Developmental effects of an intervention for preterm infants of teenage mothers

Since preterm infants and infants born to teenage mothers are noted to be at risk for developmental delays, a group of infants who were both preterm and born to teenage mothers was provided a sensorimotor exercise intervention program for the first year of infancy. The development of these infants was compared to the development of preterm infants without intervention and term infants of teenage mothers as well as term and preterm infants of adult mothers to determine the degree to which developmental delays were prevented. The intervention infants showed more optimal growth, cognitive development, temperament and play behaviors during interactions with their mothers across the first year of development.     

Agonistic behavior and social reactivity of LG/J mice in both an arena and a seminatural setting

In order to determine the relatively long-term effects of having been primed for agonistic behaviors in an arena setting, 28 male LG/J mice were observed for these behaviors in a seminatural environment for a period of 5 days following a 20 min arena test. The mice were first placed in an arena in which they were allowed either immediate physical contact with another strain (control condition) or were briefly separated from another strain by a transparent partition before being allowed physical access to them (priming condition). Subjects, recorded as either having fought or not fought in the arena, were then placed in a 101 cm square seminatural setting. Seven trials, using 8 LGs each (4 arenaexperienced males and 4 naive females), were made, and agonistic behaviors were recorded for the priming and control condition subjects. The results showed that the control condition fighters (CF) like the priming condition fighters (PF) fought in the arena situation, but different agonistic patterns in the seminatural setting were noted. While in the seminatural environment, both CF and PF mice were attacked frequently and submitted frequently, but PF mice attacked opponents more frequently than did CF subjects (p < 0.025) and elicited significantly more submissions from opponent mice than did CF mice (p < 0.025). It is concluded that: (1) there are more and different agonistic behavior patterns available in the more natural environment than in the arena setting, and more specifically (2) there is a greater effect on agonistic behaviors in a seminatural environment for mice that fought when exposed to the arena priming procedure as compared with mice having fought in the arena control condition.     

Why would social networks be linked to affect and health practices?

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation among social integration (SI), affect, and smoking and alcohol consumption. DESIGN: The authors administered social network and psychological questionnaires to 193 adults and then interviewed them on 14 consecutive evenings about their daily social interactions, affect, and smoking and alcohol consumption. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main outcome measures were positive and negative affect, smoking, and alcohol consumption. RESULTS: Between-subjects analyses found that those with more diverse social networks (high in SI) interacted with more people and smoked and drank less. SI was not, however, associated with affect. In contrast, within-subject analyses found that the more people participants interacted with during a day, the greater their positive affect, drinking, and smoking on that day. However, this occurred primarily for persons low in SI. High-SI persons reported high positive affect irrespective of the number of people with whom they interacted, and their smoking and drinking behaviors were less influenced by number of interactants. CONCLUSION: SI may alter health because it affects responsiveness to the social influences of others.