Therapeutic residential care in Spain. Population treated and therapeutic coverage

Therapeutic residential care (TRC) is the name given to specialized children's homes for treating cases with severe emotional and behavioural problems that have been placed in residential care. A recent international review has revealed great diversity in the referral criteria of cases and in the models of intervention carried out. The goal of this study is to describe the population treated in these types of facilities in Spain and the therapeutic coverage given. The sample is made up of 215 young people in children's homes, of whom 93 are in TRC. The cases referred to TRC have been in residential care for less time but have gone through a greater number of placements. These young people also exhibit more problems of drug use, and there is a larger percentage of clinical‐range cases in the Child Behaviour Checklist scales of attention problems and aggressive behaviour. Nevertheless, the results of logistic regression indicate that the only variables that significantly increase the probability of being referred to TRC are drug use and changes of care placements. With regard to therapeutic care, there is a higher percentage in the TRC group receiving psychiatric care, and the sessions are also more frequent.     

Urban Poverty,Ethnicity, and Personality Development

There are multiple factors which contribute to the development of the individual’s personality. Many of these factors have been amply discussed in traditional theories of personality Jonnation. An area that has been neglected in these discussions has been the role that poverty and ethnic and cultural factors may have in this regard. This paper offers a discussion of these issues with special emphasis on cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors which tend to characterize the lives of Latino and Black individuals. Recommendations are made for a re-evaluation of the traditional theories of personality when applied to poor and minority individuals.     

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,Dissociation, and Neuropsychological Performance in Latina Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse

This study compared the memory, attention/concentration, and executive functioning of 12 women with histories of child sexual abuse with a control group of 12 women without childhood abuse. Participants completed a neuropsychological test battery and various instruments assessing post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation. The child sexual abuse group had lower performance than the control group on long- and short-term visual and verbal memory and presented more limited performance on executive functioning tasks. Functioning in these areas showed a negative correlation with post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative symptoms. These findings suggest that child sexual abuse is associated with memory and executive functioning deficits and supports the idea that people with trauma histories and increased post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation symptoms may have alterations in neuropsychological functioning.     

A Re-examination of Defining Moments in Vygotsky's Work and Their Implications for His Continuing Legacy

This article argues for the idea of different moments in Vygotsky's work while highlighting combinations of ideas and concepts that were particularly emphasized in distinct moments of his work. After Vygotsky's death, these moments were not considered a theoretical system in development, either in former Soviet psychology or in Western interpretations of his work. Vygotsky's legacy seems to have been mostly reduced to one concrete focus of his work, mistakenly identified as cultural-historical theory. The overemphasis of selected aspects of Vygotsky's work resulted in an overshadowing of other ideas that have remained relatively “unknown” until fairly recently. In this article, previously underemphasized elements in Vygotsky's psychology, such as emotions, fantasy, imagination, personality, and the generative character of human psyche, are emphasized. A consideration of these elements offers new and refreshing alternatives to Vygotsky's legacy. These previously underemphasized elements are markedly represented in Vygotsky's first and third moments. Furthermore, in the third and final moment of his work, the category of sense opened up a completely new perspective for a systemic and complex approach to understanding the human mind.     

Small mammal assemblages in fragmented shrublands of urban areas of Central Chile

Mediterranean-type ecosystems are one of the most affected environments by habitat loss and fragmentation due to urban development, however only few studies have evaluated the effects of urbanization on the biodiversity of remnant fragments in these ecosystems. This study aims to evaluate the effects of urban development over small mammal assemblages inhabiting isolated forest fragments of an urban area of Chilean Mediterranean zone. We compared abundance and richness of small mammal assemblages of six remnant fragments within an urban matrix, and six fragments similar in area and habitat characteristics with those of urban area, but surrounded by a rural matrix. We found that small mammal assemblages differ considerably among fragments types (urban vs rural), with lack of endemic species from urban fragments and with high proportion of introduced rodents in urban fragments. Furthermore abundance of small mammals was higher in rural than in urban fragments. In urban areas small mammal abundance and richness were not correlated with any of the explanatory variables assessed (woody cover, flora heterogeneity, fragment area, perimeter/area ratio). However in rural fragments small mammal richness was negatively correlated with flora heterogeneity and the abundance of small mammals was positively correlated with perimeter/area ratio. These results reveal important differences within the effects of fragmentation over small mammal assemblages among the two types of fragments assessed. Our findings suggest that in forest fragments isolated by urbanization, larger areas with good quality habitats are not sufficient to maintain native small mammal population.     

