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Background: It is widely accepted that emotions exert a strong influence on risk decision-making. Despite this, the literature studying the role of emotional intelligence (EI) on the tendency to engage in risky behaviour is scarce, and the results appear to be inconclusive. The present study delves into the relationship between EI and risk behaviour through various risk contexts (Ethical, Health, Financial, Social, and Recreational domains). We also examined whether this relationship is age and gender-dependent.

Method: A Spanish sample of 1435 participants (Mage = 29.84, from 18 to 70; 61.9% women) was assessed for levels of EI and risk-taking by the TMMS and DOSPERT scales.

Results: The results revealed that EI was negatively related to risk behaviour in the Ethical and Health domains and positively related to the Social and Recreational domains. Moreover, we confirmed the influence of gender and age on both EI and risk behaviour.

Conclusions: EI is differentially related to risk behaviour depending on the risk domain studied, supporting the idea that risk is a domain-specific construct. We suggest that higher levels of EI could be adaptive for risk behaviour regardless of the direction of the relationship. Practical implications and future lines of research are discussed.

Background: Young adolescents and pre-adolescents are the population most vulnerable to disorders derived from a distorted Body Image (BI). In this study, the Multidimensional Body Self Relations Questionnaire, MBSR®, was adapted and validated for young Spanish people between 9 and 16 years old.

Method: 719 young people of both sexes participated. The internal structure, the invariance of the measure according to sex and age, and evidence of validity and reliability of the measure were examined.

Results: the dimensional model found in adults was not replicated in young people. The simplest, best-fitting BI construct in young people, examined from the perspective of the BI construct contained in the MBSRQ®, consisted of 20 items in 4 differentially correlated factors. The internal consistency of the factors contained in the MBSRQ-SA-a was shown to be satisfactory, as was the evidence of concurrent validity. Factor invariance was demonstrated as a function of gender and three age groups.

Conclusions: the MBSRQ-SA-a is reliable and valid for the study of BI in young people aged 9-16 years to the extent permitted by the content of the 4 factors making it up.

Background: Family members of people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are seriously affected by the disease and it is common for them to ask for professional help. The main objective of this study is to assess, in an open clinical trial, a treatment protocol based on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) strategies for relatives of individuals with BPD, compared to the same protocol plus a mindfulness component (DBT-M).

Method: The interventions were conducted in a sample of 108 relatives of 83 patients diagnosed with BPD from a Specialized Unit for Personality Disorders. Relatives and patients completed the assessment protocol before and after the intervention.

Results: Significant improvements in almost all the relevant variables tested were observed after the treatment in both the relatives and the patients. However, there were only statistically significant differences between the groups in the negative attitude towards the illness, where relatives in the DBT-M condition showed greater improvement than those in the DBT condition.

Conclusions: The results indicate that the intervention helps both patients and relatives to improve on key issues. It is essential to consider and offer support to the families of people with severe psychological disorders.

Background: Although some meta-analyses have identified potential moderators associated with treatment outcomes for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), there is as yet no consensus regarding the influence of anxiety and depression symptoms on the recovery from pediatric OCD. A meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of depression and anxiety symptoms and their comorbidities on the efficacy of CBT in pediatric OCD, as well as other potential moderators that may be associated with outcomes.

Method: An exhaustive literature search from 1983 to March 2021 located 22 published articles that applied cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to pediatric OCD, producing a total of 26 treatment groups. Some of the moderator variables analyzed included age, gender, comorbidity baseline in anxiety, depression and obsession, and methodological quality.

Results: Results showed that the psychological treatment of OCD achieves clinically significant effectiveness, both for measures of obsessions and compulsions ( d + = 2.030), and for anxiety ( d + = 0.613) and depression ( d + = 0.451). An explanatory model for the CY-BOCS effect sizes showed that three moderator variables were statistically related: the mean of the CY-BOCS (Children´s Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale) in pretest, the effect size for anxiety, and the mean age of the sample.

Conclusions: CBT reduced obsessive-compulsive symptoms and, to a lesser extent, anxiety and depression symptoms. Since anxiety symptoms are reduced with the same therapy, resources would be saved compared to other treatments.

Background: Intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) is a technique by which rats press a lever to stimulate their brains through an electrode chronically implanted in brain reward areas. Currently only two laboratories in the world, one in India and one in Spain, are intensively studying the effect of this kind of deep brain stimulation on learning and memory. This paper will present the main findings.

Methods: Different groups of young and old healthy and brain-damaged rats with electrodes implanted in the medial forebrain bundle received a treatment of ICSS after being trained in several paradigms of implicit and explicit learning. Memory was tested over short and long-term periods. Structural and molecular post-mortem analyses of their brains were examined in relation to memory results.

