Self-reported health and cortisol awakening response in parents of people with asperger syndrome: The role of trait anger and anxiety,coping and burden

Caring for offspring with autism spectrum disorders entails high levels of stress for a long period of time and is associated with several types of health complaints. Few studies have focused on specific effects of particular disorders in the spectrum. This study was carried out with the aim of evaluating the global health of parents of people with Asperger syndrome (N?=?53) compared to those of typically developing children (N?=?54) through self-reported measures (medication consumption and somatic symptoms) and biological markers (cortisol awakening response [CAR]). Additionally, we analysed various psychological variables as potential predictors of caregiver health. We found that caregivers take more medication and have worse self-reported health than controls, but there were no significant differences in CAR between the groups. However, after controlling for negative affect, differences between groups in CAR reached significance. With regards to predictor variables, anxiety trait, cognitive-coping style, burden and anger temperament were significantly associated with caregiver’s self-reported health. These findings underline the need to develop interventions that foster improvements in the health of caregivers, reduce their burden and enhance their quality of life.     

The cortisol awakening response: Associations with trait anxiety and stress reactivity

This study investigated the extent to which trait anxiety and state anxiety in response to stress are associated with the cortisol awakening response (CAR).Fifty-one healthy participants were recruited. State anxiety measures were taken in anticipation of and during a laboratory stressor. Salivary cortisol levels were measured immediately upon awakening (at 0, 15, 30, and 45 min) on two consecutive mornings. Cortisol awakening response was assessed by the area under the curve with respect to zero (AUC_G).The magnitude of the CAR was found to be negatively associated with both trait anxiety and anticipatory anxiety. Moreover, regression analysis showed that the effects of trait anxiety on the AUC_G were mediated by anticipatory anxiety.These results suggest that the CAR is influenced by trait anxiety. Moreover, the effect of trait anxiety on the CAR seems to operate by impacting on psychological stress reactivity (i.e., anticipatory anxiety).     

The cortisol awakening response and the big five personality dimensions

The present study investigated the association between the big five personality dimensions and the cortisol awakening response (CAR), a physiological parameter reflective of HPA axis activity. One hundred and seven participants completed the big five inventory (BFI; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991) and collected salivary cortisol samples at 0, 30, and 60 min after awakening on a weekday morning. The cortisol awakening response under the curve (CARauc) and the cortisol awakening response with respect to increase (CARi) were used as outcome variables in the statistical analyses. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted using the data of 92 participants. Gender and age were included as covariates in block one of the regressions, followed by the personality dimensions in block two. Extraversion emerged as a significant predictor of CARauc. No other personality dimensions were significantly predictive of CARauc or CARi. Interestingly, gender emerged as the strongest predictor in the CARauc, with females exhibiting greater cortisol release across the awakening period than males. Our results suggest that extraversion and gender may be particularly important variables to consider in the regulation of the HPA axis.     

Stress Reduction for Family Caregivers in Chronic Mental Illness: Implications of a Work Stress Management Perspective

In several studies involving a total of 291 family caregivers for schizophrenia sufferers, the stressors that arise from caregiving were identified. Also identified were the outcomes for caregivers, which often include psychological distress. Caregivers develop various stress-reduction techniques, but this article explores the utility of applying the principles of work stress management to caregiver well-being. An organizational psychology perspective suggests that a comprehensive focus must include not only how individuals can learn to manage the emotional demands of their work, but also how the work of caregiving can be made less stressful for them. Suggestions from a work stress management perspective highlight the possible contributions of worker participation in policy formulation and a collaborative relationship between family and professional caregivers. Potentially fruitful research directions are noted.     

Sleep arrangements and night waking at 6 and 12 months in relation to infants' stress‐induced cortisol responses

The objective of this short‐term longitudinal study was to examine the concurrent and prospective associations of infants' sleep arrangements and night waking with cortisol responses to an inoculation at 6 and 12 months, controlling for several key covariates. To our knowledge, this was the first study to concurrently and prospectively link proximity in sleep arrangements and night waking to physiological stress reactivity. A sample of 92 mother–infant dyads participated in the study when the infants were 6 and 12 months of age, although sample sizes were reduced for some analyses. Both proximal cosleeping arrangements and more frequent night wakings' were associated concurrently with an increased cortisol response to inoculations at both ages. Night waking at 6 months also was associated with a slightly increased cortisol response to inoculation at 12 months. Results aimed at exploring the direction of influence suggested that cosleeping and night waking may influence infant stress physiology rather than the reverse. Adaptive and maladaptive implications of infants' nocturnal experiences and greater stress‐induced cortisol responses are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

