5-HTTLPR、性别、家庭社会经济地位与面孔表情识别的关系

该研究采用531名中国汉族健康大学生为被试,综合考察了5-HTTLPR(5-羟色胺转运体基因连锁多态区)基因型、性别和家庭社会经济地位之间交互作用与面孔表情识别的关系。研究结果发现,性别和家庭社会经济地位在面孔表情识别上有显著的主效应。总体来说,家庭社会经济地位较高和女性的被试具有较好的面孔表情识别能力。5-HTTLPR基因型、性别、家庭社会经济地位,它们在面孔表情识别上的三因素交互作用也显著。该三因素交互作用主要是源于,在高家庭社会经济地位背景下,女性携带有5-HTTLPR长片段等位基因比短片段纯合子表现出稍差的面孔表情识别能力。该结果体现了基因与环境多因素交互作用对面孔表情识别能力的重要性。     

Subjective socioeconomic status and departmental identity interact to reduce depressive tendencies and negative affective responding for female undergraduates

How do subjective socioeconomic status (SES) and departmental identity promote the mental health of female undergraduates? We conducted a questionnaire study (Study 1) and an experimental study (Study 2) with undergraduates enrolled in a women's junior college to examine whether subjective SES and group identity have an interactive effect on mental health. Results indicated that in participants with high subjective SES, increased identification with their reference in‐group (the academic department) was associated with a decreased tendency for depression (Study 1). These individuals also showed reduced negative affect when responding in situations of social exclusion (Study 2). These effects were absent, or had a reduced intensity in participants with low subjective SES. In sum, subjective SES and departmental identity interact to reduce depressive tendencies and negative affective responding for female undergraduates. Individuals with higher subjective SES may gain more benefits from group identity. We have discussed the implications of these findings.     

Infant physiological regulation and maternal risks as predictors of dyadic interaction trajectories in families with a preterm infant

This longitudinal study examined predictors of rates of growth in dyadic interaction quality in children born preterm who did not experience significant neurological findings during neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalization. Multiple methods were used to collect data from 120 preterm infants (48% girls, 52% boys) and their mothers. Infant heart rate variability (HRV), gestational age, neonatal health, feeding route, and maternal socioeconomic (SES) risks were assessed at NICU discharge (mean of 36 weeks postconception). Mother-child interactions were observed at 4, 9, 16, and 24 months postterm and analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling. On average, children's quality of play, interest, and attention increased over time while their dysregulation and irritability decreased, whereas average maternal positive affect and involvement declined in quality (ps < .05), although there was individual variation in rates of change. Mothers of infants with higher postfeeding HRV (i.e., vagal regulation) exhibited less decrease in positive affect and involvement between 4 months and 24 months, compared with mothers of infants with lower HRV (p < .05). Although infants with higher postfeeding HRV showed less positive affect and communication at 4 months, they exhibited significantly greater increases in positive affect and social competence and decreases in dysregulation and irritability between 4 months and 24 months, compared with infants with lower HRV (ps < .05). Dyads experiencing more SES risks showed less optimal interactions at 4 months; this difference remained as children grew older (ps < .05). Results have implications for our understanding of social development in preterm infants.     

Socioeconomic differences in children's health: how and why do these relationships change with age?

The effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on health are well documented in adulthood, but far less is known about its effects in childhood. The authors reviewed the literature and found support for a childhood SES effect, whereby each decrease in SES was associated with an increased health risk. The authors explored how this relationship changed as children underwent normal developmental changes and proposed 3 models to describe the temporal patterns. The authors found that a model's capacity to explain SES-health relationships varied across health outcomes. Childhood injury showed stronger relationships with SES at younger ages, whereas smoking showed stronger relationships with SES in adolescence. Finally, the authors proposed a developmental approach to exploring mechanisms that link SES and child health.     

The intersectionality of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status on social and emotional skills

The intersectionality of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) in predicting social and emotional (SE) skills was examined for 81,950 6th–8th graders. At low levels of SES, White students tended to have the lower SE scores. However, as SES increased, they tended to have higher scores relative to minority groups. Across SES levels, Asian students showed higher Academic Discipline and Self-Regulation scores. The SES and SE skill relationship was less pronounced for underserved minority groups. This may be among the first reports where a measure of SE skills has documented different relationships with SES as a function of race/ethnicity. Possible explanations for these findings, as well as implications for designing culturally responsive programs that focus on SE skills, are discussed.     

