Potential consequences of abandonment in preschool-age: Neuropsychological findings in institutionalized children

Objective: Several longitudinal studies had shown that early deprivation and institutionalization during the first six months of life affects the emotional, cognitive, social and neurophysiologic development. Nevertheless, our understanding of possible similar effects of delayed institutionalization, in preschool-age remains unclear to this day. The goal of this study is to evaluate the cognitive performance of institutionalized children with history of preschool-age physical abandonment. Method: 18 male institutionalized children with history of abandonment during the preschool-age (2-5 years old) and comparison group matched by age, handedness, gender, educational and socioeconomic level were tested on multiple tasks of attention, memory and executive functions. Results: We found a cognitive impairment in the institutionalized children in several measures of attention, memory and executive functions. This is the first report of cognitive impairment related to late abandonment and institutionalization effects (after 2 years old), extending the already known effects on early institutionalization. Conclusions: This preliminary study suggests that environmental factors including abandonment and institutional care, can affect not only the infancy period, but also the preschool period providing new insights into our understanding of neurocognitive development.     

Situationism and the Concept of a Situation

Abstract: The concept of a situation underlying the debate between moral situationists and dispositionists conceals various underexplored complexities. Some of those issues have been engaged recently in the so‐called psychology of situations, but they have been slow to receive attention in mainstream philosophy. I invoke various distinctions among situations, and show how situationists have selectively chosen certain types of situations that, for conceptual reasons, skew the argument in their favour. I introduce the concept of a ‘virtue‐calibrated situation’, and argue that if the person–situation debate is to move forward in philosophy as it has in psychology, it must focus on such situations. I bring to bear evidence from analytic and continental philosophy, as well as from social and personality psychology.     

The Role of Socio-Psychological Determinants in the Sexual Behaviors of Latina Early Adolescents

Although a large body of research has examined the negative outcomes that occur when Latina adolescents engage in sexual activity, relatively little research explores the determinants that may contribute to these behaviors. In the current study, an ecological community psychological approach was used to examine the impact that substance use, sexual self-efficacy, parental communication, normative peer pressure, acculturation, educational aspirations, grades, and gang activity have on adolescent sexual behavior. The sample consisted of 217 participants (mean age of 14.6) who self-identified as Latina from the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area of California in the United States. The results indicate that about a third of the sample had engaged in one or more sexual behaviors. Overall, greater usage of substances was associated with greater numbers of sexual behaviors. Girls who reported engaging in two or more sexual behaviors reported more frequent marijuana and alcohol use. The girls who reported high sexual self-efficacy engaged in few to no sexual behaviors. Additionally, parental communication, normative peer pressure, acculturation, and educational aspirations were unrelated to their sexual behavior. However, the majority of girls who reported receiving good grades also reported no sexual activity. Moreover, girls who reported no sexual behavior also reported no gang activity. The results indicate that a multi-level approach to examining the psycho-social determinants of sexual activity in Latina girls provides a more comprehensive picture of their sexual decision making.     

Enhancing effects of acute psychosocial stress on priming of non-declarative memory in healthy young adults

Social stress affects cognitive processes in general, and memory performance in particular. However, the direction of these effects has not been clearly established, as it depends on several factors. Our aim was to determine the impact of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity to psychosocial stress on short-term non-declarative memory and declarative memory performance. Fifty-two young participants (18 men, 34 women) were subjected to the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST) and a control condition in a crossover design. Implicit memory was assessed by a priming test, and explicit memory was assessed by the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). The TSST provoked greater salivary cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) responses than the control task. Men had a higher cortisol response to stress than women, but no sex differences were found for sAA release. Stress was associated with an enhancement of priming but did not affect declarative memory. Additionally, the enhancement on the priming test was higher in those whose sAA levels increased more in response to stress (r(48)?=?0.339, p?=?0.018). Our results confirm an effect of acute stress on priming, and that this effect is related to SNS activity. In addition, they suggest a different relationship between stress biomarkers and the different memory systems.     

