Active coping with stress suppresses glucose metabolism in the rat hypothalamus

We used 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose small-animal positron-emission tomography to determine whether different styles of coping with stress are associated with different patterns of neuronal activity in the hypothalamus. Adult rats were subjected to immobilization (IMO)-stress or to a non-immobilized condition for 30 min, in random order on separate days, each of which was followed by brain-scanning. Some rats in the immobilized condition were allowed to actively cope with the stress by chewing a wooden stick during IMO, while the other immobilized rats were given nothing to chew on. Voxel-based statistical analysis of the brain imaging data shows that chewing counteracted the stress-induced increased glucose uptake in the hypothalamus to the level of the non-immobilized condition. Region-of-interest analysis of the glucose uptake values further showed that chewing significantly suppressed stress-induced increased glucose uptake in the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus and the anterior hypothalamic area but not in the lateral hypothalamus. Together with the finding that the mean plasma corticosterone concentration at the termination of the IMO was also significantly suppressed when rats had an opportunity to chew a wooden stick, our results showed that active coping by chewing inhibited the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to reduce the endocrine stress response.     

The AB Identification Survey: Identifying Absolute versus Relative Determinants of Happiness

This article introduces a simple survey method to distinguish between two types of variables that affect happiness—type A, which exerts an absolute effect on happiness, and type B, which affects happiness only through social context. The authors validate the method by comparing its findings with the findings of a theoretically superior but less practical experimental method, and use the method to identify the AB nature of a variety of naturally-occurring variables among both college students and people with work experience. We conclude by discussing the limitation of this method as well as its potential to inform policymakers about where to invest resources in order to improve people’s happiness over time.     

Distinct processing for pictures of animals and objects: evidence from eye movements

Many studies have suggested that emotional stimuli orient and engage attention. There is also evidence that animate stimuli, such as those from humans and animals, cause attentional bias. However, categorical and emotional factors are usually mixed, and it is unclear to what extent human context influences attentional allocation. To address this issue, we tracked participants' eye movements while they viewed pictures with animals and inanimate images (i.e., category) as focal objects. These pictures had either negative or neutral emotional valence, and either human body parts or nonhuman parts were near the focal objects (i.e., context). The picture's valence, arousal, position, size, and most of the low-level visual features were matched across categories. The results showed that nonhuman animals were more likely to be attended to and to be attended to for longer times than inanimate objects. The same pattern held for the human contexts (vs. nonhuman contexts). The effects of emotional valence, category, and context interacted. Specifically, in images with a negative valence, focal animals and objects with human context had comparable numbers of gaze fixations and gaze duration. These results highlighted the attentional bias to animate parts of a picture and clarified that the effects of category, valence, and picture context interacted to influence attentional allocation.     

The prevalence of loneliness among adults: a case study of the United Kingdom

Within contemporary Western (post) modern societies, loneliness is seen as a problem that is particularly associated with old age. Much less attention has been given to examining variations in loneliness across age groups. We examine patterns of loneliness across adults aged 15 years and older in the United Kingdom using data from the European Social Survey. We first consider the prevalence of loneliness among the adult population; then the relationship between loneliness and a range of key risk factors, and finally the relationship with age for each of our risk factors. Loneliness demonstrates a nonlinear U-shaped distribution, with those aged under 25 years and those aged over 65 years demonstrating the highest levels of loneliness. Depression is associated with loneliness for all age groups. Poor physical health is associated with loneliness in young adult and midlife but not later life. For those in mid and later life, the quality of social engagement is protective against loneliness, while for young adults it is the quantity of social engagement. This indicates that different factors may endow vulnerability (or protect) against loneliness at different stages of life and suggests that preventative strategies or interventions that reflect these variations need to be developed.     

Social Construction and its Development: Liping Yang Interviews Kenneth Gergen

Nanjing University psychologist Liping Yang interviews Kenneth Gergen on the development of social constructionist thought and practice. The conversation treats a variety of issues, including the development of constructionism as a new paradigm, qualitative research, education and other practices informed by constructionism, value loaded science, relativism, and the Taos Institute.     

Self-esteem modulates attentional responses to rejection: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Individuals with low self-esteem have been shown to exhibit an attentional bias for social rejection cues. The present study investigated whether individuals with low self-esteem would demonstrate greater reactivity to rejection-related stimuli during an attention shifting task than was exhibited by those with high self-esteem. Individuals with low self-esteem showed higher amplitude event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to rejection cues than was observed for those with high self-esteem. These results suggest that individuals with low self-esteem allocate more attentional resources to rejection cues than those with high self-esteem. Discussion will focus on the implications of these findings for understanding the connection between low self-esteem and social rejection.     

Referential coding contributes to the horizontal SMARC effect

The present study tested whether coding of tone pitch relative to a referent contributes to the correspondence effect between the pitch height of an auditory stimulus and the location of a lateralized response. When left-right responses are mapped to high or low pitch tones, performance is better with the high-right/low-left mapping than with the opposite mapping, a phenomenon called the horizontal SMARC effect. However, when pitch height is task irrelevant, the horizontal SMARC effect occurs only for musicians. In Experiment 1, nonmusicians performed a pitch discrimination task, and the SMARC effect was evident regardless of whether a referent tone was presented. However, in Experiment 2, for a timbre-judgment task, nonmusicians showed a SMARC effect only when a referent tone was presented, whereas musicians showed a SMARC effect that did not interact with presence/absence of the referent. Dependence of the SMARC effect for nonmusicians on a reference tone was replicated in Experiment 3, in which judgments of the color of a visual stimulus were made in the presence of a concurrent high- or low-pitched pure tone. These results suggest that referential coding of pitch height is a key determinant for the horizontal SMARC effect when pitch height is irrelevant to the task.     

Multiple goals, writing strategies, and written outcomes for college students learning English as a second language

This study examined relations of achievement goals of writers who are speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL), the frequency of their writing strategy use, and the quality of their writing from a multiple goals perspective. The goal profiles of 57 EFL college students with similar writing proficiency were based on rating items of an unpublished scale; Group 1 had strong mastery and strong performance-approach goals, and two groups included students with only one strong mastery (Group 2) or performance (Group 3) goal. Think-aloud protocols indicated that the participants adopted 21 strategies in an argumentative writing task, classified into five categories. Group 1 was found to use writing strategies of monitoring or evaluating, revising, and compensating significantly more often than the other two groups, and produced better essays. Strong mastery and performance-approach goals might be beneficial for EFL college writers.