Implicación en los estudios y consumo de drogas de adultos emergentes universitarios

En las últimas décadas se han producido numerosas transformaciones en las sociedades industrializadas que han contribuido a que algunos investigadores determinen que ha surgido una nueva etapa en el desarrollo de los y las jóvenes llamada “adultez emergente”. En este estudio, pretendemos conocer la implicación en los estudios, el consumo de drogas y el apoyo social percibido por los adultos emergentes. Asimismo, el objetivo principal de nuestro estudio es analizar en qué medida el apoyo social de la familia y los amigos percibido por los adultos emergentes se relaciona con su implicación en los estudios y su consumo de tabaco, alcohol y cannabis (hachís, marihuana…). Este estudio supone una investigación cuantitativa transversal de un grupo de 209 chicos y chicas adultos emergentes universitarios a los que se les administró cuestionarios relativos a apoyo social de la familia y los amigos, la implicación en los estudios y el consumo de alcohol, tabaco y cannabis. Los resultados señalan que los adultos emergentes de nuestra muestra perciben altos niveles apoyo social de la familia y de los amigos. Además, muestran un alto nivel de implicación en los estudios. Asimismo, conceden gran importancia a la familia, la cual se relaciona con su alta implicación en los estudios y su bajo consumo de hachís o marihuana. El trabajo presenta uno de los pocos estudios realizados en España sobre la adultez emergente y resalta la importancia del conocimiento y la intervención en esta etapa del ciclo vital para el campo de la Psicología.In recent decades there have been a lot of changes in industrialized societies that have contributed to some researchers determined that emergence of a new stage in the development of young people, it called “Emerging Adulthood”. In this study, we pretend to know drug use, involvement studies and family and friend social support perceived by emerging adults. Besides, the main aim of our study is analysed how social support and friends perceived by emerging adults is related to this involvement studies and alcohol, tobacco and hashish and marijuana consumption. This study is a transversal quantitative research of a group of 209 boys and girls undergraduate emerging adults. Questionnaires about family and friend social support, involvement studies and alcohol, tobacco and hashish or marijuana consumption were applied. The results indicate that emerging adults perceive high levels of family support and friend support. Moreover, they show a high level of involvement in studies. Besides, they give great importance to the family which influences their involvement in studies and drug use hashish or marijuana consumption. This work is one of the few researches about emerging adulthood in Spain and underlines the importance of its knowledge and intervention in the field of Psychology on this life cycle stage.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad EDU 2013-45687-

The role of parents in emerging adults’ psychological well-being: A person-oriented approach

The purpose of this study was to gain an overview of Spanish emerging adults’ family relationships and their link with psychological well-being and psychological distress. The sample comprised 1502 undergraduate students (903 women and 599 men) aged between 18 and 29 (M = 20.32 and SD = 2.13), recruited from two universities in Spain. A cluster analysis identified three groups of families based on the centrality of five family variables: parental involvement, parental support for autonomy, parental warmth, behavioral control and psychological control. The three groups or clusters were labeled high-quality family relationships (HQ), intermediate-quality family relationships (IQ) and low-quality family relationships (LQ). Women were overrepresented in the HQ cluster, whereas men were overrepresented in the IQ cluster. Moreover, emerging adults who perceived better family relationships (high levels of parental involvement, parental support for autonomy and parental warmth, and low levels of behavioral and psychological control) were found to have a higher level of psychological adjustment. Thus, our results indicate that family plays a key role in the psychological well-being of emerging adults. The discussion focuses on the implications of this finding for the parent-child relationship, and explores how it extends our knowledge about family relationships during emerging adulthood

Perceived parenting styles and adjustment during emerging adulthood: a cross-national perspective

The aim of the present study is to determine whether the influence of parenting style on children’s wellbeing is sustained during emerging adulthood. This is a stage in which young people, despite feeling themselves to be adults, often remain in the family home and continue to be financially dependent on their parents. Moreover, since parents’ beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are constructed and interpreted within their cultural milieu, the study also aims to explore the situation in Spain (SP) and Portugal (PT). Those two Southern Europe countries are representative of what is known as the “family welfare regime”, in which the family acts as the main provider of care and security not only during childhood, but also during emerging adulthood. Thus, the present study examines, from a cross-cultural perspective, the relationship between perceived parenting styles and psychological adjustment among a sample of 1047 emerging adults from Spain and Portugal. The results reveal that the most beneficial styles during this stage are the authoritative and permissive ones, with the authoritarian style being more closely related to psychological distress. The study highlights intercultural similarities and the positive role played by more symmetrical relationships in the adjustment of emerging adults in both countries.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad EDU2013-45687-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad RTI2018-097405-B-I0

