Aggression is suppressed by acute stress but induced by chronic stress: Immobilization effects on aggression, hormones, and cortical 5-HT1B/ striatal dopamine D2 receptor density

Although it has been established by a number of investigators that a variety of stressors are associated with the induction of aggressive behavior, two specific issues remain unanswered. First, it is unclear whether the contexts surrounding stressors (e.g., stressor length and chance of winning over opponents) change outcomes regarding aggressive behavior. Second, if a relationship exists between stress and aggressive behavior, altered levels of stress-related hormone (e.g., corticosterone [CORT]), as well as aggression-related biomarkers (e.g., testosterone [T], density of prefronto-cortical 5-HT(1B) receptor and striatal dopamine D(2) receptor [D2r]) may contribute to changes in aggressive behavior. Thus, we examined how immobilization (with a 1-, 5-, or 10-day exposure) would impact (1) a longitudinal course of aggression toward different-sized opponents, (2) levels of CORT and T, and (3) densities of 5-HT(1B) receptor (5-HT1Br) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and D2r in the striatum. It was found that, regardless of small or large opponents, a single 2-h exposure to immobilization reduced aggressive behavior (stress-suppressed aggression) over time, whereas repeated (10-day) exposure to immobilization escalated aggressive behavior (stress-induced aggression). These stress effects persisted up to 1 week of recovery from immobilization stress. Moreover, immobilized rats demonstrated elevated levels of T, but not CORT, as compared with controls. Finally, acute immobilization altered D2r densities in the shell of the nucleus accumbens, and chronic immobilization changed 5-HT1Br in the PFC, including the downregulation of 5-HT1Br densities in the right prelimbic and orbitolateral cortices. The potential relationships among stress, aggression, and 5-HT1Br/D2r roles are discussed.     

Musicians' working memory for tones, words, and pseudowords

Studies investigating factors that influence tone recognition generally use recognition tests, whereas the majority of the studies on verbal material use self-generated responses in the form of serial recall tests. In the present study we intended to investigate whether tonal and verbal materials share the same cognitive mechanisms, by presenting an experimental instrument that evaluates short-term and working memories for tones, using self-generated sung responses that may be compared to verbal tests. This paradigm was designed according to the same structure of the forward and backward digit span tests, but using digits, pseudowords, and tones as stimuli. The profile of amateur singers and professional singers in these tests was compared in forward and backward digit, pseudoword, tone, and contour spans. In addition, an absolute pitch experimental group was included, in order to observe the possible use of verbal labels in tone memorization tasks. In general, we observed that musical schooling has a slight positive influence on the recall of tones, as opposed to verbal material, which is not influenced by musical schooling. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce melodic contours (up and down patterns) is generally higher than the ability to reproduce exact tone sequences. However, backward spans were lower than forward spans for all stimuli (digits, pseudowords, tones, contour). Curiously, backward spans were disproportionately lower for tones than for verbal material-that is, the requirement to recall sequences in backward rather than forward order seems to differentially affect tonal stimuli. This difference does not vary according to musical expertise.     

Electrophysiological correlates of impaired reading in dyslexic pre-adolescent children

In this study, event related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the extent to which dyslexics (aged 9-13 years) differ from normally reading controls in early ERPs, which reflect prelexical orthographic processing, and in late ERPs, which reflect implicit phonological processing. The participants performed an implicit reading task, which was manipulated in terms of letter-specific processing, orthographic familiarity, and phonological structure. Comparing consonant- and symbol sequences, the results showed significant differences in the P1 and N1 waveforms in the control but not in the dyslexic group. The reduced P1 and N1 effects in pre-adolescent children with dyslexia suggest a lack of visual specialization for letter-processing. The P1 and N1 components were not sensitive to the familiar vs. less familiar orthographic sequence contrast. The amplitude of the later N320 component was larger for phonologically legal (pseudowords) compared to illegal (consonant sequences) items in both controls and dyslexics. However, the topographic differences showed that the controls were more left-lateralized than the dyslexics. We suggest that the development of the mechanisms that support literacy skills in dyslexics is both delayed and follows a non-normal developmental path. This contributes to the hemispheric differences observed and might reflect a compensatory mechanism in dyslexics.     

