The psychology of news influence and development of Media Framing Analysis

HowHow precisely do media influence their readers, listeners and viewers? In this paper, we argue that any serious study of the psychology of media influence must incorporate a systematic analysis of media material. However, psychology presently lacks a methodology for doing this that is sensitive to context, relying on generalised methods like content or discourse analysis. In this paper, we develop an argument to support our development of a technique that we have called Media Framing Analysis (MFA), a formal procedure for conducting analyses of (primarily news) media texts. MFA draws on elements of existing framing research from communication and other social scientific research while at the same time incorporating features of particular relevance to psychology, such as narrative and characterisation.

The longitudinal influence of physical activity on adolescent alcohol use

The purpose of this research was to explore the influence of physical activity on depressive symptomatology and adolescent alcohol use during an underexplored transition from middle school to high school. The study initiative is supported by the fact that research has shown a unique and simultaneous decrease in physical activity (CDC, 2010), increase in depressive symptomatology (SAMHSA, 2010) and increase in alcohol use (USDHHS, 2011) during middle adolescence. A risk and resilience framework was used in efforts to conceptualize how these variables may be inter-related. Data from waves I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, Bearman et al., 1997; Udry, 1997) was used (N = 2,054; aged 13–15 years). The sample was ethnically and racially diverse (58.2% White, 24% African American, 11.7% Hispanic, and 6.1% other). Structural equation models were developed to test the potential influence physical activity has on adolescent alcohol use (e.g., frequency of alcohol use and binge alcohol use) and whether any of the relationship was mediated by depressive symptomatology or varied as a function of gender. Results demonstrated that there was a significant influence of structured physical activity (e.g., sports) on adolescent alcohol use. However, contrary to the proposed hypothesis, engaging in structured physical activity appeared to contribute to greater binge drinking among adolescents. Instead of demonstrating a protective feature, the findings suggest that engaging in structured physical activity places adolescents at risk for binge drinking. Furthermore, no significant relationships, positive or negative, were found for the influence of physical activity (structured and unstructured) on frequency of alcohol use. The findings regarding mediation revealed binge drinking as a mediator between physical activity (structured) and depressive symptomatology. These findings provide support for research, practice, and policy initiatives focused on developing a more comprehensive understanding of alcohol use drinking behaviors, physical activity involvement, and depressive symptomatology among adolescents, which this study demonstrates are all associated with one another. Results represent an initial step toward evaluating these relationships at a much younger age.

Judging psychology experts: Can judges and attorneys distinguish between clinical and experimental psychologists?

A trial judge serves as gatekeeper in the courtroom to ensure that only reliable expert witness testimony is presented to the jury. Nevertheless, research shows that while judges take seriously their gatekeeper status, legal professionals in general are unable to identify well conducted research and are unable to define falsifiability, error rates, peer review status, and scientific validity (Gatkowski et al., 2001; Kovera & McAuliff, 2000). However, the abilities to identify quality scientific research and define scientific concepts are critical to preventing "junk" science from entering courtrooms. Research thus far has neglected to address that before selecting expert witnesses, judges and attorneys must first evaluate experts' CVs rather than their scientific testimony to determine whether legal standards of admissibility have been met. The quality of expert testimony, therefore, largely depends on the ability to evaluate properly experts' credentials. Theoretical models of decision making suggest that ability/knowledge and motivation are required to process information systematically. Legal professionals (judges and attorneys) were expected to process CVs heuristically when rendering expert witness decisions due to a lack of training in areas of psychology expertise.^ Legal professionals' (N = 150) and undergraduate students' (N = 468) expert witness decisions were examined and compared. Participants were presented with one of two versions of a criminal case calling for the testimony of either a clinical psychology expert or an experimental legal psychology expert. Participants then read one of eight curricula vitae that varied area of expertise (clinical vs. legal psychology), previous expert witness experience (previous experience vs. no previous experience), and scholarly publication record (30 publications vs. no publications) before deciding whether the expert was qualified to testify in the case. Follow-up measures assessed participants' decision making processes.^ Legal professionals were not better than college students at rendering quality psychology expert witness admissibility decisions yet they were significantly more confident in their decisions. Legal professionals rated themselves significantly higher than students in ability, knowledge, and motivation to choose an appropriate psychology expert although their expert witness decisions were equally inadequate. Findings suggest that participants relied on heuristics, such as previous expert witness experience, to render decisions.^

