Participation des familles immigrantes à l’école: points de vue des parents congolais à Edmonton (Alberta)

Economic development in Alberta during the last decade has attracted a large number of immigrant families to the province. It is important to understand the role that immigrant parents play on the schooling process of their children. The objective of this study was to identify factors limiting the involvement of some immigrant parents in their children’s education. Field data describe how parents perceive their relationship with school teachers.     

Psychometric qualities of the German version of the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PTDS)

In the present study, the psychometric properties of the German version of the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PTDS; A. Ehlers, R. Steil, H. Winter, & E. B. Foa, 1996) were evaluated in a sample of 143 trauma survivors. To investigate convergent and discriminant validity of this questionnaire, the authors assessed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression symptoms, and social phobia. Internal consistencies of the PTDS and its subscales as well as their association with related measures show that the German PTDS is a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of posttraumatic stress symptoms. A 3-factor structure was found that is, however, not exactly in concordance with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) formulation (Reexperiencing, Avoidance, and Hyperarousal) but rather comprises a Reexperiencing/Avoidance factor; an Emotional Numbing/Hyperarousal factor; and a 3rd factor, consisting of Hypervigilance and an Exaggerated Startle Response. The findings are discussed with respect to their equivalency to the original PTDS, core symptoms of PTSD, and desirable future research.     

Retrospective assessment of childhood sexual and physical abuse: a comparison of scaled and behaviorally specific approaches

This study compared retrospective reports of childhood sexual and physical abuse as assessed by two measures: the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), which uses a Likert-type scaling approach, and the Computer Assisted Maltreatment Inventory (CAMI), which employs a behaviorally specific means of assessment. Participants included 1,195 undergraduate students recruited from three geographically diverse universities. Agreement was high across the two measures in the classification of victim status (92% and 80% for sexual and physical abuse, respectively). However, the CTQ classified more participants as sexually abused than did the CAMI, whereas the opposite trend was found for physical abuse. For child physical abuse, many participants reporting abusive acts on the CAMI scored below the cut-point for physical abuse on the CTQ. Classification differences for both types of abuse were largely unrelated to demographic factors, socially desirable responding, or self-reported withholding of information. The implications of these results are discussed in light of future research using retrospective methods of assessing childhood abuse.     

Does men’s advantage in mental rotation persist when real three-dimensional objects are either felt or seen?

In several spatial tasks in which men outperform women in the processing of visual input, the sex difference has been eliminated in matching contexts limited to haptic input. The present experiment tested whether such contrasting results would be reproduced in a mental rotation task. A standard visual condition involved two-dimensional illustrations of three-dimensional stimuli; in a haptic condition, three-dimensional replicas of these stimuli were only felt; in an additional visual condition, these replicas were seen. The results indicated that, irrespective of condition, men's response times were shorter than women's, although accuracy did not significantly differ according to sex. For both men and women, response times were shorter and accuracy was higher in the standard condition than in the haptic one, the best performances being recorded when full replicas were shown. Self-reported solving strategies also varied as a function of sex and condition. The discussion emphasizes the robustness of men's faster speed in mental rotation. With respect to both speed and accuracy, the demanding sequential processing called for in the haptic setting, relative to the standard condition, is underscored, as is the benefit resulting from easier access to depth cues in the visual context with real three-dimensional objects.     

Modulation of the palmar grasp behavior in neonates according to texture property

The study investigates the newborn's grasping behavior according to the texture property of an object. 22 full term healthy newborns were tested with their right hand. Eleven babies were exposed to a first condition in which the spontaneous manual activity on an object with a smooth texture was recorded. Eleven babies were exposed to an another condition: they hold the very same object than those presented in the baseline condition except that thin pearls were added on its surface, increasing its roughness. The results provide evidence for the existence of a modulation of hand activity according to the texture property of the object. The nature of this modulatory capacity of the hand is discussed.     

When the outgroup becomes ingroup and when the ingroup becomes outgroup: Xenophobia and social categorization in a resource allocation task

Subjects classified as more or less xenophobic allocated resources to SWISS nationals (ingroup) and foreign residents (outgroup) in three intergroup judgement modes: negative interdependence, independence and positive interdependence. When both groups were assessed together as a single beneficiary (positive interdependence) they were allocated more resources than those provided to the outgroup under negative interdependence or independence. More xenophobic subjects, however gave less resources to both groups together under positive interdependence than to the ingroup under independence. In contrast, less xenophobic subjects allocated to both groups together a similar amount as to the ingroup under independence. These results suggest that, depending on their initial attitudes towards the outgroup, individuals will categorize a superordinate entity either more as an ingroup or more as an outgroup.     

On modal logic with an intuitionistic base

A definition of the concept of Intuitionist Modal Analogue is presented and motivated through the existence of a theorem preserving translation fromMIPC (see [2]) to a bimodalS ⁴–S⁵ calculus.Allatum est die 9 Septembris 1975     

The "style scheme" grounds perception of paintings

We studied the formation of style scheme (identification of the style that characterizes an artist) presenting 100 participants aesthetic visual stimuli. Participants were Spanish university students who volunteered: 72 women, 28 men of mean age 22.8 yr. Among those 50 were enrolled in History of Art and 50 students in Psychology. Stimuli belonged to different categories--High Art (pictures of well-known artists, like Van Gogh)/Popular Art (decorative pictures like Christmas postcards) and Representational (pictures with explicit meaning content, like a landscape)/Abstract (pictures without explicit meaning content, like Pollock's colored stains). Analysis using Signal Detection Theory techniques focused on how participants discriminate representational and abstract pictures. With High Art stimuli, participants can better discriminate representational paintings than abstract ones. However, the difference in discrimination between representational and abstract pictures diminishes among participants studying History of Art. It seems that prior education in art favors forming style schemes and to some extent enables the participant to detect the "meaning" in High Art abstract paintings.     

Psychological characteristics of elderly insomniacs

Sixty insomniacs, aged 60 years or over, fulfilling the DSM-IV criteria for primary insomnia, completed a set of questionnaires measuring psychological distress. These included the Sleep Impairment Index (SIM), the Symptom Check List 90-Revised (SCL-90-R), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) and the Elders Life Stress Inventory (ELSI). The insomniacs were compared on these measures with two contrast groups, one of elderly good sleepers and one an elderly community sample. As norms were developed for the SCL-90-R and PSWQ, insomniacs were also contrasted with the norm groups on these measures. In general, the results indicated a higher level of psychological distress among insomniacs than among the good sleepers, while there were negligible differences between insomniacs and the community sample on most measures. Overall, elderly insomniacs scored higher on measures of worry compared with the other groups, followed by measures of somatization, obsessive-compulsion and depression. It is concluded that excessive worrying was the most characteristic feature of elderly insomniacs.     

Does aging affect the allocation of visual attention in global and local information processing?

The earliest studies of Navon (1977) showed that in certain conditions the visual perception of hierarchical stimuli generates a global precedence effect. This hypothesis is based on the joint occurrence of two effects: a response time (RT) advantage for identifying global targets and interference by global distractors when responding to a local target. The aim of the present study was to determine the involvement of attentional mechanisms and whether certain aspects are specifically altered by normal aging. In a selective-attention task, a complete global precedence effect was found for young and old subjects. However, for the old subjects, global interference on local identification was more pronounced than for the young subjects. In a divided-attention task, the RT advantage was affected by attention shifts between global and local forms for both young and old subjects, but the global interference effect did not change.