Prevalence and predictors of benevolent childhood experiences among a representative sample of young people

Emerging research evidence suggests that benevolent childhood experiences (BCEs) may partly explain more favourable mental health outcomes among individuals affected by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). However, much of this research has focused on adult populations. Consequently, this study sought to provide the first rigorous assessment of the prevalence and predictors of BCEs using a nationally representative sample of young people from Northern Ireland (NI). Participants were 11–19-years-olds (N = 1293) who participated in the NI Youth Wellbeing Prevalence Survey (NI-YWS, 2020). Prevalence rates, gender differences and predictors of BCEs were investigated. Results revealed how most of the sample experienced multiple BCEs (95%, n = 1084), with females reporting higher levels of BCEs. Significant positive predictors of BCEs were female gender, parental education, living with both biological parents, and living in areas with lower deprivation, while significant negative predictors of BCEs included family being in receipt of social welfare and older age. Overall, this study highlights how BCEs are common, while the identification of factors associated with likelihood of having positive experiences during early development provides novel insights into those young people who may be at greater risk for maladaptive psychological outcomes.     

Ethically Allocating COVID-19 Drugs Via Pre-approval Access and Emergency Use Authorization

Abstract

Allocating access to unapproved COVID-19 drugs available via Pre-Approval Access pathways or Emergency Use Authorization raises unique challenges at the intersection of clinical care and research. In conditions of scarcity, prioritization approaches should minimize harm, maximize benefit, and promote fairness. To promote continued data collection, patients seeking access to unproven COVID-19 drugs should receive lower priority for allocation when they decline to participate in clinical trials, either of the requested drug or other investigational products, offering a comparable balance of risks and benefits; special attention should be paid to concerns of voluntariness and distrust. In addition, institutional treatment protocols that can contribute more robust real world data should be preferred to single patient requests for access, with priority for inclusion based on traditional clinical allocation criteria relying on available evidence. Fairness demands distribution of these protocols across a diverse range of sites, particularly those serving marginalized populations, among other protections.     

Thermoregulation and performance of heat-reinforced autoshaped keypecking in chicks

Performance of autoshaped keypecking reinforced by heat was found to increase and then to decrease when chicks were exposed to training under a constant thermal load on a daily basis over the first 1-2 weeks after hatching. The decline in performance was not affected by variation in US duration (Experiment 1). No decline in performance was observed when food reinforcement was used (Experiment 2), suggesting that the effect depended on the use of thermal motivation. When thermoregulation was disrupted by pharmacological blockade using propranolol hydrochloride (10 mg/kg), keypecking was reinstated (Experiment 3). The increase in keypecking produced by propranolol was not due to a nonspecific energization of behavior inasmuch as the drug depressed autoshaped keypecking established with food reinforcement (Experiment 4). These findings support the conclusion that the decline in autoshaped keypecking reinforced by heat is due to development of the chick's thermoregulatory system. Various physical changes (e.g., feathering) and the increasing effectiveness of autonomic and behavioral thermoregulatory responses reduce the net motivational value of external heat sources, thus leading to a decline in the likelihood of approach and contact with signals for heat.     

Deception and subtypes of aggression during early childhood

A multi-informant study investigated the association between deception capacities and subtypes of aggression in a young early childhood sample (M = 44.65 months of age, SD = 13.39, N = 64). A newly developed teacher report of deception had appropriate psychometric properties (reliability, concurrent validity, and construct validity). Recently introduced observational methods of physical and relational aggression were reliable and valid with this sample. Findings indicated that both physical and relational aggression were associated with concurrent deception. For boys only, physical aggression uniquely predicted deception, controlling for the variance associated with relational aggression. In addition, relational aggression predicted deception above and beyond the role of physical aggression for the entire sample.     