父母感知的家庭压力对儿童问题行为的影响：父母心理攻击和儿童应激下皮质醇反应的中介作用

儿童问题行为受到环境与个体因素的协同影响。研究以北京150名五、六年级儿童及其家长为被试,探究心理攻击和应激下皮质醇反应在父母感知的家庭压力与儿童问题行为间的中介作用。采用儿童版特里尔社会应激测试测量儿童应激下皮质醇反应,并由家长报告感知的家庭压力、对儿童的心理攻击及儿童的问题行为。结果发现：(1)父母感知的家庭压力可正向预测儿童问题行为;(2)心理攻击在父母感知的家庭压力与儿童问题行为间起中介作用;(3)心理攻击和儿童应激下皮质醇反应在父母感知的家庭压力与儿童问题行为之间起链式中介作用。研究揭示了父母感知压力对儿童问题行为影响的心理和生理机制,从父母和儿童角度为减少儿童问题行为提供了参考。     

The effects of attention retraining on depressive mood and cortisol responses to depression‐related stimuli1

Although it has been reported that attentional bias at an early stage is found in depression, no study has investigated the effects of modification of attentional bias at an early stage on depressive mood and cortisol response to a stressor. Therefore, this study tested the hypotheses that the modification of attentional bias at an early stage would reduce depressive mood and cortisol response. Fifty‐three participants were allocated alternately either to the training or the control group. They were administered attention retraining for modification of attentional bias or a sham attention task, and then underwent a stress task. With respect to depressive mood response, depressive mood increased in response to a stress task in the control group, while for high‐dysphoric participants in the training group, depressive mood response remained constant. These results indicate that attention retraining is efficacious for reducing depressive mood response. With respect to cortisol response, the percentage change in cortisol is associated with the amount of change in the attentional bias index scores. The results suggest the possibility that attention retraining could reduce cortisol response.     

Testosterone reactivity to infant crying and caregiving in women: The role of oral contraceptives and basal cortisol

Several studies have shown that mothers and fathers have significant lower levels of testosterone (T) than non-mothers and non-fathers, and that in men caregiving is related to a decrease in T. To date, only a few studies have examined T in women. We examined T reactivity to a crying infant simulator in 160 women. Use of oral contraceptives (OC), basal cortisol (CORT) levels and childhood experiences of maternal love withdrawal were taken into account. T levels were consistently significantly higher in women not using OC. In women not using OC, high basal CORT was related to higher initial T levels and larger decreases of T during caregiving. No effect of basal CORT was found in women with OC use. Childhood experiences of maternal love withdrawal did not affect T levels. This is the first study to show support for a decrease of T in women while taking care of a crying infant, supporting the Challenge hypothesis and the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds.     

The sensitivity of response rate to the rate of variable-interval reinforcement for pigeons and rats: a review

The relation between the rate of a response (B) and the rate of its reinforcement (R) is well known to be approximately hyperbolic: B = kR/(R + Ro), where k represents the maximum response rate, and Ro indicates the rate of reinforcers that will engender a response rate equal to half its maximum value. A review of data reported in 17 published papers revealed that, under variable-interval schedules of reinforcement, Ro was usually lower when pigeons were the subjects than when rats were the subjects. The value of k, in contrast, did not differ consistently between pigeons and rats. Some accounts interpret Ro as the rate of alternative, unscheduled reinforcers in the situation, expressed in units of the scheduled reinforcer. So interpreted, the difference in Ro implies that less alternative reinforcement (relative to the scheduled reinforcement) typically is available to pigeons in their operant conditioning chambers than it is to rats in theirs. Whether or not that interpretation of Ro is valid, the pigeon-rat difference in Ro ensures that for reinforcer rates above about 10 per hour, response rate will be noticeably less sensitive to changes in reinforcer rate (and presumably to changes in other incentive and motivational operations) with pigeons than with rats as subjects, at least with the experimental conditions typically employed.     