Socioeconomic status, a forgotten variable in lateralization development

Socioeconomic status (SES), a variable combining income, education, and occupation, is correlated with a variety of social health outcomes including school dropout rates, early parenthood, delinquency, and mental illness. Several studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s largely failed to report a relationship between SES and hemispheric asymmetry as measured by lateral differences in dichotic listening, tactile dot enumeration, and visual emotion and word recognition. However, none of the studies used asymmetry measures correcting for both ceiling and floor effects in accuracy, raising the question of whether lower and higher SES groups were comparable. Here the published data are reanalyzed using a laterality coefficient that corrects for such effects. The results are consistent across studies in revealing reduced lateralization in lower SES groups. Developmentally, this finding is consistent with either maturation delay or reduced functional specialization, or both. Suggestions are made for further research that include the use of behavioral asymmetry measures to screen tasks for structural and functional brain imaging.     

Parenting among Hispanic and Anglo-American mothers with young children

The authors examined parenting practices and developmental expectations among 38 Hispanic and 38 Anglo-American mothers living in the United States. Mothers of children 3 to 5 years of age completed the Parent Behavior Checklist (R. A. Fox, 1994), a 100-item measure of parents' developmental expectations, discipline, and nurturing practices. In addition, the authors appraised the Hispanic mothers' acculturation and selected them for participation if their scores on an acculturation scale indicated (a) that their lifestyle was predominantly Hispanic and (b) that they had not been assimilated into the dominant culture. The 2 ethnic groups were also divided by socioeconomic status (SES). There were significant main effects for ethnicity and SES on the discipline and nurturing scores but not on the expectations scores. The Hispanic and higher SES mothers reported higher discipline and lower nurturing scores than did the Anglo-American and lower SES mothers. An unexpected finding was the tendency for higher SES Hispanic mothers to report more frequent use of discipline than the other 3 groups.     

Neighborhood, family, and subjective socioeconomic status: How do they relate to adolescent health?

This study investigated the role of neighborhood, family, and individual subjective socioeconomic status (SES) in predicting adolescent physical health and psychological characteristics. Three hundred fifteen adolescents completed assessments of blood pressure, cortisol, and body mass index (BMI). Results revealed that lower neighborhood SES was associated with higher BMI and lower basal cortisol levels and that these effects persisted after controlling for family SES. Both family SES and neighborhood SES predicted negative psychological characteristics and experiences such as hostility and discrimination. In contrast, only subjective SES predicted positive psychological characteristics. These findings suggest the importance of understanding influences at the individual, family, and neighborhood levels for optimally targeting interventions to reduce health disparities earlier in life.     

A structural model of acculturation and mental health status among Chinese Americans

This study examined the role of acculturation and its direct and indirect impact on depressive symptom severity through various correlates, including socioeconomic status (SES), stress, social support, personality negativity, and physical health perception. Using structural equation modeling, the proposed model was tested with 983 employed Chinese Americans from a representative community sample, the majority of whom were immigrants. The results demonstrated that acculturation, correlated with SES, contributed to depressive symptom severity only through indirect pathways. Higher acculturation was found associated with higher stress that in turn contributed to more elevated depressive symptoms. On the other hand, higher acculturation was also found strongly correlated with higher SES, which was associated with lower depressive symptoms directly or indirectly through several mediators. Better support, lower personality negativity, better health perception, and lower stress were found mediating the relationship between higher SES and lower depressive symptom severity. The simultaneous multigroup analysis showed that the final model was comparable for both men and women with very few differences.     

家庭社会经济地位、智力和内部动机与创造性的关系

以415名初二和高二年级学生为对象,采用修订后的《青少年科学创造性测验》,考察了家庭社会经济地位(SES)、智力和内部动机与创造性的关系。结果发现:(1)家庭SES、智力、内部动机与创造性之间有显著正相关。(2)作为环境因素,家庭SES对创造性有显著预测作用,其标准化路径系数分别等于或高于智力和内部动机等个体因素的系数。(3)家庭SES对创造性既有直接影响,同时通过智力又有间接影响;智力和内部动机对创造性分别有直接影响。     

Developmental Transitions in Youth Behavioral Opposition and Maternal Beliefs in Social Ecological Context

We investigated age-based changes in mothers’ complaints about offspring behavioral opposition, and offspring reports of opposition in a prospective longitudinal design (N = 821). Maternal complaints declined from pre-adolescence to early adulthood, but more slowly in low socioeconomic status (SES) and single-parent families. Mothers complained more about first- than later-born children, but showed no average differences for offspring gender, race, SES, or single parent status. Complaints covaried with youth-reported opposition, but effects involving SES, single-parent status, and birth order remained significant after opposition was controlled; this finding is interpreted to reflect social contextual differences in maternal beliefs. Youth opposition was stable to age 16, then decreased; higher levels were associated with earlier birth order and low SES among European-Americans. Our results have implications for parenting interventions, indicating that parents may benefit from education about the normative, gradual increase in concordance between their own expectations and their child’s behavior from early to late adolescence. Further, parenting interventions may be strengthened by actively attending to social contextual factors that shape parental belief systems and values.     

