Considering that the intersexual condition has a negative impact on the individual, their family, and society, health professionals and researchers have dedicated themselves to studying and assisting families faced with such an experience. The purpose of this study is to describe and understand the perceptions of primary caregivers regarding intersexuality and its developmental aspects. Six mothers and one grandmother of school age children were interviewed. The data indicated that living with the stigma of intersexuality can mean a permanent state of crisis within the family system. Issues such as guilt about the child's suffering and questions related to the choice of gender follow the family from the moment of diagnosis. It is suggested that the therapeutic follow-up should foster the necessary conditions for the family group to be organized as a model of competence, replacing the model of guilt.

Victimization experienced in childhood has been linked with health-risk behaviors (HRBs) in adulthood. The purpose of this cross-sectional survey was to provide data regarding the HRBs using the ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool Retrospective version (ICAST-R), Spanish version. This aimed to broaden existing knowledge by assessing both being victimized by adults and by peers in a Spanish general population of 348, aged 18–35. Age and timing of the reported victimization were also considered. Victimization: physical, psychological, sexual abuse by adults and/or peers showed a prevalence of 44.54%. Of these, 41.29% reported abuse by both. Children victimized by adults, regardless of type, were significantly associated to be psychologically abused by their peers (p < .001). Moreover, psychological maltreatment by adults was significantly associated with two peer victimizations: Physical and psychological (p < .001 in both). Regarding HRBs, peer victimized groups showed significantly higher levels of severity than non-victimized, with a higher proportion reporting attempted suicide (p < .05) and psychological or psychiatric treatment (p < .05). Participants victimized only by adults reported higher number of HRBs (p < .01), their victimization was associated to more severe abuse of drugs/alcohol (p ≤ .05), and suicide attempts (p < .05). Those victimized by adults and peers received treatment in higher proportion than non-victims (p < .001). Participants reporting victimization since before 5 years to age of 17, compared with non-victimized, showed more substance abuse (p < .05), attempted suicide (p < .01) and receipt of treatment (p < .05). These findings highlight the relevance of ICAST-R in studying HRBs.

According to the literature about developmental changes, periods of instability and disorganization in the social and emotional behavior in both human and non-human primate, infancy precedes major developmental achievements or transitions (Heimann, 2003; Sparrow & Brazelton, 2006). Developmental investigators have observed a more frequent and prolonged crying, clinging and bids for physical contact with mother during these periods of instability and disorganization. Some authors, according to Horwich (1974), called these periods regression periods. Rijt-Plooij and Plooij (1992) claimed that 10 regression periods could be identified during the first 20 months of human life. In an early study, Sadurní and Rostan (2002) confirmed the presence of 8 such regression periods during the first year of life of 18 Catalan babies. Their 8 regression periods were comparable to the first 8 of the 10 regression periods found by Van de Rijt Plooij and Plooij. The aim of the present study is to see whether the regression periods that we found are temporally related to some transition. We define a transition as the occurrence of a new developmental change in a child. In the present study we have used non-analyzed data from the same 18 Catalan babies (10 boys and 8 girls) as mentioned in our earlier published study on regression periods. The age of these babies was between 3 weeks and 14 months. Using a microgenetic methodology we have found 8 transitions periods in the first year of life. We have also observed a temporal relation between the regressions periods found earlier and the transition periods reported here.

Visual stress (VS) affects reading in 5–12% of the general population and 31–36% of children with reading disorders. Symptoms include print distortions and visual discomfort when reading, and are exacerbated by fluorescent lighting. Prior research has indicated that VS can also affect proficient readers. We therefore examined levels of visual discomfort in a group of expert readers (n = 24) under both standard and spectrally-filtered fluorescent lighting. Participants rated their awareness of six symptoms of VS under each lighting condition. Under the standard condition, 4(16.7%) of the group recorded moderate to high levels of VS. Differences in symptom levels and reading speed between conditions were analysed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. Under the filter condition, the group reported less discomfort regarding all six symptoms of VS surveyed. The differences were significant with respect to three of the symptoms (p = .029 - p < .001), with a medium effect size in all of them (r = .31 - r = .46) and total score (p = .007; r = .39). Variations in reading proficiency included significantly fewer self-corrections (p = .019) and total errors (p = .004). Here we present evidence that VS-type symptoms of reading discomfort are not confined to populations with reading difficulties and may also occur in proficient readers, and that simple adaptations to fluorescent lighting may alleviate such symptoms.

