Development of the Social Behavior of Two Mice Species With Contrasting Social Systems

The house mouse (Mus musculus) and the mound‐building mouse (M. spicilegus) differ in their mating and social systems. The M. musculus is polygynous and females tend to breed cooperatively while M. spicilegus is known to be monogamous and famous for its unique cooperative behavior; the communal overwintering. Mus spicilegus is considered as a highly aggressive species in the genus Mus. In the present study, we attempted to analyze the development of aggressive and sociable behavior in these species and to discover how familiarity with the target moderates the development of sociable and aggressive behaviors and moderates the differences between the species. Dyadic social interaction tests in neutral cages were performed on 21‐, 60‐, and 120‐day‐old mice of both genders and both species. Each individual was tested against a sibling and an unfamiliar individual at all three ages. Our results showed that the development of aggressive and sociable behavior with age differed between the species and sexes; however, familiarity with the other mouse moderated the effect of species on aggression. At 21 days, both genders of M. spicilegus were more aggressive against strangers than siblings. This became true of both species at 60 days. When facing a stranger, both sexes of M. spicilegus were more aggressive than M. musculus at 120 days. However, when facing a sibling, neither gender of M. spicilegus was more agonistic than M. musculus, indicating that either kinship or early social experiences elicit tolerance. Aggr. Behav. 38:288‐297, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Eye movements blink the attentional blink

When presented with a sequence of visual stimuli in rapid succession, participants often fail to detect a second salient target, a phenomenon referred as the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992; Shapiro, Raymond, & Arnell, 1997). On the basis of a vast corpus of experiments, several cognitive theories suggest that the blink results from a discrete structuring of attention, sampling information from temporal episodes during which several items can access encoding process (Wyble, Bowman, & Nieuwenstein, 2009; Wyble, Potter, Bowman, & Nieuwenstein, 2011). The objective of this work is to explore the AB when multiple items are presented at the fovea during ocular movements. The authors reasoned that each fixation may cohesively form an episode and hence expected that the blink may vanish within a single fixation. In turn, they expected saccades to accentuate episodic borders and hence shorten the regime of interference when 2 targets are presented fovealy in successive fixations. Evidence is provided in favor of this hypothesis, showing that the blink vanishes when both targets are presented in the core of a single fixation (far from the saccadic boundaries) and that it recovers more rapidly in successive fixations. These studies support current views that episodes should have an effect on the AB and provide evidence that eye movements play an important role in the formation of episodes.     

Factor analysis of ipsative data: a simulation study

This paper introduces a summary on how to proceed to conduct a factor analysis when the input data are ipsative. The classical factor analysis procedures cannot be used because the covariance matrix is singular. Additionally, previous research on the optimal conditions to conduct factor analysis for ipsatized data is reviewed, and the results of a simulation study are presented. The study includes conditions of sample size, model complexity, and model specification (correct vs. incorrect). The results suggest that researchers should be careful when factor analyzing ipsatized data, particularly if they suspect that the model is incorrectly specified and includes a smaller number of factors.     

Sociodemographic, clinical and outcome differences among anxiety disorders

The aims of this paper are to analyze differences in sociodemographic and clinical characteristics among the various anxiety disorders treated in a Psychology Clinic, and the results of treatment in each anxiety disorder. Data from 282 patients of University Psychology Clinic at the Complutense University of Madrid, who had at least one diagnosis of anxiety according to DMS-IV-TR criteria, were analyzed. The most frequent anxiety disorders were nonspecific anxiety disorder (19.1%) and social phobia (18.8%). Significant differences were observed according to sex (in all disorders, the percentage of women was significantly higher than that of men, except for obsessive-compulsive disorder). Unspecific anxiety disorder required a smaller number of assessment and treatment sessions, whereas obsessive-compulsive disorder required a greater number of sessions. There were no significant differences between the percentage of patients who completed treatment and dropout rates in specific phobia, general anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Differences between epidemiological and clinical data are discussed.     

Incorporation and adaptation of the postmodern belief system

Every society develops a particular system of beliefs that summarizes its vision of socio-political organization, culture and interpersonal relationships. Each of these three basic dimensions has different forms, depending on the spatial and temporal context of societies. The belief system of the service societies is characterized by a democratic vision of social and political organization, rejection of radical social changes and high levels of interpersonal trust. This paper empirically examines the incorporation and adaptation of the postmodern belief system in a sample of university students. The participants belong to a country that is slowly integrating into the service societies. We used a scale of postmodernity to analyze the incorporation of the postmodern belief system. The results indicate that there is a peculiar combination of the three basic dimensions of the postmodern belief system, where the postmodern conceptions of culture and social relationships have lower acceptance.     

