Reconsolidation of a context long-term memory in the terrestrial snail requires protein synthesis

We investigated the influence of the protein synthesis blocker anisomycin on contextual memory in the terrestrial snail Helix. Prior to the training session, the behavioral responses in two contexts were similar. Two days after a session of electric shocks (5 d) in one context only, the context conditioning was observed as the significant difference of behavioral response amplitudes in two contexts. On the day following testing of context learning, a session of "reminding" was performed, immediately after which the snails were injected with anisomycin or vehicle. Testing of long-term context memory has shown that only anisomycin injections impaired the context conditioning. In control series, the snails were injected after the training session with anisomycin/saline without reminding, and no impairment of the long-term context memory was observed, while injection of anisomycin during the training session completely abolished the long-term memory. No effects of anisomycin on the short-term memory were observed. Surprisingly, injection of anisomycin after the reminding combined with reinforcing stimuli elicited no effect on the context memory. Differences between single-trial and multisession learning are discussed.     

Church-based social relationships, belonging, and health among older Mexican Americans

The purpose of this study is to explain how church-based emotional support influences the health of older Mexican Americans. This issue is evaluated with a theoretical model that contains the following core linkages: (1) older Mexican Americans who go to church more often will be more likely to receive emotional support from fellow church members; (2) older Mexican Americans who receive more support from their fellow church members will be more likely to feel they belong in their congregation; (3) older Mexican Americans who feel they belong in their congregation are likely to have a stronger sense of personal control; and (4) older Mexican Americans who have a stronger sense of personal control are likely to enjoy better health. Data from a recent nationwide survey of older Mexican Americans provide support for each of these relationships.     

Understanding the relationship between attachment style, pain appraisal and illness behavior in women

Insecure attachment has been hypothesized to be an important factor for understanding the experience of pain. Considering the Attachment-Diathesis Model of Chronic Pain developed by Meredith, Ownsworth, and Strong (2008), this cross-sectional study examines the relationship between attachment style, pain appraisal, and illness behavior. Two hundred healthy women recruited from community contexts completed a battery of self-report measures including the Short-form McGill Pain Questionnaire, Pain Catastrophizing Scale, Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale-20, Pain Vigilance and Awareness Questionnaire, Illness Attitude Scales, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire-Revised. The results showed that attachment anxiety was significantly correlated with pain catastrophizing, pain-related fear, depression, and illness behavior. However, attachment anxiety and avoidance were not associated with pain intensity. Attachment anxiety moderated the relationship between pain catastrophizing and illness behavior, and between pain hypervigilance and illness behavior. Pain catastrophizing and pain-related fear partially mediated the effect of attachment anxiety on illness behavior. The findings highlight potential contributions of attachment style and pain appraisal for explaining illness behavior. This study supports earlier reports and suggests the usefulness of assessing attachment style for early identification of people who might exhibit a high risk of dysfunctional responses to pain. Our findings also suggest that increasing people's insight about their attachment style and modifying some associated dysfunctional responses may be important in the treatment of chronic pain.     

Emotional Competence Disorders and Social Communication in Young Victims of Abuse

This research analyses the emotional competence difficulties (measured through emotional intelligence and empathy) and social communication disorders of young victims of abuse. These minors are in residential care centres with protective measures after suffering maltreatment and/or neglect. The relation between their emotional competence and social communication is analysed, as well as the contribution of empathy and emotional intelligence in predicting their social communication. The results indicate that a lack of emotional competence is related to and can predict their difficulties in social communication. The study manifests a scarcity of emotional intelligence, affecting attention, emotional repair and clarity of feelings, as well as a deterioration in affective and cognitive empathy. The minors’ scarce ability to put themselves in the place of others, to understand others’ intentions and emotional states, limits their use of language in social interactions. The research stresses the need to set up intervention programmes aimed at training in interpersonal and intrapersonal emotional competences which can encourage social communication.     

Depressive symptoms and one year mortality among elderly patients discharged from a rehabilitation ward after orthopaedic surgery of the lower limbs

The objective of the present prospective observational study is to evaluate the effect of depressive symptoms on 1-year mortality in a population of elderly patients discharged from a rehabilitation unit after orthopaedic surgery of the lower limbs. A total of 222 elderly inpatients were included, and stratified according to 12-months survival. 14 (6.3%) of the patients who were eligible for this study died during the 12-months period after discharge. As expected, patients who died were significantly older, lower cognitive performance, more depressive symptoms, poorer nutritional status and higher comorbidity in comparison to those who survived. Furthermore, they were generally more functionally dependent on admission to the Department, had worse functional recovery and were more disable at discharge, although a longer length of stay comparing to survived patients. In the adjusted logistic regression model, after adjustment for possible confounders and covariates, the presence of severe depressive symptoms significantly predicted a four-fold risk of death at 12 months. The only other factor associated poor 12-months survival was comorbidity, that predicted a 6-fold risk of death. In conclusions this study suggests that severe depressive symptoms on admission predicts 1-year mortality in elderly patients discharged from a post-acute care unit after orthopaedic rehabilitation.     

