Experimental manipulation of infant temperament affects amygdala functional connectivity

In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we examined neural processing of infant faces associated with a happy or a sad temperament in nulliparous women. We experimentally manipulated adult perception of infant temperament in a probabilistic learning task. In this task, participants learned about an infant's temperament through repeated pairing of the infant face with positive or negative facial expressions and vocalizations. At the end of the task, participants were able to differentiate between “mostly sad” infants who cried often and “mostly happy” infants who laughed often. Afterwards, brain responses to neutral faces of infants with a happy or a sad temperament were measured with fMRI and compared to brain responses to neutral infants with no temperament association. Our findings show that a brief experimental manipulation of temperament can change brain responses to infant signals. We found increased amygdala connectivity with frontal regions and the visual cortex, including the occipital fusiform gyrus, during the perception of infants with a happy temperament. In addition, amygdala connectivity was positively related to the post-manipulation ratings of infant temperament, indicating that amygdala connectivity is involved in the encoding of the rewarding value of an infant with a happy temperament.     

Is conscious perception gradual or dichotomous? A comparison of report methodologies during a visual task

In a recent article, [Sergent, C. &; Dehaene, S. (2004). Is consciousness a gradual phenomenon? Evidence for an all-or-none bifurcation during the attentional blink, Psychological Science, 15(11), 720–729] claim to give experimental support to the thesis that there is a clear transition between conscious and unconscious perception. This idea is opposed to theoretical arguments that we should think of conscious perception as a continuum of clarity, with e.g., fringe conscious states [Mangan, B. (2001). Sensation’s ghost—the non-sensory “fringe” of consciousness, Psyche, 7, 18]. In the experimental study described in this article, we find support for this opposite notion that we should have a parsimonious account of conscious perception. Our reported finding relates to the hypothesis that there is more than one perceptual threshold [Merikle, P.M., Smilek, D. &; Eastwood, J.D. (2001). Perception without awareness: perspectives from cognitive psychology, Cognition, 79, 115–134], but goes further to argue that there are different “levels” of conscious perception.     

Predicting Nonresponse Bias from Teacher Ratings of Mental Health Problems in Primary School Children

The impact of nonresponse on estimates of mental health problems was examined in a prospective teacher screen in a community survey of 9,155 7–9 year olds. For 6,611 of the children, parents consented to participation in the actual study (Responders), while for 2,544 children parental consent was not obtained (Nonresponders). The teacher screen involved assessment of a broad set of symptoms of mental health problems and functional impairment. Calculations of non-response coefficients, a function of effect sizes and non-response proportion, revealed only ignorable nonresponse bias for both mean scores and correlations. However, the results from binary logistic regressions revealed that children ascribed signs of mental health problems by their teachers were less likely to participate. This was most frequent among children with only moderate symptoms. However, it also involved children with high symptom scores related to inattention, hyperactivity, emotions and peer relationship problems. These findings suggest that measures based on effect size can underestimate the magnitude of non-response bias and that a logistic regression approach may be more appropriate for studies geared at estimating prevalence of mental health problems in children. The study was financially supported by the Norwegian Research Council, The Norwegian Directorate for Health and Social Affairs, Western Norwegian Regional Health Authority, the L. Meltzer legacy for the University of Bergen, and the City of Bergen.     

Temperament in children with Down syndrome and in prematurely born children

Parents of three groups of children completed the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ). Participants were children with Down syndrome aged 4-11 years (n = 55), prematurely born children aged 5 years (n = 97), and a group of normally developing kindergarten children 5-7 years of age (n = 91). Mean levels and factor structures on the CBQ were compared between the three groups. The children with Down syndrome had less attentional focusing and expressed less inhibitory control and less sadness than the normally developing children. There were also group differences in temperament structures, especially a clearer emotional factor of "surgency" among the children with Down syndrome. The only significant difference in mean temperament scores between the premature children and the control group was that the former evinced less attentional focussing. The temperament structures in the Norwegian samples were very similar to those reported in earlier studies, conducted in China and the US.     