This study examines the relationships between components of organizational safety climate, including employee attitudes to organizational safety issues; perceptions of the physical working environment, and evaluations of worker engagement with safety issues; and relates these to self-reported levels of safety behavior. It attempts to explore the relationships between these variables in 1189 workers across 78 work groups in a large transportation organization. Evaluations of safety climate, the working environment and worker engagement, as well as safe behaviors, were collected using a self report questionnaire. The multilevel analysis showed that both levels of evaluation (the work group and the individual), and some cross-level interactions, were significant in explaining safe behaviors. Analyses revealed that a number of variables, at both levels, were associated with worker engagement and safe behaviors. The results suggest that, while individual evaluations of safety issues are important, there is also a role for the fostering of collective safety climates in encouraging safe behaviors and therefore reducing accidents.

This study used depression (CDI – Kovacs, 1981), anxiety (MASC – March, 1997) and coping strategy (CRI-Y – Moos, 1993) scales and studied the fitness and discriminant validity of reduced versions. The sample consisted of 916 Portuguese pupils, 54.3% feminine, aged 10 to 21 years old. The participants were selected from a set of public schools nation-wide. Two classes were chosen from the 5th to the 12th grades.

A set of principal component analyses was carried out in a randomly chosen sample (n = 394) and all the three reduced measures were found to be strongly correlated with the previous. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) using the other part of the sample (n = 522) revealed adjustment indexes suggesting a good fit for both the whole model and gender and age groups separately. All scales revealed a good internal consistency. Globally, girls were more anxious and developed more coping strategies than boys. Older students tended to be less depressed, while younger adolescents present higher scores in depression and anxiety and less coping strategies. Reduced scales are sensitive to gender and age differences and can be used in school settings in order to establish a baseline and roadmaps for both universal and selective mental health school based programs.

Cognitive theories about auditory hallucinations maintain that inner speech is erroneously interpreted as coming from an external source. Few first-hand accounts of patients’ experiences have been made, so there is limited knowledge of the process through which patients distinguish their auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) from ordinary thoughts. 89 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, some experiencing acute hallucinatory symptomatology (Sz-AVHs) and some who were not (Sz-noAVHs), were assessed along with 48 individuals from the general population using the Auditory Hallucinations Assessment Questionnaire (AHAQ; Cuevas-Yust, Rodríguez Martín, Ductor Recuerda, Salas Azcona, & León Gómez, 2006). The Schz-AVHs group reported hearing ordinary thoughts at the same volume as their auditory hallucinations (p = .53) and spoken words (p = .89). In contrast, the Sz-noAVHs and general population samples reported hearing spoken words louder than their own thoughts (p = .002; p = .04). In comparison to these last two groups, the Sz-AVHs group described the sound of their thoughts as louder. These findings are consistent with the cognitive hypothesis of auditory verbal hallucinations. Confusion identifying the source of auditory hallucinations could be due, in part, to “hearing” one’s thoughts at the same volume as auditory hallucinations and spoken words.

The measurement invariance of the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) questionnaire was investigated across four samples of non-clinical subjects (N = 222), dermatological patients (N = 458), psychiatric inpatients (N = 156), and patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (N = 101). The results provided evidence of configural, metric, and scalar invariance across groups. Overall, our findings provide further support to the reliability and validity of the ECR.

Our main purpose was to explore hypotheses derived from the Identification of Action Theory in a particular situation that is, a dissonant situation. Thus, we varied the identification (low versus high-level) of a problematic behavior (to stop speaking for 24 hours) in the forced compliance paradigm. Two modes of dissonance reduction were presented: cognitive rationalization (classical attitude-change) and behavioral rationalization (target behavior: to stop speaking for 48 hours). As predicted, the results showed that high-level identity of action leads to cognitive rationalization whereas low-level identity leads to behavioural rationalization. Thus, participants identifying the problematic behavior at a low-level were more inclined to accept the target behavior, compared with participants identifying their problematic behavior at a higher-level. These results are of particular interest for understanding the extent to which the understanding of the discrepant act interferes with the cognitive processes of dissonance reduction.

A new individual computerized technique for psychophysiological training of operators before performing psychomotor activity on a computer model (psychomotor concentration and spatial orientation test) was developed. Qualitative criteria for the prediction of safe operator activity were formulated. Preliminary testing of operators' activity quality showed great dispersion of individual results: The amount of errors ranged from 0 to 56 and the rate of information processing varied from 1.01 up 3.56 bit/s. Subjects with initially identified respiratory sinus arrhythmia or synchronization caused by respiratory movements committed minimal recognition errors in initial stages at a high rate of information processing. The number of errors remained unchanged after the biofeedback cardio-training cycle, with the rate of information processing increasing noticeably. Subjects without inherent harmonics developed harmonics after sessions of cardiorhythm biofeedback control, and their operator activity quality improved significantly, making fewer mistakes and increasing the rate of information processing. Biofeedback control led not only to the restoration of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a favorable diagnostic sign, as revealed by cardiorhythmograms, but also resulted in improvement of the quality of operator activity.