Maximal Contrast Adaptive Region Growing for CT Airway Tree Segmentation

In this paper we propose a fully self-assessed adaptive region growing airway segmentation algorithm. We rely on a standardized and self-assessed region-based approach to deal with varying imaging conditions. Initialization of the algorithm requires prior knowledge of trachea location. This can be provided either by manual seeding or by automatic trachea detection in upper airway tree image slices. The detection of the optimal parameters is managed internally using a measure of the varying contrast of the growing region. Extensive validation is provided for a set of 20 chest CT scans. Our method exhibits very low leakage into the lung parenchyma, so even though the smaller airways are not obtained from the region growing, our fully automatic technique can provide robust and accurate initialization for other method

Depression, Gender Differences and Family Relationships during Emerging Adulthood. A longitudinal study.

Over the last three decades, older children have begun to remain in the family home for longer, and currently, most young people in Spain continue to live with their parents until well into their thirties. This means that two adult generations often live under the same roof, thus requiring a new type of family relationship. While there is some evidence regarding how family relationships influence emerging adults’ adjustment, since most of it comes from cross-sectional studies, no causal influences can be inferred. This paper has two aims. First, it seeks to examine, from a gender perspective, whether family relationships change or remain stable from the initial to the intermediate years of emerging adulthood. And second, it aims to analyze the relationship between parental behavior when emerging adults are in their early twenties and their depressive symptoms four years later. Participants were 400 emerging adults (258 women) aged between 18 and 29 (Women - Mean: 20.35; SD: 2.02 at W1 and Mean: 23.70; SD: 2.06 at W2; and Men - Mean: 20.23; SD: 2.08 at W1 and Mean: 23.57; SD: 2.14 at W2) participating in the Transition to Adulthood in Spain project. The questionnaire included sociodemographic variables (gender and age), family relationship variables (family social support, parental involvement, parental warmth, parental support for autonomy and parental behavioral and psychological control) and emerging adults’ depressive symptoms. Our results revealed a high level of relative stability in the scores obtained by all participants (men and women) for all the variables studied. Regarding absolute stability, high continuity was observed in parental support for autonomy and parental involvement, although there was a decrease in emerging adults’ perceptions of family social support, parental warmth and control. Women perceived greater parental involvement and parental warmth than men, while men perceived a higher level of behavioral control. Family control at wave 1 correlated positively with depressive symptoms at wave 2; all other family variables correlated negatively. The results also revealed a moderating effect of parental involvement on the association between behavioral control at wave 1 and depressive symptoms at wave 2. Our findings provide evidence that, in 21st century Spain, differences still exist between men and women in the way they perceive family relationships, probably as a reflection of gender-based differences in their upbringing which continue to persist, even in this day and age. Moreover, among both men and women, parental involvement seems to be a protective factor for depressive symptoms among emerging adults’ from overbearing families. This study highlights the need for social policies aimed at fostering positive parenting during emerging adulthood. It also underscores the need for longitudinal studies as a means of shedding light on the changes which take place in the family context during this developmental stage, and how they influence emerging adults’ adjustment

Emotional Autonomy and Adjustment among Emerging Adults: The Moderating Role of Family Relationships

Emerging adults build their personal maturity within the family context, however, there is a lack of studies regarding the role of emotional autonomy during this stage. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between emotional autonomy and adjustment during emerging adulthood, bearing in mind the possible moderating role of parental support in this relationship. Data was collected from 1502 Spanish undergraduate students (903 women) aged between 18 and 29. Results indicated that emotional autonomy correlated negatively with family support and psychological wellbeing and positively with psychological distress. However, only when young people perceive a family context with low social support is gaining emotional distance from their parents associated with an increase in their psychological well-being. Our findings highlight the crucial role that family environment plays in well-being during young adulthood, and reveal that the effect of emotional distancing from parents on adjustment depends on the quality of the family climate. Future research should gain more in-depth knowledge of emotional autonomy during emerging adulthood, taking into account cross-cultural diversity

Stability and change in family relationships in the transitional period of emerging adulthood

