Reduced specificity of autobiographical memories following a negative mood induction

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) to emotional and neutral cue words appears to be a stable cognitive marker of clinical depression. For example, reduced AMS is present in remitted/recovered depressed patients and shows no reliable relationship with current levels of depressed mood in correlational studies. The present study examined whether reduced AMS could be induced in healthy volunteers with no history of depression, using a negative mood manipulation and whether levels of AMS and induced mood were positively correlated. Results showed a reduction in AMS following negative mood induction, compared to a neutral induction, whereas positive mood induction had no effects on AMS. Furthermore, lower happiness following the induction phase correlated positively with reduced AMS, and the extent of happiness reduction from pre- to post-induction correlated positively with reduction in AMS. These results suggest that AMS is, at least in part, a function of current emotion state. The implications for the literature on AMS as a stable marker of clinical depression are discussed.     

Infants' behavioral reenactment of "failed attempts": exploring the roles of emulation learning,stimulus enhancement,and understanding of intentions

Two studies were conducted to examine whether infants' reenactment of intended but unconsummated acts in A. N. Meltzoff's (1995) failed-attempt paradigm is due to reading the adult's underlying intention or to the effects of nonimitative social learning processes. Two novel conditions that emphasized the object affordances and the spatial contiguity of the object sets were devised. When infants' first actions only were counted, infants who observed the full-demonstration model produced more target acts. When all target acts produced within the 20-s response period were counted, infants in the emulation-learning and spatial contiguity conditions produced as many target acts as infants in the full-demonstration and failed-attempt conditions. This pattern of findings suggests that nonimitative social learning processes may influence infants' response in the behavioral reenactment paradigm.     

Racial identity and self-esteem among black Brazilian men: race matters in Brazil too!

The contribution of J. E. Helms's (1990) people of color racial identity model to the collective and individual self-esteem of Black Brazilian men (N = 203) was explored. The relationships between racial identity attitudes and other racial constructs such as skin color, racial group self-designation, and racial mistrust were also examined. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the set of racial identity attitudes (conformity, dissonance, resistance, and internalization) was significant in predicting self-esteem (collective and individual). Results from a multivariate analysis of variance showed an effect for skin color on racial attitudes. In addition, racial identity was significantly related to mistrust of Whites by Black Brazilian men. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of racial relations in Brazil.     

The discrimination of natural movement by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) and pigeons (Columba livia)

Three experiments examined the ability of birds to discriminate between the actions of walking forwards and backwards as demonstrated by video clips of a human walking a dog. Experiment 1 revealed that budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) could discriminate between these actions when the demonstrators moved consistently from left to right. Test trials then revealed that the discrimination transferred, without additional training, to clips of the demonstrators moving from right to left. Experiment 2 replicated the findings from Experiment 1 except that the demonstrators walked as if on a treadmill in the center of the display screen. The results from the first 2 experiments were replicated with pigeons in Experiment 3. The results cannot be explained if it is assumed that animals rely on static cues, such as those derived from individual postures, in order to discriminate between the actions of another animal. Instead, this type of discrimination appears to be controlled by dynamic cues derived from changes in the posture of the demonstrators.     

Differences in practices of body stimulation during the first 3 months: Ethnotheories and behaviors of Italian mothers and West African immigrant mothers

This study investigated cultural differences, continuity and change of practices concerning body stimulation in a context of immigration. Parenting behaviors during the interaction with infants at 4, 8 and 12 weeks, and parenting ethnotheories at 12 weeks of first-generation West African immigrant mothers in Italy and autochthonous Italian mothers were compared. A qualitative inspection of ethnotheories using a thematic approach was included. As expected, results showed that immigrant mothers placed more emphasis on motor stimulation and showed longer durations of rhythmic motor and rhythmic tactile behaviors than Italian mothers; the latter placed more emphasis on tactile stimulation than immigrant mothers. The practice of motor stimulation in immigrant mothers was also adapted to values of the new context of life, becoming a positive interaction game with a mutual exchange of positive emotions. Findings express the complexity of a multidimensional process of acculturation.     

Antisocial behavior reduces the association between subdimensions of ADHD symptoms and alcohol use in a large population‐based sample of adolescents

The aim of this study was to investigate possible effects of antisocial behavior on reducing the association between subdimensions of ADHD symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity) and alcohol use. Boys and girls were analyzed separately using a population‐based Swedish adolescent sample. A randomly selected cross‐sectional survey was performed in secondary and upper secondary schools in Västmanland County during 2010. Participants were a population of 2,439 15–16 year‐olds and 1,425 17–18 year‐olds (1,947 girls and 1,917 boys). Psychosocial adversity, antisocial behaviors, symptoms of ADHD and alcohol use were assessed by questionnaires. Except for girls' inattention, subdimensions of ADHD symptoms were not associated with alcohol use when variance due to antisocial behavior was accounted for. Among boys, instead of an indirect effect of antisocial behavior on the association between impulsivity and alcohol use, a moderating effect was found. Among girls, the inattention component of ADHD was independently associated with alcohol use even when adjusted for antisocial behavior. The reduced associations between symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity, and alcohol use for boys and girls after adjusting for antisocial behavior suggest a considerable overlap between hyperactivity, impulsivity, and antisocial behavior. The direct pathway between inattention and alcohol use among girls suggests that girls with inattention symptoms are at risk of alcohol use regardless of antisocial behavior. Special attention should be given to these girls. Accounting for antisocial behavior reduced the relation between subdimensions of ADHD symptoms and alcohol use, and antisocial behaviors should therefore be screened for when symptoms of ADHD are present.     

Duration of US Residence And Resource Needs In Immigrant Families With Young Children

Journal of Child and Family Studies - To mitigate the negative impact of resource needs on child health, practices serving low-income immigrant families have implemented screening programs to...     

Memory traces compete under regimes of limited Arc protein synthesis: Implications for memory interference

Recently encoded information can be lost in the presence of new information, a process called 'retrograde interference'. Retrograde interference has been extensively described for more than a century; however, little is known about its underlying mechanisms. Different approaches agree on the need of the synthesis of plasticity related proteins (PRPs) to consolidate a long-term memory (LTM). Our hypothesis is that when PRPs are limited, interference of a task over LTM formation of another may be due to the utilization of protein resources common to both tasks. Here, by combining the tasks of inhibitory avoidance (IA) and open field (OF) exploration in rats, we show that memory traces compete for their stabilization if PRPs are limited. As a result, LTM is formed for only one of the tasks with a consequent decrease in the memory for the other. Furthermore, infusing Arc antisense oligonucleotide into the dorsal hippocampus, we found that Arc is necessary for LTM formation of these two types of learning tasks and is one of the PRPs that can be shared between them when animals are trained in both OF and IA. In sum, these findings suggest that under conditions of reduced protein availability, a learning task interferes with LTM formation of another by using the available PRPs.