Life-long environmental enrichment differentially affects the mnemonic response to estrogen in young, middle-aged, and aged female mice

The present study was designed to examine whether life-long exposure to standard or enriched housing affects the ability of estrogen to improve spatial and object memory throughout the lifespan. Three-week-old female mice were maintained in standard or enriched housing up to and through ovariectomy and behavioral testing at 5, 17, or 22 months of age. Spatial memory was tested in the Morris water maze and object memory was tested using an object recognition task. Immediately after training each day, mice were injected intraperitoneally with vehicle or 0.2 mg/kg 17beta-estradiol. Among young females, object recognition was enhanced by estradiol alone, an effect that was reduced by enrichment. In contrast, spatial water maze performance was impaired by estradiol alone, but improved by the combination of both estradiol and enrichment. At middle-age, object recognition was enhanced by estradiol or enrichment alone, and the combination of both treatments. Spatial memory in the water maze was also improved by both treatments at middle-age, but the beneficial effects of estradiol were limited to standard-housed females. Finally, whereas enrichment in aged females significantly enhanced performance in both tasks, estradiol had no effect at this age in either task. In total, the data indicate that life-long enrichment can significantly alter the extent to which estradiol affects memory in mice throughout the lifespan. Importantly, the interaction between these treatments is highly dependent on age and type of memory tested.     

Men’s Interpersonal (mis)Perception: Fitting in with Gender Norms Following Social Rejection

Interpersonal perception (IP) is useful for meeting affiliation needs, but what if IP skills are derogated by those one wishes to affiliate with? We tested the effects of affiliation motivation on IP in predominately Caucasian men. Participants were mainly U.S. undergraduates from the intermountain west. We expected that following rejection, IP performance would vary depending on the skill’s gender appropriateness. Study 1 (N?=?69) found men who recounted an in-group rejection performed better on a masculine-framed IP test. Study 2 (N?=?102) extended findings to empathic accuracy, demonstrating that rejection influenced IP as a function of the gender norms of an in-group member. The role of affiliation motivation and gender norms in the development and maintenance of men’s nonverbal skills is discussed.     

Revised Craig Lipreading Inventory.

The two purposes of this study were to shorten the Craig Lipreading Inventory without affecting its reliability and validity and to establish normative data on the revised version. The full inventory was administered to 75 children. By item analysis, half of the items were selected to comprise the brief version; both versions were administered to another group of 75 children. Scores on the two versions correlated (.91 and .92, respectively, for Word Forms A and B and .97 and .95, respectively, for Sentence Forms A and B), thereby substantiating the construct validity of the briefer version. There was significantly high intertest reliability for the Word Forms (.80) and Sentence Forms (.82) of the briefer inventory. Normative data were computed for each age group. This briefer version is a temporally efficient tool for evaluating lipreading ability of children.     

Success estimations and performance in children as influenced by age,gender, and task

This study examined the effects of a manipulated sex association cue on the estimation of success as well as actual performance on a novel motor task. Boys and girls in the third and seventh grade (N=80) were randomly assigned by gender and grade to either a football-related or a dance-related group. The task was a simple reaction time test that was presented with instructions to indicate a sex association. Findings indicated that performance expectancies obtained prior to engaging in a novel motor task can be affected by the way a task is presented.     

The rapid-smoking technique: Some physiological effects

The effects of rapid smoking on the blood pressure, pulse rate and cardiac functioning of 58 smokers (30 women and 28 men) are reported. All subjects were healthy volunteers, 45 were under 40 yr of age, the remaining 13 between 40 and 50 yr. They received between 6 and 12 rapid smoking sessions. It was found that, in both the under and over 40 age groups, blood pressure levels and pulse rates increased significantly following rapid smoking sessions. There were, however, significant decreases between sessions and no evidence of a cumulative effect of successive rapid smoking sessions. Some qualitative changes in cardiac functioning were observed, namely the appearance of T wave flattening and S-T depression. None of the changes were considered to be of sufficient magnitude to necessitate exclusion from the programme, but confirm the need to monitor closely the physiological functioning of persons undergoing rapid smoking.     

Opinion Climates in Social Media: Blending Mass and Interpersonal Communication

Social media's capacity for users to generate, comment on, and forward content (including mass media messages) to other users has created new forms of mass interpersonal communication. These systems render observable processes underlying the formation of opinion climates. Five attributes of contemporary electronic opinion environments can alter the way users gauge, form, and express opinions on topics of public interest: the juxtaposition of mass media and user‐generated content, ideological homogeneity and heterogeneity of online networks, technical ease with which to express opinions, the reach of messages, and networked audiences. These attributes facilitate analysis of theoretical and empirical works from different scholarly traditions, suggesting lines of inquiry that can enrich the analysis of (public) opinion formation via current communication technologies.     

Reading between the minds: the use of stereotypes in empathic accuracy

An ideal empathizer may attend to another person's behavior in order to understand that person, but it is also possible that accurately understanding other people involves top-down strategies. We hypothesized that perceivers draw on stereotypes to infer other people's thoughts and that stereotype use increases perceivers' accuracy. In this study, perceivers (N = 161) inferred the thoughts of multiple targets. Inferences consistent with stereotypes for the targets' group (new mothers) more accurately captured targets' thoughts, particularly when actual thought content was also stereotypic. We also decomposed variance in empathic accuracy into thought, target, and perceiver variance. Although past research has frequently focused on variance between perceivers or targets (which assumes individual differences in the ability to understand other people or be understood, respectively), the current study showed that the most substantial variance was found within targets because of differences among thoughts.     

Conditions under which function information attenuates name extension via shape

Children often extend names to novel artifacts on the basis of overall shape rather than core properties (e.g., function). This bias is claimed to reflect the fact that nonrandom structure is a reliable cue to an object having a specific designed function. In this article, we show that information about an object's design (i.e., about its creator's intentions) is neither necessary nor sufficient for children to override the shape bias. Children extend names on the basis of any information specifying the artifact's function (e.g., information about design, current use, or possible use), especially when this information is made salient when candidate objects for extension are introduced. Possible mechanisms via which children come to rely less on easily observable cues (e.g., shape) and more on core properties (e.g., function) are discussed.