Exercise commitment and proneness to eating disorders in a group of physical education teachers

The study examined the association of exercise commitment with proneness to eating disorders in 50 physical education teachers who had been practicing various aerobic sports at least three times a week for at least 5 years. Significant coefficients were found between Commitment to Exercise Scale scores, the number of weekly training sessions, and scores on the Eating Disorders Inventory-2 scales measuring Maturity Fears, Social Insecurity, Perfectionism, and Asceticism. However, no relationship was found between the Commitment to Exercise Scale and the Eating Disorders Inventory-2 variables measuring anorexic tendencies (such as Drive for Thinness, Body Dissatisfaction, and Bulimia). Findings suggest the presence of some psychological factors common to both anorexic tendencies and excessive exercising but not complete overlap, so a rather more complex pattern of relationships appears to be mediated by sex and personality characteristics.     

Self-injurious behavior and eating disorders: the extent and nature of the association

We have reviewed the literature on the association between self-injurious behaviors (SIB) and eating disorders from the psychological-behavioral perspective. Our aims were to investigate the extent and possible reasons for the association. A literature search was conducted using the following electronic databases (1989-2005): Medline, PsychInfo and EMBASE. References in identified articles were also screened. The reported occurrence of SIB in eating disorder patients ranged between 25.4% and 55.2%. The figures for occurrence of eating disorders in SIB patients ranged between 54% and 61%. These figures indicate that there is a strong association between these disorders. Impulsivity, obsessive-compulsive characteristics, affect dysregulation, dissociation, self-criticizing cognitive style and need for control were identified as potential factors involved in the association. Early trauma such as childhood sexual abuse and possibly certain characteristics of early family environment might contribute to the development of these factors. We present a hypothetical model which includes these factors and argue that the co-existence of eating disorders and SIB in patients results from several factors being present. SIB and eating disorder symptoms may provide a means whereby patients can deal with each factor simultaneously. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Efficiency and accuracy of visual search develop at different rates from early childhood through early adulthood

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Most studies of visual search across the life span have focused on classic feature and conjunction searches in which observers search for a fixed, simple shape...     

The ontogeny of continuous quantity discrimination in zebrafish larvae (Danio rerio)

Animal Cognition - Several studies have investigated the ontogeny of the capacity to discriminate between discrete numerical information in human and non-human animals. Contrarily, less attention...     

The Impact of Social Media on Body Image Perceptions and Bodily Practices among Gay,Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men: A Critical Review of the Literature and Extension of Theory

Sex Roles - Recent evidence indicates that interactive media-based web technologies, such as social networking sites, have an appreciable effect on users’ perceptions of and attitudes toward...     

Early Experience Predicts Later Plasticity for Face Processing: Evidence for the Reactivation of Dormant Effects

ABSTRACT— Research has shown that experience acquired in infancy dramatically affects face-discrimination abilities. Yet much less is known about whether face processing retains any flexibility after the 1st year of life. Here, we show that early experience with an individual infant face can modulate the recognition performance of 3-year-old children and the perceptual processes they use to recognize infant faces ( Experiment 1 ). Similar experience acquired in adulthood does not produce measurable effects ( Experiment 2 ). We also show that the effects of early-acquired experience with an infant face become dormant during development in the absence of continued experience ( Experiment 3 ) and can be reactivated in adulthood by reexposure to the original experience ( Experiment 2 ). Overall, the results indicate that early experience can preserve the face-processing system from the loss of plasticity that would otherwise take place between childhood and adulthood.     

Brain activation on pre-reading tasks reveals at-risk status for dyslexia in 6-year-old children

In this fMRI-study, 6-year-old children considered at risk for dyslexia were compared with an age-/gender-matched control group for differences in brain activation when presented with visual stimuli differing in demands for literacy processing. Stimuli were nameable pictures, brand logos familiar to children, and written words - these were either regularly spelled using early-acquired rules ("alphabetic") or more complex ("orthographic"). Brain responses distinguished between the presentation conditions, as a function of group, within many cortical areas. Activation in the alphabetic and orthographic conditions in the left angular gyrus correlated with individual at-risk index scores, and activation in inferior occipito-temporal regions further indicated differential activation for the two groups related to orthographic processing, especially. Since similar patterns are reported in adult dyslexics when processing written words, it appears that sensitivity to the cortical differentiation of reading networks is established prior to formal literacy training.     

Lexically restricted utterances in Russian, german, and english child-directed speech

This study investigates the child-directed speech (CDS) of four Russian-, six German, and six English-speaking mothers to their 2-year-old children. Typologically Russian has considerably less restricted word order than either German or English, with German showing more word-order variants than English. This could lead to the prediction that the lexical restrictiveness previously found in the initial strings of English CDS by Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, and Tomasello (2003 ) would not be found in Russian or German CDS. However, despite differences between the three corpora that clearly derive from typological differences between the languages, the most significant finding of this study is a high degree of lexical restrictiveness at the beginnings of CDS utterances in all three languages.     

Lymphocyte subsets, cardiovascular measures and anxiety state before and after a professional examination

Controversies exist regarding the impact of psychological stress on the functioning of the immune system in humans. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to evaluate whether the condition of a pre-exam stress may or not modify resting lymphocyte subsets, as well as blood pressure and heart rate. About 22 medical residents of both sexes not suffering from any medical or psychiatric disorder were included in the study. Anxiety levels were measured by means of the Hamilton rating scale for anxiety (HRSA) and anxiety traits by means of the panic-agoraphobic spectrum self-report (PAS-SR) version and the obsessive-compulsive spectrum self-report (OBS-SR) version. The results showed that systolic blood pressure and heart rate increased significantly just before sitting an examination (t(1)) in all subjects, as compared with a calm situation (t(2)), in parallel with the increase in the HRSA total score, while no significant difference was observed in lymphocyte subsets at the two assessment times. However, men had a higher number of CD4+ cells than women at t(1) and t(2), while women showed a higher heart rate at t(1). In addition, significant correlations between CD4+ lymphocyte count and heart rate at t(1) or HRSA at t(2) were detected. These findings indicate that the acute stress determined by sitting for examination provokes changes in autonomic nervous system parameters, such as blood pressure and heart rate, as well as in the subjective feeling of anxiety, as shown by the increased HRSA total scores, which were not paralleled by modifications of lymphocyte subsets. However, individual differences, related to both sex and personality traits yet to be identified, seem to have an impact in shaping the stress response.     

Software Tools in Logic Education: Some Examples

Computers are increasingly present in education and make manyresources and activities available to teachers and pupils. Newpedagogical resources development is very interesting for both.Our digital library Summa Logicae is overtly involved in innovationand pedagogical systematization. It includes some software toolsfor teaching logic developed by computer science students, andin this article we present two of these tools. The MAFIA toolis especially attractive for first year students and helps themto understand the basic concepts of logic in an interactiveway using sematic tableaux. It also allows them to solve thecrazy cases in Mafia which their fellow students from previousyears proposed. The Modelos de Kripke tool, oriented to a moreadvanced level, serves for understanding the link between theproperties of the accessibility relation and the modal formulas,which is at the basis of the current developments of modal logic.