Influence of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and catechol O-methyl transferase polymorphisms on effects of meditation on plasma catecholamines and stress

Meditation may show differential effects on stress and plasma catecholamines based on genetic polymorphisms in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catechol O-methyl transferase (COMT). Eighty adults (40 men, 40 women; mean age 26 years) who practiced meditation regularly and 57 healthy control adults (35 men, 22 women; mean age 26 years) participated. Plasma catecholamines (norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (E), and dopamine (DA)) concentrations were measured, and a modified form of the Stress Response Inventory was administered. The results were analyzed using two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with control and meditation subjects, gene polymorphism as factors, and meditation duration as the covariate. Two-way ANCOVA showed a significant interaction between control and meditation subjects, and BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on DA/NE+DA/E (p = 0.042) and NE/E+NE/DA (p = 0.046) ratios. A significant interaction was found for control and meditation subjects with COMT Val158Met polymorphism and plasma NE concentrations (p = 0.009). Post hoc ANCOVA in the meditation group, adjusted for meditation duration, showed significantly higher plasma NE concentrations for COMT Met carriers than COMT Val/Val subjects (p = 0.025). Significant differences of stress levels were found between the control and meditation subjects in BDNF Val/Met (p < 0.001) and BDNF Met/Met (p = 0.003), whereas stress levels in the BDNF Val/Val genotype did not differ between the control and meditation groups. This is the first evidence that meditation produces different effects on plasma catecholamines according to BDNF or COMT polymorphisms.     

More Than Two Choices: The Influence of Context on the Framing Effect

The framing effect demonstrates that two options with different risk levels affect people??s risk preferences, even if both options are logically equivalent. However, in reality we are almost always confronted with more than two choices, rather than a single manipulated message. In this paper, we simultaneously manipulate the framing effect and the context effect, including the attraction effect and the compromise effect, to examine the influence of context on framing. The results of two studies show that context influences the original choice preference arising from the framing effect. Moreover, the framing effect is reduced when context effects are introduced to the original choice set.     

Effects of validity screening items on adolescent survey data

In 2 studies, we examined the use of validity screening items in adolescent survey data. In each study, adolescent respondents were asked whether they were telling the truth and paying attention in answering survey questions. In Study 1 (N = 7,801), the prevalence rates of student risk behaviors were significantly lower after inappropriate (invalid) responders were screened out of the sample. In addition, confirmatory and multigroup factor analyses demonstrated significant differences between the factor structures of school climate scales with valid versus invalid responders. In Study 2, student perceptions of school climate were correlated with teacher perceptions in 291 schools. A bootstrap resampling procedure compared the correlations obtained with valid versus invalid responding students in each school and found that valid responders had more positive views of school conditions and produced higher correlations with teacher perceptions. These findings support the value of validity screening items in improving the quality of adolescent survey data.     

Ontogeny of classical and operant learning behaviors in zebrafish

The performance of developing zebrafish in both classical and operant conditioning assays was tested with a particular focus on the emergence of these learning behaviors during development. Strategically positioned visual cues paired with electroshocks were used in two fully automated assays to investigate both learning paradigms. These allow the evaluation of the behavioral performance of zebrafish continuously throughout development, from larva to adult. We found that learning improves throughout development, starts reliably around week 3, and reaches adult performance levels at week 6. Adult fish quickly learned to perform perfectly, and the expression of the learned behavior is manifestly controlled by vision. The memory is behaviorally expressed in adults for at least 6 h and retrievable for at least 12 h.     

Eye movements of second language learners when reading spaced and unspaced Chinese text

The effect of spacing in relation to word segmentation was examined for four groups of non-native Chinese speakers (American, Korean, Japanese, and Thai) who were learning Chinese as second language. Chinese sentences with four types of spacing information were used: unspaced text, word-spaced text, character-spaced text, and nonword-spaced text. Also, participants' native languages were different in terms of their basic characteristics: English and Korean are spaced, whereas the other two are unspaced; Japanese is character based whereas the other three are alphabetic. Thus, we assessed whether any spacing effects were modulated by native language characteristics. Eye movement measures showed least disruption to reading for word-spaced text and longer reading times for unspaced than character-spaced text, with nonword-spaced text yielding the most disruption. These effects were uninfluenced by native language (though reading times differed between groups as a result of Chinese reading experience). Demarcation of word boundaries through spacing reduces non-native readers' uncertainty about the characters that constitute a word, thereby speeding lexical identification, and in turn, reading. More generally, the results indicate that words have psychological reality for those who are learning to read Chinese as a second language, and that segmentation of text into words is more beneficial to successful comprehension than is separating individual Chinese characters with spaces.     