The main aim of this work was to look for cognitive biases in human inference of causal relationships in order to emphasize the psychological processes that modulate causal learning. From the effect of the judgment frequency, this work presents subsequent research on cue competition (overshadowing, blocking, and super-conditioning effects) showing that the strength of prior beliefs and new evidence based upon covariation computation contributes additively to predict causal judgments, whereas the balance between the reliability of both, beliefs and covariation knowledge, modulates their relative weight. New findings also showed “inattentional blindness” for negative or preventative causal relationships but not for positive or generative ones, due to failure in codifying and retrieving the necessary information for its computation. Overall results unveil the need of three hierarchical levels of a whole architecture for human causal learning: the lower one, responsible for codifying the events during the task; the second one, computing the retrieved information; finally, the higher level, integrating this evidence with previous causal knowledge. In summary, whereas current theoretical frameworks on causal inference and decision-making usually focused either on causal beliefs or covariation information, the present work shows how both are required to be able to explain the complexity and flexibility involved in human causal learning.

The world we perceive is delayed in relation to its flowing content, as well as the outcome of our actions on the world in relation to the moment we decide to act. This mosaic of different latencies permeating both perception and action has to be taken into account critically in order for us to cope with the temporal challenges constantly imposed by the environment. Fundamental notions, such as the sense of agency and causality, depend on the temporal relationship of events occurring in well-defined windows of time. Here, we offer a broad, yet abridged, historical view of some thought-provoking issues concerning the time of perception and action. From the pioneering work of Wundt, Titchener, and Libet to recent findings and ideas related to the employment of visual illusions as psychophysical probes (such as the flash-lag effect), we have tried to expose some problems inherent to the act of measuring the time of both perception and action, and devise possible solutions as well.

The present study’s objective is to create a Spanish adaptation of the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire II (CWEQ-II) by Laschinger, Finegan, Shamian, and Wilk (2004) in order to measure structural empowerment in an organizational context. To do so, this study was conducted in two distinct phases. In the first, a group of experts carried out a back-translation of the questionnaire and in the second phase, we analyzed the questionnaire’s internal structure (through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis) and external validity. The resulting Spanish version of the questionnaire (CWEQ-S) demonstrated/exhibited good factor structure and good psychometric properties as far as reliability and validity are concerned.

Research into the process of becoming mother or father shows very conclusively that this important life transition is accompanied by both a decrease in marital quality and a more traditional division of labour. In this paper these changes are analyzed with special emphasis on the relationships between them and exploring the role played in this process by the mother's work status. Results showed a significant link between the development of marital quality and violated expectations regarding father involvement on childrearing. Dual-earner families were characterized by a specific pattern of changes, with greater stability than single-earner families in marital and parental roles during transition to parenthood and a significant role played by spouse support as a partner, but not as a parent.

Perceived control has shown predictive value for anxiety severity symptoms as well as cognitive-behavior therapy outcomes. The most commonly used measure of perceived control is the Anxiety Control Questionnaire (ACQ), and more recently the ACQ Revised (ACQ-R). However, both questionnaires have shown structural inconsistencies among several studies. Also, although the ACQ and ACQ-R seem to be multidimensional instruments, a single total score have been commonly used. This study examined the internal structure of the ACQ-R Spanish version using exploratory factor and exploratory bi-factor analysis in a sample of 382 college students and 52 people diagnosed of panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia). Also, in this study we assessed the preliminary diagnostic value of the ACQ-R scores. The results indicated that the ACQ-R Spanish version structure consisted of two factors: one related with perceived control of internal emotional reactions (Emotion Control) and another related with perceived control of external events (Threat and Stress Control). Both specific factors can be adequately summarized by a general factor (General Anxiety Perception of Control; CFI = .973, TLI = .954, RMSEA = .039; p = .002), which accounted for 70% of the common explained variance. The correlations between the ACQ-R scores and with variables like anxiety (r = –.66) or anxiety sensitivity (r = –.50) presented the expected pattern of results. Either the two dimensions structure or the total score have proved to be a good tool to distinguish between participants with panic disorder and non-clinical samples (area under the curve = 0.79).

Workers’ perception that their job experience enriches their family life has been considered a mechanism that explains their positive attitudes toward the organization where they work. However, because women and men live their work and family differently, gender may condition this relationship between the work-family enrichment and workers’ attitudes. With a sample of 1885 workers from one Portuguese bank, with 802 women, the current study investigated the relationship between work-family enrichment and organizational affective commitment as well as the role of sex as a moderator of this relationship. The hypotheses were tested by using regression analysis. The results indicated that the perception held by workers that their work enriches their family is positively correlated with their affective commitment toward the organization. Furthermore, the data revealed that this relationship is stronger for women than for men. Study results have implications for management, particularly for human resource management, enhancing their knowledge about the relationship of work-family enrichment and workers’ affective commitment toward organization.

