Spanish normative data of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in a community-based sample of adolescents: Datos normativos españoles del Cuestionario de capacidades y dificultades (SDQ) en una muestra comunitaria de adolescentes.

Background/Objective: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire self-report (SDQ-S) has been extensively used to assess mental health problems among children and adolescents. However, previous research has identified substantial age and country variation on its psychometric properties. The aim of this study was three-fold: i) to evaluate internal structure and measurement invariance of the Spanish version of the SDQ; ii) to analyze age and gender-specific effects on the SDQ subscales; and iii) to provide Spanish normative data for the entire age range of adolescence. Method: Data were derived from two representative samples of adolescents aged 14 to 19 years old, selected by stratified random cluster sampling years (N = 3378). Results: The reliability of the Total difficulties score was satisfactory, but some subscales showed lower levels of internal consistency. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original five-factor model. Finally, results revealed that SDQ scores were influenced by the gender and the age of participants; thus, the normative banding scores and cut-off values were provided accordingly. Conclusions: This study validates the Spanish SDQ-S for the entire age range of adolescence. However, more cross-country and cross-age research is needed to better understand the inconsistent findings on SDQ reliability.

Spanish normative data of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in a community-based sample of adolescents

Background/Objective: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire self-report (SDQ-S) has been extensively used to assess mental health problems among children and adolescents. However, previous research has identified substantial age and country variation on its psychometric properties. The aim of this study was three-fold: i) to evaluate internal structure and measurement invariance of the Spanish version of the SDQ; ii) to analyze age and gender-specific effects on the SDQ subscales; and iii) to provide Spanish normative data for the entire age range of adolescence. Method: Data were derived from two representative samples of adolescents aged 14 to 19 years old, selected by stratified random cluster sampling years (N = 3378). Results: The reliability of the Total difficulties score was satisfactory, but some subscales showed lower levels of internal consistency. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original five-factor model. Finally, results revealed that SDQ scores were influenced by the gender and the age of participants; thus, the normative banding scores and cut-off values were provided accordingly. Conclusions: This study validates the Spanish SDQ-S for the entire age range of adolescence. However, more cross-country and cross-age research is needed to better understand the inconsistent findings on SDQ reliability. (AU)

Raising the level: orangutans solve the floating peanut task without visual feedback.

Chimpanzees and orangutans are able to generate innovative behaviors to solve complicated physical problems. For example, when presented with an out-of-reach peanut at the bottom of a vertical tube (floating peanut task-FPT), some of them spontaneously spit water into the tube until the peanut floats to the top. Yet, it is unclear whether this innovative solution results from repeating those actions that bring the peanut incrementally closer to the top or from anticipating the solution before acting. In the current study, we addressed this question by presenting three naïve orangutans with an opaque version of the FPT that prevented them from obtaining visual information about the effect of their actions on the position of the peanut. One of the subjects solved the opaque FPT in the very first trial: he collected water from the faucet and poured it into the opaque tube repeatedly until the hitherto non-visible peanut reached the top. This provides evidence for the first time that orangutans can potentially solve the FPT without relying on sensorimotor learning, but to some extent by mentally representing the problem.

Suicidal behavior assessment in adolescents: Validation of the SENTIA-Brief scale.

Suicide is a social-health problem in the youth population worldwide; however, there are no measuring instruments specifically designed for use in Spanish adolescents. The main goal of this work was to analyze the psychometric properties of a new measuring instrument, called SENTIA-Brief, for suicidal behavior assessment in Spanish adolescents.

