Addiction in Maternity: Prevalence of Mental Illness,Substance Use,and Trauma

Women living in vulnerable neighborhoods experience higher rates of poverty, homelessness, psychiatric issues, illicit substance use, rates of HIV, and a lowered life expectancy. The aim of the study was to further explore the history of mental illness and trauma in a sample of women (N?=?31) who had recently given birth and had a substance use problem while pregnant. We investigated sociodemographic characteristics, history of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), rates of substance use and dependence, and psychiatric symptoms. Childhood and adult traumatic experiences were found in the majority of the sample, and one-third presented with suspected PTSD diagnosis at the time of the interview. Women-centered services are in great demand, as well as trauma informed care, and further research on appropriate treatment for substance using, traumatized, women with a mental illness.     

Trust in organismic development, autonomy support, and adaptation among mothers and their children

The current studies examined relations between mothers’ trust in organismic development, autonomy supportive parenting, and adaptation among mothers and their young children. Study 1 showed that trust in organismic development was distinct from optimism, neuroticism, and social desirability whereas it correlated with having relaxed expectations for developmental milestones and making fewer social comparisons about one’s child. Study 2 used observational methods to demonstrate a significant link between trust in organismic development and mothers behaving in an autonomy-supportive rather than controlling manner toward their 1-year-old child during puzzle solving activities. Study 3 used a 1 year prospective design to show that trust in first time mothers was associated with better maternal and child adaptation over time, controlling for initial levels of adaptation and child temperament. Study 4 explored possible social/political antecedents of trust in organismic development by comparing the beliefs of first time mothers from Canada and Norway. The four studies suggest that trust in organismic development fosters autonomy supportive parenting practices and positive maternal and child adaptation. These findings are discussed from the perspective of self-determination theory.

The effects of the contingence during the visual habituation task in 3 and 6 months old infants]

Thirty-six 3-month old infants and the same number of 6-month old infants underwent three visual habituation procedures differentiated by degree of behavioural contingency. Results showed significant differences between conditions only for the six-month olds: the lower the contingency, the higher the visual fixation scores. Results support some of the propositions that Gergely and Watson (1996, 1999) have put forth regarding the developmental model for detecting contingencies. The results also challenge the traditional model for visual habituation which suggests that varied durations of visual fixation should basically be determined by the visual characteristics of the stimulus.     

When political expertise moderates the impact of scandals on young adults' judgments of politicians

This short note investigated how expertise in a political scandal moderates whether the activation of this scandal produces assimilation in the evaluation of politicians in general and contrast in the evaluation of specific politicians. It was hypothesized that participants with a rich knowledge about the scandal would display the assimilation and contrast effects whereas those with a poorer knowledge would not. Results tended to support this prediction, suggesting that the impact on judgment of a specific context depends on the amount of knowledge participants possess about this context. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Black Box effect: sensory stimulation after learning interferes with the retention of long-term object location memory in rats

Reducing sensory experiences during the period that immediately follows learning improves long-term memory retention in healthy humans, and even preserves memory in patients with amnesia. To date, it is entirely unclear why this is the case, and identifying the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning this effect requires suitable animal models, which are currently lacking. Here, we describe a straightforward experimental procedure in rats that future studies can use to directly address this issue. Using this method, we replicated the central findings on quiet wakefulness obtained in humans: We show that rats that spent 1 h alone in a familiar dark and quiet chamber (the Black Box) after exploring two objects in an open field expressed long-term memory for the object locations 6 h later, while rats that instead directly went back into their home cage with their cage mates did not. We discovered that both visual stimulation and being together with conspecifics contributed to the memory loss in the home cage, as exposing rats either to light or to a cage mate in the Black Box was sufficient to disrupt memory for object locations. Our results suggest that in both rats and humans, everyday sensory experiences that normally follow learning in natural settings can interfere with processes that promote long-term memory retention, thereby causing forgetting in form of retroactive interference. The processes involved in this effect are not sleep-dependent because we prevented sleep in periods of reduced sensory experience. Our findings, which also have implications for research practices, describe a potentially useful method to study the neurobiological mechanisms that might explain why normal sensory processing after learning impairs memory both in healthy humans and in patients suffering from amnesia.

