Development and validation of a scale to assess positive youth development values

This paper describes the development of a self-report scale for adolescents to assess positive youth development values. It presents a substantial number of psychometric results performed on a sample of 2,400 adolescents (1,068 boys and 1,332 girls) from 12 to 17 years ( M = 14.73, SD = 1.25), who were studying secondary education in Western Andalusia. The results provide evidence of the psychometric quality of items, cross-validity of a structure of eight first-order factors and three second-order factors, obtained through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and adequate reliability. This study concludes that the scale presents adequate evidence of validity and reliability that allows assessment, especially in school contexts, of a broad set of values of particular relevance to positive youth development.     

Exposure to severe urban air pollution influences cognitive outcomes, brain volume and systemic inflammation in clinically healthy children

Exposure to severe air pollution produces neuroinflammation and structural brain alterations in children. We tested whether patterns of brain growth, cognitive deficits and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) are associated with exposures to severe air pollution. Baseline and 1 year follow-up measurements of global and regional brain MRI volumes, cognitive abilities (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, WISC-R), and serum inflammatory mediators were collected in 20 Mexico City (MC) children (10 with white matter hyperintensities, WMH⁺, and 10 without, WMH⁻) and 10 matched controls (CTL) from a low polluted city. There were significant differences in white matter volumes between CTL and MC children - both WMH⁺ and WMH⁻ - in right parietal and bilateral temporal areas. Both WMH⁻ and WMH⁺ MC children showed progressive deficits, compared to CTL children, on the WISC-R Vocabulary and Digit Span subtests. The cognitive deficits in highly exposed children match the localization of the volumetric differences detected over the 1 year follow-up, since the deficits observed are consistent with impairment of parietal and temporal lobe functions. Regardless of the presence of prefrontal WMH, Mexico City children performed more poorly across a variety of cognitive tests, compared to CTL children, thus WMH⁺ is likely only partially identifying underlying white matter pathology. Together these findings reveal that exposure to air pollution may perturb the trajectory of cerebral development and result in cognitive deficits during childhood.     

Evaluation of Affect in Mexico and Spain: Psychometric Properties and Usefulness of an Abbreviated Version of the Day Reconstruction Method

The aims of the present study were to assess the psychometric properties of the Spanish-language version of the abbreviated Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), and to investigate differences in affective experience in Mexico and Spain. A total of 2,629 adults from Mexico and 4,583 from Spain were interviewed. Information was obtained using an abbreviated version of the DRM, which had been translated into Spanish. Reliability, validity, and the structure of affect were assessed and compared between countries. The diurnal variation of affect, the changes in affect along the life span, time use, and the relationship between affect and socio-demographic characteristics were also analysed. Adequate psychometric properties for the Spanish-language version of the abbreviated DRM were found in both the Mexican and the Spanish samples, and affect tended to improve along the life span in both countries. However, net affect did not have the same distribution function (Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic = 0.25, p < 0.001) in both countries, being higher in Spain. Moreover, both samples showed opposite patterns in the diurnal variation of affect. The results showed that the Spanish-language version of the DRM is a feasible and valid method to measure affect, its diurnal rhythms, and time use in large-scale surveys.     

Sensing sociality in dogs: what may make an interactive robot social?

This study investigated whether dogs would engage in social interactions with an unfamiliar robot, utilize the communicative signals it provides and to examine whether the level of sociality shown by the robot affects the dogs’ performance. We hypothesized that dogs would react to the communicative signals of a robot more successfully if the robot showed interactive social behaviour in general (towards both humans and dogs) than if it behaved in a machinelike, asocial way. The experiment consisted of an interactive phase followed by a pointing session, both with a human and a robotic experimenter. In the interaction phase, dogs witnessed a 6-min interaction episode between the owner and a human experimenter and another 6-min interaction episode between the owner and the robot. Each interaction episode was followed by the pointing phase in which the human/robot experimenter indicated the location of hidden food by using pointing gestures (two-way choice test). The results showed that in the interaction phase, the dogs’ behaviour towards the robot was affected by the differential exposure. Dogs spent more time staying near the robot experimenter as compared to the human experimenter, with this difference being even more pronounced when the robot behaved socially. Similarly, dogs spent more time gazing at the head of the robot experimenter when the situation was social. Dogs achieved a significantly lower level of performance (finding the hidden food) with the pointing robot than with the pointing human; however, separate analysis of the robot sessions suggested that gestures of the socially behaving robot were easier for the dogs to comprehend than gestures of the asocially behaving robot. Thus, the level of sociality shown by the robot was not enough to elicit the same set of social behaviours from the dogs as was possible with humans, although sociality had a positive effect on dog–robot interactions.     

