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for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”.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.     

History of Religious Delusions and Psychosocial Functioning Among Mexican Patients with Paranoid Schizophrenia

The association between global functionality and religiosity among patients from developing and predominantly Catholic countries warrants attention. To compare religiosity and psychosocial functioning in Mexican schizophrenia patients with and without a history of religious delusions, seventy-four patients with paranoid schizophrenia were recruited. Patients with a history of religious delusions had more psychiatric hospitalizations and poorer psychosocial functioning compared with those without a history of religious delusions. No differences emerged between groups in the total scores of religiosity scales. A history of religious delusions rather than religiosity itself may have an influence on psychosocial functioning among Mexican patients with schizophrenia.     

Beyond the ‘Migrant Network’? Exploring Assistance Received in the Migration of Brazilians to Portugal and the Netherlands

This paper explores the tenability of three important critiques to the ‘migrant network’ approach in migration studies: (1) the narrow focus on kin and community members, which connect prospective migrants in origin countries with immigrants in the destination areas, failing to take due account of sources of assistance beyond the ‘migrant network’ like institutional or online sources; (2) that it is misleading to assume a general pattern in the role of migrant networks in migration, regardless of contexts of arrival or departure, including the scale and history of migration or the immigration regime; and (3) that ‘migrant networks’ are not equally relevant to all migrants, and that important differences may exist between labour migrants and other types of migrants like family migrants or students. Drawing on survey data on the migration of Brazilians to Portugal and the Netherlands we find support for these critiques but also reaffirm the relevance of ‘migrant networks’.     

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.     

The Effect of Motor-Mental Preperformance Routines on Motor Performance in Novice Learners

Two sequential studies were conducted to test the notion that preperformance routines (PPRs) positively affect motor performance. The first study consisted of observations and interviews with 115 elite athletes to explore crucial time periods and body positions inherent in expert preparation for performing a golf putt, tennis serve, volleyball serve, and basketball free throw. In the second study, we taught these features of PPR to novice performers: 240 male and female high school students were assigned to two motor-mental PPR, and one control condition. Findings revealed that PPR enhances motor performance and can be implemented at an early stage of learning.     

Moderating Role of Perceived Social Support between Perceived Parenting Styles and Relational Aggression in Adolescents

This study examined the moderating role of perceived social support between perceived parenting styles and relational aggression (RA). A sample (N = 400) was selected through stratified sampling from public and private schools and colleges. Adolescents (n = 200 boys and n = 200 girls) completed (a) Demographic Performa, (b) Early Memories of Upbringing for Children to measure perceived parenting styles, (c) Social Support Questionnaire to measure perceived social support, and (d) Diverse Adolescent Relational Aggression Scale to measure RA. Statistical analyses showed that perceived social support moderated the relationship between perceived parenting styles and RA. Findings indicated that perceived social support strengthens the negative relationship between perceived father’s Overprotection parenting and RA. Results also showed that perceived social support strengthens positive relationship between perceived father’s Anxious Rearing parenting and RA. Moreover, perceived social support strengthens the positive relationship between perceived mother’s Rejection parenting and RA. Results help in implementing interventions to promote the consolidation or increment of sources that constitute adolescents with concrete and feasible actions in the cultural, educational, and counseling implications.     

Processing complex graphemes in handwriting production

Recent studies on handwriting production and neuropsychological data have suggested that orthographic representations are multilevel structures that encode information on letter identity and order, but also on intermediate-grained processing units such as syllables and morphemes. This study on handwriting production examined whether orthographic representations also include a graphemic-processing level. French adults wrote words containing an embedded one-, two-, or three-letter grapheme (e.g., a in clavier, ai in prairie, ain in plainte) on a digitizer. The results for letter duration revealed that the timing of movement processing depends on grapheme length (e.g., the duration of a for one-letter graphemes was shorter than that for two-letter graphemes, which, in turn, was shorter than that for three-letter graphemes). Two- and three-letter graphemes start to be processed before we start to write them. The results therefore revealed that orthographic representations also encode information on grapheme complexity.     

Stressful life events and suicidal behaviour in countries with different development levels: Nicaragua,El Salvador,Chile and Spain

This paper presents a study conducted on 709 Latin American undergraduates from four countries with different development levels (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Spain). The intention of this paper is to value the differences in the number and characteristics of stressful life events (SLE) suffered by the participants. Another purpose is to confirm the relation between SLE and suicidal conduct in Spanish cultural contexts, through the study of a multicultural sample of Spanish‐speaking university students, and finally, to isolate the SLE that allow predicting a later suicidal conduct to a greatest extent. The information was collected by means of a self‐applied questionnaire. The results indicate a greater presence of SLE among those who live in countries with lower development levels and among those who have attempted committing suicide. It is observed that the fact of having suffered certain SLE—physical or sexual mistreatment, excessive alcohol or drug consumption and having left home during childhood or adolescence—aid in the prediction of later suicidal conducts in the studied samples. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship Between Overeducation and Job Satisfaction Among Young Spanish Workers: The Role of Salary,Contract of Employment,and Work Experience

The increase of education in younger generations and the relative scarcity of qualified jobs available for them makes overeducation of young employees a social issue. We explored the relationships between overeducation and job satisfaction (extrinsic, intrinsic, social facet), as well as the direct and moderating role of salary, contract of employment, and work experience in these relationships using hierarchical regression analyses. Data were collected from a sample of 643 young Spanish employees. As expected, there were negative relationships between overeducation and all 3 satisfaction facets. Moreover, high work experience emerged as a moderating factor that buffered the negative effect of overeducation on extrinsic satisfaction. Contract of employment and salary did not moderate these relationships.