Hemodynamic response to featural changes in the occipital and inferior temporal cortex in infants: a preliminary methodological exploration

Over the past 30 years researchers have learned a great deal about the development of object processing in infancy. In contrast, little is understood about the neural mechanisms that underlie this capacity, in large part because there are few techniques available to measure brain functioning in human infants. The present research examined the extent to which near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), an optical imaging technique, could be used to assess the relation between object processing and brain functioning. Infants aged 6.5 months were presented with an occlusion event involving objects that differed on many feature dimensions (multi-featural change), differed on shape only (shape change) or color only (color change), or did not differ (control). NIRS data were collected in the occipital and inferior temporal cortex. In the occipital cortex, a significant increase in oxyhemoglobin (HbO(2)) was observed in response to all four events and these responses did not differ significantly from each other. In the inferior temporal cortex, a significant increase in HbO(2 )was observed in the multi-featural and the shape change condition but not in the control condition. An increase was also observed in the color change condition but this increase did not differ significantly from baseline nor did it differ significantly from the response obtained in the control condition. These data were discussed in terms of (a) what they suggest about the neural basis of feature processing in infants and (b) the viability of using NIRS to study brain-behavior relations in infants.     

Condom use, contraceptive methods, and religiosity among youths of low socioeconomic level

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the use of condoms and other contraceptive methods and religiosity/spirituality among youths of a low socioeconomic level in Porto Alegre. 1013 youths, between 12-24 years of age participated, responding to a personal questionnaire containing 109 items. Results show that 53.5% of these youths had already had their first sexual encounter, 55% of which had this experience before the age of 15. The majority (42.8%) claimed to be Catholic, and 26.7% said they believe in God, but were not religious. There appeared no significant difference in the use of condoms in relation to the level of religiosity, however, men used this method more than women to avoid AIDS and as a contraceptive. Women used other contraceptive methods more frequently, and there were no cases of exclusive use of methods permitted by the major religions (natural methods). This study revealed a high level of condom use (more than 80%) among both religious and non-religious youths.     

Robust principal components: A generalized variance perspective

This article compares several methods for performing robust principal component analysis, two of which have not been considered in previous articles. The criterion here, unlike that of extant articles aimed at comparing methods, is how well a method maximizes a robust version of the generalized variance of the projected data. This is in contrast to maximizing some measure of scatter associated with the marginal distributions of the projected scores, which does not take into account the overall structure of the projected data. Included are comparisons in which distributions are not elliptically symmetric. One of the new methods simply removes outliers using a projection-type multivariate outlier detection method that has been found to perform well relative to other outlier detection methods that have been proposed. The other new method belongs to the class of projection pursuit techniques and differs from other projection pursuit methods in terms of the function it tries to maximize. The comparisons include the method derived by Maronna (2005), the spherical method derived by Locantore et al. (1999), as well as a method proposed by Hubert, Rousseeuw, and Vanden Branden (2005). From the perspective used, the method by Hubert et al. (2005), the spherical method, and one of the new methods dominate the method derived by Maronna.     

Cybersecurity and Authentication: The Marketplace Role in Rethinking Anonymity – Before Regulators Intervene

Anonymous speech plays a fundamental role in America’s political history. However, that long tradition of anonymous communications faces an image problem in today’s age of spam, computer viruses, spyware, denial-of-service attacks on websites, and identity theft. The criminals and hackers who perpetrate these insults on the commercial Internet are, for the most part, anonymous; we simply do not know the identities of these bad guys. Yet, the promise of anonymous communications is vital to the preservation of political liberty across the globe. Therefore, how should we regard anonymity in a digital age? And how should we strike the right balance between security and anonymity online? To begin, we should not consider the outlawing of anonymous communications as the answer to today’s cybersecurity threats. Commercial sector “regulation” of anonymity, so to speak, can play a significant role in combating these problems. Increasingly, online authentication has become important to both personal security and to cybersecurity in general. Some recent proposals toward bolstering security have included greater authentication of the source of emails to deal with spam and the requirement that those who conduct transactions online reveal their identities – seeming violations of online culture. Policymakers also want a say in the matter, and as the process unfolds, they might feel increasingly tempted to intervene whenever issues impacting privacy and authentication emerge in debates over telecommunications, intellectual property, biometrics, cybersecurity, and more. Regardless, government should not strip us of our anonymity online. Cybersecurity concerns may instead call for the marketplace – not regulators – to deal with the fact that many threats stem from that very lack of authentication. The inclusion of greater authentication standards into online services by private vendors will lead to their working in concert in unprecedented ways that may draw attention from regulatory and antitrust authorities. But these private, experimental efforts have no implications for political liberty – nor are they anticompetitive. Private solutions are the only real hope we have for decreasing cybersecurity threats, given that previous government efforts to regulate the Internet – for example, outlawing spam in 2004 – have not lived up to expectations. Political anonymity and commercial anonymity are not the same thing, and the distinction requires better appreciation. Over the coming tumultuous period of dealing with online threats, policymakers should allow the experimentation necessary to cope with today’s lack of online authentication to proceed with minimal interference.     

