Young people's topography of musical functions: Personal, social and cultural experiences with music across genders and six societies

How can we understand the uses of music in daily life? Music is a universal phenomenon but with significant interindividual and cultural variability. Listeners’ gender and cultural background may influence how and why music is used in daily life. This paper reports the first investigation of a holistic framework and a new measure of music functions (RESPECT‐music) across genders and six diverse cultural samples (students from Germany, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, and Turkey). Two dimensions underlie the mental representation of music functions. First, music can be used for contemplation or affective functions. Second, music can serve intrapersonal, social, and sociocultural functions. Results reveal that gender differences occur for affective functions, indicating that female listeners use music more for affective functions, i.e., emotional expression, dancing, and cultural identity. Country differences are moderate for social functions (values, social bonding, dancing) and strongest for sociocultural function (cultural identity, family bonding, political attitudes). Cultural values, such as individualism–collectivism and secularism–traditionalism, can help explain cross‐cultural differences in the uses of music. Listeners from more collectivistic cultures use music more frequently for expressing values and cultural identity. Listeners from more secular and individualistic cultures like to dance more. Listeners from more traditional cultures use music more for expressing values and cultural identity, and they bond more frequently with their families over music. The two dimensions of musical functions seem systematically underpinned by listeners’ gender and cultural background. We discuss the uses of music as behavioral expressions of affective and contemplative as well as personal, social, and sociocultural aspects in terms of affect proneness and cultural values.     

A cultural mismatch: Independent cultural norms produce greater increases in cortisol and more negative emotions among first-generation college students

American universities increasingly admit first-generation students—students whose parents do not have four-year degrees. Once admitted, these students experience greater challenges adjusting to universities compared to continuing-generation students—students who have at least one parent with a four-year degree. This additional adversity is typically explained in terms of first-generation students' relative lack of economic (e.g., money) or academic (e.g., preparation) resources. We propose that this adversity also stems from a cultural mismatch between the mostly middle-class, independent norms institutionalized in American universities and the relatively interdependent norms that first-generation students are socialized with in working-class contexts before college. As predicted, an experiment revealed that framing the university culture in terms of independent norms (cultural mismatch) led first-generation students to show greater increases in cortisol and less positive/more negative emotions than continuing-generation students while giving a speech. However, reframing the university culture to include interdependent norms (cultural match) eliminated this gap.     

Dissociating the representation of action- and sound-related concepts in middle temporal cortex

Modality-specific models of conceptual memory propose close links between concepts and the sensory-motor systems. Neuroimaging studies found, in different subject groups, that action-related and sound-related concepts activated different parts of posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), suggesting a modality-specific representation of conceptual features. However, as these different parts of pMTG are close to each other, it is possible that the observed anatomical difference is merely related to interindividual variability. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we now investigated within the same participant group a possible conceptual feature-specific organization in pMTG. Participants performed lexical decisions on sound-related (e.g., telephone) and action-related (hammer) words. Sound words elicited higher activity in anterior pMTG adjacent to auditory association cortex, but action-related words did so in posterior pMTG close to motion sensitive areas. These results confirm distinct conceptual representations of sound and action in pMTG, just adjacent to the respective modality-specific cortices.     

The construction of emotional experience requires the integration of implicit and explicit emotional processes

Although we agree that a constructivist approach to emotional experience makes sense, we propose that implicit (visceromotor and somatomotor) emotional processes are dissociable from explicit (attention and reflection) emotional processes, and that the conscious experience of emotion requires an integration of the two. Assessments of implicit emotion and emotional awareness can be helpful in the neuroscientific investigation of emotion.     

Psychoedukation bei Borderline-Pers?nlichkeitsst?rungen für Betroffene und Angeh?rige

Psychoeducation programs have been developed for patients with psychoses and also for patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Psychoeducation has the function of a basic psychotherapeutic program that offers patients and their relatives a better understanding of the illness and of the treatment options as well as a means of communication at eye level with the therapists. This article introduces the Munich model of psychoeducation for BPD and the modifications for the work with relatives.     

Migranten in sozial schwachen Stadtteilen von Berlin

Background

The aim of the present study was to compare psychological distress and substance use between migrant and non-migrant populations in a socially deprived area of Berlin.

Methods

A population-based random sample stratified for age (18?C57?years) and gender (50% female) was retrieved from the registration office. A total of 143 persons were included in the study. The participation rate was 48.5% when contact was established. Psychological distress was assessed using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) with its four subscales, somatic symptoms, anxiety/insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression. Substance use was quantified using the Alcohol Use Identification Disorder Test (AUDIT) and the Fagerstr?m Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND).

Results

Of the study population 51.3% were first or second generation migrants and lived more often in single households. Migrants had lower educational levels and lower employment rates. The mean scores of migrants and non-migrants did not differ on any of the subscales somatic symptoms, anxiety/depression, social dysfunction or severe depression of the GHQ-28. Non-migrants showed significantly higher risks regarding alcohol use.

Discussion

The present study did not reveal any differences regarding symptom profiles in the spectrum of anxiety and depression between non-migrants and migrants who lived in a socially deprived area. Migrants may compensate higher social risk profiles with lower risks regarding alcohol use. Larger samples have to inform on possible differences regarding smoking and other substances.     

Birth-cohort effects in the association between personality and fertility

The present study investigated whether associations between individuals' personality traits and whether they have children have been modified by birth-cohort effects in the 20th-century United States. Participants were from the Midlife Development in the United States study (n = 6,259) and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n = 3,994) and were born between 1914 and 1974. Data on personality traits of the Five Factor model and fertility history were collected in adulthood. Higher levels of openness to experience in both sexes and higher levels of conscientiousness in women were associated with lower fertility, and these associations strengthened linearly as birth cohorts became younger. In the total sample, high extraversion, low neuroticism, and women's high agreeableness were associated with high fertility rate, but there were no systematic cohort effects. The fertility decisions of people with certain personality traits may be influenced by prevailing societal and cultural circumstances.     

Juvenile stress potentiates aversive 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations and freezing during auditory fear conditioning in adult male rats

Traumatic experiences that occur during adolescence can render individuals vulnerable to mood and anxiety disorders. A model in juvenile rats (age: 27-29 days) was developed previously to study the long-term effects of adolescent stress exposure on behaviour and physiology. This paradigm, termed juvenile stress, involves subjecting juvenile rats to different stressors on consecutive days over a 3-day period. Here, we investigated the effects of the juvenile stress paradigm on freezing behaviour and aversive 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during auditory fear conditioning in adult male rats (age: 68-90 days). We found that rats previously subjected to juvenile stress increased aversive 22-kHz USVs (total calls and time spent calling) compared with controls during fear-conditioning training. The acoustic USV parameters between control and juvenile stress rats were largely equivalent, including duration, peak frequency and amplitude. While rats did not differ in freezing behaviour during fear conditioning, juvenile stress rats exhibited greater cue-conditioned freezing upon testing 24 h later. Our results show that juvenile stress elicited different long-term changes in freezing and aversive USVs during fear conditioning. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of assessing USVs to detect experience-dependent differences between control and stress-exposed animals which are not detectable by measuring visible behaviour.