Evaluación de la conducta suicida en adolescentes: validación de la escala SENTIA-Breve / Suicidal behavior assessment in adolescents: Validation of the SENTIA-Brief scale

INTRODUCCIÓN: El suicidio es un problema socio-sanitario en población juvenil a nivel mundial; sin embargo, no existen instrumentos de medida específicamente diseñados para su uso en adolescentes españoles. El principal objetivo de este trabajo fue analizar las propiedades psicométricas de un instrumento, denominado SENTIA-Breve, para la evaluación de la conducta suicida en adolescentes españoles. METODOLOGÍA: Participaron 1790 estudiantes selecciona-dos mediante un muestreo estratificado por conglomerados. La media de edad fue 15,70 años (DT = 1,26), siendo el 53,7% chicas. Se utilizaron diferentes instrumentos que valoraban la conducta suicida y el ajuste socio-emocional y conductual. RESULTADOS: Entre un 4% y un 15% de los adolescentes puntuaron afirmativamente en al menos un ítem de la esca-la. Las mujeres mostraron puntuaciones medias significativa-mente más altas que los varones. Se encontró una estructura esencialmente unidimensional. Ningún ítem mostró funcionamiento diferencial en función del género. La fiabilidad de las puntuaciones fue alta (omega = 0,97). Las puntuaciones de SENTIA-Breve se asociaron positivamente con ideación suicida, síntomas de depresión, problemas de salud mental y experiencias psicóticas atenuadas. CONCLUSIONES: SENTIA-Breve parece ser un instrumento de medida breve, sencillo y con adecuadas propiedades psicométricas que permite la evaluación de la conducta suicida en jóvenes españoles. Además, SENTIA-Breve se puede utilizar como una herramienta de cribado, tanto en entornos clínicos como educativos, para detectar a personas con riesgo de conducta suicida de cara a prevenir este problema y sus negativas consecuencias

INTRODUCTION: Suicide is a social-health problem in the youth population worldwide; however, there are no measuring instruments specifically designed for use in Spanish adolescents. The main goal of this work was to analyze the psychometric properties of a new measuring instrument, called SENTIA-Brief, for suicidal behavior assessment in Spanish adolescents. Method. A total of 1,790 students selected by sampling stratified by conglomerates participated in the survey. The average age was 15.70 years (SD = 1.26), 53.7% being girls. Different instruments to assess suicidal behavior and socio-emotional and behavioral adjustment were used. RESULTS: Between 4% and 15% of adolescents scored positively at least on one item of the SENTIA-Brief scale. Women showed significantly higher scores than men in the total score. An essentially one-dimensional structure was found. No items showed differential functioning by gender. The reliability was adequate (Omega = .97). SENTIA-Brief scores were positively associated with suicidal ideation, symptoms of depression, mental health problems, and psychotic-like experiences. CONCLUSIONS: SENTIA-Brief seems to be a simple and brief instrument with adequate psychometric properties that al-lows the assessment of suicidal behavior in young Spaniards. In addition, SENTIA-Brief can be used as a screening tool, both in clinical and educational settings, to detect individuals at risk for suicidal behavior in order to prevent this problem and its negative consequences associated

(In)Sensitivity to Accuracy? Children's and Adults' Decisions About Who to Trust: The Teacher or the Internet.

Recent research has challenged the extended idea that when presented with conflicting information provided by different sources, children, as do adults, make epistemic judgments based on the past accuracy of each source. Instead, individuals may use relatively simple, but adaptive non-epistemic strategies. Here we examined how primary-school children (N = 114) and undergraduate students (N = 57) deal with conflicting information provided by two key sources of information in their day-to-day lives: their teacher and the Internet. In order to study whether the inaccuracy of a source generated a decline in trust, we manipulated this variable between participants: teacher-wrong and Internet-wrong conditions. For this, we first presented two baseline trials, followed by the accuracy manipulation, and finally, two post-test trials. Analyses were performed on group performance as well as on individual performance, to explore the individual patterns of responses. Results revealed that most participants showed no preference for any source during baseline, with no age differences in their overall choices. Crucially, when a given source provided inaccurate information about a familiar issue, most children and adults did not lose trust on this source. We propose tentative explanations for these findings considering potential differences in the participants' strategies to approach the task, whether or not epistemic.

Suicidal behaviour in adolescents: A network analysis. / Conducta suicida en adolescentes: un análisis de redes.

