vol. 6 núm. 1 (2010)

The present includes a case study of a family mediation process with a separated couple in a Judiciary Consultant service of the Rosario University at Bogotá, Colombia. Its purpose was to analyze the type of communication dialogues that occurred during the mediation process, based on Jurgen Habermas Action Communication Theory and the Symbolic Relationship Model of Mediation (MRS) developed by the School of Family Studies of the Université Cattólica del Sacro Cuore di Milano. The core of the conflict mediation process is centered upon the comprehension of bonding in a couple, family or community members, as well as the symbolic meaning that act as regulators of the relationship. The structure of the bonding between a couple, together with the basic gender differences between being a man or a woman, and the task of providing for the generations within the conscience of nurturing, is basic to guarantee the maintenance of the parental task for their offspring after the rupture of the marriage bonding. 

This article presents a revision and reflexions on the relation between the parenting styles and the socioaffective development during childhood, as a result of the research done and assuming that the mental health of the parents, the upbringing guidelines and the socioaffective development of children are very related and that the socioaffective development of these change according to a great number of evolutive and contextual variables. Finally, it is considered that the family is very important in order to facilitate the development of prosocial behaviours, the emotional self regulation and for preventing mental health problems during the childhood such as depression, aggressiveness, low self esteem, anxiety and others. 

The production of psychological knowledge that is both original and high level can be considered the main condition to place psychology as a field that takes part in the general concert of the sciences. In Paraguay several of its psychological departments has courses of Experimental Psychology as a part of their academic platform. One of the regular objectives for these courses is the application of the experimental method in the student research works, with the double purpose of both didactical learning and the developing of new knowledge. However, in Paraguay these courses carry out their teaching activities in the middle of a great scarcity both of resources and infrastructure. But some universities bear their basic reserch purposes to a final stage. This article discusses such problems in a critical way. First, a general exposition on the background of experimental psychology in Paraguay can be found. Second, the article details the students' work with special reference to both the subject of research and the used statistics. The papers were completed during the second semester of the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 at the University of the Integration of the Americas (UNIDA) located in the city of Asunción (2006) and the Catholic University, Regional See of Itapúa (UCI) in the city of Encarnación (2006, 2007 and 2008). In the conclusive section of this article we will both identify and discuss some of the main problems that make difficult the psychological research in the paraguayan universities with special emphasis on the application of the experimental method.Key words: Experimental Psychology, experimental method, psychology in Paraguay, psychological research.

The study was performed on the student body of the Psychology Faculty at the University of Santo Tomás in Bogotá, the purpose of this investigation is to describe the learning methods and to identify if a correlation between these exists.The results demonstrated that all the learning methods are present in the student body that were evaluated, this was substantiated by their individual characteristics. Also, it was observed that there exists a significant relationship between the methods of learning and academic yields in the students who apply active methods and those that apply a reflexive method.The students who live with their nuclear families tend to demonstrate a major degree of thoughtfulness in comparison with those who live alone, this can infer that those who live with their families would be associated with having access to a greater social support network that would help them meet their challenges and reach their goals. 

The current research aims at describing behaviors dealing with the job psychological relentless persecution as well as features of personality and self-esteem in people who have been victims and have been able to accuse this complex issue in front of legal instances. The participants were four women aged between forty-five and fifty-seven years old, with time of entailment over fifteen years, at public organizations. The research instruments applied were the Lipt-60 questionnaire, the BFQ test, the Rosenberg self-esteem scale and a semi-structured interview, too. The outcomes clearly reflect the presence of descending-vertical job psychological relentless persecution; each case is different from the other since they do not show similarities in the harassing actions and are also different regarding the intensity and the frequency of the strategies used by the pursuer towards the victim. Finally, in regard to the personality features, all cases present low fluctuations of affability and emotional stability. 

The purpose of this study was to describe the personality, the affect and the emotional intelligence of 422 business students throughout their training process. The Personality Inventory NEO-FFI of Costa & McCrae (1994), the Spanish versions of TMMS-24 (adapted by Fernández-Berrocal, Extremera, & Ramos, 2004) and the PANAS (adapted by Sandín et al., 1999), were used. We found high levels of Neuroticism and low levels of Extraversion, Openness to Experience and Agreeableness; Emotional Intelligence achieved intermediate levels, and a predominant positive affectivity. The neuroticism was increased in some semesters, the Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness although all of them had low levels, tended to increase during the formation. The participants are characterized by positive emotions, which does not seem to depend on the formation processes but their personal characteristics. These findings are discussed in relation to the training of business leaders.

This article is a product of the investigation "The meaning from Lev Semionovich Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner and Kenneth Gergen ". The pretension is to understand the concepts of "meaning" constructed by these authors, by means of the review of some of his works. The method of investigation used was the analysis of content; in addition, there was realized a goal - observation of this work of degree that allowed to establish new relations between the authors. The realized analysis allowed to discover differences and points of consensus between three authors, as for the definition of the meanings, the explanation of his origin and evolution and the delimiting of the functions that these fulfill in the human beings. Since original idea in Vygotsky highlights the step of the interpsychological meaning to the intrapsychologica; in Bruner, the constant negotiation of meanings between human immersed beings in a culture; and in Gergen, the relational construction of the meanings. 

