Differences in Beliefs About Psychological Services in the Relationship Between Sociorace and One's Social Network

The roles of previous psychological service use and social network variables in beliefs about psychological services were examined with 184 college students. Having friends and family members who used psychological services, being female, and having used psychological services positively related with beliefs about psychological services. Socioracial differences in the effects of previous use of psychological services and social network variables on students’ beliefs about psychological services were found. Suggestions for ways counselors can provide support to students are discussed.     

Childhood poverty and young adults' allostatic load: the mediating role of childhood cumulative risk exposure

Childhood poverty is linked to a host of physical and psychological disorders during childhood and later in life. In the study reported here, we showed that the proportion of childhood spent in poverty from birth to age 9 was linked to elevated allostatic load, a marker of chronic physiological stress, in 17-year-olds. Furthermore, this prospective longitudinal relationship was mediated by cumulative risk exposure at age 13. The greater the duration of early life spent in poverty, the greater the exposure to cumulative risk. This, in turn, leads to elevated allostatic load. Multiple psychological, biological, and neurological pathways likely account for the social patterning of psychological and physical disease.     

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.     

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.     

A latent profile analysis of Asian American men's and women's adherence to cultural values

The goal of this study was to identify diverse profiles of Asian American women's and men's adherence to values that are salient in Asian cultures (i.e., conformity to norms, family recognition through achievement, emotional self-control, collectivism, and humility). To this end, the authors conducted a latent profile analysis using the 5 subscales of the Asian American Values Scale-Multidimensional in a sample of 214 Asian Americans. The analysis uncovered a four-cluster solution. In general, Clusters 1 and 2 were characterized by relatively low and moderate levels of adherence to the 5 dimensions of cultural values, respectively. Cluster 3 was characterized by the highest level of adherence to the cultural value of family recognition through achievement, whereas Cluster 4 was typified by the highest levels of adherence to collectivism, emotional self-control, and humility. Clusters 3 and 4 were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms than Cluster 1. Furthermore, Asian American women and Asian American men had lower odds of being in Cluster 4 and Cluster 3, respectively. These findings attest to the importance of identifying specific patterns of adherence to cultural values when examining the relationship between Asian Americans' cultural orientation and mental health status.     

Vowels in early words: an event-related potential study

Previous behavioural research suggests that infants possess phonologically detailed representations of the vowels and consonants in familiar words. These tasks examine infants' sensitivity to mispronunciations of a target label in the presence of a target and distracter image. Sensitivity to the mispronunciation may, therefore, be contaminated by the degree of mismatch between the distracter label and the heard mispronounced label. Event-related potential (ERP) studies allow investigation of infants' sensitivity to the relationship between a heard label (correct or mispronounced) and the referent alone using single picture trials. ERPs also provide information about the timing of lexico-phonological activation in infant word recognition. The current study examined 14-month-olds' sensitivity to vowel mispronunciations of familiar words using ERP data from single picture trials. Infants were presented with familiar images followed by a correct pronunciation of its label, a vowel mispronunciation or a phonologically unrelated non-word. The results support and extend previous behavioural findings that 14-month-olds are sensitive to mispronunciations of the vowels in familiar words using an ERP task. We suggest that the presence of pictorial context reinforces infants' sensitivity to mispronunciations of words, and that mispronunciation sensitivity may rely on infants accessing the cross-modal associations between word forms and their meanings.     

Effects of cage mesh on pointing: hand shapes in chimpanzees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>)

It has been speculated that cage mesh exerts a shaping influence on reaching behavior by captive apes, which is then misconstrued as pointing by human observers. Although this notion is clearly falsified by the pointing of captive language-trained apes—who point in the absence of intervening cage mesh—nevertheless, the degree to which cage mesh might influence pointing hand shapes by captive great apes in other housing environments remains relatively unexplored. We examined 259 pointing gestures displayed in archival footage from over 18 h of observation by three nonlanguage-trained chimpanzees housed at a biomedical research center. We coded points in relation to how close to the boundaries of the diamond-shaped cage mesh their points were displayed. We found that points with the whole hand were significantly more likely to be displayed away from the mesh boundaries, relative to points with the index finger or other single-digit points. However, points of each hand shape were displayed at each location, demonstrating that these physical parameters do not fully account for the number of fingers extended while pointing by chimpanzees.     

Ethical Assurance Statements in Political Science Journals

Many journals in the physical sciences require authors to submit assurances of compliance with human subjects and other research ethics standards. These requirements do not cover all disciplines equally, however. In this paper we report on the findings of a survey of perceptions of ethical and managerial problems from journal editors in political science and related disciplines. Our results show that few journals in political science require assurance statements common to journals for other scientific disciplines. We offer some reasons for this as well as some recommendations for implementing ethical assurance safeguards for political science.     

Hindsight bias and causal reasoning: a minimalist approach

What factors contribute to hindsight bias, the phenomenon whereby the known outcome of an event appears obvious only after the fact? The Causal Model Theory (CMT) of hindsight bias (Nestler et al. in Soc Psychol 39:182–188, 2008a; in J Expl Psychol: Learn Mem Cog 34:1043–1054, 2008b; Pezzo in Mem 11:421–441, 2003; Wasserman et al. in Pers Soc Psychol Bull 17:30–35, 1991) posits that hindsight bias can occur when people have the opportunity to identify potential causal antecedents and evaluate whether they could have led to the outcome. Two experiments incorporating highly controlled minimalist scenarios supported the CMT. As predicted by the CMT, hindsight bias occurred when the causal factor explained the actual outcome better than the alternative outcome, and reverse hindsight bias occurred when the causal factor explained the alternative outcome better than the actual outcome. Moreover, we found new evidence that outcome knowledge alone was insufficient to elicit hindsight bias in the absence of a potential causal antecedent. Implications for future directions in hindsight bias research are discussed.