Growing research indicates that police legitimacy is a strong predictor of whether people behave respecting or violating rules. Perceptions of legitimacy are an output of socializing processes through which individuals develop their values and orientations toward authorities and the legal system. Legal socialization studies show that encounters with legal authorities are critical “teachable moments” in this process. The present study verifies whether direct or vicarious negative contacts with police officers affect changes in the perception of the legitimacy of police authority by adolescents over time. The adolescents were classified according to whether or not they had witnessed or experienced any negative contact or experience with the police during the period before the interview, composing two group trajectories at the first wave, four at the second wave, and eight at the third wave. Then the trajectories were compared in terms of the extent to which they agree with statements about police legitimacy, allowing the quantification of changes of opinion after negative contacts with the police. Results show that three main factors diminish the perception of police legitimacy: having negative contact with the police; having more than one negative contact; and having a recent negative contact. These findings have important implications for police patrolling and approach strategies.

One of the procedures used most recently with longitudinal data is linear mixed models. In the context of health research the increasing number of studies that now use these models bears witness to the growing interest in this type of analysis. This paper describes the application of linear mixed models to a longitudinal study of a sample of Spanish adolescents attending a mental health service, the aim being to investigate their knowledge about the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. More specifically, the main objective was to compare the efficacy of a motivational interviewing programme with a standard approach to drug awareness. The models used to analyse the overall indicator of drug awareness were as follows: (a) unconditional linear growth curve model; (b) growth model with subject-associated variables; and (c) individual curve model with predictive variables. The results showed that awareness increased over time and that the variable ‘schooling years’ explained part of the between-subjects variation. The effect of motivational interviewing was also significant.

The purpose of the present paper was to study the development of emotional autonomy through adolescence analysing its association with family relationships. The development of emotional autonomy involves an increase in adolescents' subjective sense of his or her independence, especially in relation to parents. From some scholars emotional autonomy is a normative manifestation of the detachment process from parents, however, others point out that detachment from parental ties is not the norm, so high level of adolescent emotional autonomy is the consequence of negative family relationships. In our study a sample of 101 adolescents were followed for 5 years, from early to middle adolescence, and completed questionnaires to measure their emotional autonomy and the quality of their family relationships. Our results showed that over the course of adolescence some dimensions of emotional autonomy increase, meanwhile others decrease, so the global level of emotional autonomy global level remains stable. On the other hand, emotional autonomy is associated with negative family relationships, so emotional autonomy, more than a necessary process to become adult, could be indicating an insecure attachment to parents.

This study longitudinally examined the production of pointing in four Spanish 1-year-old and four Spanish 2-year-old children in interactive situations with their mothers at home over the course of one year. Three aspects were analyzed: a) the functions of the pointing gesture, their accurate comprehension by the interlocutor (mother or child), and their order of emergence in the child; b) whether or not there were differences in the production of pointing according to who initiated the interaction; and c) whether maternal and child speech were related to maternal and child pointing production. The results showed that the pointing function of showing is the most frequent for both children and mothers from groups 1 and 2, and the first to emerge followed by the informing, requesting object, requesting action, and requesting cooperation functions. The accuracy with which these intentions were comprehended was found to be very high for both mother and child. Pointing production was greater when the speaker initiated the interaction than when the other person did, indicating that gestures follow the turn-taking system. Finally, the production of pointing to showing in children and mothers was found to be related to maternal and child speech, while pointing to request cooperation triggered the process of joint activity between mother and child.

Varias hipótesis actuales consideran el proceso de atribución de importancia a los estímulos y la integración de la realidad percibida de hecho con la experiencia como base cognitiva para la génesis de las ideas delirantes. Examinamos esos modelos comparando a esquizofrénicos delirantes, controles sanos y pacientes ansiosos al razonar en situación de incertidumbre. El examen se llevó a cabo en esquizofrénicos con ideas delirantes actuales (n = 29), en 16 de ellos también cuando estaban en remisión, en grupos de control normales (n = 35) y en pacientes ansiosos (n = 31) utilizando una tarea de inferencia probabilística. Confrontados con datos potencialmente refutatorios en situaciones probabilísticas, los esquizofrénicos con psicosis aguda estaban menos dispuestos que los sujetos normales, los pacientes ansiosos y los esquizofrénicos en remisión a modificar su razonamiento. También estaban menos inclinados que los pacientes ansiosos y los esquizofrénicos en remisión a corregir su estimación confrontados con datos confirmatorios. Los datos apoyan la hipótesis de una influencia más débil de los estímulos de entrada sobre el razonamiento en situación de incertidumbre como base cognitiva del mantenimiento de las ideas delirantes.