Reliability and validity of the Padua Inventory in an Iranian population

In order to study the reliability and validity of the Padua Inventory (PI), its items were translated into Persian and then back-translated into English as suggested by Brislin, Lonner, Thorndike, Cross-cultural research methods, Wiley, New York, 1973. Using the translated version of the PI, two studies were carried out. The first study included 219 healthy participants selected from Shiraz city in Iran to examine the reliability and factorial structure of the PI via test-retest, internal consistency and principal component analysis methods. The results of this study showed good reliability for the PI and confirmed its factorial structure reported by previous studies. The second study included four groups of participants as follows: patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), patients with anxiety disorders, patients with depressive disorder and normal individuals. The PI scores were able to differentiate between OCD patients and normal individuals, but failed to differentiate between neurotic and OCD patients. Two subscales of PI-R version of the PI (precision and washing) differentiated depressive and OCD patients.     

Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development

Children who produce one word at a time often use gesture to supplement their speech, turning a single word into an utterance that conveys a sentence-like meaning ('eat'+point at cookie). Interestingly, the age at which children first produce supplementary gesture-speech combinations of this sort reliably predicts the age at which they first produce two-word utterances. Gesture thus serves as a signal that a child will soon be ready to begin producing multi-word sentences. The question is what happens next. Gesture could continue to expand a child's communicative repertoire over development, combining with words to convey increasingly complex ideas. Alternatively, after serving as an opening wedge into language, gesture could cease its role as a forerunner of linguistic change. We addressed this question in a sample of 40 typically developing children, each observed at 14, 18, and 22 months. The number of supplementary gesture-speech combinations the children produced increased significantly from 14 to 22 months. More importantly, the types of supplementary combinations the children produced changed over time and presaged changes in their speech. Children produced three distinct constructions across the two modalities several months before these same constructions appeared entirely within speech. Gesture thus continues to be at the cutting edge of early language development, providing stepping-stones to increasingly complex linguistic constructions.     

Antecedent reactivation by surface and deep anaphora in Norwegian

Anaphora are expressions in language that depend on other linguistic entities for their full meaning. They can furthermore be divided into two types according to the level of representation where they find their antecedents: Surface anaphora, which resolve their reference at the sentence representation level, and deep anaphora, which resolve their reference at the non-grammatical level of discourse representation. The linguistic theory of these two anaphor types, and recent findings about processing differences at these two levels, combine to predict that surface anaphora should show fast and immediate reactivation of their antecedents, whereas deep anaphora should have a slower time course of antecedent re-access. These predictions were confirmed with two lexical decision task experiments with Norwegian stimuli.     

Masculinity, Femininity, and the Bem Sex Role Inventory in Turkey

The aim of this study was to examine the masculinity and femininity scales of Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) among Turkish university students. Five hundred thirty-six students (280 men and 256 women) volunteered to complete the short-form of the BSRI and answer demographic questions. In factor analyses, the original factor structure (Bem, 1981) was found both in the mens and womens data. Comparisons of the factor structures with target rotation (Procrustes rotation) and comparison indexes showed no difference between the factor structures found among men and women. The internal consistency of the masculinity and femininity scales was acceptable, and t-tests showed that women scored higher on the femininity scale, and men scored higher on the masculinity scale. There were significant differences between men and women only on two masculinity items, but significant differences were found in 8 (of 10) femininity items.     

"结构":解读古典经济学哲学构架的逻辑中轴--瓦尔特·本雅明:作品、生活、时代和历史的交叠

马克思的"古典经济学"概念具有明确内涵、外延并与一定的"知识型"相关,这与西方学者在一般的、含糊的意义使用这个概念具有根本的异质性.它界划了一种分析的范式,说明了马克思与资产阶级经济学之间存在着"知识型"的断裂,这种分析范式就是从配第和布阿吉尔贝尔开始的探讨社会结构及由这种结构所决定的运动规律,这是"古典经济学"概念之独特内涵所在.福柯等人忽视了古典经济学的"结构"视角而从"劳动"范畴出发,认为马克思对李嘉图的修正在西方知识的最深层中并未产生真正的间断性,这是没有读懂马克思"古典政治经济学"的真正内涵.     

