Mediación del grupo de amigos en la relación entre familia y comportamiento antisocial juvenil

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of the variables related to family functioning (parental monitoring, family support, and family conflict) on juvenile antisocial behavior either directly or indirectly through the choice of deviant friends. Thus, the sample consisted of 764 adolescents from the Autonomous Community of Galicia (Spain), from juvenile offender centres (mean age = 17.12, 87.4% males) and students from local schools (mean age = 16.06, 45.5% males). The scales of Valoración del Riesgo en Adolescentes Infractores [Juvenile Offenders Risk Assessment] on parental monitoring, family conflict, family support, antisocial peer group, and antisocial behavior, were applied. The results of structural equation modelling showed a better fit of the mediation model. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the prevention, risk assessment, and management of juvenile offendersEl objetivo de este estudio ha sido medir los efectos de las variables relativas al funcionamiento familiar (supervisión, apoyo y conflicto familiares) en el comportamiento antisocial juvenil, ya sea directamente o indirectamente a través de la elección de amigos desviados. La muestra constaba de 764 adolescentes de la Comunidad Autónoma de Galicia, de centros de menores en conflicto (media de edad de 17.12 anos, ˜ el 87.4% varones) y de alumnos de centros escolares (media de edad de 16.06, el 45.5% varones). Se les aplicó las escalas de Valoración del Riesgo en Adolescentes Infractores (VRAI) que miden supervisión parental, conflicto familiar, apoyo familiar, grupo de amigos antisociales y comportamiento antisocial. La comparación de los modelos de ecuaciones estructurales muestran un mejor ajuste para el modelo de mediación. Se comentan los resultados en cuanto a sus implicaciones para la prevención, evaluación y gestión del riesgo en jóvenes infractoresThis study was funded by the Subdirección General de Proyectos de Investigación (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación del Gobierno de Espana) with Research Grant: PSI2011-29704-C03-01S

Patrones de consumo y variables de personalidad en drogodependientes a tratamiento

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la relación entre factores de personalidad y consumo de sustancias. Específi camente se busca analizar la impulsividad y la búsqueda de sensaciones como variables de personalidad derivadas de modelos psicobiológicos de personalidad, así como el autocontrol, para examinar su relación con los patrones de consumo de drogas. En el trabajo se exploran las características diferenciales en términos de personalidad en pacientes adictos a heroína y en pacientes adictos a cocaína, así como en otro grupo de consumidores que puede merecer especial atención, como es el caso de los antiguos consumidores de heroína que ahora son adictos a la cocaína. La muestra está compuesta por 256 drogodependientes adultos, a tratamiento por su adicción. Se han evaluado características sociodemográfi cas, de consumo y criminológicas, así como características de impulsividad, búsqueda de sensaciones y autocontrol. Los resultados apoyan la importancia de delimitar un grupo especial formado por los exheroinómanos que ahora son cocainómanos, a los que llamamos cocaheroinómanos. Presentan un perfi l de mayor gravedad de la adicción y marginalidad: consumo más problemático y desde más temprana edad, más problemas judiciales, así como diferencias en cuanto a las variables de personalidad en el sentido de mayor impulsividad y búsqueda de sensaciones y peor autocontrol, lo que justifi caría la importancia de ser considerados como un nuevo grupo diferenciado de los clásicosThe aim of this work is to analyze the relationship between personality factors and substance use. It specifi cally seeks to analyze impulsiveness and sensation seeking as personality variables derived from psychobiological personality models, as well as self-control, in order to examine their relationship with drug consumption patterns. The work explores the differential personality characteristics in heroin-addicted and cocaine-addicted patients, as well as in another group of consumers which may deserve special attention, as is the case of former heroin users who are now addicted to cocaine. The sample consists of 256 adult addicts undergoing treatment for their addiction. Sociodemographic, consumption and criminology characteristics have been assessed, as well as characteristics of impulsiveness, sensation-seeking and self-control. The results support the importance of delimiting a special group made up of former heroin addicts who are now addicted to cocaine, who are called cocaheroin addicts. Their profi le implies more serious addiction and marginality: more problematic and earlier onset of consumption, more legal problems, as well as differences in personality variables in the sense of higher impulsivity and sensation seeking and poorer self-control, which would justify the importance of being considered as a new group differentiated from the archetypal onesS

