Alejandra Dobarro

Electrophysiological evidence for a natural/artifactual dissociation

The aim of this work was to test whether the differences usually found between the processing of visual stimuli corresponding to natural and artifactual domains reflect the different ways in which these domains are organized in the brain or are rather due to varying tasks demands. For this purpose, we designed two tasks in which subjects had to classify a series of line drawings. In one task (semantic categorization), the subjects were asked to categorize the stimuli as corresponding either to the natural or the artifactual class, and in the other (gender decision), the subjects had to decide if the names of the stimuli corresponded to either the masculine or the feminine gender. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and reactions times (RTs) were registered during the two tasks. We found both quantitative and topographical differences between ERPs elicited by natural stimuli and those by artifactual stimuli. In the 50- to 200-ms period, ERPs were more positive for the natural stimuli in the categorization task, but more positive for the artifactual stimuli in the gender decision task. In addition, natural stimuli elicited larger P600 and were associated with shorter RTs than artifactual stimuli in the categorization task. These results likely reflect differences concerning the relative difficulty of processing the stimuli of each domain in each task. In the N400 range, in contrast, there were differences between the two domains which were independent of task. In the two tasks, natural and artifactual stimuli elicited ERPs with a different scalp distribution: ERPs were more positive at posterior (parietal and temporal) sites for the natural stimuli and in the frontal areas for the artifactual ones. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that semantic knowledge associated with natural and artifactual domains is represented in separate subsystems with presumably different anatomical bases.

El consenso de normas de aula y su relación con bajos niveles de violencia escolar

Resumen Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos: a) Conocer en qué medida se utiliza el consenso de normas de aula en los centros de Educación Primaria asturianos, en comparación con otras estrategias para la prevención de la violencia escolar; y b) Estudiar hasta qué punto el consenso de normas de aula se relaciona con bajos niveles de violencia escolar, en comparación con la mera difusión de normas y sanciones. Para ello, fueron evaluados 1041 estudiantes de tercer ciclo de Educación Primaria, pertenecientes a 20 centros de Asturias, mediante el cuestionario CUVE3-EP y el Cuestionario M-EP. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que el consenso de normas de aula: a) Es el tipo de medida para la prevención de la violencia escolar menos habitual, en opinión del alumnado, de los cuatro tipos de medidas evaluados; y b) Se relaciona con niveles bajos de Disrupción en el Aula, Violencia Verbal de Alumnado hacia Alumnado, Violencia Verbal de Alumnado hacia Profesorado y Violencia de Profesorado hacia Alumnado en mayor medida que la mera difusión de normas y sanciones entre los estudiantes.

Parenting Style Dimensions As Predictors of Adolescent Antisocial Behavior

Antisocial behavior is strongly associated with academic failure in adolescence. There is a solid body of evidence that points to parenting style as one of its main predictors. The objective of this work is to elaborate a reduced, valid, and reliable version of the questionnaire by Oliva et al. (2007) to evaluate the dimensions of parenting style and to analyze its psychometric properties in a sample of Spanish adolescents. To that end, the designed questionnaire was applied to 1974 adolescents 12–18 years of age from Asturias (Spain). Regarding construct validity, the results show that the model that best represents the data is composed of six dimensions of parenting style, just as in the original scale, namely affection and communication; promotion of autonomy; behavioral control; psychological control; self-disclosure; and humor. The psychological control factor negatively correlates with the other factors, with the exception of behavioral control, with which it positively correlates. The remaining correlations among the factors in the parenting style questionnaire are positive. Regarding internal consistency, the reliability analysis for each factor supports the suitability of this six-factor model. With regard to criterion validity, as expected based on the evidence available, the six dimensions of parenting style correlate in a statistically significant manner with the three antisocial behavior measures used as criteria (off-line school aggression, antisocial behavior, and antisocial friendships). Specifically, all dimensions negatively correlate with the three variables, except for psychological control. In the latter case, the correlation is positive. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.