Non-bayesian inference: causal structure trumps correlation

The study tests the hypothesis that conditional probability judgments can be influenced by causal links between the target event and the evidence even when the statistical relations among variables are held constant. Three experiments varied the causal structure relating three variables and found that (a) the target event was perceived as more probable when it was linked to evidence by a causal chain than when both variables shared a common cause; (b) predictive chains in which evidence is a cause of the hypothesis gave rise to higher judgments than diagnostic chains in which evidence is an effect of the hypothesis; and (c) direct chains gave rise to higher judgments than indirect chains. A Bayesian learning model was applied to our data but failed to explain them. An explanation-based hypothesis stating that statistical information will affect judgments only to the extent that it changes beliefs about causal structure is consistent with the results.     

Exploring the Construct of Perceived Burdensomeness Among Suicidal Adolescents: An Intervention Development Study

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide has a growing base of empirical support for use with adolescents. Of the two interpersonal constructs that...     

Women and body dissatisfaction: Does sexual orientation make a difference?

In this study, heterosexual (n = 95) and nonheterosexual (n = 84) women were asked to rate figure drawings and computer-generated images of women that varied in body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and breast size in terms of self, ideal, and cultural ideal; discrepancy indices, indicating body dissatisfaction, were created for each body aspect. Nonheterosexual women had significantly higher body mass indices (BMIs) than heterosexual women, but when the effects of BMI were controlled, participants evidenced similar perceptions of their bodies, their ideal bodies, and the female cultural ideal, as well as similar levels of body dissatisfaction for body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and breast size. The results of this study suggest that being a member of a society that highly values a thin, curvaceous, relatively large-breasted body puts women, regardless of sexual orientation, at risk for body dissatisfaction.     

Body dissatisfaction levels and gender differences in attentional biases toward idealized bodies

Attentional bias toward idealized bodies (men: muscular; women: thin) may cause upward comparisons and increase body dissatisfaction (BD). We investigated attentional biases of 39 men and 41 women with high and low BD toward muscular male bodies and thin female bodies. An eye-tracker measured gaze durations and fixation frequencies while exposing participants to images of thin, normal, muscular, and fat bodies of the same gender. Results revealed longer and more frequent attention toward muscular bodies in high BD men, and toward thin bodies in high BD women. High BD men and women also rated muscular and thin bodies as more attractive than those with low BD. Although men attended to muscular and women attended to thin bodies, both showed an attentional bias toward body types they rated as more attractive. These findings could provide indirect evidence in explaining the relationship between BD and the social comparison theory with attentional bias.     

Fostering connections between graduate students and strengthening professional identity through co-mentoring

For counsellors and counsellor educators, developing a sound sense of professional identity is a necessity in preserving and advancing the counselling field. In an effort to promote professional identity development in a group of counsellors in training, a co-mentoring programme was developed that paired master's level and doctoral level counsellors. The participants used letter writing and email to support the development of these mentoring relationships over the course of a semester. This study attempted to measure the effectiveness of the co-mentoring programme using interview data and written artefacts. An open, axial and selective coding process was employed. The participants of the study identified themes of enhanced professional identity development and collegial professional relationships as a result of participating in the co-mentoring relationship. Further research is needed to determine how best to support professional identity development for emerging professionals and the effectiveness of mentoring relationships and letter writing in this developmental process. A co-mentoring programme may offer training settings an opportunity for student self-awareness and growth in an experiential and meaningful manner, as well as providing additional opportunities for students to develop their professional identity. Implications for the use of co-mentoring and mentoring programmes to aid in the identity development of counsellors or other professionals are addressed.     

An Evaluation of Alternative Ways of Computing the Creativity Quotient in a Design School Sample

Certain educational programs and jobs require selecting individuals based on their creativity. Tests of creativity are commonly based on divergent thinking tasks. The scoring of the ideational output of such tasks should ideally be done based on fluency (the number of ideas generated), flexibility (the number of categories into which the generated ideas can be partitioned), and originality (the number of unique or unusual ideas). However, most scoring procedures do not take into account all three dimensions. Building on the Creativity Quotient (CQ) measure (Snyder, Mitchell, Bossomaier & Pallier, 2004 Snyder , A. , Mitchell , J. , Bossomaier , T. , & Pallier , G. ( 2004 ). The creativity quotient: An objective scoring of ideational fluency . Creativity Research Journal , 16 , 415 – 420 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which covers fluency and flexibility, an adjusted CQ and two CQs based on diversity type measures are proposed. Findings indicated that an adjusted measure that weights categories based on their discriminative power was most strongly related to other predictors of performance on creative tasks and thus presents an important advance over the original CQ.