OBJECTIVE: Suicidal behaviour has not yet been analysed from a network approach in adolescent samples. It is imperative to incorporate new psychological models to understand suicidal behaviour from a different perspective. The main objective of this work was twofold: a) to examine suicidal behaviour through network analysis and b) to estimate the psychological network between suicidal behaviour and protective and risk factors in school-age adolescents. METHOD: Participants were 443 students (M = 14.3 years; SD = 0.53; 51.2% female) selected incidentally from different schools. Different instruments were administered to assess suicidal behaviour, emotional and behavioural difficulties, prosocial behaviour, subjective well-being, emotional intelligence, self-esteem, depressive symptomatology, empathy, positive and negative affect, and emotional regulation. RESULTS: The resulting network of suicidal behaviour was strongly interconnected. The most central node in terms of strength and expected influence was «Consider taking your own life¼. In the estimated psychological network of suicidal behaviour and risk and protective factors, the nodes with the highest strength were depressive symptomatology, positive affect, and empathic concern. The most influential nodes were those related to emotional intelligence abilities. Suicidal behaviour was positively connected to depression symptoms and negative affect, and negatively connected to self-esteem and positive affect. The results of the stability analysis indicated that the networks were accurately estimated. CONCLUSIONS: Suicidal behaviour can be conceptualized as a dynamic, complex system of cognitive, emotional, and affective characteristics. The new psychopathological and psychometric models allow us to analyse and understand human behaviour and mental health problems from a new perspective, suggesting new forms of conceptualization, evaluation, intervention, and prevention.

Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents: A Latent Class Analysis.

: The main goal of the present study was to identify and validate latent classes of suicidal behavior in a representative sample of adolescents. The sample comprised a total of 1506 students, including 667 males (44.3%), selected through a sample stratified by clusters. The mean age was 16.15 years (SD = 1.36). The instruments used evaluated suicidal behavior, positive and negative affect, emotional and behavioral problems, prosocial behavior, and subjective well-being. Using the Paykel Suicide Scale, the latent class analysis identified four homogeneous subgroups: "low risk", "suicidal act", "suicidal ideation", and "high risk for suicide". These subgroups presented a differential pattern in terms of their social-emotional adjustment. The subgroups with the highest theoretical risk showed lower scores on subjective well-being and positive affect as well as higher scores on emotional and behavioral problems and negative affect compared to the non-risk subgroups. This study contributes to an understanding of the typologies of suicidal behavior among adolescents and the relationship with psychopathological adjustment. Ultimately, these findings may promote the development or improvement of early detection and prevention strategies in the suicidal behavior field in order to reduce the socio-economic burdens associated with suicide in young populations.

Social norms and cultural diversity in the development of third-party punishment.

Human cooperation is probably supported by our tendency to punish selfishness in others. Social norms play an important role in motivating third-party punishment (TPP), and also in explaining societal differences in prosocial behaviour. However, there has been little work directly linking social norms to the development of TPP across societies. In this study, we explored the impact of normative information on the development of TPP in 603 children aged 4-14, across six diverse societies. Children began to perform TPP during middle childhood, and the developmental trajectories of this behaviour were similar across societies. We also found that social norms began to influence the likelihood of performing TPP during middle childhood in some of these societies. Norms specifying the punishment of selfishness were generally more influential than norms specifying the punishment of prosocial behaviour. These findings support the view that TPP of selfishness is important in all societies, and its development is shaped by a shared psychology for responding to normative information. Yet, the results also highlight the important role that children's prior knowledge of local norms may play in explaining societal variation in the development of both TPP and prosociality.

Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity in prosocial behaviour and development.

Recent studies have proposed that social norms play a key role in motivating human cooperation and in explaining the unique scale and cultural diversity of our prosociality. However, there have been few studies that directly link social norms to the form, development and variation in prosocial behaviour across societies. In a cross-cultural study of eight diverse societies, we provide evidence that (1) the prosocial behaviour of adults is predicted by what other members of their society judge to be the correct social norm, (2) the responsiveness of children to novel social norms develops similarly across societies and (3) societally variable prosocial behaviour develops concurrently with the responsiveness of children to norms in middle childhood. These data support the view that the development of prosocial behaviour is shaped by a psychology for responding to normative information, which itself develops universally across societies.