Positive affect as informational feedback in goal pursuit

Two studies investigated the cognitive activation of a goal following a promise to complete it. Current theorizing about the impact of positive affect as informational feedback in goal pursuit suggests two contradictory conclusions: (1) positive affect can signal that sufficient progress towards a goal has been made, but also (2) positive affect can signal that commitment to a goal should be maintained. When individuals infer that significant progress toward goal achievement has been made, the goal should be deactivated, but when individuals infer that commitment to the goal should be maintained, goal activation should be increased. To determine the conditions in which positive affect leads to increased goal activation as opposed to goal deactivation, we proposed that competing goals serve as a moderator. We found that positive affect led to decreased goal activation when competing goals were present, but to increased goal activation when competing goals were absent.     

The politics and contexts of Soviet science studies (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Naukovedenie</Emphasis>): Soviet philosophy of science at the crossroads

Naukovedenie (literarily meaning ‘science studies’), was first institutionalized in the Soviet Union in the twenties, then resurfaced and was widely publicized in the sixties, as a new mode of reflection on science, its history, its intellectual foundations, and its management, after which it dominated Soviet historiography of science until perestroika. Tracing the history of meta-studies of science in the USSR from its early institutionalization in the twenties when various political, theoretical and institutional struggles set the stage for the development of the field, to the sixties when the field resurfaced within the particular political context of the Cold War, and using the history of Moscow Institute for the History of Science and Technology as a case-study, I situate Soviet naukovedenie project within the culture of late-socialism in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, asking what this discourse meant for its creators and practitioners, as well as for the high-ranked Soviet officials who provided the authoritative support for this field.     

Similar effects of visual perception and imagery on simple reaction time

A longstanding issue is whether perception and mental imagery share similar cognitive and neural mechanisms. To cast further light on this problem, we compared the effects of real and mentally generated visual stimuli on simple reaction time (RT). In five experiments, we tested the effects of difference in luminance, contrast, spatial frequency, motion, and orientation. With the intriguing exception of spatial frequency, in all other tasks perception and imagery showed qualitatively similar effects. An increase in luminance, contrast, and visual motion yielded a decrease in RT for both visually presented and imagined stimuli. In contrast, gratings of low spatial frequency were responded to more quickly than those of higher spatial frequency only for visually presented stimuli. Thus, the present study shows that basic dependent variables exert similar effects on visual RT either when retinally presented or when imagined. Of course, this evidence does not necessarily imply analogous mechanisms for perception and imagery, and a note of caution in such respect is suggested by the large difference in RT between the two operations. However, the present results undoubtedly provide support for some overlap between the structural representation of perception and imagery.     

Perceived Cognitive Efficiency and Subjective Well-Being in Late Adulthood: The Impact of Developmental Factors

The current literature shows cross-cultural differences related to implicit theories of ageing. Specifically, in the Western individualistic cultural context, elderly people are perceived as obsolete, weak and unable to contribute usefully to society, whereas in collectivistic cultures, older people are venerated as a source of knowledge and cultural traditions (e.g. Yoon et al. in Psychol Aging 15:694–704, 2000). The focus of the current study was to investigate the effect of age-related factors affecting self-referent well-being in the Italian population. One hundred and thirty-nine healthy adults (20–99 years) were recruited in Northern Italian (i.e. individualistic context) and Sardinian (i.e. collectivist context) contexts and were, respectively, assigned to the following groups: Young (20–30 years old), Old (65–74 years old) and Very Old (>75 years old). Participants were administered a battery of tests, including self-referent cognitive efficiency scales, subjective psychological well-being, depression and psychological distress scales. Participants from Sardinia showed greater levels of well-being and lower levels of psychological distress than adults from Northern Italy. Moreover, participants from the Old group reported more coping strategies, emotional competencies and personal satisfaction, as well as fewer depressive symptoms, than the Very Old group. One possible explanation is that sociocultural contexts emphasising the positive social role of the elderly like that prevailing in Sardinia promote psychological well-being in late adulthood.     

Capturing age-group differences and developmental change with the BASC Parent Rating Scales

Estimation of age-group differences and intra-individual change across distinct developmental periods is often challenged by the use of age-appropriate (but non-parallel) measures. We present a short version of the Behavior Assessment System (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1998) Parent Rating Scales for Children (PRS-C) and Adolescents (PRS-A), which uses only their common-items to derive estimates of the initial constructs optimized for developmental studies. Measurement invariance of a three-factor model (Externalizing, Internalizing, Adaptive Skills) was tested across age-groups (161 mothers using PRS-C; 200 mothers using PRS-A) and over time (115 mothers using PRS-C at baseline and PRS-A five years later) with the original versus short PRS. Results indicated that the short PRS holds a sufficient level of invariance for a robust estimation of age-group differences and intra-individual change, as compared to the original PRS, which held only weak invariance leading to flawed developmental inferences. The importance of test–content parallelism for developmental studies is discussed.