Relations Between Acculturation And Alcohol Use Among International Students

In the current study, 226 international students attending Florida International University responded to an Web-based questionnaire that assessed self-reported scores for: acculturation, acculturative stress, alcohol use patterns, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms for alcohol use. The purpose of the study was to evaluate structural relations among this set of variables using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via AMOS 17.0. The results of SEM analyses documented acceptable fit of a model which hypothesized that relations between acculturation and alcohol use variables are mediated partially by acculturative stress, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms. While significant path coefficients were documented for paths between (a) acculturation and acculturative stress and (b) acculturative stress and alcohol use, the coefficients had negative signs, contrary to existing studies investigating these relations among immigrant youth. While paths between (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms and participants’ alcohol use were significant, path coefficients between acculturation and either (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms were not statistically significant. In addition, multiple-group comparisons suggested that social support had a significant moderating influence on several significant paths in the structural model. Specifically, international students reporting higher social support reported lower scores for acculturative stress and alcohol use, in contrast to their counterparts who reported lower scores for social support.

O processo de subjetivação profissional durante os estágios supervisionados em psicologia

Internship is legally understood in Brazil as an overseen educational activity to be developed in a work setting aiming to prepare students to make productive work. According to the federal law number 11.788/08, its main aim is to provide students with competences directly related to the professional activity in a curricular context and to make students develop themselves to live as citizens and to work professionally. With a focus on the professionalizing internship, this research aimed at understanding the professional subjectiveness process of Psychology undergraduates at a public university in the state Minas Gerais during their internship and according to a critic perspective in schooling psychology. The importance of studying psychologist academic training above all the relationship between theory and practice is on the fact that the internship is his/her initial contact with the professional experience itself after four years of theoretical studies. Understood as a way of appropriating and internalizing theoretical and practical dimensions related to the psychologist profession and constructed by the individual, the concept of professional subjectiveness is viewed in the light of the cultural-historical theory, that is, as a result of the human being social constitution. Three Psychology s intern students and their respective overseers were interviewed during their internship period to talk about the process of professional constitution at this phase of the academic training. To do so, oral history proved to be an important methodological support, for it offers a means of giving voice to common people and letting them signify their multi-circumstantial experiences. Results reiterate the presence of subjectivity in the dynamics of an undergraduate training, but they showed that it is permeated by social relations established in his/her personal life story and professional trajectory, stemming from the professional choice, the relationship between intern and overseer, the professional activity properly considered, the psychotherapy, the rules, and from the institutionalization of knowledge, among others aspects that guide the professional subjectiveness during the internship. We verified that the training of a Psychology undergraduate includes multiple determinations that exceed the academic setting because it points out the breaking down of the professional dimensions and personal one dichotomy.

Crisis communication in politics: forgiveness as image restoration tool

Crisis communication is a widely treated field. There are lot of works and guides which provide helpful information in order to face crisis situations successfully (Alcat, 2005, Benoit, 1997) and articles about case studies (Nespereira, 2014, Blaney y Benoit 2001). Nonetheless, most of times, these guides are focused on business or corporations (Abeler, 2010) and there are not such information about crisis communications in politics (Gaspar e Ibeas, 2015). The field is smaller if we speak about forgiveness as restoration image tool in politics (Harris 2006). Despite all, we live in “forgiveness era” as Krauze said (1998) where people demand to politicians to apologize when they have mistakes (Harris et al. 2006:716). So, we will try to make an approach to forgiveness in politics as a image restoration tool and analyze its capabilities in order to face crisis management.

Affect--or feeling (after Leys)

In recent years the ‘affective turn’ has permeated the arts, humanities, social sciences, and psychology, but like any influential academic movement has not escaped critique. We outline and agree in general terms with the critique by Leys (2011b), which emphasises the influence of the basic emotion paradigm; the dualisms that accompany its deployment; and concerns regarding intentionality and meaning. We then propose an alternate approach to affect and feeling, derived from the philosophies of Whitehead and Langer; demonstrate how this avoids the endorsement of cognitivism to which Leys critique succumbs; illustrate the strengths of this approach with respect to analyses of former U.S. President Reagan; and highlight two strengths of affect theory which are compatible with it. We conclude that our approach closes the intentionality gap that Leys identifies whilst retaining a fruitful emphasis upon the affective realm.