Benefit of social support for resilience-building is contingent on social context: examining cardiovascular adaptation to recurrent stress in women

Previous work on social support and stress tolerance using laboratory-based cardiovascular stress response paradigms has suggested that perceived social support may be effective in building resilience in recipients. However, such paradigms are often socially de-contextualized insofar as they fail to take account of the social aspects of stress itself. Using 90 healthy college women, the present study sought to examine the association between self-reported perceived social support and cardiovascular stress tolerance. Participants underwent two consecutive exposures to a mental arithmetic task. On second exposure to the stressor, participants completed the task under either social threat or control conditions. Social threat was manipulated using socially salient instructions, to create a high social context. Adaptation to stress was established in terms of comparisons between cardiovascular responses to successive exposures. Results showed that cardiovascular responses tended to habituate across time, with perceived social support associated with the degree of habituation, but only under certain contextual conditions; high perceived support was associated with effective habituation under control conditions only. This response pattern is consistent with the view that high perceived social support buffers against stress in healthful ways, but only in asocial contexts.     

Post-acquisition release of glutamate and norepinephrine in the amygdala is involved in taste-aversion memory consolidation

Amygdala activity mediates the acquisition and consolidation of emotional experiences; we have recently shown that post-acquisition reactivation of this structure is necessary for the long-term storage of conditioned taste aversion (CTA). However, the specific neurotransmitters involved in such reactivation are not known. The aim of the present study was to investigate extracellular changes of glutamate, norepinephrine, and dopamine within the rat amygdala using in vivo microdialysis during the acquisition and 1-h post-acquisition of CTA paradigm. Microdialysis monitoring showed a significant norepinephrine increase related to novel taste exposure and a glutamate increase after gastric malaise induction by i.p. LiCl administration. Interestingly, we found a spontaneous concomitant increase of glutamate and norepinephrine, but not dopamine, 45 min after conditioning, suggesting the presence of aversive learning-dependent post-acquisition signals in the amygdala. These signals seem to be involved in CTA consolidation process, since post-trial blockade of N-methyl-D-aspartate or β-adrenergic receptors impaired long- but not short-term memory. These data suggest that CTA long-term storage involves post-acquisition release of glutamate and norepinephrine in the amygdala.     

Parent Perspectives on Community Mental Health Services for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The community mental health (CMH) system provides treatment for behavioral and psychiatric problems in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Although parent stakeholder perspectives are important to improving care, these perspectives have not been systematically examined for this population in the CMH sector. Twenty-one semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with parents of children with ASD who received services in CMH clinics. Themes related to child clinical histories, service access and experiences with the CMH system revealed a specific trajectory of service need identification, obtaining a diagnosis, and experience with services. Each trajectory stage was marked by high parent stress. Results provide information about the characteristics of children with ASD served in community mental health clinics and direction for targeted improvement efforts.     

Opposite actions of dopamine on aversive and appetitive memories in the crab

The understanding of how the reinforcement is represented in the central nervous system during memory formation is a current issue in neurobiology. Several studies in insects provide evidence of the instructive role of biogenic amines during the learning and memory process. In insects it was widely accepted that dopamine (DA) mediates aversive reinforcements. However, the idea of DA being exclusively involved in aversive memory has been challenged in recent studies. Here, we study the involvement of DA during aversive and appetitive memories in the crab Chasmagnathus. We found that DA-receptor antagonists impair aversive memory consolidation, in agreement with previous reports in insects, while administration of DA facilitates memory formation after a weak training protocol. In contrast, DA treatment during appetitive training was found to impair formation of long-term appetitive memory. In addition, as a first step in elucidating the neuroanatomical correlates of DA action on memory, we mapped dopaminergic neurons in the central nervous system of the crab. Results of the current study, together with those obtained in a previous work about the role of octopamine (OA), suggest that both amines (DA and OA) play a dual action in memory processes. On the one hand, DA and OA mediate the aversive and the appetitive signals, respectively, throughout training, while on the other hand, they interfere with the formation of memory of the opposite sign (DA in appetitive and OA in aversive). Our results support a new understanding about the way appetitive and aversive stimuli are processed during memory formation to ensure adaptive behavior.     

Parental knowledge and adolescent adjustment: substance use and health-related quality of life

This study analyses two models (maternal and paternal) in which parental care and sources of parental knowledge moderated the relationship between parents' knowledge about their adolescents' lives and adolescents' substance use and health-related quality of life. The sample was made up of 15942 Spanish adolescents who participated in the 2006 edition of Health Behavior in School-aged Children Study. Results showed that increased parents' knowledge about their adolescents' lives reduced adolescents' substance use and increased their quality of life. With respect to the moderation relationship, a limited effect was found. However, parental care and sources of parental knowledge used by both parents generally had main effects on adolescents' substance use and health-related quality of life, with care being the most relevant variable in the health-related quality of life, while knowledge was the most relevant one for substance use.