Design of activated carbon–clay composites for effluent decontamination

Adsorption offers an efficient technology for removing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from air pollution sources. Often activated carbons (ACs) are employed owing to their large specific surface areas, high micropore volumes, rapid adsorption capabilities and selectivity towards organic molecules compared to water vapour or air. However, when large volumes of gas are to be treated pressure drop limitations may arise from the use of conventional powder adsorption beds. For these applications conformation of the activated carbon as open channel honeycomb monoliths can take advantage of the almost null pressure drop caused by these structures. Similarly, conformation as extrudates or tubes although increasing the pressure drop due to the turbulent gas flow can improve any diffusion limitations that the open channel monoliths can suffer. Conformation of the AC as a ceramic composite also improves the handling characteristics. By the use of a silicate clay binder a commercially available AC, was conformed in three different monolithic geometries; changing the channel width and the wall thicknesses and as solid extrudates and tubes. The textural and mechanical properties of these conformed composite structures were determined and the results analysed along with their dynamic adsorption capacities towards toluene at 30 C, used as a probe molecule to establish criteria by which the most suitable structure for industrial use could be selected.This work has been supported by the CICYT project MAT2009-09960, Community of Madrid project S-0505/MAT/000227 and CDTI IDI-20091139

Psychopathic personality as a distinctive indicator of severity and persistence for child and youth conduct problems

Los problemas de conducta constituyen uno de los fenómenos más analizados durante la infancia y la adolescencia. Dada su heterogeneidad, durante las últimas décadas se ha planteado la necesidad de delimitar los problemas de conducta de inicio temprano a partir de la manifestación de rasgos afectivos, interpersonales y conductuales similares a los que definen la psicopatía adulta. El presente trabajo pretende analizar, desde una perspectiva transversal y longitudinal, si la manifestación temprana de rasgos psicopáticos permite distinguir a un grupo de sujetos con problemas conductuales más severos y persistentes. Para ello, se analizaron los datos obtenidos en una muestra de 192 niños de entre 6 y 11 años, de los cuales 133 fueron nuevamente evaluados en un seguimiento realizado tres años después. A partir de los resultados obtenidos en el mCPS y CBCL (padres) y en el APSD y TRF (profesores), se observó que los niños que manifestaban rasgos psicopáticos de forma temprana presentaban mayor frecuencia, gravedad y persistencia de problemas de conducta. Estos resultados sugieren la necesidad de tener en cuenta el papel de los rasgos psicopáticos, especialmente de tipo afectivo-interpersonal, como factor de riesgo con el que delimitar los patrones más severos y persistentes de conducta externalizanteConduct problems are among the most discussed behavioral problems during childhood and adolescence. Given their heterogeneity, in recent years, researchers on this topic have called for delineation of early-onset conduct problems on the basis of affective, interpersonal and behavioral traits that resemble adult psychopathy. The present study aims to analyze, from both a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective, whether early psychopathic traits allow identification of a group of individuals defined by severe and persistent behavioral problems. To achieve this goal, data from a sample of 192 children (aged 6 to 11) were analyzed; from this sample, 133 children were followed-up in a new data collection that took place three years later. From the data obtained with the mCPS and CBCL (parents), and APSD and TRF (teachers), we observed that children who showed early psychopathic traits, also showed greater frequency, severity and persistence of conduct problems. These results suggest the need to take into account the role of psychopathic traits (particularly, affective and interpersonal) as risk factors to delimit the most serious and persistent patterns of externalizing behaviorS

User localization during human-robot interaction

This paper presents a user localization system based on the fusion of visual information and sound source localization, implemented on a social robot called Maggie. One of the main requisites to obtain a natural interaction between human-human and human-robot is an adequate spatial situation between the interlocutors, that is, to be orientated and situated at the right distance during the conversation in order to have a satisfactory communicative process. Our social robot uses a complete multimodal dialog system which manages the user-robot interaction during the communicative process. One of its main components is the presented user localization system. To determine the most suitable allocation of the robot in relation to the user, a proxemic study of the human-robot interaction is required, which is described in this paper. The study has been made with two groups of users: children, aged between 8 and 17, and adults. Finally, at the end of the paper, experimental results with the proposed multimodal dialog system are presented.The authors gratefully acknowledge the funds provided by the Spanish Government through the project “A new approach to social robotics” (AROS), of MICINN (Ministry of Science and Innovation)