One of the most puzzling phenomena of memory is that we forget, and since its beginning as a scientific discipline, psychology has been trying to find out why and how this happens (Ribot 1882; Ebbinghaus 1885; Müller and Pilzecker 1900; Burnham 1903)? Addressing this question, Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) published a remarkable study in 1924 suggesting that much forgetting arises from continued mental activity caused by ongoing everyday experiencing that normally follows learning in natural settings. Their intriguing findings were not systematically pursued during the next decades, as the focus shifted to exploring the role of prior or subsequent learning on forgetting; that is, effects of proactive or retroactive interference of highly similar material on memory retention. This research program eventually led into a dead end (Tulving and Madigan 1970; Wixted 2004), and interference research in humans slowed down in the 1970s. In recent years, however, interest about the neurobiological bases of interference began to emerge again (Appleby and Wiskott 2009; Bartko et al. 2010; Blake et al. 2010; Butterly et al. 2012; Luu et al. 2012; Martínez et al. 2012; Winocur et al. 2012; Peters et al. 2013; Alber et al. 2014; Censor et al. 2014; Martínez et al. 2014; McDevitt et al. 2014; Albasser et al. 2015; Eugenia et al. 2016; Koen and Rugg 2016; Ge et al. 2019; Peters and Smith 2020).In their original experiment, Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) used sleep to reduce the amount of interference after learning. They found that when their participants went about their normal (university campus) day after learning a list of nonsense syllables, their ability to recall the lists 1, 2, 4, or 8 h later was always poorer than when instead they slept during the time between learning and test. Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) concluded that their results “indicate that forgetting is not so much a matter of the decay of old impressions and associations than a matter of the interference, inhibition, or obliteration of the old by the new.” Their findings were replicated by others, confirming that being asleep, compared with being awake and active, indeed improves memory retention (Van Ormer 1932; Ekstrand 1967). However, it remained an open question whether it is the reduction of sensory stimulation and new learning, which would usually occur during wakefulness, that prevents retroactive interference, or whether a specific, possibly sleep-dependent, memory facilitation process was at play (Ekstrand 1967, 1972).Noting that participants in the sleep condition did not immediately fall asleep in the original experiment, but that they experienced increased quiescence shortly after learning, Minami and Dallenbach (1946) tested the retroactive interference explanation of forgetting more directly, by controlling the amount of stimulation after learning in awake animals. This remarkable experiment used Periplaneta americana (American cockroach) and a little treadmill. After learning to suppress their natural tendency to run into a dark shelter box in a bright open alley (encouraged by an electrical shock received in the dark shelter), the cockroaches were either placed on a running treadmill in a transparent box, or in a normally lit circular transparent resting chamber, where they were not able to fall asleep but experienced notably less activity than the cockroaches on the treadmill. The outcome was that cockroaches who were forced to move presented with more forgetting than those who were not, suggesting that sleep—notwithstanding its possible beneficial effect on memory—may not be necessary to promote memory retention; rather, reducing the amount of stimulation and activity after learning may be critical for attenuating retroactive interference and thus forgetting.Some six decades later, a series of experiments picked up this original line of inquiry. Exploring in humans whether memory for short prose, word lists, or spatial knowledge benefits from reduced stimulation after learning, these studies have invariably replicated the main finding that spending a 10-min retention interval in quiet wakefulness in a dimly lit room after learning leads to better memory for the learned material than participating in unrelated cognitive tasks during the retention interval (Dewar et al. 2007, 2010). Increased memory for the acquired material following quiet wakefulness is long-lasting and can be detected up to 7 d after learning (Dewar et al. 2012; Alber et al. 2014). Even in amnesic patients 10 min of reduced sensory stimulation, compared with participating in cognitive tasks, enhances memory retention for verbal material (Cowan et al. 2004; Dewar et al. 2009, 2010). This lends strong support to the suggestion that the memory loss in amnesia arises from an increased vulnerability to interference shortly after encoding (Warrington and Weiskrantz 1974; Hardt et al. 2013)Similar results have been obtained in rodents in studies exploring the role of perirhinal cortex in object recognition memory. Rats with lesions to the perirhinal cortex typically show robust impairments in object recognition tasks (Brown and Aggleton 2001; Mumby et al. 2002, 2007; Norman and Eacott 2005; Albasser et al. 2015). However, if rats are placed into a dark box during the retention interval between the encoding phase and the test phase of an object recognition task, rats with lesions to perirhinal cortex no longer show a memory deficit and perform as well as intact animals (McTighe et al. 2010). Thus, reduction of sensory stimulation between encoding and test appears to enhance memory for objects even in rats with perirhinal cortex lesions. This finding recapitulates the outcomes of the studies with human patients suffering from amnesia after hippocampal damage.The aim of the current experiments was to determine whether reducing sensory stimulation after encoding would also enhance hippocampus-dependent memory in rats. To do this, we used a spontaneous object exploration task that assesses memory for object locations (Ennaceur and Delacour 1988; Hardt et al. 2010; Migues et al. 2016, 2019). Using this approach, we replicated in rats the basic effect that quiet wakefulness promotes memory retention as previously observed in humans. Specifically, here we show that following learning, everyday activity in the home cage with cage mates impairs object location memory in rats, while reducing sensory stimulation in a dark chamber, without sleep, promotes it.     