The article is a contribution to the understanding the process of construction and transformation of professional identity of the soccer player in Brazil. Both athletes' good and bad outcomes in the search of professional recognition are our path to the road of that analysis and scrutiny. Grounded in Habermas theory, we scrutinize sports - soccer in particular - as a social sector overrun by the systemic order and ruled by money and power. Since soccer, as the sport of crowds has been colonized by the "instrumental reason", it has been fueled by strong marketing appeal and as such brings about the world of life (culture, society and identity) as well as the twisted dreams and expectations of thousands of individuals and of their families. Accordingly, the life stories and examples brought about by this text hint at the intertwined relationships between the world of soccer, the dreams of a successful career, the actual possibility of failure and the construction of psychosocial identities within that "surprise box" which soccer seems to be. 

The following document is a reflection associated with the thesis "Pprocesos de construcción narrativa que organizan experiencias resilientes en familias en situación de desplazamiento, en la interacción institución familia", articulated with the Master of Clinical Psychology and Family at the University of Santo Tomas.The article argues that narratives are constructed through the recursive interaction of certain elements, mechanisms or processes. This assumption leads to expose epistemological foundations that argue the narrative theory. Following this suggested a concept of how some elements connected to two dimensions identified in a judicious theoretical review - text with their arguments or funds and relational contexts - intertwine to promote the emergence of stories.Texts with their Arguments or Funds are understood as those contained narrative that have meanings, The Relational Contexts are defined as scenarios space and time where is maintained and / or transform the content. The connection of the two dimensions stimulates the emergence of stories that speak of a reality self, and the family systems and other systems (school, work, etc.)

This research adapted Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (1970) for Mexican Spanish and obtained psychometric properties for two samples of Mexican adults. A total of 314 subjects were interviewed, 165 of whom were elderly adults (97 women, average age 61.7, SD = 9.7 and 68 men, average age 62.7, SD = 8.3) and 149 undergraduate students (132 women, average age 19.4, SD = 1.3 and 17 men, average age 19.9, SD = 1.3. The scale was changed to a four point Likert scale. The principal component analysis with varimax rotation, applied to the data from both samples (elderly adults and undergraduate students), yielded 3 factors for each group. The factor structure obtained from the responses provided by the undergraduate students only slightly agreed with that reported by Tomás-Sábado and Gómez-Benito (2002) for an equivalent Spanish sample. Internal consistence for elderly adults was a=.86, and a=.83 for undergraduate students. Discriminant validity was documented. The version of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale presented would seem to have adequate psychometric properties for its use with elderly Mexican adults. Finally, the results provide evidence of the possible impact the cultural differences between Spanish-speaking nations and generations have on the psychometric properties of the scale. 

This study corresponds to a trans-sectional non-experimental design with descriptive levels of analysis, comparison and correlation of the subgroups of the LGBT population and the heterosexual population resident in the city of Bogota-Colombia. A survey was constructed and applied to 639 people from the LGBT community and heterosexual in order to identify the practices of consumption (expenditure pattern of housing, utilities, home, etc.) and lifestyle (sporting and recreational among others). The results show that there are differences in lifestyle between LGBT groups and between it and heterosexuals. However, these differences are specific and not attributable solely to sexual orientation. In regard to consumption practices found that there are many more similarities than differences between women and gay men compared with their heterosexual counterparts, indicating that consumption is more associated with type of demographic variables to sexual orientation as such. 

According to previous research, perspective-taking can't be easily developed before ages of four years old. Nevertheless, that studies used protocols based on hypothetical situations with a high level of abstraction and, additionally, with a limited number of examples. For this reason, a training protocol for perspective taking, based on real situations was developed. The protocol used a multiple exemplar training, and feedback was provided when was needed. Deictic frames was keeped as a constant (I-YOU, HERE-THERE and NOW-THEN, simple and reversed). An intrasubject ABA design was used in this research. It was obtained that the protocol was effective to develop the abilities of perspective taking in a girl of 3 years and 7 months old. She didn't show the abilities at the first measurement. Also the data of the number of sessions required for training each frame, and their complexity are analyzed under the light of previous research. 

This study evaluated the effects of non-explicit audiovisual instructions on feeding behaviour. Five adults between 19 and 24 years-old participated as subjects, which were exposed at nutritional (fruit and water) or no nutritional (chips and soda) foods during two experimental phases. Subjects were videotaped and exposed to two video programs in different phases. In the first phase, subjects were exposed to a musical video, in the second phase subjects were exposed to a program about health eating habits. The results showed that non-explicit audiovisual instructions modified feeding behaviour. However, will be necessary evaluate if these modification could persist for longer time. 

Theory of mind (ToM) and pretense play have been topics of great interest to developmental psychology; nonetheless their relationship and interaction are still subjects of research. With this on mind, an instrument was developed with the purpose of determining if children with social interaction difficulties could generate ToM attributions to an object during pretense play, especially emotions and intentions. 5 case studies were conducted (male participants 11-13 years of age), diagnosed with various psychological disorders within a vulnerable social context. The instrument consisted of a semi-structured interview and a doll which had the intention of facilitating pretense play and ToM. The participants showed difficulties during pretense play tasks, requiring help to initiate play and generate a detailed explanation about the situation. In comparison, during ToM tasks their vocabulary was more fluid and relevant; which is not consistent with the literature where pretense play is a necessary precursor of ToM. We suggest that more research is needed to explain the relation between pretense play and ToM, and determine if there is an interdependency and chronological development of these cognitive abilities.