Effects of fear of negative social evaluation in interaction with potential partners: experimental study of first encounters / Efectos del temor a la evaluación social negativa en interacción con parejas potenciales: estudio experimental de los primeros encuentros

Abstract

This study used an experimental procedure to evaluate the effects of fear of negative social evaluation (FNSE) on courtship strategies and the ability to interact with the opposite sex. 108 university students participated in this study with a mean age of 19.6. Prior to the experimental procedure, FNSE levels were measured. Then two photographs of people of the opposite sex were shown, one more attractive than the other, and the participants were informed that they would meet one of them. Levels of anxiety and self-presentation motivation (SPM) were measured before the planned interaction. Results show that people with low levels of FNSE have positive expectations of reciprocity when they are about to meet a person that they find attractive. Women, but not men, with high levels of FNSE report higher SPM with less attractive people than with more attractive people. High levels of FNSE are associated with a loss of calm in the situation of meeting a person of the opposite sex. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of courtship strategies.     

FROM OLD SOUTH TO NEW SOUTH? BLACK-WHITE RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION IN MICROPOLITAN AREAS

This article examines black-white residential segregation in micropolitan areas across the South. Micropolitan areas are newly defined urban clusters with a core population that ranges from 10,000 to 50,000. By shifting the focus to the nonmetropolitan South, we take debates about the “American dilemma” back to a historically important terrain of black-white relations that few scholars have systematically examined in the post-Civil Rights era. Using the most recent census, we find that the dynamics of residential segregation in our sample of micropolitan areas reflect both important opportunities and constraints. In contrast to their counterparts in metropolitan areas, blacks in the nonmetropolitan South face “only” moderate levels of segregation. Surprisingly, southern micropolitan areas afford greater opportunities for spatial assimilation to the least economically advantaged blacks as well as those who are more advantaged. Perhaps most importantly, this finding holds for micropolitan areas located in the historic Black Belt as well as elsewhere; however, several patterns emerge that suggest a set of barriers to spatial assimilation similar to those facing African Americans in metropolitan areas. In sum, our analysis clarifies the complexities of black-white segregation in the “New South/Old South,” pushing scholars to more systematically map the distinct trajectories of “American Apartheid” across time and place in the United States.     

Growing Parental Economic Power in Parent–Adult Child Households: Coresidence and Financial Dependency in the United States, 1960–2010

Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children in the United States has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries, instead showing that intergenerationally extended households generally benefit the younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the economic fortunes of those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted in the second half of the twentieth century, with increasing financial well-being among older adults and greater financial strain among younger adults. This article uses U.S. census and American Community Survey (ACS) data to examine the extent to which changes in generational financial well-being over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and financial dependency in parent–adult child U.S. households between 1960 and 2010. We find that younger adults have become more financially dependent on their parents and that while older adults have become more financially independent of their adult children, they nevertheless coreside with their needy adult children. We also find that the effect of economic considerations in decisions about coresidence became increasingly salient for younger adults, but decreasingly so for older adults.     

Estimating Traffic Emissions Using Demographic and Socio-Economic Variables in 18 Chilean Urban Areas

A macro-scale methodology for vehicle emissions estimation is described. The methodology is based on both correlations between activity level and PM, CO, THC and NO _x vehicle emissions and relationships between demographic and socio-economic variables and transportation activity level. First, pollutant emissions were correlated with transportation activity, expressed as vehicle-km/year, using existing data collected from mobile sources emission inventories in nine urban cities of Chile. Second, demographic and socio-economic variables were pre-selected from those that could intuitively be correlated with vehicle activity level and considering the data availability. Using the individual R ² correlation coefficient as variable selection criterion, population, the number of vehicles, fuel consumption, gross domestic product, average family incomes and road kilometers were finally chosen. A different set of explicative variables was considered for different vehicle categories, based on the selection criterion above mentioned. Then, correlation functions between these variables and transport activity were obtained by non-linear Gauss–Newton least square method. This methodology was applied to eighteen provinces of the country obtaining total annual emission for mobile sources, divided into six main vehicles categories.