Immobility reaction at birth in newborn infant

Objective

To describe an immobility reaction (IR) that was not previously reported at or immediately after birth in human newborns.

Method

We analyzed 31 videos of normal term vaginal deliveries recorded from Time 0 of birth defined as the as the moment that lies between the birth of the thorax and the pelvis of the infant. We searched for perinatal factors associated with newborn's IR.

Results

IR at birth was observed in 8 of the 31 newborns. The main features of their behavior were immobilization, frozen face, shallow breathing and bradycardia. One of the 8 newborns had sudden collapse 2 h after birth. We found significant relationships between maternal prenatal stress (PS) and IR (p = .037), and a close to significant one between infants’ lividness at Time 0 and IR (p = .053). The first breath of the 31 newborns occurred before and was not associated with the first cry (p < .001).

Discussion

The main features of IR at birth are similar to those of the universal most severe response to severe stress or danger. The relationship with PS suggests that children who had IR at birth might be at risk for similar disorders as those associated with PS. Sudden neonatal collapse of one of the IR newborns needs further research to determine if they are at risk for sudden infant death syndrome.

Conclusion

This first report of an IR reaction at birth in human infants could open up new paths for improving early neonatal care. Further research is needed for maternal PS, stress hormones, umbilical cord blood pH measurements in IR newborns. The challenge of education and support for parents of IR newborns is outlined.     

The subjective effort of everyday mental tasks: Attending,assessing, and choosing

Why are some mental tasks experienced as more effortful than others? Answers to this question about subjective effort have begun to be addressed by researchers investigating why some mental tasks are associated with more ‘elbow grease’ or ‘depletion’ than other tasks. It has been proposed that tasks such as sustained attention should be accompanied by more subjective effort than other tasks, such as assessing (e.g., counting a handful of items) or choosing randomly between two alternatives. In general, these proposals coincide with people’s intuitions regarding how effort should vary by mental task. However, little laboratory data have corroborated these conclusions. In two studies, we cataloged the relative amount of subjective effort associated with some basic and ubiquitous mental activities: attending (most subjective effort), assessing, and choosing (least subjective effort). Results support hypotheses about subjective effort. Because subjective effort is perceived to be experienced by a subject, we explored also the relationship between effort and the involvement of the ‘psychological self.’     

The notion of happiness in early Wittgenstein: towards a non-contentful account of happiness

This paper examines the notion of ‘happiness’ in the writings of the early Wittgenstein as a notion that does not involve any particular content or states of mind. The main question that the paper addresses is how we can retain a non-contentful account of happiness without turning happiness into an abstract notion, isolated from our concrete lives in language. The paper examines two pivotal components of the Wittgensteinian account of happiness: the ‘good exercise of the will’ and the ‘artistic way of seeing’. In both cases, I try to stress their non-contentful dimension, while simultaneously trying to understand them through language. The central concept for such a non-contentful aspect of language is the notion of ‘meaningfulness’. Thus the paper examines the pivotal components of the Wittgensteinian account of happiness in relation to the notion of ‘meaningfulness’: happiness is then explained as seeing a world against the background of possibilities of meaning.     

BDNF serum levels in subjects developing or not post-traumatic stress disorder after trauma exposure

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a syndrome resulting from exposure to a severe traumatic event that poses threatened death or injury and produces intense fear and helplessness. The neural structures implicated in PTSD development belong to the limbic system, an important region for emotional processing. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a neurotrophin that serves as survival factor for selected populations of central nervous system (CNS) neurons and plays a role in the limbic system by regulating synaptic plasticity, memory processes and behavior. Impaired BDNF production in the brain can lead to a variety of CNS dysfunctions including symptoms associated with PTSD. However, so far fewer studies have investigated this neurotrophin in patients with PTSD. Furthermore, given the multiple role of BDNF in various CNS disorders, it cannot be excluded that traumatic events per se may influence neurotrophin levels, without a direct association to the PTSD syndrome.     

