Development of a Biomedical Program of Research in the Blackfeet Community: Challenges and Rewards

American Indian (AI) communities have high levels of stress and trauma and are disproportionately affected by numerous preventable diseases. Here, we describe an academic–community partnership based on a collaboration between Blackfeet Community College students and faculty in Psychology and Immunology at Montana State University (MSU). The collaboration, which has spanned over 5 years, was sparked by community interest in the relationship between stress and disease on the Blackfeet reservation. Specifically, community members wanted to understand how the experience of psychological stress and trauma may affect disease risk in their community and identify factors that promote resilience. In doing so, they hoped to identify pathways through which health could be improved for individual community members. Here, we discuss all stages of the collaborative process, including development of measures and methods and themes of research projects, challenges for community members and non‐indigenous collaborators, future directions for research, and the lessons learned. Finally, we note the ways in which this partnership and experience has advanced the science of community engagement in tribal communities, with the hope that our experiences will positively affect future collaborations between indigenous community members and non‐indigenous scientists.     

‘Blue Whale Challenge’: A Game or Crime?

A bewildering range of games are emerging every other day with newer elements of fun and entertainment to woo youngsters. Games are meant to reduce stress and enhance the cognitive development of children as well as adults. Teenagers are always curious to indulge in newer games; and e-gaming is one such platform providing an easy access and quicker means of entertainment. The particular game challenge which has taken the world by storm is the dangerous “Blue Whale Challenge” often involving vulnerable teenagers. The Blue Whale Challenge is neither an application nor internet based game but the users get a link through social media chat groups to enter this “deadly” challenge game. This probably is the only game where the participant has to end his/her life to complete the game. The innocent teenagers are being targeted based on their depressed psychology and are coercively isolated from their social milieux on the pretext of keeping the challenges confidential. To add to the woes, no option is offered to quit the challenge even if the contender is unable to complete the challenge. Blue Whale Challenge in its sheer form could be seen as an illegal, unethical and inhumane endeavor in our present society. The present communication discusses the severe effects of the game on teenagers, the ethical concerns involved and the preventive measures necessary to curb it.

     

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN RETRACTED: Enumeration of objects and substances in non‐human primates: experiments with brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus)

Both human infants and adult non‐human primates share the capacity to track small numbers of objects across time and occlusion. The question now facing developmental and comparative psychologists is whether similar mechanisms give rise to this capacity across the two populations. Here, we explore whether non‐human primates’ object tracking abilities are subject to the same constraints as those of human infants. In particular, we examine whether one primate species, the brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus), also fails to represent and enumerate objects when they behave non‐rigidly or non‐cohesively. We presented lemurs with a series of expectancy violation studies involving simple 1 + 1 addition events in which we varied the entities to be enumerated. Like infants, lemurs successfully enumerated the two objects when those objects were rigid, cohesive individuals, but failed to enumerate similar‐looking non‐rigid piles of sand. In contrast to human infants, however, lemurs successfully enumerated non‐cohesive objects that broke into multiple pieces. These results are discussed in light of recent theories about object processing in human infants and adults.     

Changes in sleep quality and levels of psychological distress during the adaptation to university: The role of childhood adversity

Stress-related sleep disturbances are common, and poor sleep quality can negatively affect health. Previous work indicates that early-life adversity is associated with compromised sleep quality later in life, but it is unknown whether it predicts greater declines in sleep quality during stressful life transitions. We propose and test a conceptual model whereby individuals who reported experiencing greater levels of child maltreatment would experience greater psychological distress during a stressful life transition, which in turn would contribute to greater declines in sleep quality, relative to their quality of sleep before the stressful transition. Controlling for potential confounding variables (e.g., age, gender), structural equation modelling demonstrated that psychological distress experienced during a stressful transition (i.e., beginning life at university) mediated the relationship between childhood emotional neglect and changes in sleep quality. The hypothesized model demonstrated a good overall fit to the data, χ ² (15) = 17.69, p = .279, CFI = .99, TLI = .97, SRMR = .04, RMSEA = .04 (90% CI <0.001–0.09). Emotional neglect (β = .22) was positively associated with psychological distress which in turn was positively associated with poor sleep quality (β = .31) during a stressful transition. Future research should aim to understand the specific stressors in the university environment that are most challenging to individuals who faced early-life emotional maltreatment. These findings will help inform interventions to facilitate adaptation to a new environment and improve sleep quality for these university students.     

