HPV High Risk and Protective Behaviors: The Effects of Religious Affiliation

The majority of Americans identify themselves as belonging to some religious group. There is a mixed body of literature on whether or not religious affiliation has an influence on engaging in risky behaviors among young adults attending college. This study examined associations between religious affiliation, risky sexual practices, substance use, and family structure among a sample of predominantly white college females attending a southeastern university. Given the high risk of acquiring genital human papillomavirus infection as a result of high risk sexual practices, gaining a better understanding of how religious affiliation can be used to promote healthy sexual behaviors is warranted.     

Authors’ response: what are emotions and how are they created in the brain?

In our response, we clarify important theoretical differences between basic emotion and psychological construction approaches. We evaluate the empirical status of the basic emotion approach, addressing whether it requires brain localization, whether localization can be observed with better analytic tools, and whether evidence for basic emotions exists in other types of measures. We then revisit the issue of whether the key hypotheses of psychological construction are supported by our meta-analytic findings. We close by elaborating on commentator suggestions for future research.     

Children's use of semantic organizational strategies is mediated by working memory capacity

In adults, the ability to apply semantic grouping strategies has been found to depend on working memory. To investigate this relation in children, two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping instruction) were administered to 6–12-year-olds. The role of working memory was examined by means of mediation analyses and by assessing whether children who successfully used the semantic grouping strategy had higher working memory capacity than did children who did not show such strategy use. Only children aged 8–12 were able to successfully use semantic grouping strategies (and 8–9-year-olds only after instruction), while strategy use was absent in 6–7-year-olds. Both types of analysis involving working memory suggested that, also in children, working memory (and not short-term memory) mediates the development of successful use of the semantic grouping strategy during both encoding and retrieval.     

Content of maternal open-ended questions and statements in reminiscing with their 4-year-olds: links with independence and interdependence orientation in European contexts

Mother's open-ended questions and elaborative statements during reminiscing were analysed for their content (child agency, co-agency, non-social, and social context) in three cultural contexts. Participants were 115 mothers and their 4-year-old children: 35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia. Across samples the most prominent content was talk about non-social context followed by co-agency and child agency. Tallinn mothers asked the children to talk about themselves, and Berlin mothers asked the children to talk about themselves together with other people, more frequently than they talked about these contents themselves. The content was related to the cultural orientations of mothers assessed through questionnaires: the Berlin mothers whose independence/ interdependence ratio was higher talked less about other people and asked the children fewer questions about other people; the Stockholm mothers with a higher independence/interdependence ratio talked more about child agency. In Tallinn both correlations existed on a trend level. The results are discussed in the light of common conversational practices and mothers' orientation to independence and interdependence in these cultural contexts.     

Gender Differences and Similarities in Strategies for Managing Conflict with Friends and Romantic Partners

Using hypothetical vignettes, we investigated the extent to which gender differences in conflict-management strategies depended on the relationship context of a same-gender friendship vs. a romantic relationship. Associations between conflict-management strategies, goals and gender-typed traits also were assessed. Men (131) and women (203) undergraduate students (19–25?years) from a state university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States participated. To assess expressive and instrumental personality traits, participants completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence and Helmreich 1978). Participants also rated their endorsement of communal and agentic goals and strategies for managing hypothetical conflicts presented in the “Peer Conflict Management Questionnaire.” This questionnaire, created for the purposes of this study, consisted of 4 vignettes that portrayed hypothetical conflicts with a friend and a romantic partner. Results showed that women were more likely than men to endorse communal strategies when managing conflict with a same-gender friend, but not with a romantic partner. Women were more likely than men to endorse agentic strategies for managing conflict with a romantic partner, but not with a same-gender friend. For conflicts with a same-gender friend, communal goals, but not expressive traits or gender, predicted communal strategy endorsement. For conflicts with a romantic partner, gender and agentic goals predicted agentic strategies; instrumental traits did not. Implications for understanding consequences of gender-typed relationship processes are discussed. The contextual specificity of gender differences and similarities are emphasized.     

Asociality and engagement in adult offenders in substance abuse treatment

In therapeutic community models for drug treatment, individual recovery is principally structured around group meetings and positive peer influences. Research shows that asocial group members with resistant behaviors and attitudes are at risk for poor treatment outcomes and have the potential to adversely impact the therapeutic group. To gain a better understanding of the asocial client's role in the larger treatment process, in-prison treatment data were used: (1) to model and confirm a two-factor solution of asociality consistent with the literature, and (2) to examine the relationship between asocial clients and treatment engagement for validation of the two-factor model. Exploratory analysis resulted in a three-factor solution representing behavioral responsivity, cognitive distortion, and social disassociation dimensions. Nested ANOVA (i.e., clients nested within prison programs) demonstrated that asocial levels (low, medium, and high risk) predicted treatment engagement. Furthermore, comparisons among asocial risk levels indicated that high asocial clients reported significantly lower engagement levels when compared with low and medium asocial clients. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peripheral oxytocin administration buffers autonomic but not behavioral responses to environmental stressors in isolated prairie voles

Negative social experiences such as social stressors and isolation influence mental and physical illnesses, including affective disorders and heart disease. Studies focused on socially monogamous prairie voles can provide insight into neurobiological systems that underlie the consequences of negative social interactions. Female prairie voles were exposed to 28 days of social isolation or pairing with a female sibling (control). Voles were administered daily oxytocin [20 μg/50 μl, subcutaneous (sc)] or saline vehicle (50 μl, sc) for 14 days and exposed to two behavioral stressors [elevated plus maze (EPM) and resident-intruder test]. Brain tissue was collected for analysis of central peptide levels in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN). Isolation produced autonomic changes [increased heart rate (HR) and decreased HR variability) during both acute stressors and increased anxiety behaviors in the EPM. Oxytocin injection prevented the autonomic consequences of the acute stressors in isolated prairie voles, but did not affect the behaviors tested under the present conditions. Oxytocin had no effect on the behavioral or autonomic responsiveness in paired prairie voles. Oxytocin injection may exert a beneficial effect on autonomic responses to stressors in isolated animals through increasing the number of oxytocin-containing neurons and decreasing the number of corticotropin-releasing hormone-containing neurons in the PVN. Oxytocinergic mechanisms may serve to compensate for autonomic responses associated with chronic isolation and exposure to both social and non-social acute stressors.