Differentiation of Self and Social Justice Commitment Mediated by Hope

This study tested a theoretical model of hope mediating the relationship between differentiation of self and social justice commitment among graduate students (N = 202) in the helping professions. The theory was based primarily on the social justice philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr., Cornel West, and Paulo Freire using a cultural psychology approach. Results generally supported the theoretical model. Implications are considered for both training and future research on social justice.     

The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian

We developed affective norms for 1,121 Italian words in order to provide researchers with a highly controlled tool for the study of verbal processing. This database was developed from translations of the 1,034 English words present in the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999) and from words taken from Italian semantic norms (Montefinese, Ambrosini, Fairfield, & Mammarella, Behavior Research Methods, 45, 440–461, 2013). Participants evaluated valence, arousal, and dominance using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in a Web survey procedure. Participants also provided evaluations of three subjective psycholinguistic indexes (familiarity, imageability, and concreteness), and five objective psycholinguistic indexes (e.g., word frequency) were also included in the resulting database in order to further characterize the Italian words. We obtained a typical quadratic relation between valence and arousal, in line with previous findings. We also tested the reliability of the present ANEW adaptation for Italian by comparing it to previous affective databases and performing split-half correlations for each variable. We found high split-half correlations within our sample and high correlations between our ratings and those of previous studies, confirming the validity of the adaptation of ANEW for Italian. This database of affective norms provides a tool for future research about the effects of emotion on human cognition.     

Motor imagery in spinal cord injury patients: Moving makes the difference

Both real action control and execution and motor imagery abilities require knowledge of the spatial location of body parts, in other words efference copy information and feedbacks from the sensory system (Frith et al., 2000, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci., 355, 1771). Spinal cord injuries induce severe motor disability, due to a damage of the descending motor pathways (Cramer et al., 2007, Exp. Brain. Res., 177, 233). Patients' motor imagery competences are variably reported as either normal or defective (Decety & Boisson, 1990, Eur. Arch. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci., 240, 39; Lacourse et al., 1999, Behav. Brain Sci., 104, 73). We explored biomechanical constraint effects in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) patients, as they are considered the most reliable indexes of motor imagery abilities (Parsons, 1987b, Cogn. Psychol., 19, 178). Sixteen spinal cord injuries patients and 16 neurologically unimpaired subjects have been administered with (1) the Hand Laterality Task (HLT), in which subjects were asked to judge the laterality of a rotated hand; and (2) the Mirror Letter Discrimination Task (MLD), in which subjects were asked to judge if a rotated character was in its correct upright position or mirror‐reversed form. Our patients did not present the effect of stimulus orientation, neither did they show any effect related to biomechanical constraints. Based on these data, the hypothesis is that SCI patients' performance may be ascribed to the use of a different strategy to solve the tasks, based on memory rather than on mental rotation.     

Executive functions,impulsivity, and inhibitory control in adolescents: A structural equation model

Background. Adolescence represents a critical period for brain development, addressed by neurodevelopmental models to frontal, subcortical-limbic, and striatal activation, a pattern associated with rise of impulsivity and deficits in inhibitory control. The present study aimed at studying the association between self-report measures of impulsivity and inhibitory control with executive function in adolescents, employing structural equation modeling. Method. Tests were administered to 434 high school students. Acting without thinking was measured through the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale and the Dickman Impulsivity Inventory, reward sensitivity through the Behavioral Activation System, and sensation seeking through the Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personali- ty Questionnaire. Inhibitory control was assessed through the Behavioral Inhibition System. The performance at the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task indicated executive function. Three models were specified using Sample Covariance Matrix, and the estimated parameters using Maximum Likelihood. Results. In the final model, impulsivity and inhibitory control predicted executive function, but sensation seeking did not. The fit of the model to data was excellent. Conclusions. The hypothesis that inhibitory control and impulsivity are predictors of executive function was supported. Our results appear informative of the validity of self-report measures to examine the relation between impulsivity traits rather than others to regulatory function of cognition and behavior.