Sex Differences in Social Support and Self-Efficacy Within a Recovery Community

This study examined similarities and differences in social support and self-efficacy for abstinence between women and men recovering from substance addiction. The sample consisted of 87 residents of Oxford House (OH) self-run, community-based recovery homes. Analyses revealed similarities between women and men in terms of the composition and utilization of support networks and abstinence self-efficacy. Also, for both sexes, length of residency in OH was significantly related to decreased social support for alcohol and drug use and increased self-efficacy for abstinence. However, multiple-group SEM analyses demonstrated that social support for alcohol/drug use fully mediated the link between length of residency and abstinence self-efficacy for women, but not for men. Findings suggest that the process of gaining self-efficacy to remain abstinent is distinct for women and men, and that social support plays a different role in women's recovery than it does in men's.     

A psychometric assessment of a Swedish translation of Spreitzer's empowerment scale

The psychometric properties of a Swedish translation of Spreitzer's (1995a) empowerment scale were assessed. Three parallel assessments were made of data from 1,107 female registered nurses, 758 female assistant nurses, and 107 male registered and assistant nurses. The analyses indicated that the psychometric properties of the scale can be considered satisfactory. Suggestions are made regarding future research in the fields of psychometrics and work- and health-psychology.     

Processing coordinated structures: incrementality and connectedness

We recorded participants' eye movements while they read sentences containing verb-phrase coordination. Results showed evidence of immediate processing disruption when a reflexive pronoun embedded in the conjoined verb phrase mismatched the sentence subject. We argue that this result is incompatible with models of human parsing that employ only bottom-up parsing procedures, even when flexible constituency is employed. Models need to incorporate a mechanism similar to the adjoining operation in Tree-Adjoining Grammar, in which one structure is inserted into another.     

Racial Differences in Responses to the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire

The aim of this study was to examine differences in responses to the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (CGSQ) between African American and White caregivers of children with emotional and behavioral challenges. Significant item- and scale-level differences were detected across groups with African Americans consistently reporting less strain. We examined whether these differences were more likely due to nonequivalent measurement than to real differences in the experience of caregiver strain. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model fit the data well for both racial groups, but there were some differences in structural components. Internal consistency was equivalent across the groups. In an examination of criterion validity, regression analyses showed that African American caregivers experienced a slower rate of increase in objective caregiver strain at a given increase in child internalizing problems. No other race differences were found in the regression analyses. In general, we conclude that the CGSQ can be useful for detecting caregiver strain and identifying family support needs for both White and African American caregivers. Differences across groups in reports of caregiver strain, however, call for more research on racial differences in the impact on the family of caring for a child with emotional and behavioral disorders.     

Differences in Individual Approaches: Communication in the Familial Breast Cancer Consultation and the Effect on Patient Outcomes

This multicenter study aimed to assess (i) whether individual clinical geneticists and genetic counselors vary in their communication skills and (ii) whether this variation in communication impacts on patient outcomes, such as anxiety, depression, genetics knowledge, and satisfaction. One hundred and fifty women from high-risk breast cancer families attending their first genetic counseling consultation completed pre and post-consultation self-report questionnaires. The consultations were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Univariate analyses showed highly significant differences between individual clinical geneticists and genetic counselors in: facilitating understanding (p 0.001); facilitating active involvement (p 0.001); facilitating partnership building (p = 0.003); addressing emotional concerns (p 0.001); and discussing prophylactic mastectomy (p = 0.017). Multivariate linear regressions showed that this variation in communication resulted in a greater change in patients depression 4 weeks after the counseling session (p = 0.017). These findings suggest clinical geneticists and genetic counselors have achieved some standardization in communicating information, but showed diversity in their facilitation skills. Communication skills may be a useful area to explore further in this field.