Depressed mothers' newborns show less discrimination of other newborns' cry sounds

Newborns' crying in response to the cry of another newborn has been called an empathetic response. The purpose of this study was to determine whether newborns of depressed mothers showed the same response. Newborns of depressed and non-depressed mothers were presented with cry sounds of themselves or other infants, and their sucking and heart rate were recorded. The newborns of non-depressed mothers responded to the cry sounds of other infants with reduced sucking and decreased heart rate. In contrast, the newborns of depressed mothers did not show a change in their sucking or heart rate to the cry sounds of other infants. This lesser attentiveness/responsiveness to other infants' cry sounds may predict their later lack of empathy.     

On the binary quality of recognition and the inconsequentiality of further knowledge: two critical tests of the recognition heuristic

The recognition heuristic is claimed to be distinguished from notions of availability and fluency through its categorical or “binary” treatment of information and the “inconsequentiality” of further knowledge to inferences based on recognition. Using the city‐size task of Goldstein and Gigerenzer ( 2002 ) we demonstrate that: (1) increasing the validity of other information in the environment decreases the reliance on recognition; (2) cities that are both recognized and have other information known about them (e.g. they have a soccer team) are chosen more often than those which are simply recognized; and (3) there is a negative correlation between the time taken to identify a city and the proportion of times it is selected as the larger of a pair. None of these results is predicted by the process model of the recognition heuristic. The implication of the results for the distinction between the recognition, availability and fluency heuristics is discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Anxiety Disorder and Social Support Behavior in Friendships

Relationship quality is a strong predictor of health outcomes, and individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) report increased interpersonal impairment. However, there are few studies testing the effect of SAD on friendships and it is thus unclear whether there are behavioral differences that distinguish friendships in which a target individual has SAD from friendships in which the target individual does not have SAD. We tested for differences in the provision and receipt of support behaviors as a function of having a SAD diagnosis and accounting for comorbid depressive symptoms. Participants with SAD (n = 90) and their friends engaged in support conversations that were coded using the Social Support Interaction Coding System. Structural equation modeling revealed some differences between participants and friends when accounting for depression. Specifically, friends of participants with SAD and comorbid depression engaged in fewer positive helper behaviors than the friends of participants who did not have SAD or comorbid depression. Additionally, dyads in which the primary participant had SAD engaged in more off-task behaviors. Results suggest that SAD does not result in global interpersonal impairment, but that receipt of positive support behaviors from friends may differ as a function of SAD and comorbid depression. Interpersonal interventions aimed at increasing adaptive friendships and aspects of CBT that target subtle avoidance (e.g., safety behaviors) may be useful in facilitating more satisfactory relationships for these individuals.     

3-D bone models to improve treatment initiation among patients with osteoporosis: A randomised controlled pilot trial

Objective: To investigate the efficacy of 3-D printed bone models as a tool to facilitate initiation of bisphosphonate treatment among individuals who were newly diagnosed with osteoporosis.

Design: Fifty eight participants with estimated fracture risk above that at which guidelines recommend pharmacological intervention were randomised to receive either a standard physician interview or an interview augmented by the presentation of 3-D bone models.

Main outcome measures: Participants’ beliefs about osteoporosis and bisphosphonate treatment, initiation of bisphosphonate therapy assessed at two months using self-report and pharmacy dispensing data.

Results: Individuals in the 3-D bone model intervention condition were more emotionally affected by osteoporosis immediately after the interview (p = .04) and reported a greater understanding of osteoporosis at follow-up (p = .04), than the control group. While a greater proportion of the intervention group initiated an oral bisphosphonate regimen (alendronate) (52%) in comparison with the control group (21%), the overall initiation of medication for osteoporosis, including infusion (zoledronate), did not differ significantly (intervention group 62%, control group 45%, p = .19).

Conclusion: The presentation of 3-D bone models during a medical consultation can modify cognitive and emotional representations relevant to treatment initiation among people with osteoporosis and might facilitate commencement of bisphosphonate treatment.     

Self-reported sleep durations of college students: normative data for 1978-79, 1988-89, and 2000-01.

In 2000-2001 academic year the frequency distribution of hours slept per night was not significantly different from distributions of 1978-79 and 1988-89.     

Infidelity, race, and gender: An evolutionary perspective on asymmetries in subjective distress to violations-of-trust

Asymmetries in subjective distress were observed among African American and white (N = 191) men and women who were asked to imagine a partner being emotionally and sexually unfaithful, and a partner committing other paired, gender-linked viola-tions-of-trust. More women than men were distressed by imagining a partner forming a deep emotional attachment to another person and more men than women were distressed by imagining a partner enjoying passionate sexual intercourse with another person. In addition, more men than women were distressed by male-linked violations, such as a partner no longer trying to look attractive, and more women than men were distressed by female-linked violations, such as a partner no longer wanting to work. The results contribute to a growing body of cross-cultural research reporting gender differences in distress to emotional and sexual infidelity. The results also provide cross-cultural validation of the extension of an evolutionary perspective to under-standing gender differences in subjective distress to other biologically relevant viola-tions-of-trust.     

A set of 254 Snodgrass-Vanderwart pictures standardized for Spanish: Norms for name agreement,image agreement,familiarity, and visual complexity

The Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) picture set was standardized for a Spanish sample (N = 261). The present article shows the main results, but more explicitly, it shows the differences between English and Spanish data. This evidence justifies the statement that normative data of cognitive stimuli cannot be taken into another language directly, because object names that are very common in one language may not be so in another, or objects that have a specific name in one language may have a generic name in another, and so on. Finally, because of the potential usefulness of the data for bilingualism studies, the Spanish data are presented jointly with the English data.     

Dimensional dominance and stimulus discriminability.

The relationship between the discriminability of scaling stimuli and assessed dimensional dominance was investigated in three studies. Sixty kindergarten children were assessed using a psychophysical scaling method to determine JND values for the size, brightness, and orientation dimensions. Thirty of the same subjects were then assessed for dimensional dominance using stimuli of two levels of known discriminability, based on the obtained JND values. In a third experiment, the remaining 30 subjects were assessed for dimensional dominance using stimuli that systematically emphasized the values of one dimension relative to the other two dimensions, again based on obtained JND values.The results indicated that (1) kindergarten children were able to perform consistently during psychophysical scaling, and there was little variability between children in their judgments of stimuli, (2) the overall level of discriminability affects dimensional dominance scaling behavior, with subjects more likely to exhibit dominance for one dimension when all the values of scaling stimuli are high in discriminability, and (3) some support for the hypothesis that dimensional dominance scaling behavior can be manipulated by manipulating the relative discriminability of scaling stimuli was found, though the trend was not clear.The relative discriminability of scaling stimuli appears to have some effects on dimensional dominance scaling behavior of young children. However, some pre-experimental bias to attend to a particular dimension seems to remain even when the values of all dimensions present are of equal and known discriminability. Dimensional dominance is a function of an interaction between discriminability of scaling stimuli and the experiential bias or perceptual set of the subject.     

Free-association norms for the Spanish names of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures

The most frequent names in Spanish corresponding to a set of 247 pictures in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) norms were used as stimuli in a discrete free-association task. A sample of 525 Spanish-speaking participants provided the first word that came to mind for each of the verbal stimuli. Responses were organized according to frequency of production in order to prepare word-association norms for the set of stimuli.