Qualitative Study on the Traumatic Experiences of Female Sex Offenders

This study into female sex offenders examines the links between their sexual acting out and traumatic life events. The methodology is based on an analysis of 35 court cases involving females convicted of sexual abuse alongside semistructured interviews recorded with 13 participants. NVivo® software was used to analyze the data thematically, whence four key themes emerged (a desire for power, sadism, extreme anger, and the quest for self-affirmation); these themes fall into a typology that highlights the different contexts and characteristics of the sexual abuse. The results also highlight a traumatic context during childhood and adolescence that is likely to have formed the basis for the development of the deviant sexual behavior and the fact that all the women acted in collusion. The discussion on the results suggests that assessing and analyzing the needs of these women should focus in particular on the relationship between the current sexual acting out and a personal biography filled with traumatic events.     

Corticostriatal Regulation of Language Functions

Neuropsychology Review - The role of corticostriatal circuits in language functions is unclear. In this review, we consider evidence from language learning, syntax, and controlled language...     

Plagiarism Allegations Account for Most Retractions in Major Latin American/Caribbean Databases

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/Caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports (JCR). LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications.     

The uncertainty appraisal enhances the prominent deck B effect in the Iowa gambling task

The Iowa gambling task (Bechara et al., Cognition 50:7–15, 1994) is designed to simulate a decision making problem under ambiguity, in which the degree of reliance on emotional cues arising from previous experiences contributes to perform advantageously. Recent studies based on the appraisal tendency framework demonstrated that emotional certainty (associated with intuitive strategies) leads to a more advantageous decision pattern, whereas emotional uncertainty (associated with deliberative strategies) impairs the performance in the IGT (Bagneux et al., Motivation and Emotion 37(4):818–827, 2013; Bollon and Bagneux, Cognition and Emotion 27(2):376–384, 2013). Due to the problems in the IGT (Dunn et al., Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30:239–271, 2006; Steingroever et al., Psychological Assessment 25(1):180–193, 2013), however, it is an open question to what extent the disadvantageous IGT performance in the uncertainty conditions was based on risky decision making. Addressing the main criticisms on the IGT, the primary aim of the present study is to provide a further explanation for the underlying source of the IGT impairment led by uncertainty appraisals. In line with previous research, we found that participants in the certainty-associated emotion condition (disgust) outperformed those in uncertainty-associated conditions (fear, sadness) in the gambling game. Detailed four-deck format analyses on decision patterns and knowledge levels provided supporting evidence for our main hypothesis that the weak IGT scores in the uncertainty conditions can be summarized as a failure to anticipate the badness and the goodness of the most difficult decks, and a dominant preference for a risky option with high immediate gains and infrequent losses.     

Comparison of Allocations by Individuals and Interacting Groups in an Escalation of Commitment Situation1

In this study, individuals and interacting 3‐person groups were asked to make a series of allocation decisions using a modified version of the A&S decision case (Staw, 1976). Based on the choice‐shift effect, it was hypothesized that groups would allocate more to a failing course of action than would individuals, and that these differences would emerge only after repeated sequential decisions. Both hypotheses were supported. These findings suggest that processes unique to groups account for the greater allocations of groups, relative to individuals in escalation situations. The implications of these findings in applied settings are discussed.     

Relations between approaches to studying and note-taking behaviour in lectures

Copies of notes taken during a lecture were obtained from first-year psychology students, and the relations examined between measures derived from these (the number of points recorded, the number of words written, and the number of words per point) and a number of variables measuring personality and approach to studying. Three variables were found to be related to the measures derived from the notes: older students, those scoring high on strategic learning (strategy component) and those scoring high on surface learning (motivational component), both measured by questions derived from Biggs (1979), produced longer notes and recorded more of the important points in the lecture. The results suggest that relations between approaches to studying and specific study behaviour are not straightforward and require more detailed investigation.     

Simulating the variability of actual outcomes

A method is described for simulating the variability of outcomes encountered in a variety of settings. Outcome values falling within a specified range are randomly generated and presented across subjects and trials, so that, over time, the average values seen by all subjects in a condition are the same. Randomly varying reinforcement dimensions (such as magnitude) over trials for each subject is recommended to enhance both the internal and the external validity of laboratory results. In addition, it can be used to study the effects of the variability or uncertainty of outcome dimensions such as magnitude and duration in investigations of behaviors such as matching, melioration, and behavioral momentum.     

Psychophysics in the field: Perception and memory for labor pain

Separate groups of women estimated the painfulness of labor contractions either immediately (perceptual judgments) or at time intervals varying from 8 to 48 h after their completion (memorial judgments). The pain judgments of individual uterine contractions were related functionally to the biometrically measured magnitude of these contractions. Perceived and remembered painful sensations were related to referent intensities by power functions governed, as a rule, by exponents greater than unity. Exponents for the memory functions were consistently greater than those for the perceptual functions. Psychophysics done in the field can help decide theoretical issues in addition to providing useful practical information.     

Construction of monadic three-valued Łukasiewicz algebras

The notion of monadic three-valued ukasiewicz algebras was introduced by L. Monteiro ([12], [14]) as a generalization of monadic Boolean algebras. A. Monteiro ([9], [10]) and later L. Monteiro and L. Gonzalez Coppola [17] obtained a method for the construction of a three-valued ukasiewicz algebra from a monadic Boolea algebra. In this note we give the construction of a monadic three-valued ukasiewicz algebra from a Boolean algebra B where we have defined two quantification operations and ^* such that ^*x=^*x (where ^*x=-^*-x). In this case we shall say that and ^* commutes. If B is finite and is an existential quantifier over B, we shall show how to obtain all the existential quantifiers ^* which commute with .Taking into account R. Mayet [3] we also construct a monadic three-valued ukasiewicz algebra from a monadic Boolean algebra B and a monadic ideal I of B. The most essential results of the present paper will be submitted to the XXXIX Annual Meeting of the Unión Matemática Argentina (October 1989, Rosario, Argentina).     

Evaluating the filial behaviour scale across three cultural groups using exploratory structural equation modelling

Filial piety is a Confucian concept that guides how children treat and take care of their parents. The Filial Behaviour Scale (FBS) is a 25-item instrument developed in the Chinese context measuring behavioural manifestations of filial piety. Although the components of filial piety have been found to be relevant across cultures, little research has investigated the psychometric properties of the FBS in other cultural contexts. The present study evaluated the factor structure, internal consistency, measurement invariance and construct validity of the FBS across three cultural groups: the United States, Italy and Malaysia. Participants were 1090 emerging adults (67% females; M_age = 21.29 years, SD = 1.97; White Americans: n = 455, White Italians: n = 428, Malays: n = 328). A two-factor structure emerged across groups: Obedience/Obligation (behaviours showing obedience and obligation towards parents) and Relationship (behaviours expressing affection and promoting positive parent–child relationships). The two factors demonstrated adequate internal consistency, full configural, partial metric and partial scalar invariance, as well as unique associations with depressive symptoms and parent–child relationships across groups. These findings yielded a more nuanced understanding of filial behaviour and supported the utility of a two-factor FBS among emerging adults in various cultural contexts.