Health-Related Quality of Life,Functioning and Social Experiences in People with Psychotic Disorders

Applied Research in Quality of Life - To inform development of a model for health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in people with psychotic disorders, we aimed to assess correlations between...     

Working and reference memory of pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) in a holeboard spatial discrimination task: the influence of environmental enrichment

Interest in cognitive research in pigs is increasing, but little is known about the impact of environmental conditions on pigs’ cognitive capabilities. The present study investigated the effect of environmental enrichment on cognitive performance of pigs in a holeboard spatial task, in which they had to discriminate four baited buckets out of 16. Pigs (n = 32) were either housed in stimulus-poor, barren pens, or in larger pens enriched with rooting substrates. Pigs were subjected to 30 holeboard trials. Both working memory (WM), that is, the ratio (baited visits/total number of (re)visits to baited buckets), and reference memory (RM), that is, the ratio ((re)visits to baited buckets/total number of visits to all buckets), improved over trials. WM scores were higher in pigs from enriched pens than in pigs from barren pens. Housing did not affect RM scores. Personality type of the pigs, as assessed early in life using a backtest, did not affect WM or RM. In conclusion, housing conditions of pigs did not affect reference memory, but environmental enrichment improved working memory of pigs in a spatial discrimination task. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest that cognitive functioning of pigs may be impaired under commonly used housing conditions.     

Megachiropteran bats (Pteropus) utilize human referential stimuli to locate hidden food

Spontaneous point-following behavior has been considered an indicator of advanced social cognition unique to humans. Recently, it has been suggested that a close evolutionary relationship with humans could result in similar social skills in domesticated species. An alternative view is that the mechanism is not genetic domestication alone but instead a combination of phylogenetic and ontogenetic variables. Here we test the necessity of phylogenetic domestication by investigating the point-following behavior of a captive population of nondomesticated megachiropteran bats (Pteropus pumilus, Pteropus rodricensis, Pteropus conspicillatus, Pteropus vampyrus). Three of five subjects were highly successful in following an unfamiliar human's point to a target location, providing the first empirical evidence of cross-species social referencing in bats. The three successful bats were all born in captivity and socialized to humans early in life, whereas unsuccessful bats were wild-born individuals. This study provides evidence that referential point following is not restricted to domesticated animals and indicates that early experience may be important. Megachiropteran bats may prove to be a useful model for studying social behaviors.     

Comparison of pausing behavior in children who stutter and children who have Asperger syndrome

Purpose

The objective of this research was to compare the number and types of grammatical and non-grammatical silent pauses presented by stutterers and subjects with Asperger syndrome in their narratives.

Method

Ten children who stutter and four participants with Asperger syndrome (mean ages of both groups 10 years) were assessed at the Speech and Language Disorders Department of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo/Brasil. They narrated a story based on a pre-selected sequence of pictures. They were filmed and their productions were analyzed using version 5.0.47 of Praat (http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/download_win.html). Silent intervals in the speech that ranged from 0.25 to 4 s were considered pauses. The pauses were classified as grammatical and non-grammatical, depending on the words that preceded and followed them.

Results

Both groups presented grammatical and non-grammatical pauses and the former predominated. The children with Asperger syndrome produced a greater number of pauses than the stutterers.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) characterize the use of pauses in the oral narrative; (2) distinguish a grammatical pause from a non-grammatical pause regarding the use and function; (3) recognize the pattern of pause found in the two populations.     

Passive tactile feedback facilitates mental rotation of handheld objects

Mental rotation of objects improves when passive tactile information for the rotating object accompanies the imagined rotation (Wraga, Creem, & Proffitt, 2000). We examined this phenomenon further using a within-subjects paradigm involving handheld objects. In Experiment 1, participants imagined rotating an unseen object placed on their upturned palms. The participants were faster at mental rotation when the object was rotated on their palm than when the object remained stationary. Experiment 2 tested whether the performance advantage would endure when the participants received tactile information for only the start- and endpoints of the rotation event. This manipulation did not improve performance, relative to a stationary control. Experiment 3 revealed that ambiguous tactile information, continuous with the rotation event but independent of object shape, actually degraded performance, relative to a stationary control. In Experiment 4, we found that continuous tactile rotation discrepant from imagined object movement also hindered performance, as compared with continuous tactile information aligned with imagined object movement. The findings suggest a tight coupling between tactile information specifying continuous object rotation and the corresponding internal representation of the rotating object.     

Morphological knowledge as revealed in children's spelling accuracy and reports of spelling strategies

The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a derivative revealed the silent ending, and (c) lexical words that had silent consonant endings for which no familiar derivative revealed the ending. Children were also asked to provide immediate retrospective reports of the strategies used to spell each word. Two experiments (Ns = 46 and 39) were conducted. As expected, children in Grade 4 spelled phonological words more accurately than they did words with silent consonant endings. In addition, children spelled morphological words more accurately than they did lexical words. Reports of using retrieval were associated with accurate performance across word types. Importantly, reports of using morphological strategies to spell morphological words were associated with a similar level of accuracy, as were reports of using retrieval. Even though children reported using a phonological strategy frequently across all word types, this strategy was associated with accurate performance only for spelling phonological words. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 with another set of stimuli and also showed that children's morphological awareness predicted their spelling accuracy for morphological words as well as the reported frequency of morphological strategy use. In sum, the findings revealed that most children showed evidence of adaptive strategy use.     

Breasts Are for Men: Media, Masculinity Ideologies, and Men’s Beliefs About Women’s Bodies

Although masculinity ideology (MI) has been shown to predict men’s sexual risk-taking, less is known about MI’s contribution to men’s beliefs about women and their sexual bodies. Accordingly, we examined associations between masculine ideology, media consumption, and men’s attitudes about women’s reproductive body functions among a sample of 656 undergraduate men. Participants completed measures assessing their endorsement of traditional gender ideologies, their levels of media exposure and engagement, and their attitudes toward childbirth and breastfeeding. It was hypothesized that media use would contribute to traditional MI, and that traditional MI would contribute to negative views about breastfeeding and childbirth. Results supported these individual connections, but not a mediated model. Discussion focuses on implications of these findings for women’s lives.     

Neural Correlates of Reward Processing in Adolescents With a History of Inhibited Temperament

ABSTRACT— Functional imaging data were acquired during performance of a reward-contingency task in a unique cohort of adolescents (ages 14–18 years) who were characterized since infancy on measures of temperamental behavioral inhibition. Neural activation was examined in striatal structures (nucleus accumbens, putamen, caudate) with a known role in facilitating response to salient reward-related cues. Adolescents with a history of behavioral inhibition, relative to noninhibited adolescents, showed increased activation in the nucleus accumbens when they believed their selection of an action would affect reward outcome. Neural responses did not differ between the two groups when participants made a prespecified response that they knew would result in reward or when they produced random motor responses that they knew would not be rewarded. These results link inhibited temperament and perturbed neural responses to reward-contingency cues.