differences in the self-perceptions of disadvantaged and advantaged students

Previous research had indicated positive and significantly higher self-perceptions for disadvantaged children in comparison to advantaged children in grades four through eight. The intention of this research was to determine whether disadvantaged children maintain their more positive self-images when they enter the more integrated environment with advantaged children. It was discovered that both disadvantaged and advantaged high school students had significantly lower self-perception scores than did the elementary school pupils. The importance of the study is in the continued non-support of the hypothesis that disadvantaged children of all ages have negative self concepts—whether in segregated or integrated situations. However, the study further shows that high school students' self-images are not as high as those of younger children—whether they are disadvantaged or advantaged.