José M. Mestre

The Role of Knowledge and Skills for Managing Emotions in Adaptation to School Social Behavior and Misconduct in the Classroom

Students’ ability to evaluate emotionally challenging situations and identify effective strategies for managing emotions in themselves and others was negatively related to poor classroom social behavior across three studies. These studies, involving 463 students from two Spanish high schools and one American university, examined indicators of adaptation to school based on teacher ratings and official school records. Relationships between the ability to manage emotions, measured with a situational judgment test, and indicators of social adaptation to school remained significant or marginally significant after controlling for demographic factors, personality traits, and indicators of cognitive ability. These findings suggest that emotion regulation knowledge and skills that can be taught explain important aspects of socio-emotional adaptation to school over and above other relevant constructs.

Models of Cognitive Ability and Emotion Can Better Inform Contemporary Emotional Intelligence Frameworks

Emotional intelligence (EI) stands at the nexus between intelligence and emotion disciplines, and we outline how EI research might be better integrated within both theoretical frameworks. From the former discipline, empirical research focused upon whether EI is an intelligence and what type of intelligence it constitutes. It is clear that ability-based tests of EI form a group factor of cognitive abilities that may be integrated into the Cattell–Horn–Carroll framework; less clear is the lower order factor structure of EI. From the latter discipline, research linking EI with theoretical frameworks from emotion research remain relatively sparse. Emotion regulation and appraisal theory may be key to explain how EI may reflect different processes. We propose a research agenda to advance the EI study.

Attention lapses in children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus and children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

ABSTRACT Attentional lapses are usually defined as temporary and often brief shifts of attention away from some primary task to unrelated internal information processing. This study addressed the incidence of attention lapses and differences in attentional functioning in 30 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 26 healthy children, and 29 children with spina bifida myelomeningocele and hydrocephalus (SBH). Assessments were conducted using computerized tonic and phasic attention tests, the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), and the Trail Making Test Form B (TMT–B). The group with SBH differed from normal controls on cognitive measures of attention and executive functions. The ADHD group obtained lower scores than the SBH group and healthy children. ANOVA results showed that there was an effect of shunt revisions and shunt-related infections on neuropsychological performance. Lapses of attention together with reaction time may thus represent important factors for the understanding of cognitive deficits in SBH.

Reimagining Emotional Intelligence: A Healthy, Much Needed, and Important Progression for the Field

In this response to the critiques of Fontaine (2016) and Hughes and Evans (2016), we touch on main points of consensus and contention, and offer some suggestions for future programs of research.

Reaction Time and Attention: Toward a New Standard in the Assessment of ADHD? A Pilot Study.

This pilot study shows results of an experiment comparing reaction times (RTs) and attentional performance between an ADHD group of 30 children and 30 controls, both Spanish speaking. The experiment was carried out using the Seville computerized neuropsychological battery (SNB). Objective: This study had two goals: One was to test sensitivity of SNB for attention deficits in ADHD and the second was to detect differences in RTs between ADHD and controls. Possible explanations and implications of such differences are also discussed. Method: SNB computerized system was used to assess RTs and accuracy, and alternate forms of continuous performance task were used. Results: Results showed high sensitivity of some of the SNB tests, especially cancellation tests. RTs were significantly different between groups. Conclusion: SNB represents a helpful tool for detection of attention deficits, and RT indices represent the most significant variable in differentiation of both groups studied.

PERVALE-S: a new cognitive task to assess deaf people’s ability to perceive basic and social emotions

A poorly understood aspect of deaf people (DP) is how their emotional information is processed. Verbal ability is key to improve emotional knowledge in people. Nevertheless, DP are unable to distinguish intonation, intensity, and the rhythm of language due to lack of hearing. Some DP have acquired both lip-reading abilities and sign language, but others have developed only sign language. PERVALE-S was developed to assess the ability of DP to perceive both social and basic emotions. PERVALE-S presents different sets of visual images of a real deaf person expressing both basic and social emotions, according to the normative standard of emotional expressions in Spanish Sign Language. Emotional expression stimuli were presented at two different levels of intensity (1: low; and 2: high) because DP do not distinguish an object in the same way as hearing people (HP) do. Then, participants had to click on the more suitable emotional expression. PERVALE-S contains video instructions (given by a sign language interpreter) to improve DP’s understanding about how to use the software. DP had to watch the videos before answering the items. To test PERVALE-S, a sample of 56 individuals was recruited (18 signers, 8 lip-readers, and 30 HP). Participants also performed a personality test (High School Personality Questionnaire adapted) and a fluid intelligence (Gf) measure (RAPM). Moreover, all deaf participants were rated by four teachers for the deaf. Results: there were no significant differences between deaf and HP in performance in PERVALE-S. Confusion matrices revealed that embarrassment, envy, and jealousy were worse perceived. Age was just related to social-emotional tasks (but not in basic emotional tasks). Emotional perception ability was related mainly to warmth and consciousness, but negatively related to tension. Meanwhile, Gf was related to only social-emotional tasks. There were no gender differences.

Utilización de conceptos en la evaluación de la memoria implícita

ResumenTiempo atras se ha comprobado que cuando se presenta a los sujetos experimentales palabras que pertenecen todas a una misma categoria, dichas palabras se recuerdan mejor que cuando la presentacion ha sido realizada de forma caotica, entremezclando aleatoriamente unos ejemplares con otros de distintas categorias. No obstante, estas investigaciones han estado orientadas al analisis de la estructura de la memoria explicita, sin considerar la implicita. Este estudio en un principio trataba de comprobar como el priming es mayor en una lista de palabras presentadas de forma bloqueada (por categorias) que en otra lista de palabras presentadas al azar en una prueba de produccion categorica. A raiz de los resultados encontrados se observo la dificultad que existe en la evaluacion de la memoria implicita, utilizando conceptos. Para poder discernir el efecto del priming de la memoria implicita de otras hipotesis como los elementos prototipicos de la memoria semantica, este trabajo propone un diseno alternativ...