Confucian dynamism work values and team performance: A multiple‐level analysis

In this study we clarified the multiple‐level effects of Confucian‐related work values, including self‐discipline and interpersonal ethics, on the performance of individuals and the team. Empirical data of 70 work teams with 472 team members from Taiwanese enterprises were collected to test our hypotheses. Results showed that, at the group level, shared team values of interpersonal ethics were positively related to team performance through the partial mediation of team cooperation. For cross‐level effect, shared team values of interpersonal ethics and individual member's self‐discipline values were both positively related to individual performance. The implications of Confucian dynamism work values on contemporary organizational management and indigenous Chinese team theories were provided.     

Academic achievement in Norwegian secondary schools: the impact of violence during childhood

Using data from a national survey (N = 6,979) of young people in their last year in Norwegian secondary schools in 2007 (aged 18 and 19), this paper examines the effect of experience of violence including sexual abuse during childhood (before the age of 13) on the later academic achievement of young people. This investigation includes three types of violence: non-physical, physical and sexual, and two types of victimisation: being abused and witness to abuse. First we investigate the relationship between the experience of various violent acts before the age of 13 and young people??s later academic achievement. Second, applying the structural equation modelling technique, we take into account the effect of background factors such as parents?? educational attainment and gender, and the effect of mediating factors such as social capital and educational motivation on the academic achievement of the young victims. The results show that exposure to violence during childhood not only directly influences young people??s educational outcomes but also exerts indirect influences on their achievement through its impact on young victims?? social relations and psychological health.     

Distinguishing different strategies of across-dimension attentional selection

Selective attention in multidimensional displays has usually been examined using search tasks requiring the detection of a single target. We examined the ability to perceive a spatial structure in multi-item subsets of a display that were defined either conjunctively or disjunctively. Observers saw two adjacent displays and indicated whether the to-be-selected items within the two displays matched in terms of their spatial structure (the identity of the corresponding items within these subsets was not relevant to the task). The observers in our study could readily perceive conjunctively defined subsets, but had great difficulty with disjunctively defined subsets. The results pose a challenge to the popular idea that attention is guided by a "priority map" that sums bottom-up and top-down factors, whereas they are directly predicted by Boolean map theory of visual attention.     

Implicit Science Stereotypes Mediate the Relationship between Gender and Academic Participation

While the gender gap in mathematics and science has narrowed, men pursue these fields at a higher rate than women. In this study, 165 men and women at a university in the northeastern United States completed implicit and explicit measures of science stereotypes (association between male and science, relative to female and humanities), and gender identity (association between the concept “self” and one’s own gender, relative to the concept “other” and the other gender), and reported plans to pursue science-oriented and humanities-oriented academic programs and careers. Although men were more likely than women to plan to pursue science, this gap in students’ intentions was completely accounted for by implicit stereotypes. Moreover, implicit gender identity moderated the relationship between women’s stereotypes and their academic plans, such that implicit stereotypes only predicted plans for women who strongly implicitly identified as female. These findings illustrate how an understanding of implicit cognitions can illuminate between-group disparities as well as within-group variability in science pursuit.     

The reciprocal relations between teachers' perceptions of children's behavior problems and teacher-child relationships in the first preschool year

To examine the reciprocal relations between teacher-child relationships and children's behavior problems, the authors analyzed cross-lagged longitudinal data on teacher-child relationships and children's internalizing and externalizing problems using a structural equation modeling approach. The homeroom teachers of 105 first-year preschoolers aged 2-3 years filled in the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist/2-3, first at 3 months after the children's preschool entrance and then at the end of the first preschool year. Results showed significant cross-wave reciprocal relations between externalizing problems and teacher-child conflict and significant cross-wave relation from early internalizing problems to later teacher-child conflict. However, the cross-wave associations between internalizing and externalizing problems and teacher-child closeness were not significant.