Social isolation, psychological health, and protective factors in adolescence

This study investigates the relationships among social isolation, psychological health, and protective factors in adolescents. Feelings of social isolation may influence psychological health in adolescents, but protective factors such as family connectedness, school connectedness, and academic achievement may also play a key role. The sample included 4,746 adolescents from 31 middle and high schools. Participants responded to 221 survey questions regarding peer relationships, psychological health, school connectedness, family relationships, and academic achievement. The findings revealed that social isolation was associated with an increased risk for depressive symptoms, suicide attempts, and low self-esteem. Protective factors influenced associations between social isolation and psychological health. Implications for prevention such as building healthy peer relationships, promoting family connectedness, and developing school-based interventions are discussed.     

Cortical Language Mapping in Epilepsy: A Critical Review

One challenge in dominant hemisphere epilepsy surgery is to remove sufficient epileptogenic tissue to achieve seizure freedom without compromising postoperative language function. Electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) of language was developed specifically to identify essential language cortex in pharmacologically intractable epilepsy patients undergoing left hemisphere resection of epileptogenic cortex. Surprisingly, the procedure remains unstandardized, and limited data support its clinical validity. Nevertheless, ESM for language mapping has likely minimized postoperative language decline in numerous patients, and has generated a wealth of data elucidating brain–language relations. This article reviews the literature on topographical patterns of language organization inferred from ESM, and the influence of patient characteristics on these patterns, including baseline ability level, age, gender, pathology, degree of language lateralization and bilingualism. Questions regarding clinical validity and limitations of ESM are discussed. Finally, recommendations for clinical practice are presented, and theoretical questions regarding ESM and the findings it has generated are considered.     

Natural variation in Drosophila larval reward learning and memory due to a cGMP-dependent protein kinase

Animals must be able to find and evaluate food to ensure survival. The ability to associate a cue with the presence of food is advantageous because it allows an animal to quickly identify a situation associated with a good, bad, or even harmful food. Identifying genes underlying these natural learned responses is essential to understanding this ability. Here, we investigate whether natural variation in the foraging (for) gene in Drosophila melanogaster larvae is important in mediating associations between either an odor or a light stimulus and food reward. We found that for influences olfactory conditioning and that the mushroom bodies play a role in this for-mediated olfactory learning. Genotypes associated with high activity of the product of for, cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG), showed greater memory acquisition and retention compared with genotypes associated with low activity of PKG when trained with three conditioning trials. Interestingly, increasing the number of training trials resulted in decreased memory retention only in genotypes associated with high PKG activity. The difference in the dynamics of memory acquisition and retention between variants of for suggests that the ability to learn and retain an association may be linked to the foraging strategies of the two variants.     

Fathers' parenting hassles and coping: associations with emotional expressiveness and their sons' socioemotional competence

The present study examined fathers' daily parenting hassles and coping strategies to (a) determine their association with fathers' emotional expressiveness and (b) predict their sons' development of socioemotional competence. Fathers of 148 preschool‐aged boys reported on their parenting hassles, coping strategies, and emotional expressiveness; mothers also reported on fathers' emotional expressiveness; and teachers reported on boys' socioemotional competence. Parenting hassles were associated with less rational, more emotional, and more avoidance coping as well as negative emotional expressiveness. More emotional and less rational coping responses were related to more negative expressiveness, whereas more rational, more emotional, and less coping were related to more positive expressiveness. Fathers' negative expressiveness was predictive of their sons being rated as more aggressive and disruptive by their teachers. In addition, fathers' parenting hassles and coping both predicted teacher ratings of their sons' aggressiveness. Implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Completion norms collected from younger and older adults for 198 sentence contexts

Completion responses were collected from younger and older adults for 198 highly constrained sentence contexts that were designed to elicit the same response (i.e., the best completion) in the vast majority of subjects. For each context, completions and their respective frequency of occurrence are provided. Overall, individuals of all ages produced highly similar terminal words. Results of formal analyses indicated that greater socioeconomic status and higher levels of education were mildly associated with a greater probability of producing a best completion response. Although increasing age also correlated with greater probability of producing a best completion, this very weak association would not preclude use of these stimuli with a wide age range.     