Reliability and validity evidence of the Out-group Threat Perception Scale (OTPS)

This study aimed to analyze the psychometric properties of a new scale: the Out-group Threat Perception Scale (OTPS). The OTPS was designed to measure the perception of out-group threat, an important psychosocial variable that is closely related to negative attitudes towards out-groups. Three hundred and two Spanish participants responded to the OTPS in reference to the following out-groups: Moroccans (N= 102), Romanians (N= 101) and Ecuadorian immigrants (N= 99). The reliability and item analyses showed that the scale had good internal consistency. Factor analyses yielded two independent dimensions: Realistic Threat and Symbolic Threat. Correlational analyses showed that the OTPS correlated significantly with several psychosocial variables. The present findings suggest that the OTPS is a reliable and valid measure, and it can be a useful instrument to study intergroup relationships in our country.     

Methods for averaging alpha coefficients in reliability generalization studies

The reliability generalization (RG) approach is a kind of meta-analysis that aims to statistically integrate a set of independent reliability coefficients obtained in several applications of a test, with the purpose of characterizing the measurement error and determining which factors related to the studies and samples can explain its variability. Diverse procedures have been proposed in the literature for averaging a set of independent alpha coefficients, and there is no consensus about which methods are best. Here, we present the results of a Monte Carlo simulation study, comparing the performance of twelve procedures proposed in Feldt and Charter, in terms of bias and mean square error. These procedures differ from each other in the transformation (or not) of the coefficients, and in the application or not of a weighting scheme based on sample size. Our results recommend using weighted methods in contrast to unweighted ones, and transforming the coefficients by the Hakstian and Whalen's proposal or by the proposal based on the square root of the inverse alpha coefficient. Lastly, we discuss the relations between the diverse procedures for averaging alpha coefficients with fixed-effects, random-effects, and varying coefficients models.     

Developmental pattern of digit span in Spanish population

This study examined in a Spanish population the developmental pattern of digit span, as an index of one of the components of Baddeley's working memory--the phonological loop. A verbal digit span was administered to 570 participants ranging from 5 to 17 years old. The results indicated that the digit memory span increases until age 17 as opposed to Anglo-Saxon data--where it is established that this span reaches a peak by age 15. Additionally, these results were compared to the performance in the same task of healthy elderly, Alzheimer disease patients, and Frontotemporal dementia patients, examined in a previous study. The analysis shows that the phonological loop is affected by age and not so much by dementias.     

Low diversity and low frequency of participation in leisure activities compromise working memory efficiency in young adults

People perform leisure activities (LA) every day; pursuits that entail applying cognitive, physical and social abilities. As in old age, doing LA during early and middle adulthood is related to a reduced risk of dementias, probably by generating a cognitive reserve. As it is possible that a relation between doing LA and working memory (WM) efficiency exists in young adults, we assessed whether the diversity and frequency of LA are related to WM efficiency in this population. Ninety-three healthy young subjects solved the n-back task at two levels of difficulty (2, 3), and answered an LA questionnaire on the activities in which they had participated in the month prior to the experiment. Subjects were classified separately on their scores for (1) diversity (high/low) and (2) frequency (high/low) in order to test the relation between each variable and WM efficiency. Though no differences were found, a subsequent analysis of the average of diversity and frequency ratios of LA performance taken together-the diversity/frequency index-showed that low diversity plus low frequency was significantly associated with reduced WM efficiency at this age; results that suggest that frequent participation in diverse LA during youth is related to WM efficiency.     

The statistical signature of morphosyntax: A study of Hungarian and Italian infant-directed speech

Does statistical learning (Saffran, Aslin, &; Newport, 1996) offer a universal segmentation strategy for young language learners? Previous studies on large corpora of English and structurally similar languages have shown that statistical segmentation can be an effective strategy. However, many of the world’s languages have richer morphological systems, with sometimes several affixes attached to a stem (e.g. Hungarian: iskoláinkban: iskolá-i-nk-ban school.pl.poss1pl.inessive ‘in our schools’). In these languages, word boundaries and morpheme boundaries do not coincide. Does the internal structure of words affect segmentation? What word forms does segmentation yield in morphologically rich languages: complex word forms or separate stems and affixes? The present paper answers these questions by exploring different segmentation algorithms in infant-directed speech corpora from two typologically and structurally different languages, Hungarian and Italian. The results suggest that the morphological and syntactic type of a language has an impact on statistical segmentation, with different strategies working best in different languages. Specifically, the direction of segmentation seems to be sensitive to the affixation order of a language. Thus, backward probabilities are more effective in Hungarian, a heavily suffixing language, whereas forward probabilities are more informative in Italian, which has fewer suffixes and a large number of phrase-initial function words. The consequences of these findings for potential segmentation and word learning strategies are discussed.