The maladaptive nature of Perfectionistic Automatic Thoughts (PAT) increases the importance of evaluating the construct. This study aims to identify different clusters of PAT in undergraduates, and to check possible inter-cluster differences in the dimensions of dispositional empathy and emotional intelligence in a sample of 691 Spanish undergraduates (Mage = 23.1; SD = 5.26). The Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale were used. Three clusters with low (LPAT), moderate (MPAT) and high (HPAT) levels of PAT were identified. Statistically significant differences were observed between these clusters in terms of dispositional empathy and emotional intelligence dimensions. HPAT significantly scored higher than LPAT on Fantasy, Empathic Concern, Personal Discomfort and Perception, as well as in comparison with MPAT on Fantasy, Empathic Concern, Personal Discomfort and Perception. Moreover, MPAT obtained significantly higher scores on Comprehension and Repair than LPAT. Effect sizes for these differences were of a small magnitude, except for the HPAT and LPAT contrasts, whose differences were of a moderate magnitude.

The current populational aging context requires that society reflect on the variables related with well-being and discuss ways of how to ensure them. The Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2002) posits that individuals who possess more material or social resources are more capable of resolving conflicts and dealing with stressful situations, thus maintaining good levels of well-being. However, there is a lack of instruments aimed at measuring the necessary resources for retirement well-being. The objective of this study was to translate and analyse the psychometric qualities of the Retirement Resources Inventory (RRI) (Leung & Earl, 2012) as applied to 1002 Brazilian retirees. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were undertaken using two independent subsamples consisting of 401 and 601 retirees respectively. Two viable models arose from the exploratory analysis: A five-factor model, χ2(gl) = 816.644 (271); CFI = 0.88; GFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.07; R2 = 0.55; and a six-factor model, χ2(gl) = 1028.291 (400); CFI = 0.88; GFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.03; R2= 0.53, with good fit indices, but similar to each other. Confirmatory analysis pointed towards an instrument consisting of 29 items and five factors with good fit indices, χ2(gl) = 1,274(364); CFI = 0.87; TLI: 0.86; RMSEA: 0.06, corroborating the model proposed by Wang and Shultz (2010). The analyses also highlighted the need for actions that take into account the gender, age and region of the country where the retiree lives. Future cross-cultural studies are recommended seeing that retirement planning is an emerging issue that affects the world as a whole.

Professionals who are likely to come into contact with children play an essential role in the protection of children, thus we aimed to study the criteria they use to identify and report child sexual abuse cases. Based on the Factorial Survey design, we presented 974 Spanish (90%) and Latin American professionals from six fields (Psychology, Social Services, Education, Health, Law and Security) with hypothetical situations of sexual interaction with minors (systematically varying the type of sexual act, the child's and the other person's sex and age, the use of coercion and the type of strategy employed to involve the child), in order to examine their perception of abuse and willingness to report. According to results, the factors or criteria that most impact assessments are age asymmetry and use of coercion. Specifically, professionals are significantly more likely to perceive abuse and intend to report it if the other person involved in the interaction is much older than the minor and/or uses a coercive strategy, especially force, drugs or blackmail. Another relevant criterion is the type of sexual act, since acts involving intercourse, digital penetration or oral sex are significantly more likely to be deemed as abuse and reported.

Transgressions occur frequently in romantic relationships, and how they are perceived is influenced by the type of transgression that occurred. By means of an experimental study of 399 participants (75.9% women and 24.1% men) aged 18 to 64 years old (Mage = 31.20, SD = 10.48), we examined the relationship between the type of sexual transgression (infidelity versus coercion), and perceived severity, strategies individuals would use in response to the transgression, and the probability they would leave the relationship, as well as levels of dependence and commitment. Results revealed higher perceived severity (p < .001, η2p = .24) and probability of leaving the relationship (p < .001, η2p = .39) in the infidelity scenario (versus coercion). Meanwhile, women (compared to men) rated sexual transgressions as more severe (p < .001, η2p = .04) and reported a higher probability of leaving the relationship (p < .001, η2p = .03), as well as a higher use of active conflict resolution strategies (exit, p = .048, η2p = .01, and voice, p < .001, η2p = .06) and lower use of passive strategies (loyalty, p < .001, η2p = .08). Finally, high levels of commitment and dependence predicted lower perceived severity (commitment, p < .001, 95% CI [–.72, –.20]; dependence, p < .001, 95% CI [–1.73, –.85]) and lower probability of leaving the relationship (commitment, p = .048, 95% CI [–.55, –.01]; dependence, p < .001, 95% CI [–1.66, –.73]) in coercion (versus infidelity) transgressions. These results highlight the normalization of sexual coercion in romantic relationships, which is not viewed as negatively as infidelity, and that commitment and dependence contribute to minimizing the negative impressions of it.