Journal of Behavior, Health & Social Issues最新文献

The research is aimed at understanding and qualitatively describing the social representation of conditions for happiness and of living experiences source of happiness in the discourse of socializing agents in matters of well-being and quality of life. Whether these attributions are consistent with the findings of positive psychology was also analyzed. The study was non experimental, transversal, cross-cultural, and qualitative. The sample was non-probabilistic and included health and education students and professionals in Chile and Italy. Open-ended questions were applied to students of psychology, obstetrics and related fields of both sexes aged between 18 and 38 years. Focus groups were conducted with students and professionals of both sexes, including educators, psychologists and related professionals, aged between 22 and 67 years. People attributed happiness to external conditions (affection and personal freedom) and internal factors (psychological capital). The discourse balanced the presence of experiences of satisfaction by reception (passive role) and by realization (active role). The ranges of these experiences vary from individual to collective scopes. A common nucleus of social representation in both groups was identified, which included elements that positive psychology has linked with happiness. This information guides the training of professionals influencing the lifestyles of the population.

If the development of the concept of “self” as a unit distinct from the environment ontogenetically follows the development of the concept of “us”, then psychosocial constructs would play a very important role in explaining psychological constructs. The current study explores to what extent the psychosocial construct “family strength” can be used to predict the psychological constructs “psychological well-being” and “internal locus of control”. Three different scales were administered to a non-probability sample of 400 subjects (153 males and 247 females) to measure family strength, psychological well-being and internal locus of control. Structural Equation Models found that 67% of the variance in psychological well-being and 59% of the variance in internal locus of control were predicted by “family commitment-trust” with good data adjustment (÷2/df = 1.78, GFI = .95, AGFI = .94, and NFI = .92). These findings show the primacy of the psychosocial dimension over the psychological dimension. The article discusses the implications of these findings for professional healthcare practice.

Sex differences in the performance of a second spatial learning (i.e. interference) and in the context renewal of a previous one was researched. Two groups of men and women had to find a hidden key ring in a virtual shelf. Training included two phases, in the second phase the context could be the same or different from the first phase and in each one of them the goal location was different. Testing was conducted in the same context of the first phase of training with the difference that goal was omitted. Results showed that men had lower latencies to find the goal during the first phase and during the initial trial of the second phase; which also showed sex differences in the distribution of search responses. In the testing phase an interference effect or context renewal of spatial learning was observed respectively if the context was always the same or if it changes through training, without sex differences. These results demonstrate the presence of sex differences in a second spatial learning and in their search strategies, but not in the contextual renewal of a previous one.

This article reviews different conceptual perspectives about how disrupt and reconfigure the roles of indigenous women who migrate to cities of Mexico. Some of the authors analyzed, agree that migration not only affects women directly involved, but also to those who without leaving their territorial space, such as spouses, children and families in general, reconfigure their gender roles and thus the power relations change among those affected. The proposed revision suggests that while there are changes in female subjectivity, further relates to processes of empowerment, yet simultaneously there is reinforce of subordination and patriarchal control. This situation suggests the need to consider different contexts, as well as placing the extreme complexity of the subject. For our part, would not rule out a third option, in relation to situations of ambiguity or compromise between the two factors, which indicates the existence of variables in processes of transition and change. Most of the review of the paper are based on the gender studies, but the review also try to incorporate a multidisciplinary approach that allows us a more fully understand of this phenomenon, so broad and complex, incorporating gender studies, but also approaches from psychoanalytic, psychological, cultural, migration and sociological perspectives.

A study was conducted to assess the effects of two intervention strategies aimed at developing reading comprehension at different levels of functional complexity, with first grade students from a public junior high school of Mexico City. A total of 90 students participated -53% were female and 47% ware male, with ages between 12 and 14 years and a mean age of 12 years 9 months enrolled in three different groups from the morning shift. These three groups were assigned, one as control and two as experimental groups that received the same training, only modifying the reading materials used literary or nature themes-. The intervention effects were measured with tests of reading comprehension assessment of literary and nature themes, through a pre and post test experimental design. The results indicate that both experimental groups achieved high levels of reading comprehension, with no differences between them. Differences were found regarding the control group, concluding that intervention was appropriate to develop reading comprehension and to ensure transference of the skills developed to other non-trained topics.

Lately the experiential avoidance (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996) has been proposed as an element shared by different psychiatric syndromes. Several studies have been conducted outside of Mexico with the aim to identify whether there is any relationship between experiential avoidance (EA) and other psychiatric disorders. Following this argument, the present study was conducted to identify differences in the levels of experiential avoidance among people who have a psychiatric diagnosis (anxiety, depression and psychotic disorder) and non-clinical population from the city of Mérida Yucatán. The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II adapted for Yucatán population (Patrón, 2010) was applied to 108 participants. The sample was divided into four groups of 27 members depending on the diagnosis: (1) anxiety, (2) depression, (3) psychotic and (4) non-clinical. Statistical analysis was performed using simple variance test. The results suggest that there were significant differences between clinical and nonclinical groups and between the group with a diagnosis of psychotic disorder and groups with depression and anxiety disorder. These findings lead to study in more depth the role that the EA plays in the different types of schizophrenia, and to suggest possible techniques designed to influence the EA as part of the treatment of various disorders.

There are several self-report questionnaires used to measure achievement goals, mostly in school settings, but there are differences in the focal point of items belonging to the same goal, and also relationships between goals and other variables may differ depending on the questionnaires used to measure them. These results indicate that there are instruments that measure different components of the goals as constructs. The aim of the present studies was to develop a three-dimensional questionnaire to assess achievement goals in team sports, based on previous questionnaires, which included the most relevant theoretical characteristics of each goal. Two studies were conducted. In the first one, 441 athletes participated; successive exploratory factor analyses were used to design the questionnaire to be used in the second study. In this study, 501 athletes participated, a confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable ft to data for the final questionnaire, consisting of 23 items grouped into three subscales. Sportsmen were higher than sportswomen in performance-approach goal, but there were no significant differences in mastery and performance-avoidance goals.

The analysis of the hypnotic behavior has involved perspectives focused on the biological or social factors. The psychological aspects have been left aside and put under a logic of lineal causality. This has obstructed an adequate understanding about the hypnotic phenomena and has perpetuated some confusion. From an interbehavioral perspective (Ribes & López, 1985) the present work analyses the problem of the psychological events called “hypnosis” in the ordinary language. It proposes that, hypnosis can be conceived as events of Paradoxical Stable Affectation (or PSA events). In these events, language promotes the occurrence of a functional unbinding from the present situational properties, that is why the hypnotic behavior could be classified in the Referential Substitutive Function. The phenomenon known as “hypnotic anesthesia/analgesia” has been chosen as case situation to show the articulation of the functional relations that participate in the facilitation of the hypnotic behavior.