Ethnocultural Differences in Prevalence of Adolescent Depression

Data from an ethnically diverse sample of middle school (Grades 6–8) students (n = 5,423) are analyzed for ethnic differences in major depression. The point prevalence of major depression was 8.4% without and 4.3% with impairment. Data were sufficient to calculate prevalences for nine ethnic groups. Prevalences adjusted for impairment ranged from 1.9% for youths of Chinese descent to 6.6% for those of Mexican decent. African and Mexican American youths had significantly higher crude rates of depression without impairment, but only the latter had significantly higher rates of depression with impairment. Multivariate (logistic regression) analyses, adjusting for the effects of age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES), yielded significant odds ratios for only one group. Mexican American youths were at elevated risk for both depression without (OR = 1.74, p < .05) and depression with impairment (OR = 1.71, p < .05). There was no significant interaction of ethnicity and SES in relation to depression. Females had higher prevalences of depression with and without impairment, as did youths who reported that their SES was somewhat or much worse off than their peers. The data add to growing evidence that Mexican American youths are at increased risk of depression, and that community intervention efforts should specifically target this high-risk group.     

Parenting Among Hispanic and Anglo-American Mothers With Young Children

Abstract

The authors examined parenting practices and developmental expectations among 38 Hispanic and 38 Anglo-American mothers living in the United States. Mothers of children 3 to 5 years of age completed the Parent Behavior Checklist (R. A. Fox, 1994), a 100-item measure of parents' developmental expectations, discipline, and nurturing practices. In addition, the authors appraised the Hispanic mothers' acculturation and selected them for participation if their scores on an acculturation scale indicated (a) that their lifestyle was predominantly Hispanic and (b) that they had not been assimilated into the dominant culture. The 2 ethnic groups were also divided by socioeconomic status (SES). There were significant main effects for ethnicity and SES on the discipline and nurturing scores but not on the expectations scores. The Hispanic and higher SES mothers reported higher discipline and lower nurturing scores than did the Anglo-American and lower SES mothers. An unexpected finding was the tendency for higher SES Hispanic mothers to report more frequent use of discipline than the other 3 groups.     

Childhood intelligence and adult health: The mediating roles of education and socioeconomic status

The longitudinal relation between childhood intelligence and various health outcomes in adulthood is now well-established. One mediational model that accounts for this relation proposes that intelligence has cumulative indirect effects on adult health via subsequent educational attainment and adult socioeconomic status (SES). The aim of the present study was to examine whether and the extent to which educational attainment and SES mediate the impact of childhood intelligence on three dimensions of adult health in Luxembourg, a country with high-quality universal public health care. We used data from 745 participants in the Luxembourgish MAGRIP study. At the age of 12, participants completed a comprehensive intelligence test. At the age of 52, they reported their educational careers, SES, and functional, subjective, and physical health status. Using structural equation modeling, we investigated the direct and indirect effects (via educational attainment and adult SES) of childhood intelligence on adult health. We found that higher childhood intelligence predicted better functional, subjective, and physical health in adulthood. These effects were entirely mediated via educational attainment and SES. The mediational processes differed depending on the health dimension under investigation: Whereas SES was crucial in mediating the effect of intelligence on functional and subjective health, educational attainment was crucial in mediating the effect on physical health. These findings held up when considering adult intelligence and were similar for women and men. Our results suggest that even excellent public health care cannot fully offset the cumulative effects of childhood intelligence on adult health. Further studies are needed to investigate the relative importance of different mediators in the intelligence–health relation while including a broader set of objective health measures.     

Brain lateralization of phonological awareness varies by maternal education

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to influence language skills, with children of lower SES backgrounds performing worse on language assessments compared to their higher SES peers. While there is abundant behavioral research on the effects of SES, whether there are differences in the neural mechanisms used to support language skill is less established. In this study, we examined the relation between maternal education (ME), a component of SES, and neural mechanisms of language. We focused on Kindergarten children, at the beginning of formal reading education, and on a pre‐reading skill, phonological awareness—the ability to distinguish or manipulate the sounds of language. We determined ME‐related differences in neural activity by examining a skill‐matched sample of typically achieving 5‐year‐old children as they performed a rhyme judgment task. We examined brain lateralization in two language processing regions, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG). In the IFG, lateralization was related to ME but not skill: children with low ME showed bilateral activation compared to children with higher ME who showed leftward lateralization. In the STG, there was a skill by ME interaction on lateralization, such that children with high ME showed a positive relation between rightward lateralization and skill and children with low ME showed a positive relation between leftward lateralization and skill. Thus, we demonstrated ME is related to differences in neural recruitment during language processing, yet this difference in recruitment is not indicative of a deficit in linguistic processing in Kindergarten children.     

