Physical fitness of South African primary school children, 6 to 13 years of age: discovery vitality health of the nation study

Basic physical fitness was measured using 8 different measures for 10,295 South African children and youths (5,611 boys, 4,684 girls) ages 6 to 13 years. These measurements included height, weight, Body Mass Index, standing long jump, shuttle run, sit-and-reach, sit-up (EUROFIT testing battery), and cricket ball throw scores. Due to the effects of earlier apartheid laws on separating communities, it was hypothesized that scores for different ethnic groups may differ. Therefore, in addition to the calculation of basic norms and sex differences, ethnic differences were also tested. Height and weight, relative to age, were different between the various ethnic groups (Black, White, and Mixed ancestry) for boys, with Black boys being shorter and lighter than White boys. There were no differences in sit-and-reach flexibility scores between the groups. With the exception of the cricket ball throw for girls, White children had higher scores in most tests. Although not significantly different from the White children, in the majority of cases, the children of mixed ancestral origin had scores that ranged between the other two ethnic groups. These results suggest a need for encouraging fitness in school children, and the reintroduction of formal physical education into the South African school curriculum, especially into schools in which Black children predominate.     

Young infants' generalization of emotional expressions: effects of familiarity

From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others.     

Impact of fearful expression on danger processing: The influence of the level of trait anxiety

Threat estimation is crucial for the adaptation of behavior to a dangerous situation. In anxiety, a bias to threat has been described as a core feature. Therefore, the sensitivity for threatening information in anxious individuals may have consequences for danger estimation. In this study, we used the affective priming paradigm to test the assumption that fearful expressions would facilitate danger detection in natural scenes in anxious individuals. Twenty-three high trait anxious individuals and 22 low trait anxious individuals participated in the study. They had to detect the potential threat of a target scene (neutral or threatening) following neutral or fearful face primes. High trait anxious participants detected threat more rapidly than low trait anxious participants, consistent with previous reports of emotional hypervigilance in anxiety. Furthermore, this effect was enhanced when the target scene followed a fearful expression: Only in anxious participants were reaction times shorter to detect danger following a fearful prime than a neutral prime. Our results tend to show that in anxiety, the hypervigilance to threat may be of an important value such as increasing the detection of a subsequent potential danger. Implication of attentional processes and attentional control is discussed.     

A Discussion of “Disorders of Temporality and The Subjective Experience of Time: Unresponsive Objects and the Vacuity of the Future” by Stephen Seligman

In this review of Stephen Seligman’s contribution to the literature on disorders of temporality, the patient’s ordinary and extraordinary experiences of time in the clinical situation, the reviewer provides both theoretical confirmation and clinical illustration in support of the author’s arguments. Infant research, nonlinear dynamic systems theory, and especially a brain-based psychoanalytic perspective taken from the work of Gerald Edelman are introduced to facilitate understanding of memory in general and the second of Seligman’s disorders of temporality in particular. Edelman’s formulation on the biological evolution of consciousness affords a means to comprehend how the phenomenon of dissociation emerges spontaneously in the clinical situation that matches and offers an explanation Seligman’s own understanding.