High emotional arousal and failures in reality monitoring: Pathways to auditory hallucinations in non‐psychotic children?

Recent research has confirmed the presence of auditory hallucinations in non‐psychotic children, with this research also suggesting that such hallucinations may be more common than previously thought. While auditory hallucinations in children have frequently been associated with high levels of emotional stress, there is still a poor understanding of how this stress may precipitate hallucinations, and why some children experience hallucinations while others seem not to. The current study assessed the association between high levels of trauma symptomatology, anxiety and depression, and the presence of hallucinations against matched controls. Results indicated that hallucinating children had significantly higher mean anxiety, depression and, in particular, re‐experiencing scores than did the children in the control group. These results were examined within the framework of reality monitoring, that is, the ability to distinguish between externally or internally generated sources of information. The notion of high levels of emotional distress decreasing the efficiency of reality monitoring and leading to the possibility of confusion between internally and externally generated stimuli was discussed, with the conclusion advanced that the misattribution of an externally generated source – either held as a memory or as a traumatic re‐experiencing – as an internally generated one, underlies hallucinatory experiences.     

Nature et significations des échanges entre domaines de vie : l’exemple des nouveaux cadres de l’Action Sociale

Accessing to a management position for the first time implies, for professionals, reflecting on their commitments in different fields and times of their socialization, on their articulation, and on their compatibilities. Referring to the model of an active socialization – active because plural and then conflicting – which rejects a dichotomous approach of the “work/non work” relations, the meaning people give to the relations between their different life spheres, communicating with others, orientates the organization of exchanges between life domains. Content analysis of interviews conducted with new social work managers brought us to distinguish six types of exchanges: temporal, informational, relational, emotional, axiological, ideological and symbolic.     

Simple and multiple P‐splines regression with shape constraints

In many research areas, especially within social and behavioural sciences, the relationship between predictor and criterion variables is often assumed to have a particular shape, such as monotone, single‐peaked or U‐shaped. Such assumptions can be transformed into (local or global) constraints on the sign of the nth‐order derivative of the functional form. To check for such assumptions, we present a non‐parametric regression method, P‐splines regression, with additional asymmetric discrete penalties enforcing the constraints. We show that the corresponding loss function is convex and present a Newton–Raphson algorithm to optimize. Constrained P‐splines are illustrated with an application on monotonicity‐constrained regression with both one and two predictor variables, using data from research on the cognitive development of children.     

Myriad Philosophical Methodologies

This article offers an overview of philosophical methodologies. In an attempt to avoid a certain circularity, the article itself tries to avoid consciously or solely deploying and engaging with any current standard notion of what constitutes a philosophical method or philosophy itself. It hopes to find some of the possible places in which philosophy occurs, and this turns out to include (at least) such endeavours as literature, art, poetry, and linguistics. From here it considers how almost anything—for example, conversation, everyday life, and love—can also be philosophy. An attempt is made to identify some characteristic feature of philosophy as it occurs in all such forms. In the end, the simultaneous enacting of a peculiar optimism and particular humility both, in the search for knowledge, is put forward as potentially sufficient to at least begin to identify philosophy across its many guises.     

CAMP: A community‐based approach to promoting safe sex behaviour in adolescence

The primary goal of this study was to describe the development and assessment of the Community Awareness Motivation Partnership (CAMP) Teen Theatre intervention. Based on the behavioural ecological model, CAMP addressed the role of contraceptive use in safe sex behaviour through a brief informative, entertaining, and culturally responsive dramatization programme. Adolescents (N = 1613) between the ages of 11 and 18 (M = 13.31, SD = 0.76) received the intervention, and 961 participants completed both pre‐ and post‐tests. The majority of participants were Latino (78.5%, n = 1039), many of whom were first generation immigrants. Results indicated that the intervention increased participants' reported intentions to delay sex and use contraceptives. The intervention produced short‐term changes in safe‐sex behavioural intentions and knowledge. Suggestions for producing long‐term changes were discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.