Integration of intermittent visual samples over time and between the eyes

The authors investigated the integration of alternate disparate monocular inputs for binocular perception in 1-handed catching experiments (N = 14, 32, 22, and 15 participants, respectively in Experiments 1-4). They varied the no-vision interval between alternate monocular samples to measure catching performance, and they compared the alternating monocular conditions with binocular and monocular conditions with equal no-vision intervals. They found no evidence of a binocular advantage for one-handed catching in the alternating monocular conditions. Performance in monocular and alternating monocular conditions did not differ across no-vision intervals ranging from 0-80 ms and was particularly worse than performance in binocular viewing conditions when the no-vision interval was 40 ms or more. The authors argue that the dissimilarity between disparate monocular inputs created by the approaching object limited the integration of those inputs and subsequent binocular perception.     

Ambivalence toward the body: death, neuroticism, and the flight from physical sensation

Based on terror management theory, the authors suggest that ambivalent reactions to the human body are partially rooted in the association of the physical body with inescapable death and that individuals high in neuroticism are particularly vulnerable to such difficulties. Three experiments demonstrated that priming thoughts about one's death leads individuals high in neuroticism to flee from physical sensations, including pleasurable ones. In response to mortality salience, highly neurotic individuals spent less time submerging their arm in ice-cold water and using an electric foot massager but did not avoid stimulation in nontactile modalities (i.e., listening to music). The discussion highlights the role of existentially motivated self-repression in inhibitions surrounding the body.     

Asymmetries in finger-tapping interference produced by mental versus manual rotation of Shepard and Metzler type objects

Two experiments were conducted using dual-task finger-tapping procedures to examine cerebral hemisphere laterization for mental versus manual rotation. Actual three-dimensional block-designs based on Shepard and Metzler's (1971) abstract three-dimensional cubes were constructed. Forty-eight right-handed introductory psychology students participated in each study. The first experiment showed greater right-hand than left-hand interference for mental rotation implicating more left-hemisphere involvement. In contrast, more left-hand than right-hand finger-tapping disruption with manual rotation was observed suggesting more right-hemisphere involvement. A second experiment was conducted to determine if the right-hemisphere involvement found with manual rotation was due to the manual activity of handling and rotating the blocks. Results showed that dual-task interference produced by irrelevant manual rotation combined with mental rotation was not lateralized. Thus, the pattern of results indicate that the manipulospatial processing required in the first experiment was responsible for the asymmetry implicating right-hemisphere involvement.     

Mother's milk: an existential perspective on negative reactions to breast-feeding

Drawing from an existential perspective rooted in terror management theory, four studies examined the hypothesis that breast-feeding women serve as reminders of the physical, animal nature of humanity and that such recognition is threatening in the face of one's unalterable mortality. Study 1 demonstrated that mortality salience (MS) led to more negative reactions toward a scenario depicting a woman breast-feeding her infant in public, and in Study 2, MS decreased liking and increased physical avoidance of a potential task partner described as breast-feeding in another room. Further supporting the hypothesis that such reactions are rooted in threats associated with human creatureliness, MS in conjunction with a breast-feeding prime led to an increase in the accessibility of creaturely related cognitions (Study 3) and priming human/animal similarities (i.e., creatureliness) led to increased negativity toward a magazine cover depicting a woman breast-feeding her child (Study 4). Implications of this research are discussed.     

Nonverbal representation of time and number in adults

A wealth of human and animal research supports common neural processing of numerical and temporal information. Here we test whether adult humans spontaneously encode number and time in a paradigm similar to those previously used to test the mode-control model in animals. Subjects were trained to classify visual stimuli that varied in both number and duration as few/short or many/long. Subsequently subjects were tested with novel stimuli that varied time and held number constant (eight flashes in 0.8-3.2s) or varied number and held time constant (4-16 flashes in 1.6s). Adult humans classified novel stimuli as many/long as monotonic functions of both number and duration, consistent with simultaneous, nonverbal, analog encoding. Numerical sensitivity, however, was finer than temporal sensitivity, suggesting differential salience of time and number. These results support the notion that adults simultaneously represent the number and duration of stimuli but suggest a possible asymmetry in their representations.