Memory fragments as components of autobiographical knowledge

Adults described and dated two kinds of personal remembrances: a fragment—a memory moment that is largely bereft of context—and an episodic, personal event memory—a narrative that consists of a number of related events. In Experiment 1 subjects reported memories from when they were 0–8 years of age and in Experiment 2, from when they were 0–16 years of age. Fragments were judged to be older than event memories, especially in Experiment 2 where the estimated ages of most fragments were from 0 to 8 years and of most episodic memories, from 8 to 16 years. Ratings of various features of the two kinds of memories also differed. We conclude that isolated memory moments possess validity and that although they are most likely to arise when the autobiographical memory system is not fully developed, they can also originate during a time when it is. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal Acceptance and Consistency of Discipline as Buffers of Divorce Stressors on Children's Psychological Adjustment Problems

This study examines whether two aspects of mothering—acceptance and consistency of discipline—buffer the effect of divorce stressors on adjustment problems in 678 children, ages 8 to 15, whose families had divorced within the past 2 years. Children reported on divorce stressors; both mothers and children reported on mothering and internalizing and externalizing problems. Multiple regressions indicate that for maternal report of mothering, acceptance interacted with divorce stressors in predicting both dimensions of adjustment problems, with the pattern of findings supporting a stress-buffering effect. For child report of mothering, acceptance, consistency of discipline, and divorce stressors interacted in predicting adjustment problems. The relation between divorce stressors and internalizing and externalizing problems is stronger for children who report low acceptance and low consistency of discipline than for children who report either low acceptance and high consistency of discipline or high acceptance and low consistency of discipline. Children reporting high acceptance and high consistency of discipline have the lowest levels of adjustment problems. Implications of these results for understanding variability in children's postdivorce adjustment and interventions for divorced families are discussed.     

Evidence for a form of mutual exclusivity during label acquisition by grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus)?

The authors present context-dependent evidence for a form of mutual exclusivity during label learning by Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). For human children, mutual exclusivity refers to their assumption during early word learning that an object has one and only one label. Along with the whole-object assumption (that a label likely refers to an entire object rather than some partial aspect), mutual exclusivity is thought to guide children in initial label acquisition. It may also help children overcome the whole-object assumption by helping them interpret a novel word as something other than an object label, but for young children, any second label for an object can initially be more difficult to acquire than the first. The authors show that Grey parrots quickly learn object labels for items, then have considerable difficulty learning to use color labels with respect to a previously labeled item unless specifically taught to use a color and object label as a pair.     

A multi-analyses approach of inductive/deductive asymmetry in the affective priming paradigm

Rapidly evaluating our environment's beneficial and detrimental features is critical for our successful functioning. A classic paradigm used to investigate such fast and automatic evaluations is the affective priming (AP) paradigm, where participants classify valenced target stimuli (e.g., words) as good or bad while ignoring the valenced primes (e.g., words). We investigate the differential impact that verbs and adjectives used as primes and targets have on the AP paradigm. Based on earlier work on the Linguistic Category Model, we expect AP effect to be modulated by non-evaluative properties of the word stimuli, such as the linguistic category (e.g., if the prime is an adjective and the target is a verb versus the reverse). A reduction in the magnitude of the priming effect was predicted for adjective–verb prime-target pairs compared to verb–adjective prime-target pairs. Moreover, we implemented a modified crowdsourcing of statistical analyses implementing independently three different statistical approaches. Deriving our conclusions on the converging/diverging evidence provided by the different approaches, we show a clear deductive/inductive asymmetry in AP paradigm (exp. 1), that this asymmetry does not require a focus on the evaluative dimension to emerge (exp. 2) and that the semantic-based asymmetry weakly extends to valence (exp. 3).     

The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to PTSD,Depression, Poly-Drug Use and Suicide Attempt in Reservation-Based Native American Adolescents and Young Adults

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with numerous risk behaviors and mental health outcomes among youth. This study examines the relationship between the number of types of exposures to ACEs and risk behaviors and mental health outcomes among reservation‐based Native Americans. In 2011, data were collected from Native American (N = 288; 15–24 years of age) tribal members from a remote plains reservation using an anonymous web‐based questionnaire. We analyzed the relationship between six ACEs, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, physical and emotional neglect, witness to intimate partner violence, for those <18 years, and included historical loss associated symptoms, and perceived discrimination for those <19 years; and four risk behavior/mental health outcomes: post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depression symptoms, poly‐drug use, and suicide attempt. Seventy‐eight percent of the sample reported at least one ACE and 40 % reported at least two. The cumulative impact of the ACEs were significant (p < .001) for the four outcomes with each additional ACE increasing the odds of suicide attempt (37 %), poly‐drug use (51 %), PTSD symptoms (55 %), and depression symptoms (57 %). To address these findings culturally appropriate childhood and adolescent interventions for reservation‐based populations must be developed, tested and evaluated longitudinally.