El aprendizaje distribuido como estrategia didáctica en la enseñanza del vocabulario de ELE : Un acercamiento a su uso en el salón escolar sueco

Aprender nuevas palabras en un idioma extranjero, es decir, el léxico necesario que fundamenta la posibilidad del desarrollo de las destrezas comunicativas, constituye uno de los problemas más complejos en el proceso tanto de enseñanza como de aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera. En relación con el aprendizaje del vocabulario identificamos un posible problema; el riesgo de que el número de palabras aprendidas se olvide aumenta después de la prueba o los ejercicios. Si nuestros alumnos no pueden ampliar su vocabulario su competencia comunicativa tampoco va a desarrollar.Para poder entender por qué ocurre el problema y cómo se podría encontrar otros recursos didácticos que contribuyan a un cambio en el proceso, investigamos un fenómeno conocido por la psicología de la educación como el efecto de la memoria espaciada - un fenómeno cognitivo que se benéfica de las repeticiones, pero siempre distribuidas en el tiempo. Estrategias de enseñanza que utilizan dicho efecto se refiere como aprendizaje distribuido.Mediante un pequeño estudio analizamos el efecto de la memoria espaciada (ME) como método alternativa. De este estudio podemos inferir que existe un efecto de memoria espaciada tangible en el aprendizaje de los alumnos que estudiaron según un modelo distribuido, es decir con repeticiones.Pudimos constatar un resultado positivo en este pequeño estudio piloto. Los alumnos lograron recordar en la examinación el 85% de las palabras ejercitadas en la clase un mes después. Este resultado abre nuevas perspectivas de estudio e indica que puede haber alternativas didácticas en la enseñanza del vocabulario de ELE en el salón escolar sueco.

Siegfried Bernfeld: Sämtliche Werke in 16 Bänden. Band 1: Theorien des Jugendalters. Hrsg. v. Ulrich Herrmann. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz 1992 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Siegfried Bernfeld: Sämtliche Werke in 16 Bänden. Band 1: Theorien des Jugendalters. Hrsg. v. Ulrich Herrmann. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz 1992, 306 S.

Aspectos cognitivos en torno a la novela y el cine de la memoria histórica: "La voz dormida" de Dulce Chacón y su adaptación fílmica

Culture, history, and biology are inseparable. Cultural manifestations are necessarily immersed in a context, originate in the embodied minds that create them, and are directed to the embodied minds that receive them and recreate them within their contexts (individual and collective). The novel and the film of historical memory in Spain aim to connect their audiences with a problem that has not been solved, as the Civil War, the postwar, and the pact of forgetfulness left a wide sector of the Spanish society voiceless. During the last few years, a series of initiatives coming from the arts, as well as other realms such as the legal, have sought to reexamine the unhealed wound that still haunts Spanish subjects. La voz dormida [The Sleeping Voice] is one of those initiatives. It begins as testimony, develops into a hybrid and intertextual novel, and later becomes a film. It constitutes an inclusive project, one of offering an alternative version to the “official history”, while incorporating the marginal voices of women that had been left out of the memory of the war and the dictatorship. Objective and Results By examining both the literary and the cinematic versions of Chacón’s work I aimed to evidence the connections that exist between the artistic portrayal of the postwar repression (particularly how it affects women) and the current movement of recovery of historical memory in Spain. Specifically, I was interested in showing how both the novel and the film employ a series of narrative strategies that emphasize the body and intentionality, with the purpose of creating in readers and spectators an empathetic response that may lead to prosocial behavior. In order to carry out this interdisciplinary study, which relates fiction, mind, and socio-historical context, I draw on cognitive theories of literature and film, as well as theories from social and developmental psychology, such as the Richard Gerrig’s theory of narrative experience, Keith Oatley’s psychology of fiction, Suzanne Keen’s theory of narrative empathy, and the empathy-altruism hypothesis, derived form the ideas of Jean Decety, among others...