Acceptance of relapse fears in breast cancer patients: effects of an act-based abridged intervention

Objective: Relapse fear is a common psychological scar in cancer survivors. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of an abridged version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in breast cancer patients.Method: An open trial was developed with 12 non-metastatic breast cancer patients assigned to 2 conditions, ACT and waiting list. Interventions were applied in just one session and focused on the acceptance of relapse fears through a ‘defusion’ exercise. Interference and intensity of fear measured through subjective scales were collected after each intervention and again 3 months later. Distress, hypochondria and ‘anxious preocupation’ were also evaluated through standardized questionnaires.Results: The analysis revealed that ‘defusion’ contributed to decrease the interference of the fear of recurrence, and these changes were maintained three months after intervention in most subjects. 87% of participants showed clinically significant decreases in interference at follow-up sessions whereas no patient in the waiting list showed such changes. Statistical analysis revealed that the changes in interference were significant when comparing pre, post and follow-up treatment, and also when comparing ACT and waiting list groups. Changes in intensity of fear, distress, anxious preoccupation and hypochondria were also observed.Conclusions: Exposure through ‘defusion’ techniques might be considered a useful option for treatment of persistent fears in cancer patients. This study provides evidence for therapies focusing on psychological acceptance in cancer patients through short, simple and feasible therapeutic methods.

The perception of the African-American community through the eyes of the Hispanic media in the U.S.: a critical discourse analysis of the reporting of the death of Michael Brown

In this paper, 36 English and 38 Spanish news articles were selected from English and Spanish newspapers and magazines published in the U.S.A. from August 2014 to November 2014. All articles discuss the death of Michael Brown, the ensuing protests and police investigations. A discourse analysis shows that there are few differences between reporting by the mainstream and the Hispanic media. Like the mainstream media, the Hispanic media adopts a neutral point of view with regard to the African-American minority. However, it presents a negative opinion with regard to the police. It appears that the Hispanic media does not explicitly side with the African-American community, but rather agrees more with the mainstream media’s opinion and is substantially influenced by it.

Multilingualism and conceptual modelling

One of the leading motivations behind the multilingual semantic web is to make resources accessible digitally in an online global multilingual context. Consequently, it is fundamental for knowledge bases to find a way to manage multilingualism and thus be equipped with those procedures for its conceptual modelling. In this context, the goal of this paper is to discuss how common-sense knowledge and cultural knowledge are modelled in a multilingual framework. More particularly, multilingualism and conceptual modelling are dealt with from the perspective of FunGramKB, a lexico-conceptual knowledge base for natural language understanding. This project argues for a clear division between the lexical and the conceptual dimensions of knowledge. Moreover, the conceptual layer is organized into three modules, which result from a strong commitment towards capturing semantic knowledge (Ontology), procedural knowledge (Cognicon) and episodic knowledge (Onomasticon). Cultural mismatches are discussed and formally represented at the three conceptual levels of FunGramKB.

A cognitive study of polysemy in Chinese 手 shǒu and Spanish mano ‘hand’

When studying polysemy in Chinese and Spanish, a cognitive approach shows what is common in the polysemous patterns of both languages, so that we can make generalizations applicable to other languages and other semantic phenomena of language. The paper’s hypothesis is that there are universal mechanisms of semantic extension that can be highlighted and can be used in teaching and learning languages.

Conditional cash transfer programs and the representations of poverty in Bolivia and Peru

Bolivia and Peru adopted the same instruments of social policy —conditional cash transfer programs— to solve the same public problems under different political regimes. By means of the qualitative methodology of discourse analysis, this paper studies the representations of poverty and State made by key actors of those social programs. Underlying more differences than similarities, one demonstrates that the same social policy is linked to opposite social representations of poverty and the State role in every country. The main explanation for this is, far from being imposed by international organizations, those programs are adopted and adapted by each political regime.

Digging up the frequency of phrasal verbs in English for the Police: the case of "up"

The present study focuses on the frequency of phrasal verbs with the particle up in the context of crime and police investigative work. This research emerges from the need to enlarge McCarthy and O’Dell’s (2004) scope from purely criminal behavior to police investigative actions. To do so, we relied on a corpus of 504,124 running words made up of spoken dialogues extracted from the script of the American TV series Castle shown on ABC since 2009. Based on Rudzka-Ostyn’s (2003) cognitive motivations for the particle up, we have identified five different meaning extensions for our phrasal verbs. Drawing from these findings, we have designed pedagogical activities for those L2 learners that study English at the Police Academy.

