Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The professionalization of writing studies, through the contributions of pedagogic, cognitive and socio-cognitive, sociolinguistic, discursive, rhetorical or critical approaches, has let us broaden our understanding of writing beyond simple transcription. This progress has implied problematizing the defined object of study, and attending to processes, human activities, social practices, emotions, and identities. Such approaches pose theoretical and methodological challenges. The development of robust research design informed by complex epistemologies about writing is now a central topic in the study of communication and written culture around the world. In this thematic issue, “Beyond the Text: Situated Writing Research”, we called for research that would seek to understand context as an integral part of the writing phenomenon, and to develop writer-centric epistemologies and methodologies. The call resulted in seven papers from four countries, addressing literacies from early childhood to adult education. With a common theoretical horizon and renewed methodological designs, these articles identify the forces that structure writing practices and tend to challenge the institutional and evaluative regimes in which writing takes place. Their contributions enrich the advances made by writing studies in the last two decades and allow us to project future directions for development, specifically in terms of applying these research findings to learning inside and outside the classroom.

An evaluation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should not reduce it to merely the source of all our problems, or, on the contrary, their panacea. Even so, we must not forget that the economic and social performance of Mexico in these past years is an example of the historical experience of a drastic institutional change that did not produce its promised outcome. Moreover, it did not allow the structures and potentialities that a country needs to remain a democratic nation-state to develop in the midst of a profound shift towards internationalization.

La obesidad se relaciona con bajo desempeño cognitivo a lo largo del desarrollo vital. Las alteraciones se relacionan con la atención, memoria, lenguaje y con el funcionamiento ejecutivo. Sin embargo, la relación obesidad-funcionamiento ejecutivo no es clara en adolescentes. Este estudio presenta una revisión sistemática sobre las alteraciones del funcionamiento ejecutivo en adolescentes con obesidad. Se propuso una ecuación de búsqueda (Disfunción ejecutiva Y Obesidad Y Adolescentes) y 60 estudios cumplieron los criterios de inclusión en la base de datos de Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection. Un análisis bibliométrico identificó la importancia del tema de investigación y se construyó una red de citas con el propósito de establecer las líneas de estudio. Finalmente, se exportó la red de citaciones a Gephi para visualizar los grupos de investigación en la temática. Los hallazgos sugieren 4 líneas de estudio: (a) anormalidad cerebral a nivel estructural y funcional en adolescentes con obesidad, (b) alteraciones en el control inhibitorio en adolescentes con obesidad, (c) efectos de la actividad física y cognitiva en el funcionamiento ejecutivo de adolescente con obesidad y (d) alteraciones en la memoria de trabajo en adolescentes con obesidad. Se encontró que los adolescentes prefieren recompensas inmediatas en comparación con recompensas a largo plazo. Sin embargo, las intervenciones efectivas aumentan el consumo de frutas y verduras y reducen la ingesta de comida con alto contenido calórico. Se recomiendan estudios longitudinales adicionales para evaluar si las alteraciones en el funcionamiento ejecutivo es una causa o consecuencia de la obesidad en adolescentes

     Different perspectives about the impact of early exposure to communication and information technologies are currently available in the literature. However, little is known about the use of these technologies among children. This article describes how Costa Rican preschoolers watch television. Study 1 specifies the context in which children watch television at home. A survey was applied to 285 families with children between 2 and 8 years old (M = 5 years and 2 months, SD = 12.75 months) using convenience sampling. Questionnaires were distributed through social networks and in four preschools. Results indicated that children watch television in the company of their parents, who reported talking about the contents of the televised programs with their children. Based on these results, the aim of Study 2 was to characterize the parental scaffolding provided during television co-viewing. Using convenience sampling, video recordings of 17 mother-child dyads (M = 3 years and 9 months, SD = 6.45 months) watching a child television program were completed. Videotape analyses indicated that mothers talked to children while watching the program. These conversations mostly described program's content, mainly using labeling and description of actions, followed by evaluations of the program's content and connections between the content and the child's personal experiences. The use of predictions and inferences about the content of the program was scarce. Taken together, these results inform the development of future studies aimed at evaluating the potential of co-viewing to promote child development.

  The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — Fifth Edition is the most recent update to this scale, launched originally in 2014 in the United Stated. WISC-V includes several improvements from previous versions, such as an updated factorial structure that includes more indexes, new process scores and new procedures for norming. These improvements are particularly relevant in the Chilean context, since the previous version available in the country was the WISC-IIIv.ch, whose factorial structure dates from 1991, although it was standardized for Chilean population in 2007. This article presents the standardization process for the WISC-V, which includes the translation, adaptation and norming procedures for the Chilean population. It includes evidence for reliability and validity, and also results for various special groups samples, such as intellectual disability (24), attentional deficit disorder with hyperactivity (27), autism spectrum disorder (26), specific language disorder (56) and rural population (47). The Chilean data shows excellent reliability results and an excellent adjustment to the factorial model used in the North American version. This research provides evidence for convergent validity between WISC-V and other versions of these scales, such as the WAIS-IV and the WISC-IIIv.ch. Finally, we perform a comparison between private, voucher and public schools using this scale and a comparison between male and female performance in this scale. The main finding of this research is that the Chilean standardization of the WISC-V has excellent psychometric properties that allow recommending the use of this instrument in the country. <!-- [if gte mso 9]> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful

La investigación educativa ha mostrado que los logros académicos y las relaciones con pares se asocian desde los primeros años escolares, donde las amistades juegan un papel importante al influir en el rendimiento escolar, así como en las actitudes y los comportamientos de los estudiantes. El presente estudio examina cómo el desempeño académico individual se asocia con las amistades en 240 estudiantes de quinto y sexto grado. La información sobre amistades, rendimiento académico, género, popularidad y preferencia social de los estudiantes se recopiló en una muestra de conveniencia de 8 aulas de 2 escuelas privadas subvencionadas en Santiago, Chile. Se utilizó el análisis longitudinal de redes sociales (RSiena) para estudiar la coevolución del rendimiento académico y la dinámica de la amistad mediante la evaluación simultánea de procesos de selección e influencia e incorporando covariables de estatus social (popularidad y preferencia social) como moderadores de la selección e influencia de las amistades. Los resultados mostraron que las amistades fueron más probables entre pares del mismo sexo y entre estudiantes con un estatus social similar. Con respecto a la influencia social, las amistades influyen en el rendimiento académico individual. Además, estudiantes socialmente preferidos tuvieron más probabilidades de verse influenciados por el rendimiento académico de sus amigas/os, pero no ocurrió lo mismo con los estudiantes populares. Estos resultados podrían sugerir que atributos asociados a estudiantes socialmente preferidos (cooperación, reciprocidad y amistades de alta calidad) facilitarían la influencia del rendimiento académico. Por el contrario, los estudiantes populares serían menos susceptibles al rendimiento académico de sus amigos, centrándose en cambio en comportamientos salientes (p. ej. agresión). Los hallazgos de esta investigación resaltan la importancia de comprender la dinámica de las redes sociales entre estudiantes en entornos educativos.

The goal of this work was to examine validity evidence of a brief version of the Cognitive and Affective Empathy Test (TECA) for Argentine college students. Two studies were carried out. In Study 1, using a non-probabilistic sampling, 1135 college students participated, between 18 and 30 years old, from three universities in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. The discrimination of the items, the underlying structure of the TECA through confirmatory factor analysis, and the internal consistency of the scale were evaluated. In Study 2, through a non-probabilistic sampling, 425 college students participated, between 18 and 30 years old, from three universities and two Argentine provinces. Different evidences of external validity (comparison of groups, convergent validity, and relations between theoretical constructs) were evaluated. Results indicated better fit indices for the reduced version. The composite reliability was adequate, and the validity indicators were in line with what was theoretically expected. It is possible to conclude that the brief version of the TECA has adequate psychometric properties and enables a practical and agile evaluation of the cognitive and affective components of empathy among young Argentine college students, being especially useful in research contexts.

Though evidence is not conclusive, motivation to write tends to decline throughout schooling in international research. The role of sex in this tendency is unclear. To identify and compare the motivation for writing of Chilean students from different grade levels and the role of sex, questionnaires addressing two relevant variables of motivation –attitude and self-efficacy perceptions– were applied to a convenience sample of 2160 students from 3rd grade to 11th grade from 5 schools in the Metropolitan region in Chile. Sample means were obtained for each scale, distinguishing the results according to school level and sex. Tests of mean differences, analysis of variance and Tukey test were performed. Pearson correlations between the averages of both scales for each school level were also calculated. Results confirm the international trend, since motivation levels are lower in the higher grades and, comparatively, 3rd and 4th grade show higher averages than the rest of the grades up to 11th grade in the Attitude scale and up to 10th grade in the Self-efficacy scale. On average, females showed better motivation to write than their male peers, with significant differences in grades 3rd and 8th, and grades 9th and 10th on the Attitude scale, and grades 8th and 9th on the Self-efficacy scale. Positive correlations were found between the two variables across all grades.

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is defined as the individual disposition to accept hierarchy and dominance among groups. The measurement of SDO has evolved accordingly with the development of the theory, providing several versions of this scale. This scale has demonstrated indicators of reliability and validity across contexts, but it also has some limitations related to potential ambiguities and the phrasing of items. In this article we present the adaptation and validation of the SDO7 scale in Spanish for the Colombian context, where some of these limitations are addressed. In 2 studies conducted with conventional samples (nStudy1 = 394; nStudy2 = 867), we provide evidence for the psychometric properties of the scale and the predictive validity of its dimensions on social/political attitudes within the Colombian context. Factor analyses confirmed the factorial structure of two substantive dimensions of SDO (dominance and anti-egalitarianism). Regression analyses suggested that both dimensions, dominance and anti-egalitarianism, were accordingly associated with different attitudes that justify inequality: Dominance was associated with more explicit and hostile attitudes, whereas anti-egalitarianism was linked to subtler measures that maintain inequality. This article contributes to the comprehension of one of the processes related to the legitimacy of inequality and to the development of tools for its empirical research.

Narrative competence has been defined as a bridge between oral and written language, given that it is acquired before children formally learn to read. This competence has shown to be a relevant factor in reading comprehension and school learning. This study examines the narrative comprehension task proposed by Paris and Paris (2003) and adapted in Chile by Silva et al. (2014) to detect changes in the development of this skill in a purposive sample of 172 Chilean preschoolers aged 2-4 years (121) and 4-6 years (51), 52% of whom were girls. The children, who resided in areas with an average vulnerability index of 86%, attended 9 subsidized private schools in the Metropolitan Region (72% of the sample) and 6 municipal schools in the BioBío Region (29% of the sample). Results show the tool’s structural validity, differential functioning by sex, and adequate internal consistency. Furthermore, the tool exhibits developmental sensitivity, yielding different results according to student age or educational level. The availability of instruments of this type makes it possible to identify children’s progress in this domain and organize pedagogical work to enhance their learning in early childhood education.