Early Childhood Adversities and Trajectories of Psychiatric Problems in Adoptees: Evidence for Long Lasting Effects

The aim of the present study is to investigate whether early childhood adversities determine the longitudinal course of psychiatric problems from childhood to adulthood; in particular if the impact of early maltreatment on psychopathology decreases as time passes. A sample of 1,984 international adoptees was followed (955 males and 1029 females; adopted at the mean age of 29 months). Parents provided information about abuse, neglect and number of placements prior to adoption at baseline and completed the Child Behavior Checklist or the Young Adult Behavior Checklist three times when their children were between 10 and 30 years of age. Multilevel analyses were performed to determine trajectories of psychiatric problems. Experience of early childhood adversity prior to adoption substantially increased the level of psychiatric problems, especially when maltreatment was severe. Moreover, the impact of early adversities on psychiatric problems remained markedly stable. This suggests that vulnerability of early-maltreated children persists even if they are taken out of their problematic environments and are raised in enriched circumstances.     

Early attention processes and anxiety in children

It has been hypothesized that anxiety in children is associated with attentional bias in the early stages of information processing. Bias towards threat indicates the tendency of an individual to direct attention towards threatening information. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether high test-anxiety in a sample of nonreferred children is associated with attentional bias towards threat pictures, and if low test-anxiety is associated with attentional bias away from threat pictures. A probe-detection task was used with 44 10- to 13-yr.-old children. The overall analyses indicated the presence of an attentional bias away from threatening pictures in these nonreferred children. However, in relation to anxiety, the study did not confirm that high anxious children show an attentional bias towards threatening pictures or that low anxious children show an attentional bias away from threatening pictures. Yet, higher anxiety did seem to be associated with longer mean response times. These longer response times might originate from the interpretation of the nature of a stimulus as too threatening, compared to the actual threatening content, in the first stage of information processing. This finding could be useful to improve treatment methods aimed at anxiety symptoms during childhood.     

Coordination between breathing and mental grouping of pianistic finger movements

6 pianists (age 22 to 43 years) performed a simple finger exercise at a spontaneously chosen most comfortable tempo on a Yamaha-Disklavier piano. Five versions of the exercise, notated in quarter notes, were presented with different types of meters: (1) 3/4, (2) 4/4, (3) 5/4, (4) 6/4, and (5) 7/4. The onsets of finger strokes were measured while respiration was recorded in parallel by means of a thermistor placed at the front of the dominant nostril. The chosen tempo (finger-beat-rate) was about 3 Hz on all trials but not exactly constant. Correspondingly, the meter-rate chosen was faster for 3/4 and 4/4 meter (around 1 Hz), slower for 5/4, 6/4, and 7/4 meter (around 0.5 Hz). Mean breathing rate while playing the piano (0.38 Hz) was significantly higher than while resting (0.22 Hz, p<.05). Pooling the data of all subjects, the ratios of instantaneous meter and breathing rates clustered around different integer values, depending on the type of meter. Also the individual data indicated integer ratios between instantaneous meter and breathing rates. Even periods of constant phase relations between onsets of the meter and of inspiration could be observed. Thus, the mental process of grouping the same piece of music by various musical meters interacts with unconscious breathing rhythm.     

Grasping language – A short story on embodiment

The new concept of embodied cognition theories has been enthusiastically studied by the cognitive sciences, by as well as such disparate disciplines as philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience, and robotics. Embodiment theory provides the framework for ongoing discussions on the linkage between “low” cognitive processes as perception and “high” cognition as language processing and comprehension, respectively. This review gives an overview along the lines of argumentation in the ongoing debate on the embodiment of language and employs an ALE meta-analysis to illustrate and weigh previous findings. The collected evidence on the somatotopic activation of motor areas, abstract and concrete word processing, as well as from reported patient and timing studies emphasizes the important role of sensorimotor areas in language processing and supports the hypothesis that the motor system is activated during language comprehension.