The structure of personality traits in adolescents: the Five-Factor Model and the Alternative Five

En los últimos años, el Modelo de Cinco Factores ha adquirido gran popularidad como descripción estructural de la personalidad. A pesar de ello, se ha analizado muy poco su aplicabilidad en la adolescencia. Son particularmente escasos los trabajos realizados con adolescentes sobre el NEO-PI-R, el instrumento más emblemático del modelo. Igualmente escasos son los trabajos con adolescentes sobre el ZKPQ, que evalúa los «Cinco Alternativos» de Zuckerman-Kuhlman. En el presente trabajo, el NEO-PI-R y el ZKPQ-III fueron aplicados a una muestra de adolescentes (15-19 años), junto con medidas de afecto positivo y negativo, conducta antisocial y fracaso escolar. Con estos datos se examina 1) las estructuras del NEO-PI-R y del ZKPQ-III, con el fin de conocer en qué medida se replican, en los adolescentes, los modelos subyacentes a estos instrumentos; 2) la relación de ambos modelos con correlatos relevantes, con el fin de explorar su red nomológica y 3) cómo convergen el NEO-PI-R y en ZKPQ-III en un modelo integradoIn the last years, the Five-Factor Model has been object of an increasing interest as a structural description of personality. Nevertheless, the usefulness of the model in adolescence has not received enough attention. Particularly scarce are the studies examining its most representative questionnaire (the NEOPI- R) in adolescent samples. Also scarce are the studies on the ZKPQ-III, which assesses the Zuckerman- Kuhlman «Alternative Five». In this study, the NEO-PI-R and the ZKPQ-III were administered to a sample of adolescents aged 15-19, together with measures of positive and negative affect, antisocial behavior and academic failure. These data allow examination of: 1) the structures of the NEO-PIR and the ZKPQ-III in a young population ; 2) the relationships between both models and revelant correlates, in order to explore their nomological nets; 3) the convergence of the NEO-PI-R and the ZKPQ-III in an integrated modelS

Drug abuse prevention in the school: four years follow-up of a program

En este trabajo se presentan los resultados obtenidos al aplicar una adaptación del «programa de entrenamiento en habilidades de vida», elaborado por G. J. Botvin para prevenir el abuso de drogas. El estudio fue realizado en cinco institutos de la comunidad autónoma gallega. La muestra inicial estuvo compuesta por 1.029 adolescentes, repartidos en tres condiciones experimentales: una de control, en la que no se llevó a cabo ninguna intervención, y dos de tratamiento, en las que el programa fue aplicado por los profesores de los alumnos o por miembros del equipo de investigación ajenos a los centros. En el artículo se presentan los resultados obtenidos sobre el consumo de las distintas drogas analizadas a lo largo de los cuatro años de seguimiento. Los resultados muestran cómo en las condiciones de tratamiento se produce un menor consumo del tabaco y alcohol tras un año de seguimiento. En evaluaciones posteriores esos efectos decaen, pero surgen diferencias significativas en el consumo de otras drogas como el cannabis, los tranquilizantes o las anfetaminasIn this work the results obtained on applying a drug abuse prevention program are displayed. This program is an adaptation of G. J. Botvin’s «life skills training» program. This study was carried out in five Galician high school. The initial sample was composed of 1029 teenagers, distributed in three experimental conditions, one of control and two of treatment, in which the program was applied by the children’s teachers or the investigation team members. In this paper the results about the drugs use for four years are displayed. The results obtained show how under treatment conditions a lower tobbaco and alcohol use is produced after a year of follow-up. In later evaluations, these effects are reduced, but important differences about the use of other drugs such as cannabis, tranquilizers or amphetamimes appearS

Multimodal Fusion as Communicative Acts during Human-Robot Interaction

Research on dialog systems is a very active area in social robotics. During the last two decades, these systems have evolved from those based only on speech recognition and synthesis to the current and modern systems, which include new components and multimodality. By multimodal dialogue we mean the interchange of information among several interlocutors, not just using their voice as the mean of transmission but also all the available channels such as gestures, facial expressions, touch, sounds, etc. These channels add information to the message to be transmitted in every dialogue turn. The dialogue manager (IDiM) is one of the components of the robotic dialog system (RDS) and is in charge of managing the dialogue flow during the conversational turns. In order to do that, it is necessary to coherently treat the inputs and outputs of information that flow by different communication channels: audio, vision, radio frequency, touch, etc. In our approach, this multichannel input of information is temporarily fused into communicative acts (CAs). Each CA groups the information that flows through the different input channels into the same pack, transmitting a unique message or global idea. Therefore, this temporary fusion of information allows the IDiM to abstract from the channels used during the interaction, focusing only on the message, not on the way it is transmitted. This article presents the whole RDS and the description of how the multimodal fusion of information is made as CAs. Finally, several scenarios where the multimodal dialogue is used are presented.Comunidad de Madri

