Withdrawn and intrusive maternal interaction style and infant frontal EEG asymmetry shifts in infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers

The effects of maternal interaction style (intrusive/withdrawn) on the development of brain electrical activity were studied in infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers shortly after birth and again at 3-6 months of age. Infants of depressed mothers exhibited significantly greater relative right frontal EEG activation than infants of non-depressed mothers. Infants of depressed withdrawn mothers exhibited greater relative right frontal EEG activation than infants of depressed intrusive mothers. Furthermore, while infants of depressed mothers with intrusive interaction styles showed a shift towards greater relative left frontal EEG activation from birth to 3-6 months, infants of depressed mothers with withdrawn interaction styles showed a shift towards greater relative right frontal EEG activation.     

Overcoming illusory inferences in a probabilistic counterintuitive problem: The role of explicit representations

In the context of conditional probabilities, a good example of the marked discrepancy between intuition and formal reasoning is the Monty Hall dilemma (MHD). We used the MHD to study the effects of practicing the game, making explicit the underlying structure, or enhancing the representation of the different possibilities, on reaching and stating the correct answer. The results of the experiments showed that accumulated experience with the MHD increased the proportion of switching responses but did not change erroneous intuitions (Experiment 1). However, when the dilemma was presented in the form of an adversary game that made the underlying structure more explicit, more participants formed complete mental representations that enabled them to reason correctly (Experiment 2). This result was observed even without any practice with the game if the participants were encouraged to represent possibilities (Experiment 3). Therefore, in this context, correct reasoning seems to depend more on the ability to consider different possibilities than on extensive practice with the game.     

Role of hippocampal signaling pathways in long-term memory formation of a nonassociative learning task in the rat

Long-term habituation to a novel environment is one of the most elementary forms of nonassociative learning. Here we studied the effect of pre- or posttraining intrahippocampal administration of drugs acting on specific molecular targets on the retention of habituation to a 5-min exposure to an open field measured 24 h later. We also determined whether the exposure to a novel environment resulted in the activation of the same intracellular signaling cascades previously shown to be activated during hippocampal-dependent associative learning. The immediate posttraining bilateral infusion of CNQX (1 μg/side), an AMPA/kainate glutamate receptor antagonist, or of muscimol (0.03 μg/side), a GABA_A receptor agonist, into the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus impaired long-term memory of habituation. The NMDA receptor antagonist AP5 (5 μg/side) impaired habituation when infused 15 min before, but not when infused immediately after, the 5-min training session. In addition, KN-62 (3.6 ng/side), an inhibitor of calcium calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), was amnesic when infused 15 min before or immediately and 3 h after training. In contrast, the cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) inhibitor Rp-cAMPS, the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MAPKK) inhibitor PD098059, and the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin, at doses that fully block memory formation of inhibitory avoidance learning, did not affect habituation to a novel environment. The detection of spatial novelty is associated with a sequential activation of PKA, ERKs (p44 and p42 MAPKs) and CaMKII and the phosphorylation of c-AMP responsive element-binding protein (CREB) in the hippocampus. These findings suggest that memory formation of spatial habituation depends on the functional integrity of NMDA and AMPA/kainate receptors and CaMKII activity in the CA1 region of the hippocampus and that the detection of spatial novelty is accompanied by the activation of at least three different hippocampal protein kinase signaling cascades.     

Moderate involvement in sports is related to lower depression levels among adolescents

Sports involvement has been found to be related to social and psychological well-being in Icelandic adolescents. The present study investigated whether similar relationships exist for American adolescents. A group of 89 high school seniors completed a questionnaire that gathered data on sports involvement, depression, intimacy with parents and friends, and grade point average. It was found that the moderate sports involvement group (3 to 6 hours per week) had lower depression scores than did the low sports involvement group (2 hours or less per week). The findings are discussed.     

Common dilemmas in combined individual and group treatment

The treatment of patients in combined individual and group therapy presents a challenge in terms of theory and technique. The inevitable paradoxes that arise in this modality can confound even the most experienced clinician. This paper delineates some of the conflicts, examines some of the advantages and disadvantages of combined treatment, and addresses the contraindications for some patients.     

Instruction-driven processing in human perceptual learning

We conducted a series of experiments to determine the relative contribution of unsupervised versus controlled mechanisms to the intermixed-blocked effect. In Experiment 1, participants received pre-exposure instructions prompting a search for differences between stimuli, in keeping with past studies, and the intermixed-blocked effect was observed. In the remaining experiments, participants did not receive the aforementioned instructions, but instead were instructed either to simply observe the stimuli (Experiment 2) or in relation to a masking task (Experiment 3). None of the latter experiments produced an intermixed-blocked effect, suggesting that the effect found in Experiment 1 was driven by the instructions to search for differences, consistent with a controlled processing account of the effect. Moreover, we tested a prediction assuming the operation of a search strategy against one assuming the operation of a short-term habituation mechanism and found evidence more consistent with the search strategy hypothesis. We formulate a new account of the intermixed-blocked effect in humans based on an instruction-driven search and discuss how the account could explain many findings in the human literature.     

Using token reinforcement to increase walking for adults with intellectual disabilities

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of token reinforcement, using an ABAB reversal design, for increasing distance walked for adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities at an adult day‐training center. Five participants earned tokens for walking 50‐m laps and exchanged tokens for back‐up reinforcers that had been identified through preference assessments. Token reinforcement resulted in a substantial increase from baseline in laps walked for 4 participants.     

Gentzen-Style Sequent Calculus for Semi-intuitionistic Logic

The variety \({\mathcal{SH}}\) of semi-Heyting algebras was introduced by H. P. Sankappanavar (in: Proceedings of the 9th “Dr. Antonio A. R. Monteiro” Congress, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, 2008) [13] as an abstraction of the variety of Heyting algebras. Semi-Heyting algebras are the algebraic models for a logic HsH, known as semi-intuitionistic logic, which is equivalent to the one defined by a Hilbert style calculus in Cornejo (Studia Logica 98(1–2):9–25, 2011) [6]. In this article we introduce a Gentzen style sequent calculus GsH for the semi-intuitionistic logic whose associated logic GsH is the same as HsH. The advantage of this presentation of the logic is that we can prove a cut-elimination theorem for GsH that allows us to prove the decidability of the logic. As a direct consequence, we also obtain the decidability of the equational theory of semi-Heyting algebras.