The brightness dimension as a marker of gender across cultures and age.

Universally, female skin color is lighter than male skin color, irrespective of geographical location. This difference is a distinctive and universal adaptive pattern that emerges after puberty. We address whether this sexual dimorphism is cognitively and culturally represented to ground gender. To this end, we examine a non-Western, non-industrialized population, namely the Wichí (Salta, Argentina) and a Western industrialized population (Spain). The two cultural populations included both adults and prepubescent children. Across two experiments, we utilized a novel task with children and adults who had to make a choice for a female (male) target person between two identical objects that differed only in terms of their brightness. The results in both experiments revealed that the children from the two cultural communities choose a lighter colored object for the female target and a darker version of the same object for the male target. This pattern held across cultures irrespective of the age of participants, except for the male Wichí participants. We discuss how sexual dimorphism in skin color contributes to a universal grounding of the gender category, and advance possible explanations as to why Wichi males did not consistently link gender and brightness.

Pay to play: Children's emerging ability to use acts of generosity for selfish ends.

Adults will offer favors to advance their standing and solicit a favor in return, using ostensibly prosocial acts strategically for selfish ends. Here we assessed the developmental emergence of such strategic behaviors in which individuals are generous to elicit future reciprocation from others. In a novel experimental paradigm with children aged 3 to 7 years, we tested whether children are willing to share more valuable resources when this act could prompt subsequent reciprocation. In an Experimental condition, children could share a more attractive or less attractive resource with a person who they knew would subsequently choose to play a game with either the children or another individual. In the Control condition, children knew the person would play alone. Across two studies, we found that over repeated trials, 5- and 7-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, learned to share more valuable resources in the Experimental condition than in the Control condition. This shows that older age groups were able to quickly learn how to influence the subsequent partner choice in a novel situation. We address theoretical questions about the various types of reciprocity as being supported by different psychological mechanisms and discuss whether the current results could be explained by children's emerging ability for future-directed thinking.

The word order of languages predicts native speakers' working memory.

The relationship between language and thought is controversial. One hypothesis is that language fosters habits of processing information that are retained even in non-linguistic domains. In left-branching (LB) languages, modifiers usually precede the head, and real-time sentence comprehension may more heavily rely on retaining initial information in working memory. Here we presented a battery of working memory and short-term memory tasks to adult native speakers of four LB and four right-branching (RB) languages from Africa, Asia and Europe. In working memory tasks, LB speakers were better than RB speakers at recalling initial stimuli, but worse at recalling final stimuli. Our results show that the practice of parsing sentences in specific directions due to the syntax and word order of our native language not only predicts the way we remember words, but also other non-linguistic stimuli.

What Makes Children Defy Majorities? The Role of Dissenters in Chinese and Spanish Preschoolers' Social Judgments.

When many people say the same thing, the individual is more likely to endorse this information than when just a single person says the same. Yet, the influence of consensus information may be modulated by many personal, contextual and cultural variables. Here, we study the sensitivity of Chinese (N = 68) and Spanish (N = 82) preschoolers to consensus in social decision making contexts. Children faced two different types of peer-interaction events, which involved (1) uncertain or ambiguous scenarios open to interpretation (social interpretation context), and (2) explicit scenarios depicting the exclusion of a peer (moral judgment context). Children first observed a video in which a group of teachers offered their opinion about the events, and then they were asked to evaluate the information provided. Participants were assigned to two conditions that differed in the type of consensus: Unanimous majority (non-dissenter condition) and non-unanimous majority (dissenter condition). In the dissenter condition, we presented the conflicting opinions of three teachers vs. one teacher. In the non-dissenter condition, we presented the unanimous opinion of three teachers. The general results indicated that children's sensitivity to consensus varies depending both on the degree of ambiguity of the social events and the presence or not of a dissenter: (1) Children were much more likely to endorse the majority view when they were uncertain (social interpretation context), than when they already had a clear interpretation of the situation (moral judgment context); (2) The presence of a dissenter resulted in a significant decrease in children's confidence in majority. Interestingly, in the moral judgment context, Chinese and Spanish children differed in their willingness to defy a majority whose opinion run against their own. While Spanish children maintained their own criteria regardless of the type of condition, Chinese children did so when an "allied" dissenter was present (dissenter condition) but not when confronting a unanimous majority (non-dissenter condition). Tentatively, we suggest that this difference might be related to culture-specific patterns regarding children's deference toward adults.