Los rasgos psicopáticos median el efecto de la marginalidad social en la conducta antisocial juvenil

Background: Research of the indirect effects of neighbourhood risk through psychopathic personality traits (i.e., impulsiveness, narcissism and callous-unemotional traits) on juvenile antisocial behaviour has become relevant. Methods: In the current study, mediation effects were assessed using a sample composed of 406 young people between 14 and 21 years old, 82.7% males, from juvenile centres in Galicia and Andalucía (Spain). Results: The results showed signifi cant mediation effects of neighbourhood risk on antisocial behaviour through impulsiveness and callous-unemotional traits. Conclusions: The implications of the mediation effects for prevention, risk assessment, and risk management in juvenile offenders are discussedAntecedentes: el estudio de los efectos indirectos de la marginalidad social a través de los rasgos de personalidad psicopática (i.e., impulsividad, narcisismo y dureza-insensibilidad emocional) sobre el comportamiento antisocial juvenil ha cobrado gran relevancia. Método: en este estudio se analizan los efectos de mediación utilizando una muestra compuesta por 406 jóvenes de entre 14 y 21 años, el 82,7% hombres, de centros de menores en Galicia y Andalucía (España). Resultados: los resultados mostraron efectos de mediación signifi cativos de la marginalidad sobre el comportamiento antisocial a través de la impulsividad y la dureza-insensibilidad emocional. Conclusiones: se discuten las implicaciones de los efectos de mediación para la prevención, evaluación y gestión del riesgo en jóvenes infractoresS

Interactive effects of personality and separation as acculturation style on adolescent antisocial behaviour

The primary aim of this study was to assess the interaction between personality and acculturation variables in predicting antisocial behaviour among adolescent immigrants living in Spain. Previous studies have shown that the acculturation style referred to as separation (rejection of the host country's culture, and a strong desire to preserve the culture of the country of origin) was strongly related to antisocial behaviour among immigrants. A further aim of this study was to examine if the relationship between separation and antisocial behaviour was moderated by personality variables, in particular impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and personal competence. Self-reported data of a sample of 750 adolescent immigrants living in Galicia's and Madrid's regions (Spain) were gathered using previously validated scales. The results revealed that both separation and personality variables were significantly related to antisocial behaviour. Moreover, hierarchical regression analysis with the interaction terms entered found significant moderating effects i.e., the relationship between separation and antisocial behaviour was significantly amplified when impulsivity or sensation-seeking were high. The results underscore the need to examine the effects of personality, acculturation, and the interaction between both on antisocial behaviour among adolescent immigrantsEste trabajo tiene como principal objetivo estudiar cómo las variables de personalidad y la aculturación interactúan a la hora de predecir la conducta antisocial de adolescentes inmigrantes en España. Estudios previos mostraron que la estrategia aculturativa llamada separación (rechazo por la cultura de acogida, con un fuerte aprecio por la preservación de la de origen) es la más relacionada con la conducta antisocial inmigrante. Este estudio examina si esa relación está moderada por variables de personalidad, particularmente por la impulsividad, la búsqueda de sensaciones y la competencia personal. Para ello, a través de escalas auto-informadas, previamente validadas, se recogieron datos en una muestra de 750 adolescentes inmigrantes en Galicia y Madrid. Los resultados mostraron que tanto la separación como las variables de personalidad están significativamente asociadas a la conducta antisocial. Además, los análisis de regresión jerárquica, que incluyen términos de interacción, mostraron potentes efectos de moderación: la relación entre separación y conducta antisocial se amplifica notablemente cuando la impulsividad o la búsqueda de sensaciones son elevadas. Estos resultados alertan sobre la necesidad de estudiar los complejos efectos conjuntos entre personalidad y aculturación cuando se trata de explicar los problemas de adaptación en jóvenes inmigrantesThis research project was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Project SEJ2005-08949)S