Throughout emerging adulthood, family relationships have been scarcely studied in South European countries and the research using longitudinal designs are practically non-existent. This study has two specific objectives. First, to examine whether family relationships changes or remain stable over emerging adulthood. Second, to analyse whether parent-child relationship at the beginning of emerging adulthood are associated with psychological distress four years later. Method: A sample of 400 emerging adults was followed from early to middle emerging adulthood. They completed, at wave 1 (Mean: 20.31; SD: 2.04) and wave 2 (Mean: 23.66; SD: 2.08), questionnaires to measure socio-demographic variables (age and sex), family social support, parental involvement, parental warmth, parental autonomy support, behavioural and psychological control exercised by parents, and psychological distress. Results: Data showed high relative stability in family relationships seen globally. There is absolute stability in parental involvement and parental autonomy support meanwhile parental social support, parental warmth and parental control decrease over the years. Parental control at W1 is significantly and positively associated with psychological distress at W2. By contrast, the rest of the family variables analysed at W1 had a negative and significant association with psychological distress at W2. Discussion: These findings suggest that although some parental behaviours decrease throughout emerging adulthood, family relationships still play an important role during the third-decade people’s lives. Finally, our findings highlight the importance of spreading our knowledge about this stage in the European context in order to optimize young people’s development with psychoeducational programs for them and their families who faced a new challenge during these years

Estilos educativos parentales y malestar psicológico en adultos emergentes universitarios del sur de Europa

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo principal examinar la relación existente entre los estilos educativos parentales y el malestar psicológico de adultos y adultas emergentes estudiantes de Universidad. Debido a que las prácticas parentales se interpretan y construyen dentro del contexto cultural en que se llevan a cabo, hemos realizado el estudio en dos países distintos del sur de Europa, España y Portugal. Los estilos educativos parentales se crearon siguiendo el método empleado en el clásico estudio de Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg and Dornsbush (1991) basado en puntuaciones terciles. La muestra estuvo compuesta por personas adultas emergentes universitarias de edades comprendidas entre 18 y 30 años procedentes de España (N = 552; M = 20,29; SD = 2,13) y Portugal (N = 492; M = 20,20; SD = 2,10). El principal resultado es que los y las estudiantes de Universidad que perciben a sus padres y madres con un estilo educativo autoritario tienen mayores niveles de malestar psicológico en ambos países, tanto España como Portugal. Nuestros resultados revelan por un lado, la necesidad de realizar estudios sobre relaciones familiares durante la adultez emergente en los países del sur de Europa, ya que en estos países la mayoría de los y las jóvenes vive esta etapa en el contexto familiar y la familia continúa siendo un referente fundamental en la promoción de un desarrollo saludable. Por otro lado, la necesidad de politicas sociales de apoyo a la familia durante esta etapa del desarrollo

Fast parameter-free region growing segmentation with application to surgical planning

In this paper, we propose a self-assessed adaptive region growing segmentation algorithm. In the context of an experimental virtual-reality surgical planning software platform, our method successfully delineates main tissues relevant for reconstructive surgery, such as fat, muscle, and bone. We rely on a self-tuning approach to deal with a great variety of imaging conditions requiring limited user intervention (one seed). The detection of the optimal parameters is managed internally using a measure of the varying contrast of the growing region, and the stopping criterion is adapted to the noise level in the dataset thanks to the sampling strategy used for the assessment function. Sampling is referred to the statistics of a neighborhood around the seed(s), so that the sampling period becomes greater when images are noisier, resulting in the acquisition of a lower frequency version of the contrast function. Validation is provided for synthetic images, as well as real CT datasets. For the CT test images, validation is referred to manual delineations for 10 cases and to subjective assessment for another 35. High values of sensitivity and specificity, as well as Dice’s coefficient and Jaccard’s index on one hand, and satisfactory subjective evaluation on the other hand, prove the robustness of our contrast-based measure, even suggesting suitability for calibration of other region-based segmentation algorithms

Development and evaluation of perceptually adapted colour gradients

In this study a set of colour gradients based on colour visual perception, which use International Commission on Illumination (CIE) L*a*b* colour space, is presented. The main objective is the study of how the colour difference equations, developed by CIE, affect the estimation of the gradients in terms of correlation with colour visual perception. To evaluate the gradients performance they are used as the basis of an edge detector based on levelset. A set of synthetic images was designed to evaluate which edge detector and consequently, which colour difference equation, is more correlated with human perception of colour. Both quantitative and qualitative measurements showed that the results obtained using CIE94 have a higher correlation with what the human eye can perceive