Comparing humans and nonhuman great apes in the broken cloth problem: Is their knowledge causal or perceptual?

When presented with the broken cloth problem, both human children and nonhuman great apes prefer to pull a continuous cloth over a discontinuous cloth in order to obtain a desired object resting on top. This has been interpreted as evidence that they preferentially attend to the functionally relevant cues of the task (e.g., presence or absence of a gap along the cloth). However, there is controversy regarding whether great apes' behavior is underpinned by causal knowledge, involving abstract concepts (e.g., support, connection), or by perceptual knowledge, based on percepts (e.g., contact, continuity). We presented chimpanzees, orangutans, and 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children with two versions of the broken cloth problem. The Real condition, made with paper strips, could be solved based on either perceptual cues or causal knowledge. The Painted condition, which looked very similar, could be solved only by attending to perceptual cues. All groups mastered the Real condition, in line with previous results. Older children (3- and 4-year-olds) performed significantly better in this condition than all other groups, but the performance of apes and children did not differ sharply, with 2-year-olds and apes obtaining similar results. In contrast, only 4-year-olds solved the Painted condition. We propose causal knowledge to explain the general good performance of apes and humans in the Real condition compared with the Painted condition. In addition, we suggest that symbolic knowledge might account for 4-year-olds' performance in the Painted condition. Our findings add to the growing literature supporting the idea that learning from arbitrary cues is not a good explanation for the performance of apes and humans on some kinds of physical task.

The shadow of the future: 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, adjust their sharing in anticipation of reciprocation.

Cooperation can be maintained if individuals reciprocate favors over repeated interactions. However, it is not known when during development the psychological capacities to engage in contingent reciprocation emerge. Therefore, we tested when children begin to differentiate between reciprocal and nonreciprocal interactions in their resource sharing. We compared the sharing behavior of 3- and 5-year-olds in two situations. In an experimental condition, the child and a puppet partner alternated the roles of donor and recipient. In a control condition, the puppet had no opportunity to reciprocate. Results showed that 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, increased their sharing toward a potential reciprocator. In addition, we found that children's ability to delay gratification was positively related to their tendency to share in both conditions. These findings show that reciprocity in anticipation of repeated interactions emerges during middle childhood. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of the ability to delay gratification as a prerequisite for children's sharing. We discuss how children's emerging cognitive abilities enable reciprocal sharing in situations where a child must react to or anticipate a partner's behavior.

Two and a half-year-old children are prosocial even when their partners are not.

A total of 33 2.5-year-old toddlers were tested for proactive and selective prosocial responding in an iterated Prosocial Game with unfamiliar adult partners who were communicatively neutral and alternated their roles as actors and recipients every other trial. When children were actors, they were required to choose, at no cost to themselves, between a selfish option that delivered a reward to them only (1/0) and a prosocial option that delivered identical rewards to both themselves and their partners (1/1). When adult partners were actors, they consistently behaved prosocially (1/1) or selfishly (1/0) over 10 alternating trials, depending on test condition. An additional 17 children were used as a recipient-absent control group to test for self-oriented versus other-oriented prosocial preferences. This study shows that by 2.5 years of age, and in the particular context of the task administered, toddlers can display proactive, other-oriented prosocial behavior, but their prosocial responding is indiscriminate in that they fail to respond contingently to their partners' prosocial or selfish behavior in the previous trials. These findings lend further support to the view that human prosociality is in place early in development as a basic tendency to be nice to others. This inclination may be so strong that not even partners who are communicatively neutral or repeatedly selfish toward children can erode it. They also suggest that this precocious proactive prosociality may be independent of reciprocity in terms of both its developmental schedule and psychological scaffolding.