On a first-name basis: Englishization and naming in Flanders

Following and contributing to the ongoing shift from more structuralist, system-oriented to more pragmatic, socio-cultural oriented anglicism research, this paper verifies to what extent the global spread of English affects naming patterns in Flanders. To this end, a diachronic database of first names is constructed, containing the top 75 most popular boy and girl names from 2005 until 2014. In a first step, the etymological background of these names is documented and the evolution in popularity of the English names in the database is tracked. Results reveal no notable surge in the preference for English names. This paper complements these database-driven results with an experimental study, aiming to show how associations through referents are in this case more telling than associations through phonological form (here based on etymology). Focusing on the socio-cultural background of first names in general and of Anglo-American pop culture in particular, the second part of the study specifically reports on results from a survey where participants are asked to name the first three celebrities that leap to mind when hearing a certain first name (e.g. Lana, triggering the response Del Rey). Very clear associations are found between certain first names and specific celebrities from Anglo-American pop culture. Linking back to marketing research and the social turn in onomastics, we will discuss how these celebrities might function as referees, and how social stereotypes surrounding these referees are metonymically attached to their first names. Similar to the country-of-origin-effect in marketing, these metonymical links could very well be the reason why parents select specific “celebrity names”. Although further attitudinal research is needed, this paper supports the importance of including socio-cultural parameters when conducting onomastic research.

La invocación de los antepasados en "De divinatione" y "De natura deorum" de Cicerón. "Religio e identidad" romana a fines de la república

La invocación del ideal del mos maiorum, entendido como conjunto de virtudes o rasgos ejemplares de los romanos, ha sido estudiada repetidamente en los textos de Cicerón. Analiza el tópico en relación con la discusión en torno a la identidad romana en textos del siglo I a.C. y delimita tres empleos diferentes: uno al que define como típicamente aristocrático, referido a la ascendencia noble de un individuo en particular; un segundo uso que, en vez de individualizar, amalgama a todos los ancestros en un mismo conjunto y establece una continuidad entre pasado y presente; finalmente, una tercera modalidad que propone una ruptura total entre el mundo de los antepasados y el de los contemporáneos. En este trabajo indagaremos el funcionamiento de este tópico en De diuinatione y De natura deorum de Cicerón. Desde nuestro punto de vista, el ideal del mos maiorum no solamente involucra virtudes éticas y morales sino que también supone una especial actitud con respecto a los dioses y el culto que resulta central en la definición de la identidad romana.

Motivating film title translation: a cognitive análisis

This proposal is a non-quantitative study based on a corpus of real data which offers a principled account of the translation strategies employed in the translation of English film titles into Spanish in terms of cognitive modeling. More specifically, we draw on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera’s (2014) work on what they term content (or low-level) cognitive operations, based on either ‘stands for’ or ‘identity’ relations, in order to investigate possible motivating factors for translations which abide by oblique procedures, i.e. for non-literal renderings of source titles. The present proposal is made in consonance with recent findings within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (Samaniego 2007), which evidence that this linguistic approach can fruitfully address some relevant issues in Translation Studies, the most outstanding for our purposes being the exploration of the cognitive operations which account for the use of translation strategies (Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013: 10), mainly expansion and reduction operations, parameterization, echoing, mitigation and comparison by contrast. This fits in nicely with a descriptive approach to translation and particularly with skopos theory, whose main aim consists in achieving functionally adequate renderings of source texts.

Pupil participation in school life: an approach from the educational community

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989) is currently the most ratified international treaty. Several authors have highlighted its potential for both a moral education and citizenship. However, paradoxically, different studies report its limited or occasional incorporation into school practices. This article explores experiences of participation in schools,the third P of the CRC, from the plurality of voices and actors of the educational community,by means of 14 discussion groups in 11 autonomous communities in Spain. Discourse analysis evidence low levels of student participation in school life. But, at the same time, a favorable educational environment for the development of projects that contribute to child participation is found, as well as for the incorporation of the CRC as a mover and a referential integrator of the different schools projects. However, it is also an educational background conductive to projects for its development, such as the incorporation of the CRC as a referential integrator of the schools projects.