“If I didn’t write it,why would I remember it?” Effects of encoding,attention, and practice on accurate and false memory

In two experiments involving recall and recognition, we manipulated encoding strategies, attention, and practice in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott false memory procedure. During the study of auditory word lists, participants listened to the words, wrote the words, wrote the second letter of the words, or counted backward by threes and wrote numbers in time with the words. The results from both experiments showed that, relative to the full-attention hear word condition, the divided-attention write number condition impaired accurate memory, but not false memory. In contrast, the focused-attention write word and write second letter conditions were comparable to the hear word condition in producing accurate memory, yet they were better at reducing false memory. But even after multiple study-test trials, people still falsely recalled or recognized words that they had never written during study. These results are consistent with predictions generated from fuzzy trace theory and the activation/monitoring framework.     

Validity of the Woodcock-Johnson tests of cognitive ability: A comparison with the WISC-R in LD and normal elementary students

The study addresses the external validity of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJTCA) in learning disabled (LD) elementary school children by controlling for two methodological errors Woodcock identified in previous studies: (a) Intellectual ability range was restricted for both normal and LD samples to counteract an artificial inflation of mean WISC-R scores without concomitant effect on WJTCA scores, and (b) the WISC-R was readministered during data collection. In addition, normals were used as controls for LD students. WJTCA scores were correlated and compared with WISC-R scores and reading achievement test scores in 20 normal, 20 mild-to-moderate LD, and 20 severe LD third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students. Results indicate comparability of mean WISC-R and WJTCA Full Scale scores in the normal sample, but manifest a significantly lower WJTCA Full Scale scores in the LD samples, despite a strong degree of correlation between the two tests in each sample. The significant linear trend of increasing mean WISC-R/WJTCA discrepancy across the severity of LD strongly suggests that the lower WJTCA scores in the LD samples is a function of the instrument's achievement emphasis and refutes the possibility of systematic error in the WJTCA norms. Results suggest that the WJTCA's achievement emphasis jeopardizes its validity for assessing and classifying LD students within the currently accepted and mandated ability-achievement discrepancy model of specific learning disabilities.     

Infants’ understanding of auditory events

Infants’ reaching‐in‐the‐dark was studied in a sample of normal 7.5–11‐month‐olds to determine whether infants can use sound cues to localize and recognize the action and objects of complex events. Infants were shown an event in which a moving, sounding object rotated clockwise through the infant's reaching space in the light and dark. Infrared recorded videotapes were later coded for reaching behaviour. Results showed that infants were able to localize the object on most trials in the dark but were slower and less efficient than in the light. Infants grasped the object at first contact and contacted the object near its salient feature in the dark, suggesting recognition of the object. Further, contact time was 1.7 s less when infants grasped the object at first contact in the dark (recognition) than when they touched the object, suggesting that recognition of the object improves reaching efficiency. There were no age and gender differences. In sum, the results support the use of the reaching‐in‐the‐dark method to demonstrate auditory localization of moving sounds and to reveal infants capacity to use represented information to guide subsequent action. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Concordance of self- and informant ratings of adults' current and childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms

Self-informant rating concordance for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms was assessed in 281 adults at the subscale (Inattention, Hyperactivity-Impulsivity) and individual symptom levels. Potential demographic, diagnostic, and informant identity moderators were also investigated. Concordance levels were similar for current and childhood symptoms. Although moderate positive correlations were found between self- and informant ratings on both subscales, informants endorsed more significant inattentive symptom severity. Kappa coefficients were variable, suggesting low concordance for certain symptoms. Sex and ADHD diagnosis moderated concordance, although effect sizes were small. These results have implications for the use of behavior rating scales in diagnosing ADHD, raise questions about the validity of self- and informant ratings, and support the need to investigate individual-differences variables that may impact concordance.     

An Examination of Sociotropy and Excessive Reassurance Seeking in the Prediction of Depression

The study was an examination of the relationship between sociotropy and excessive reassurance seeking in the prediction of depression. Although there is an obvious theoretical link between these constructs, little empirical work has been directed at integrating these constructs. Because it was theorized that sociotropic persons would be relatively more likely to engage in excessive reassurance seeking relative to autonomous individuals, it was predicted that sociotropy, and not autonomy, would be positively related to excessive reassurance seeking. In addition, it was predicted that excessive reassurance seeking would mediate effects of sociotropy upon depression. Overall, the results from 167 undergraduates completing measures for all variables supported these predictions. The results suggest that beyond the psychological vulnerabilities hypothesized by A. T. Beck (1983), sociotropic persons might engage in interpersonal behaviors that exacerbate their response to life stress.