Loneliness in Intimate Relationships Scale (LIRS): Development and Validation

Intimate relationships have been shown to be loneliness positively related to self-esteem. Happiness and well-being and have also been regarded as a buffer against loneliness. Nevertheless, substantive research indicates that intimate relationships and marriage can produce or result in loneliness and thus seriously affect the person’s physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Loneliness in intimate relationships may damage the relationship if it goes on, and thus, this newly developed scale has been introduced to aid clinicians and researchers in discovering loneliness in an intimate union so it can be addressed before it negatively affects the union. Since none of the measures of loneliness tap loneliness as experienced in intimate relationships, a new rating scale, the Loneliness in Intimate Relationships Scale (LIRS), was developed and tested psychometrically. The generation of items followed a qualitative approach based on a semi-structured questionnaire administered to 108 volunteers from the general Israeli population, theoretical and empirical literature, and assessments of expert psychologists. In a second study (N = 215), a self-report scale assessing loneliness in intimate relationships was developed. This was followed by psychometric and construct validity evaluations with a new sample of 306 participants. Analyses revealed that loneliness in intimate relationships is experienced mainly in terms of three aspects: detachment, hurt, and guilt. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and validity tests indicate that the final 14-item Loneliness in Intimate Relationship Scale is a well-structured, reliable, and valid scale tapping emotional, behavioral, and cognitive manifestations of loneliness in intimate relationships

Hemispheric asymmetries in semantic processing: Evidences from false memories for ambiguous words

Abstract Previous research suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) focuses on strongly related word meanings; the right hemisphere (RH) may contribute uniquely to the processing of lexical ambiguity by activating and maintaining a wide range of meanings, including subordinate meanings. The present study used the word-lists false memory paradigm [Roediger, H. L. III., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803-814.] to examine whether these differences between the two cerebral hemispheres in semantic processing also affect memory representations for different meanings of ambiguous words. Specifically, we tested the differences between the LH and RH in recollecting unpresented, semantically related, ambiguous words following the presentation of lists of words all related to either the dominant or the subordinate meanings of these ambiguous words. Findings showed that for the unpresented ambiguous words, the LH made more false alarms than the RH for the dominant lists, whereas the opposite pattern emerged for subordinate lists. Moreover, d 0 analyses showed that, whereas the LH was more sensitive to subordinate than dominant meanings, the RH showed no differences in sensitivity for the two types of word-lists. Taken as a whole, these results support the RH coarse semantic coding theory [Beeman, M. (1998) , 9, 512-518.] indicating that during word recognition, the RH activates and maintains a broader and less differentiated range of related meanings than the LH, including both dominant and subordinate meanings of ambiguous words. Furthermore, the findings suggest that hemispheric differences in ambiguity resolution during language processing extend also to verbal memory

Les relations entre milieu social, climat scolaire et réussite scolaire en Israël: les hypothèses de compensation, de médiation et de modération

National audienceIl est largement admis parmi les chercheurs et les praticiens qu'un climat scolaire positif peut atténuer l'influence du milieu social des élèves (au niveau individuel et de l'école) sur la réussite scolaire. Néanmoins, les mécanismes exacts de ce phénomène ne sont pas clairs. Cette étude cherche à combler cette lacune, en développant une évaluation fiable et complète du rôle du climat de l'école dans la relation entre le milieu social et la réussite scolaire. Cette étude a spécifiquement testé si le climat de l'école a une influence complémentaire sur les performances académiques, par rapport au milieu social (modèle de compensation), si le milieu social de l'école influe sur son climat scolaire, qui influence à son tour la réussite scolaire (modèle de médiation), ou si la relation entre le milieu social et les performances académiques diffère selon les écoles (modèle de modération). Cette analyse secondaire d'un échantillon national représentatif d'élèves des cinquième et huitième années dans les écoles publiques en Israël où l'enseignement est en hébreux, montre que le climat de l'école joue un rôle important dans les résultats scolaires, indépendamment du milieu social de l'élève et de son école. Le climat scolaire a un effet de compensation sur les performances académiques, à la fois aux niveaux de l'école et de l'élève. Le climat scolaire modère aussi la relation entre les performances et le milieu social des élèves. En revanche, l'hypothèse d'effet de médiation du climat de l'école sur la relation entre le milieu social et la réussite scolaire n'est pas confirmée. Ces résultats mettent en évidence la nécessité d'améliorer le climat des écoles, en particulier dans celles scolarisant les populations les plus défavorisées, afin de faire progresser la mobilité sociale et l'égalité des chances