Relationship between types of humour and stress response and well‐being among children in Japan

This study examined the relationship between three types of children's humour (aggressive, self‐defeating, and playful) and the children's stress response and well‐being in the Japanese context, where a collectivistic culture is prevalent. To do so, 500 study participants (250 elementary and 250 junior high school students) were recruited. The participants reported the types of humour, stress responses, and level of well‐being that they experienced. After correlation analysis, aggressive humour and playful humour showed a positive correlation with stress responses; in addition, aggressive humour showed a negative correlation with well‐being. Self‐defeating humour showed a negative correlation with stress responses and a positive correlation with well‐being. We also conducted a cluster analysis using the scores for the three types of humour, analysing four groups: “aggressive humourists” (respondents who demonstrated above‐average aggressive humour and scored average for all other humours), “nonhumourists” (below‐average humour in all areas), “self‐deprecating humourists” (above‐average self‐defeating humour, below‐average aggressive humour, and average playful humour), and “multiple humourists” (above‐average humour in all areas). Upon comparing the results of stress responses and well‐being scores among the four groups, we found that self‐deprecating humourists reported the highest level of well‐being. These results show that in collectivistic cultures, self‐defeating humour may be adaptive.     

‘The Good Mother and Her Clinging Child’: Patterns of Anchoring in Social Representations of Dementia Caregiving

This paper discusses the findings of a study that examined the processes of anchoring in the understanding of dementia caregiving using 29 interviews conducted in Germany with wives and daughters caring for a relative with dementia and 43 newspaper articles pertinent to the research objective. The concept of anchoring from Social Representations Theory was complemented by elements from cognitive linguistics to analyse the social representations (SRs) that served as source domains to determine what the target domain of dementia caregiving means, entails and requires. The analysis revealed three prevalent patterns of anchoring dementia care in SRs of child care and the good mother. The first pattern ascribed the role of the helpless clinging child needing his mother to the dementia patient, the second emphasised that the dementia caregivers' responsibility for caring, just like motherhood, should take precedence over all other interests and the third consisted of dementia caregivers deriving the perception of being the most suitable caregiver from the mother's natural aptitude for caring. The conclusions reached by the different patterns are argued to contribute to dementia caregivers overexerting themselves and not using support services. The clinical implications for targeting such adverse effects of the anchoring will be discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of rumination and defensiveness on negative affect in response to experimental stress

Previous experiments investigating the influence of rumination on negative affect have often manipulated the timing and content of rumination, which may be problematic as rumination is phenomenologically experienced as uncontrollable. In the present experiment, rumination was not manipulated, but measured as an individual tendency before the experiment. Furthermore, it was tested whether defensiveness would reduce the higher degree of negative affect often associated with rumination. Fifty-six participants completed questionnaires measuring rumination and defensiveness and participated in a phrase completion task, rating negative affect before and after the task. Correlational analyses showed that rumination was positively associated (p < 0.05) with affect responses (r range = 0.35-0.61), whereas defensiveness was negatively associated with affect responses (r range =-0.27-0.32). Four groups of high and low rumination and defensiveness scorers were created using median splits. An ANOVA showed that scoring high on defensiveness did not reduce the negative affect experienced by high ruminating participants.     

Threshold adjustment in response to asymmetric loss functions: The case of auditors’ “substantial doubt” thresholds

Thresholds play a critical role in linking judgments and choices. One way they do so is by dividing a continuous judgment variable, such as probability, into two regions that imply different choices and actions, such as operate/do not operate, admit/do not admit, or invest/do not invest. We examine this link by focusing on the tendency of professional decision makers to adjust their thresholds when the risks associated with negative decision outcomes are elevated. We report two studies involving experienced auditors that investigate thresholds in a “going-concern” setting. In this setting, the auditor assesses the probability that a business firm will be unable to continue in existence for the coming year; if that probability exceeds a “substantial doubt” threshold (also assessed by the auditor), the auditor is required to disclose the relevant information in the firm’s annual report to the public. Our studies use two experimental cases based on actual business firms that differ in their objective likelihoods of not continuing as going concerns. We derive the auditors’ substantial doubt thresholds from the relationship between their probability assessments and their disclosure choices, unlike all prior research which has simply asked auditors to state the probability they believe represents substantial doubt. We find that auditors’ derived thresholds are adjusted downward for the more problematic firm, a result that we attribute to the asymmetric loss functions inherent in going-concern settings. The second study has some of the auditors directly provide their substantial doubt thresholds (SDTs). The downward adjustment is again found for derived thresholds but not for elicited thresholds, suggesting that the method of capturing thresholds may be an important issue in understanding judgment and choice.     

