The Relationship Between Premenstrual Distress and Anxiety Sensitivity: The Mediating Role of Rumination

Given that premenstrual distress is reported by large numbers of women, research has focused on the identification of biological and psychological factors that influence its severity. Previous research suggests that women who are high in anxiety sensitivity also report greater levels of premenstrual distress and negative affect. According to the menstrual reactivity hypothesis, women who have a tendency to self-focus and catastrophize about physical sensations are more likely to report greater levels of premenstrual distress. Cognitive schemas surrounding the menstrual cycle develop that are influenced by gender roles, cultural stereotypes, and expectations about bodily sensations. Another cognitive process, rumination, may also be linked to increased reports of premenstrual distress. Conceptually, the constructs of anxiety sensitivity and rumination share the tendency to self-focus on internal states. The goal of this study was to investigate how these two constructs relate to the prediction of premenstrual distress in a large sample of healthy undergraduate women (N = 478). Using mediational modeling, support was found for a mediational model; women who reported high levels of rumination and anxiety sensitivity reported the greatest premenstrual distress. These results are discussed within the framework of the menstrual reactivity hypothesis, a diathesis-stress model of premenstrual distress.     

Sleep arrangements and night waking at 6 and 12 months in relation to infants' stress‐induced cortisol responses

The objective of this short‐term longitudinal study was to examine the concurrent and prospective associations of infants' sleep arrangements and night waking with cortisol responses to an inoculation at 6 and 12 months, controlling for several key covariates. To our knowledge, this was the first study to concurrently and prospectively link proximity in sleep arrangements and night waking to physiological stress reactivity. A sample of 92 mother–infant dyads participated in the study when the infants were 6 and 12 months of age, although sample sizes were reduced for some analyses. Both proximal cosleeping arrangements and more frequent night wakings' were associated concurrently with an increased cortisol response to inoculations at both ages. Night waking at 6 months also was associated with a slightly increased cortisol response to inoculation at 12 months. Results aimed at exploring the direction of influence suggested that cosleeping and night waking may influence infant stress physiology rather than the reverse. Adaptive and maladaptive implications of infants' nocturnal experiences and greater stress‐induced cortisol responses are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Observer XT: A tool for the integration and synchronization of multimodal signals

The Observer was originally developed as a manual event recorder for the collection, management, analysis, and presentation of observational data in animals. Because of the flexibility of later versions, it became clear that The Observer was suitable for almost any study involving collection of observational data in both animals and humans. Furthermore, the most recent version of The Observer (The Observer XT) allows the integration and synchronization of multimodal signals from various sources, such as observational, video, tracking, and physiological data. This article describes how The Observer XT was used to integrate and synchronize video, observational, tracking, and physiological data from an experiment carried out in 2001 at the Wageningen Institute of Animal Sciences of Wageningen University and Research Centre. The integration and synchronization of these multimodal signals in The Observer XT allows the user to draw a more complete picture of the phenomena under study.     

The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown. Here we report three experiments in which adult participants learned novel words in the spoken or sung modality. While we found no benefit of musical presentation on free recall or recognition memory of novel words, novel words learned in the sung modality were more strongly integrated in the mental lexicon compared to words learned in the spoken modality. This advantage for the sung words was only present when the training melody was familiar. The impact of musical presentation on learning therefore appears to extend beyond episodic memory and can be reflected in the emergence and properties of new lexical representations.     

Relational insecurity heightens sensitivity to limbal rings in partnered women

Limbal rings augment perceived facial health and attractiveness. We thus expected sensitivity to their presence would depend on motives to seek alternative relationship partners among those feeling insecure about a current pairbond. Despite partnered women's relative insensitivity to good gene cues, partnered women feeling relationally dissatisfied might heighten acuity toward limbal rings. We primed single and partnered women with secure or insecure attachment before evaluating the health of male and female faces with and without limbal rings. Insecurity‐primed partnered women demonstrated greater perceptual acuity toward limbal rings than security‐primed partnered women; this sensitivity was reduced in single women. Findings contribute to literature implicating limbal rings as a health cue, demonstrating how dissatisfaction of mating goals modulates preferences for facial features.     

Associations between prenatal maternal mental health indices and mother–infant relationship quality 6 to 18 months’ postpartum: A systematic review

Maternal mental disorders can significantly impact on children's psychosocial and psychological development, incurring substantial ongoing economic and personal costs. A key mediating mechanism is mother–infant relationship quality (MIRQ). Research studies and perinatal mental health screening initiatives have predominantly focused on depressive symptoms and perinatal depression as predictors of MIRQ. While maternal depression is associated with suboptimal MIRQ, the findings have not been consistent. Personality characteristics are associated with parenting and proneness to depression, presenting a potential addition to prenatal mental health assessment. We conducted a systematic review of studies that have examined the link between prenatal depressive symptoms and/or personality characteristics with postnatal MIRQ. Our findings suggest that both maternal personality traits and depressive symptoms measured in early pregnancy are associated with postnatal MIRQ. A measure of personality characteristics may enhance prenatal mental health assessment, affording opportunities for targeted intervention commencing in pregnancy to improve MIRQ, parenting, maternal mental health outcomes, and infant psychosocial and psychological development, and thereby contributing to the reduction of human and economic cost burdens.     

The Logical Style of Confucius’ Analects

Considered from a logical point of view, Confucius’ Analects contain many implicit forms of reasoning and argumentation. This is shown first by analyzing the phenomenon of parallelism: direct parallelism is often a way of hinting at a general assertion, whereas anti-parallelism hides dilemmas, generalizations and modal notions of “moral preference.” The Analects also have various types of conditionals, ranging from material implications, to modalized implications, and counterfactual conditionals, which are the germs of implicit reasoning, concluding with a moral recommendation. Analogies are particularly abundant and a presentation of three examples suggests that, beyond their explicative role, they also involve moral recommendations. The implicit logic of The Analects requires an active, albeit unconscious participation of the reader, which could be an important element in explaining the enduring influence of the text.     

Age differences in the Big Five across the life span: evidence from two national samples

Cross-sectional age differences in the Big Five personality traits were investigated using 2 large datasets from Great Britain and Germany: the British Household Panel Study (BHPS; N > or = 14,039) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSEOP; N > or = 20,852). Participants, who ranged in age from 16 to the mid-80s, completed a 15-item version of the Big Five Inventory (e.g., John & Srivastava, 1999) in either 2005 or 2006. The observed age trends were generally consistent across both datasets. Extraversion and Openness were negatively associated with age, whereas Agreeableness was positively associated with age. Average levels of Conscientiousness were highest for participants in middle age. The only exception was Neuroticism, which was slightly negatively associated with age in the BHPS and slightly positively associated with age in the GSEOP. Neither gender nor education level were consistent moderators of age differences in the Big Five.