Family Cultures in The Context of Migration and Ageing

Intergenerational family relations are embedded in family cultures which influence how families regulate their relations over the whole life span with regard to key issues, such as autonomy and relatedness, or support exchange and reciprocity, and which may vary inter- and intraculturally. Migrant families undoubtedly face a special situation as values and expectations from the culture of origin and from the host cultural context might differ. Not much is known yet about how migrant families adapt their family cultures to the host cultural context. The present article will focus on aspects of intergenerational family regulation by taking into account family cultures of migrant compared to non-migrant families in a life span perspective. We will illustrate our theoretical outline by presenting first results from the IRMA-study comparing Luxembourgish and Portuguese immigrant families living in Luxembourg. We focus on issues of family cohesion, enmeshment and normative expectations regarding adult children’s support for their ageing parents, by drawing both on quantitative questionnaire as well as qualitative interview data. Implications for the experience of ambivalence and conflicts as well as well-being of family members from both generations will be discussed.     

Listeners feel the beat: Entrainment to English and French speech rhythms

Can listeners entrain to speech rhythms? Monolingual speakers of English and French and balanced English–French bilinguals tapped along with the beat they perceived in sentences spoken in a stress-timed language, English, and a syllable-timed language, French. All groups of participants tapped more regularly to English than to French utterances. Tapping performance was also influenced by the participants’ native language: English-speaking participants and bilinguals tapped more regularly and at higher metrical levels than did French-speaking participants, suggesting that long-term linguistic experience with a stress-timed language can differentiate speakers’ entrainment to speech rhythm.     

Legal aspects of the risks raised by nanotechnologies in the field of medicine

The major breakthroughs achieved in nanotechnologies open new avenues in the field of healthcare--aid to diagnosis, upgrading medical treatment efficacy, development of regenerative medicine--but they are also associated with risks, hence the increasing need of legislation. So far very little research work has been conducted on this technology whose applications are still limited and whose potential hazards are not yet clearly apprehended. The more and more frequent uses of nanoparticles in medical imaging and in current research projects dealing with tissue engineering or RFID raises the following question: is the current legislative framework relevant in light of the specificities of nano-objects? The challenge is twofold: the legal approach must encompass the nanometric element itself as a "legal object" but it must include the use of nanotechnologies and their final aims. There is still some degree of uncertainty concerning the innocuity of nanoparticles so that the use of nanoelements in aid to medical diagnosis and in clinical trials must take into account and anticipate the potential harmful effects on patients and on biomedical research teams. But due to the fact that a clear understanding of nanoparticles as specific objects with new features is still missing, the existing regulations on chemical substances, medicinal products, medical devices or cosmetics do not seem to be appropriate. So considering nanoparticles as "singular" legal objects is a prerequisite requiring an approach based on the precautionary principle. Misusing nanotechnologies in the medical field is also a cause for great concern. Threats on individual freedom and on private life as well as on human identity are real and they raise recurring questions. The possible deviations in the use of these techniques, the temptations to "trespass the limits" are also common to info technologies and to biotechnologies but the threats triggered by the nanotechnologies are enhanced by the possibilities offered by the nanometric size and the expected convergence of these different technologies. One should refer to leading guiding principles in order to solve the future conflicts between the different sets of values, especially in the medical field by always remembering the Hippocratic oath "primum non nocere, deinde curare"     

Tracking irregular morphophonological dependencies in natural language: evidence from the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in French

This study examines French-learning infants’ sensitivity to grammatical non-adjacent dependencies involving subject-verb agreement (e.g., le/les garçons lit/lisent ‘the boy(s) read(s)’) where number is audible on both the determiner of the subject DP and the agreeing verb, and the dependency is spanning across two syntactic phrases. A further particularity of this subsystem of French subject-verb agreement is that number marking on the verb is phonologically highly irregular. Despite the challenge, the HPP results for 24- and 18-month-olds demonstrate knowledge of both number dependencies: between the singular determiner le and the non-adjacent singular verbal forms and between the plural determiner les and the non-adjacent plural verbal forms. A control experiment suggests that the infants are responding to known verb forms, not phonological regularities. Given the paucity of such forms in the adult input documented through a corpus study, these results are interpreted as evidence that 18-month-olds have the ability to extract complex patterns across a range of morphophonologically inconsistent and infrequent items in natural language.     

Externalizing behavior trajectories: The role of parenting, sibling relationships and child personality

Based on longitudinal multilevel modeling and using a multi-informant strategy, this study examines trajectories of externalizing problem behavior (EPB) in childhood as predicted by parental behavior (absolute level of parenting [ALP] and parental differential treatment [PDT]), parental self-efficacy (PSE), child personality and sibling relationships. Besides main effects, several interactions were tested. The effects of changes in parenting on changes in EPB were also examined. A total of 119 families from the French-speaking area of Belgium rearing a child (3- to 5-year-olds at the onset of the study) referred for EPB were studied. The effects of both level-of and changes-in mothers' ALP were partially confirmed, but for fathers, only ALP was predictive. There were some significant interactions between ALP and PDT for both parents. Mothers' PSE explained some variance in EPB, additional to that explained by the parenting measures. Some parenting by personality and by sibling relationship interactions were found.