Gaze-following behind barriers in domestic dogs

Although gaze-following abilities have been demonstrated in a wide range of species, so far no clear evidence has been available for dogs. In the current study, we examined whether dogs follow human gaze behind an opaque barrier in two different contexts, in a foraging situation and in a non-foraging situation (food involved vs. food not involved in the situation). We assumed that dogs will spontaneously follow the human gaze and that the foraging context will have a positive effect on dogs’ gaze-following behaviour by causing an expectation in the dogs that food might be hidden somewhere in the room and might be communicated by the experimenter. This expectation presumably positively affects their motivational and attentional state. Here, we report that dogs show evidence of spontaneous gaze-following behind barriers in both situations. According to our findings, the dogs gazed earlier at the barrier in the indicated direction in both contexts. However, as we expected, the context also has some effect on dogs’ gaze-following behaviour, as more dogs gazed behind the barrier in the indicated direction in the foraging situation. The present results also support the idea that gaze-following is a characteristic skill in mammals which may more easily emerge in certain functional contexts.     

Not a Negation? A Logico-Philosophical Perspective on the Ugaritic Particles lā/ ’al

Topoi - The negative particles lā/ ’al in Ugaritic change from positive to negative in modal contexts, conditional, questions, disjunctions, etc. They have usually been studied from a...     

Longitudinal Associations Between the Five-Factor Model of Personality and The Bi-Factor Model of Psychopathology: Continuity,Pathoplasty and Complication Effects in Adolescents

The study of the bifactor structure of psychopathology, which includes a general factor of psychopathology (or p factor) in addition to the internalizing and externalizing factors, has gained attention. However, its associations with the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality has been addressed in few studies, and none has examined different plausible etiological models (i.e., continuity, pathoplasty, complication) to explain its relationship, which is the aim of the present research. Additionally, the longitudinal association of the General Factor of Personality (GFP) and the p factor will be also explored. Personality and psychopathological symptoms of high school students were assessed at three time points (once a year) (n?=?655; M?=?13.79, SD?=?1.24; 49.8% girls). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (and measurement invariance across waves) were tested for the traits, the GFP and the bifactor model of psychopathology. While the bifactor model and the one-factor solution for each personality trait displayed good fit to the data and remained invariant over time, the structure of the GFP was adequate and invariant in two of the three waves. The resulting factors were included in cross-lagged panel models and showed that the FFM traits and the psychopathology factors influenced each other reciprocally. Most associations fell in line with the continuity model, but minor pathoplastic and complication effects were also reported. Similar associations were found between the GFP and the p factor. These results suggest that interventions in riskier personality profiles might prevent the development of general and more specific psychopathology spectra.

     

The Efficient Assessment of Self-Esteem: Proposing the Brief Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

Self-esteem is defined as sense of self-worth and self-respect, being crucial for understanding people’s well-being and success. It is one of the most studied constructs in the social sciences, with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) being the most used measure. Across four studies (N = 1450), we tested the psychometric parameters of an abbreviated version of the RSES. Through Item Response Theory, the five best items were selected to form the unidimensional Brief Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (B-RSES), a reliable and valid measure of self-esteem, which is invariant across age groups and gender. In addition, both RSES and B-RSES correlated very similarly with the Big Five Personality Factors. Also, the B-RSES was strongly correlated with three other short measures of self-esteem, besides being more strongly associated with a range of variables such as conscientiousness and self-competence in comparison to the other three short scales. Together, the B-RSES is especially useful in research that requires rapid evaluation and the use of multiple variables.

     

Measurement of Quality of Life in Spanish Regions

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The present paper measures quality of life through a set of dimensions included in the following partial indicators of objective well-being: demography,...