Dreading the boards: stress response to a competitive audition characterized by social-evaluative threat

The capacity of psychosocial stressors to provoke the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis has been demonstrated to vary depending upon a number of psychological factors. Laboratory stressors characterized by social-evaluative threat are proposed to be the most efficacious in the elicitation of a cortisol stress response. Salivary cortisol, cardiovascular, and subjective responses of 16 healthy adults facing a naturalistic stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (competitive performance auditions) were examined. Audition exposure was sufficient to provoke significant cortisol, arterial blood pressure (systolic and diastolic), and subjective stress responses. Cortisol response reactivity (area under the curve with respect to increase [AUCi]) also correlated with participants' subjective rating of social-evaluative threat. The competitive performance audition context is therefore considered a promising context in which to further explore cortisol responsivity to social-evaluative threat.     

Individual response patterns and the effects of different behavioral methods in the treatment of agoraphobia

The importance of individual response patterns in agoraphobic patients was examined in the present study. Forty psychiatric outpatients with agoraphobia were assessed in individually relevant natural phobic situations. During this behavioral test their heart rates were measured continuously, and self-ratings of experienced anxiety were made at fixed intervals. On the basis of their reactions in the test situation, the patients were divided into two groups showing different response patterns—behavioral and physiological reactors. Within each group the patients were randomly assigned to one behaviorally-focused method (exposure in vivo, E) and one physiologically-focused method (applied relaxation, AR). The patients were treated individually for 12 sessions. Both treatments yielded significant improvements on most measures; 60% of the E group and 70% of the AR group patients were clinically improved after treatment. The between-group comparisons showed that both treatments did equally well both for behavioral and physiological reactors. Thus, the differential effects for these methods obtained in previous studies were not seen.     

Impacts of school-wide positive behaviour support: Results from National Longitudinal Register Data

Problem behaviour in schools may have detrimental effects both on students' well-being and academic achievement. A large literature has consistently found that school-wide positive behaviour support (SWPBS) successfully addresses social and behavioural problems. In this paper, we used population-wide longitudinal register data for all Norwegian primary schools and a difference-in-difference (DiD) design to evaluate effects of SWPBS on a number of primary and secondary outcomes, including indicators of externalising behaviour, school well-being, pull-out instruction, and academic achievement. Indications of reduced classroom noise were found. No other effects were detected. Analyses revealed important differences in outcomes between the intervention and control schools, independent of the implementation of SWPBS, and that a credible design like DiD is essential to handle such school differences.     

Adolescent boys’ physical fighting and adult life outcomes: Examining the interplay with intelligence

Although it is well known that adolescent delinquent behavior is related to poor outcomes in adulthood, longitudinal research on specific acts of delinquency and their interplay with important individual characteristics in predicting future outcomes is scarce. We aimed to examine how physical fighting—one of the most common acts of violent delinquency among adolescent boys—is related to adult life success in several domains, and how intelligence influences these associations. The study used data from 1,083 boys that participated in the population-based longitudinal Young in Norway Study, following adolescents from 1992 to 2015, by combining self-reports at four time points with comprehensive information from registers. Results showed that adolescent boys’ physical fighting was associated with poor adult outcomes in the domains of employment, education, and criminal behavior. Associations remained significant even after controlling for conduct problems in general—which isolated the effects of fighting from other delinquent acts—as well as from a variety of other potential confounders. Detailed analyses on the interplay of physical fighting and intelligence showed that some parts of the associations between adolescent boys’ fighting and several adverse adult outcomes could be ascribed to lower intelligence among the fighters. Moreover, intelligence moderated the relationship between physical fighting and adult education. Adolescent fighting was not related to educational attainment among boys with high intelligence, whereas boys with lower intelligence experienced detrimental effects of adolescent fighting. The analyses show the importance of considering adolescent boys’ physical fighting as a potential risk factor for future social marginalization.