Perceptual Learning of Intonation Contour Categories in Adults and 9‐ to 11‐Year‐Old Children: Adults Are More Narrow‐Minded

We report on rapid perceptual learning of intonation contour categories in adults and 9‐ to 11‐year‐old children. Intonation contours are temporally extended patterns, whose perception requires temporal integration and therefore poses significant working memory challenges. Both children and adults form relatively abstract representations of intonation contours: Previously encountered and novel exemplars are categorized together equally often, as long as distance from the prototype is controlled. However, age‐related differences in categorization performance also exist. Given the same experience, adults form narrower categories than children. In addition, adults pay more attention to the end of the contour, while children appear to pay equal attention to the beginning and the end. The age range we examine appears to capture the tail‐end of the developmental trajectory for learning intonation contour categories: There is a continuous effect of age on category breadth within the child group, but the oldest children (older than 10;3) are adult‐like.     

The role of epistemic motivation in individuals’ response to decision complexity

Integrating findings on the effects of more alternatives with findings on the effects of more attributes, we offer a motivational decision-making model, suggesting that epistemic motivation moderates individuals’ responses to complex information. Study 1 empirically investigated the shared essence of four conceptualizations of epistemic motivation, further distinguishing it from the maximizing/satisficing motivation. A series of experiments indicate that epistemic motivation moderates the effect of complex information on one’s discomfort with a decision (Studies 2–4) and on the tendency to implement one’s choice in action (Study 3). Taken together, our findings indicate that individuals with low epistemic motivation experience more discomfort and are less likely to implement their decision when faced with complex information whereas those high on epistemic motivation portray a weaker or even an opposite effect. The consistent findings across conceptualizations (dispositional Need-for-Cognitive-Closure and manipulated Openness vs. Conservation values) indicate the robustness of the findings and the important role of epistemic motivation in complex decisions.     

The Effect of Prosody on Distributional Learning in 12‐ to 13‐Month‐Old Infants

Distributional information is a potential cue for learning syntactic categories. Recent studies demonstrate a developmental trajectory in the level of abstraction of distributional learning in young infants. Here we investigate the effect of prosody on infants' learning of adjacent relations between words. Twelve‐ to thirteen‐month‐old infants were exposed to an artificial language comprised of 3‐word‐sentences of the form aXb and cYd, where X and Y words differed in the number of syllables. Training sentences contained a prosodic boundary between either the first and the second word or the second and the third word. Subsequently, infants were tested on novel test sentences that contained new X and Y words and also contained a flat prosody with no grouping cues. Infants successfully discriminated between novel grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, suggesting that the learned adjacent relations can be abstracted across words and prosodic conditions. Under the conditions tested, prosody may be only a weak constraint on syntactic categorization. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of category formation for faces differing by age in 9‐ to 12‐month‐olds: An effect of experience with infant faces

We examined category formation for faces differing in age in 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds, and the influence of exposure to infant faces on such ability. Infants were familiarized with adult or infant faces, and then tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category (Experiment 1). Both age groups formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces, but exposure to infant faces in everyday life did not modulate performance. The same task was conducted with child versus infant faces (Experiment 2). Whereas 9‐month‐olds preferred infant faces after familiarization with child faces, but not child faces after familiarization with infant faces, 12‐month‐olds formed discrete categories of child and infant faces. Moreover, more exposure to infant faces correlated with higher novel category preference scores when infants were familiarized with infant faces in 12‐month‐olds, but not 9‐month‐olds. The 9‐month‐old asymmetry did not reflect spontaneous preference for infant over child faces (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds can form age‐based categories of faces. The ability of 12‐month‐olds to form separate child and infant categories suggests that they have a more exclusive representation of face age, one that may be influenced by prior experience with infant faces.     

Bringing the State Back in Secularization: The Development of Laïcité in the French Third Republic (1875–1905)

The secularization literature increasingly recognizes the role of historical state‐building processes and the manifest agency of sociopolitical actors in shaping public secularity. Based on archival data from the French Third Republic, this article offers three contributions to the historicizing agenda. First, to better capture the contingent and agency‐driven nature of secularization, it reoperationalizes the concepts of separation and regulation as contentious strategies of state‐building used toward religious authority. Second, it identifies and exemplifies four interrelated yet uneven spheres in which secularization is prompted through governmental action: politico‐institutional, socio‐pedagogical, symbolic‐ideological, and property‐distributional. Third, it suggests going beyond viewing secularizing agents as disconnected elites operating independently of grassroots movements. The French case shows that the Republicans’ engagement with the pressures of various class forces had a significant impact on their secularizing policies. The analysis advances the study of the mechanisms whereby state‐building engenders and mediates secularization as a nonlinear and heterogeneous process.