What is Special About Body Based Reference Frame?

Classifying spatial frames of references have placed egocentric/body-based representations on muddy grounds. The traditional taxonomy places it under the deictic distinction while the Levinson’s terminology does not provide a special status for it but classifies it along with the relative frame of reference. Research from other areas of cognition has come up with other implied classifications that are motivated by the special role played by these egocentric representation(s). Tangled among such issues is the fuzzy distinction between egocentric and body based representations. The current paper takes up exactly this issue and proposes to sub classify egocentric representations into two different subtypes namely the first- and the second-order representations. The proposed distinction serves an essential purpose for understanding important cognitive processes like spatial transformation, mental perspective taking, and so on.     

Recent Developments in the Treatment of Depression

The cognitive and behavioral interventions can be as efficacious as antidepressant medications and more enduring, but some patients will be more likely to respond to one than the other. Recent work has focused on developing sophisticated selection algorithms using machine-learning approaches that answer the question, “What works best for whom?” Moreover, the vast majority of people suffering from depression reside in low- and middle-income countries where access to either psychotherapy or medications is virtually nonexistent. Great strides have been made in training nonspecialist providers (known as task sharing) to overcome this gap. Finally, recent work growing out of evolutionary psychology suggests that antidepressant medications may suppress symptoms at the expense of prolonging the underlying episode so as to increase the risk of relapse whenever someone tries to stop. We address each of these developments and their cumulative implications.     

How prosimian primates represent tools: experiments with two lemur species (Eulemur fulvus and Lemur catta)

The authors examined how 2 lemur species (Eulemur fulvus and Lemur catta) reason about tools. Experiment 1 allowed subjects to use 1 of 2 canes to retrieve an inaccessible food reward. Lemurs learned to solve this problem as quickly as other primates. Experiment 2 then presented subjects with novel tools differing from the originals along one featural dimension. Subjects attended more to tools' sizes than to their colors and made no distinction between tools' shapes and textures. Experiments 3 and 4 presented problems in which some of the tools' orientations had to be modified relative to the food. Subjects performed well on these problems, sometimes modifying the position of the tool. These results are discussed in light of the performance of other primates on this task.     

Visuospatial skills and their association with math performance in girls with fragile X or Turner syndrome.

The present study was designed to assess object identification ("what") and location ("where") skills among girls with fragile X or Turner syndrome and girls with neither disorder. Participants completed standardized subtests of visual perception and tasks of visuospatial "what" and "where" memory. Girls with fragile X had average performance on most object identification tasks, yet 53% failed to accurately recreate the gestalt of a design during the "where" memory task. Fewer than 7% of girls in the Turner or comparison group made this error. Girls with Turner syndrome had lower scores and longer response times on object perception tasks and had poorer recall of location for internal features of the design on the "where" memory task, relative to girls in the comparison or fragile X group. When limiting analyses to IQ-matched samples, correlations between math and visual perception tasks emerged, but only for girls with fragile X. These results reflect important differences between two cognitive phenotypes and have implications for the role of visuospatial processing in early math performance.     

Interactions of space and language: Insights from the neglect syndrome

The current article speculates about the interrelations between space and language from the perspective of the neglect syndrome. Various conflicting findings are reviewed and the effect of cultural factors is strongly emphasised. Current scientific literature describes relationships between space and language; however, the available data render it difficult to conclude whether it is the primacy of spatial representations or the complex two‐way interaction between linguistic and spatial representations that determines the nature of cognitive processing. It is hoped that studying the neglect syndrome will provide a solution to this problem. Finally, directions for future research are provided that requires bridging the gap between cognitive theorising and neuroscientific approaches.