Results: ICSS enhances implicit and explicit memory, especially in animals showing poor performance in the learning tasks, such as brain-damaged subjects. At the structural and molecular level, ICSS enhances size and dendritic arborization and promotes neurogenesis in specific hippocampal areas. ICSS also regulates the expression of genes related to learning and memory.

Conclusions: Through activating reward and neural plasticity mechanisms, ICSS in the medial forebrain bundle is a promising technique for memory-enhancing treatments.

Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors can experience psychological changes and growth as a consequence of their victimization experience, known as posttraumatic growth (PTG). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dimensionality, reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory - Short Form (PTGI-SF) (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) in a sample of 104 adult survivors of CSA.

Method: Different models of PTGI-SF validated in different languages and samples were tested using Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Results: The results showed that the original five-factor model exhibited the best goodness of fit. Internal consistency was adequate for the general scale, and acceptable for the five different factors. Furthermore, positive correlations were found between the PTGI-SF total score and psychosocial and mental health problems, as well as gender differences, with women tending to report more PTG than men.

Conclusions: These results suggest that the Spanish PTGI-SF is a brief, reliable, valid self-report measure for assessing PTG experienced by CSA survivors.

Background: The delimitation of the clinical high risk of psychosis (CHRp) is characterized by the wide variety of symptoms assessed from different approaches from the onset of psychosis. This study aimed to create a systematic procedure for an effective and accurate earlydetection of CHRp in educational settings.

Method: A representative sample of 1,824 adolescents (average age, 15.79; 53.8%, women) was used to develop an online assessment system and a new 3-track, 3-level algorithm that combines symptoms of the main risk approaches: ultra-high risk (UHR), basic symptoms (BS), and anomalies in the subjective self-experience (ASE) with functional deficit.

Results: The acceptability and feasibility of the online screening system were confirmed by the data. Of the total participants, 68 (3.7%) were identified as high-risk and 417 (22.9%) were identified as moderate, which also supports the functionality of the proposed algorithm.

Conclusions: The system indicates a dynamic model of progression of the different symptoms in the early stages of psychosis, and it may constitute a first line of identification for severe mental disorders in young people in the earliest stages, allowing application of initial preventive measures.

Background: Despite the authorities' efforts to promote responsible driving, traffic accidents are a notable cause of death in many countries. Scientific research shows that variables such as alcohol abuse and personality dimensions can contribute to explaining this social phenomenon and the rising number of traffic offences. The present study aims to explore how alcohol abuse, personality disorders and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are associated with risky driving behaviour.

Method: The sample included 300 subjects: the study group (199 convicted of traffic offences) and the control group (101 subjects from the general driving population). The tools used were the International Personality Disorder Scale, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test and the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS).

Results: A higher incidence of signs of paranoid, antisocial, impulsive, borderline and anxious personality traits was detected for the study group, as well as a higher prevalence of alcohol abuse.

Conclusions: This research offers indications for the design of effective preventive and reinsertion interventions. It also highlights the importance of considering psychological dimensions to ensure road safety.

Background: Grade retention in compulsory secondary education is a commonly adopted action when students have academic achievement problems, but research has shown conflicting results. This study analyzes the relationship of school retention with academic performance, academic self-concept and goal orientation.

Method: A longitudinal design was carried out, with a representative sample (N = 1326) of secondary school students from the Canary Islands (Spain), randomly selected and evaluated for 18 months in four different waves.

Results: The results showed the negative effects of grade retention on academic performance and motivational variables. The capacity of previous performance, academic self-concept and goal orientation to predict the grade retention from six months before was also shown.

Conclusions: These findings show the ineffectiveness of this strategy for the academic development of students, which should lead to educational authorities rethinking its use.

Background: The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) is used all over the world to identify metacognitive components that are relevant to learning. However, there is not enough evidence confirming its factorial structure or the suitability of its Shortened Version, proposed by various authors. Also, to date, the MAI has not been validated in the Spanish context.

Method: After adapting the MAI to Spanish, it was administered to 1076 university students from different regions of Spain. Different structures of the MAI Shortened Version, with 19 items, were compared with the structures of the original 52-item MAI. Indexes of validity and reliability were analyzed, considering the factorial structure and relationships to other validated questionnaires.

Results: Only the MAI Shortened Version that differentiates between knowledge and regulation of cognition achieved a good fit. These two scales showed good convergent and divergent validity, high criterion validity in relation to academic achievement, high test- retest reliability, and high internal reliability.

Conclusions: results support the traditional differentiation between knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition, but only for the Shortened Version of the MAI. This instrument allows quick evaluations and identification of these components in Spanish contexts with adequate metric properties.