Psychological stress in childhood and susceptibility to the chronic diseases of aging: moving toward a model of behavioral and biological mechanisms

Among people exposed to major psychological stressors in early life, there are elevated rates of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases of aging. The most compelling data come from studies of children raised in poverty or maltreated by their parents, who show heightened vulnerability to vascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and premature mortality. These findings raise challenging theoretical questions. How does childhood stress get under the skin, at the molecular level, to affect risk for later diseases? And how does it incubate there, giving rise to diseases several decades later? Here we present a biological embedding model, which attempts to address these questions by synthesizing knowledge across several behavioral and biomedical literatures. This model maintains that childhood stress gets "programmed" into macrophages through epigenetic markings, posttranslational modifications, and tissue remodeling. As a consequence these cells are endowed with proinflammatory tendencies, manifest in exaggerated cytokine responses to challenge and decreased sensitivity to inhibitory hormonal signals. The model goes on to propose that over the life course, these proinflammatory tendencies are exacerbated by behavioral proclivities and hormonal dysregulation, themselves the products of exposure to early stress. Behaviorally, the model posits that childhood stress gives rise to excessive threat vigilance, mistrust of others, poor social relationships, impaired self-regulation, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. Hormonally, early stress confers altered patterns of endocrine and autonomic discharge. This milieu amplifies the proinflammatory environment already instantiated by macrophages. Acting in concert with other exposures and genetic liabilities, the resulting inflammation drives forward pathogenic mechanisms that ultimately foster chronic disease.     

Compared to what? Effects of categorization on hedonic contrast

Test stimuli are rated less “good” following very good context stimuli than when presented either alone or following neutral context stimuli. This diminution in rating is calledhedonic contrast. In two experiments, the degree of hedonic contrast depended on how subjects were instructed to categorize context and test stimuli. Contrast was substantially attenuated if context and test stimuli were said to belong to different categories. The effect was demonstrated for beverages (Experiment 1) and birds (Experiment 2). Stimuli’s hedonic ratings were far less affected by other stimuli declared to belong to a different category than by stimuli declared to belong to a common category.     

Individual differences in adult decision-making competence

The authors evaluated the reliability and validity of a set of 7 behavioral decision-making tasks, measuring different aspects of the decision-making process. The tasks were administered to individuals from diverse populations. Participants showed relatively consistent performance within and across the 7 tasks, which were then aggregated into an Adult Decision-Making Competence (A-DMC) index that showed good reliability. The validity of the 7 tasks and of overall A-DMC emerges in significant relationships with measures of socioeconomic status, cognitive ability, and decision-making styles. Participants who performed better on the A-DMC were less likely to report negative life events indicative of poor decision making, as measured by the Decision Outcomes Inventory. Significant predictive validity remains when controlling for demographic measures, measures of cognitive ability, and constructive decision-making styles. Thus, A-DMC appears to be a distinct construct relevant to adults' real-world decisions.     

Toward a brief multidimensional assessment of emotional intelligence: psychometric properties of the Emotional Quotient Inventory-Short Form

Although several brief instruments are available for the emotional intelligence (EI) construct, their conceptual coverage tends to be quite limited. One notable exception is the short form of the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i:S), which measures multiple EI dimensions in addition to a global EI index. Despite the unique advantage offered by the inventory, psychometric properties of the EQ-i:S scores have not yet been systematically evaluated. Such an evaluation was the main goal of the present investigation. Using data from 2,508 undergraduates, the authors conducted 2 studies involving factor structure, internal reliability, 6-month temporal stability, and construct validity of the EQ-i:S responses, both for the total EQ scale and for each constituent dimension. The results supported the multidimensional measurement structure of the EQ-i:S, with each dimension producing internally consistent, temporally stable, and theoretically meaningful responses. Scores on the EQ-i:S were associated more strongly with performance on an ability test of EI and with a conceptually similar construct of alexithymia than with the broader dimensions of basic personality and explained nontrivial amounts of incremental variance in the criterion symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Moreover, scores on each EQ-i:S dimension exhibited unique patterns of associations with the validation variables. The discussion highlights the advantages of the multidimensional approach in the assessment and study of EI.     

Gravity constraints in infant motor development

The effect of gravity in determining if and when during infancy movements eventuate and the rate at which they develop is unknown. In accordance with intersegmental relationships (Hof, 1992), a muscle moment during infancy would have to develop more rapidly than the gravitational moment before movement could occur. In this investigation, the effect of growth through the influence of gravity on the joint moments in the axial region when infants were in a prone or supine posture was examined. A mathematical model that considers the body to be composed of transverse elliptical cylinders, 1 cm deep and of known density, was used in estimating the mass of the 16 segments of the body. The gravitational moments about 3 joints within the axial region (C7-T1, T12-L1, and the hip) were determined by summation, using the radii from the joint transverse axis to the center of mass of the segments. Infants (N = 27) aged between 9 and 36 weeks at the beginning of the study were tested monthly 6 times, and the effect of growth on the gravitational moments was represented by first-order polynomials. Age x Joint analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the mean slopes of the regressions for the gravitational moments revealed significant main effects for age and joint. The means increased monotonically with the number of segments and decreased as infants aged. The mean slopes of the neck and trunk joints were significantly smaller than that of the hip joint. With increasing age, the gravitational slope was significantly smaller. The changes in the gravitational moments during infancy are seen as likely control parameters effecting phase shifts in motor patterns during development.     

Reproduction memory of two-event sequences in pigeons

Six pigeons were trained to reproduce two-event sequences in an experiment that employed a discrete-trial procedure that required subjects to peck one of four possible sample sequences (left-left, left-right, right-right, right-left) signaled on a given trial by the successive illumination of response keys. Following a retention interval (0.1 to 30 seconds), a reinforcer was delivered if a subject reproduced the prior sample sequence during a test condition in which both left and right keys were illuminated. The pigeons readily reproduced the orders in which they had just seen and pecked two illuminated keys. Reproduction accuracy declined as the retention interval was increased. Homogeneous sequences (left-left, right-right) were reproduced with greater accuracy than heterogeneous sequences.     

Book reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Success strivings and their relationship to affective work behaviors: gender differences.

Gender differences in the importance of six life success dimensions and their relationships to job satisfaction, job involvement, and propensity to stay on the job were examined among 756 working women and men in southeast Florida. Results showed that the female participants rated family relationships, personal fulfillment, and security as more important success measures than their male counterparts did, and they rated status/wealth as less important. Professional fulfillment and security were not significantly different. The relationships between measures of success and work behaviors also varied significantly by gender, even after controlling for demographic and job position variables.