Cognition and incident coronary heart disease in late midlife: The Whitehall II study

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether cognitive function in midlife predicts incident coronary heart disease (CHD), followed up over 6 years. Data on 5292 (28% women, mean age 55) individuals free from CHD at baseline were drawn from the British Whitehall II study. We used Cox regression to model the association between cognition and CHD in analyses adjusted for socio-demographic variables, cardiovascular risk factors and health behaviors. The results show a one standard deviation lower score on the “general” cognitive measure and measures of reasoning and vocabulary to be associated with elevated CHD risk. There was some evidence that these effects differed between high and low socioeconomic status (SES) groups with associations only seen in the low SES group. These results were not explained by threshold effects or by the different SES groups representing different parts of the cognitive test score distribution. Three other possible explanations of these results are discussed: sub clinical vascular disease drives the observed association but no effect is observed in the high SES group due to compensation provided by greater cognitive reserve, cognition is a marker of overall bodily integrity particularly in low-SES groups, and SES is a moderator of the association between cognition and CHD, because it marks a range of other risk factors.     

Animalizing the disadvantaged,mechanizing the wealthy: The convergence of socio‐economic status and attribution of humanity

Differences between groups in socio‐economic status (SES) are becoming more salient nowadays. In this context, we examined the animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization that both low and high‐SES groups may experience respectively by conducting three studies. In study 1, we manipulated the SES of two fictitious groups (low vs. high‐SES) and measured the humanity ascribed to them. Results showed that the low‐SES group was animalized in comparison with the high‐SES group, which was mechanized. In study 2, we manipulated the humanity of two fictitious groups by describing them as animals or machines and measured the perceived SES of the groups. Participants tended to attribute lower SES to the group described as animals and higher SES to the group described as machines. Finally, in study 3, we used an Implicit Association Test to replicate the results of studies 1 and 2. Taken together, these studies show that low‐SES groups are considered as animal‐like whereas high‐SES groups are seen as robot‐like. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to the justification of income inequality within our society.     

家庭社会经济地位与父母教养方式对儿童青少年公正世界信念的影响

以全国24013名10~15岁儿童青少年为对象,探讨家庭社会经济地位与父母教养方式对公正世界信念的影响。结果发现：（1）家庭社会经济地位能够正向预测一般公正世界信念与个人公正世界信念;（2）权威型教养方式能够正向预测一般公正世界信念与个人公正世界信念,独裁型与纵容型教养方式能够负向预测一般公正世界信念与个人公正世界信念;（3）家庭社会经济地位与父母教养方式的交互作用对公正世界信念的影响显著,其中,权威型教养方式对高家庭社会经济地位比对低家庭社会经济地位儿童青少年公正世界信念的促进作用更大,独裁型与纵容型教养方式对低家庭社会经济地位比对高家庭社会经济地位儿童青少年公正世界信念的削弱作用更大。     

Socioeconomic status and hippocampal volume in children and young adults

An individual's socioeconomic status (SES) is often viewed as a proxy for a host of environmental influences. SES disparities have been linked to variance in brain structures particularly the hippocampus, a neural substrate of learning and memory. However, it is unclear whether the association between SES and hippocampal volume is similar in children and adults. We investigated the relationship between hippocampal volume and SES in a group of children (n = 31, age 8–12 years) and a group of young adults (n = 32, age 18–25 years). SES was assessed with four indicators that loaded on a single factor, therefore a composite SES scores was used in the main analyses. Hippocampal volume was measured using manual demarcation on high resolution structural images. SES was associated with hippocampal volume in the children, but not in adults, suggesting that in childhood, but not adulthood, SES‐related environmental factors influence hippocampal volume. In addition, hippocampal volume, but not SES, was associated with scores on a memory task, suggesting that net effects of postnatal environmental factors, captured by SES, are more distal determinants of memory performance than hippocampal volume. Longitudinal investigation of the association between SES, hippocampal volume and cognitive functioning may further our understanding of the putative neural mechanisms underlying SES‐related environmental effects on cognitive development.     

Socioeconomic Status and Psychopathic Traits in a Community Sample of Youth

The current study aims to address socioeconomic status (SES) as a moderating variable between psychopathic traits and conduct problems in a sample of 2432 Dutch adolescents (M_age?=?14.50 years, SD?=?1.67, 56% male). Both family and neighborhood SES were measured, with income as a proxy for the level of SES. There were small but significant positive correlations between the behavioral and interpersonal dimensions of psychopathy and family SES, a small but significant negative correlation between the affective dimension and neighborhood SES, and a small and significant positive correlation between neighborhood SES and the behavioral dimension of psychopathy. Results further showed that the relations between youth psychopathic traits were moderated by neither family SES nor neighborhood SES. The results suggest that the relations between psychopathic traits and conduct problems are equally strong for lower and higher SES youth. Taken together, these findings warrant the conclusions that SES does not play a role as a moderator in the relation between psychopathy and conduct problems.