Anxiety, Sensory Over-Responsivity, and Gastrointestinal Problems in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience high rates of anxiety, sensory processing problems, and gastrointestinal (GI) problems; however, the associations among these symptoms in children with ASD have not been previously examined. The current study examined bivariate and multivariate relations among anxiety, sensory over-responsivity, and chronic GI problems in a sample of 2,973 children with ASD enrolled in the Autism Treatment Network (ages 2–17 years, 81.6 % male). Twenty-four percent of the sample experienced at least one type of chronic GI problem (constipation, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, and/or nausea lasting three or more months). Children with each type of GI problem had significantly higher rates of both anxiety and sensory over-responsivity. Sensory over-responsivity and anxiety were highly associated, and each provided unique contributions to the prediction of chronic GI problems in logistic regression analyses. The results indicate that anxiety, sensory over-responsivity and GI problems are possibly interrelated phenomenon for children with ASD, and may have common underlying mechanisms.     

The impact of frequent social Internet consumption: Increased procrastination and lower life satisfaction

Organizations are frequently turning to social Internet applications in an effort to form bonds with consumers. However, little research has addressed the impact of social Internet consumption on the individual. Two studies of regular social Internet consumers (i.e., users of Facebook and socially connected online games) examined the effects of prompted usage reduction or cessation upon participants. In both studies, participants benefitted on average during the reduction/cessation period, reporting increased life satisfaction and decreased procrastination. The Facebooker versus gamer factor had remarkably few effects (i.e., results generalized across these two groups). Implications are discussed for both consumers and organizations involved in social Internet activities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personal and Environmental Factors Predict Participation of Children With and Without Mild Developmental Disabilities

Enhancing participation in age-related activities is a key goal in the education and rehabilitation of children with diverse disabilities. The aim of this study was to explore a multidimensional and ecological model of participation for young children. Seventy eight children with mild developmental disabilities (MDD, such as motor and visual-motor difficulties), and 110 children without disabilities, between the ages 4 and 6 years old, participated in the study together with their parents. Data were collected using standardized assessments for child capacities and newly developed questionnaires for child participation and for human and physical environmental factors. Associations were found between personal and environmental factors and the participation dimensions amongst young children, thus supporting the validity of the proposed model of participation. Moreover, the study results outline different pathways for the participation of children with and without MDD. Child factors (e.g. process skills) were found to be crucial predictors of participation particularly for children with MDD, whereas human environmental factor (e.g. maternal self-efficacy beliefs) was associated with higher participation scores especially for children without disabilities. These findings may facilitate the development of effective intervention programs which focus on environmental factors as well as on child factors.     

Infants hierarchically organize memory representations

Throughout development, working memory is subject to capacity limits that severely constrain short‐term storage. However, adults can massively expand the total amount of remembered information by grouping items into chunks. Although infants also have been shown to chunk objects in memory, little is known regarding the limits of this ability. In particular, it remains unknown whether infants can create more complex memory hierarchies, binding representations of chunks into still larger chunks in recursive fashion. Here we tested the limits of early chunking, first measuring the number of items infants can bind into a single chunk and the number of chunks infants can maintain concurrently, and then, critically, whether infants can embed chunked representations into larger units. We tested 14‐month‐old infants' memory for hidden objects using a manual search task in which we manipulated memory load (the number of objects infants saw hidden) and the chunking cues provided. We found that infants are limited in the number of items they can chunk and in the number of chunks they can remember. However, we also found that infants can bind representations of chunks into ‘superchunks’. These results suggest that hierarchically organizing information strongly affects working memory, starting in infancy.     

Chronic psychological stress and the regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines: a glucocorticoid-resistance model.

This study examined whether chronic stress impairs the immune system's capacity to respond to hormonal signals that terminate inflammation. Fifty healthy adults were studied; half were parents of cancer patients, and half were parents of healthy children. Parents of cancer patients reported more psychological distress than parents of healthy children. They also had flatter diurnal slopes of cortisol secretion, primarily because of reduced output during the morning hours. There was also evidence that chronic stress impaired the immune system's response to anti-inflammatory signals: The capacity of a synthetic glucocorticoid hormone to suppress in vitro production of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 was diminished among parents of cancer patients. Findings suggest a novel pathway by which chronic stress might alter the course of inflammatory disease.     

Parental reports of executive dysfunction in adolescents with bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness that affects children and adolescents at a rate similar to that seen in adults. Extremely little is known, however, about cognitive functioning in childhood and adolescent BPD. The present study represents an initial effort to examine executive functioning in adolescents with BPD who are in a manic or mixed mood state, by collecting data from caregivers about the participants' performance on everyday tasks thought to be mediated by executive functioning abilities, using the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function. In comparison to healthy volunteers, adolescents with BPD exhibited significant elevations across all of the measured functional domains. These elevations were evident even in adolescents with BPD who did not have comorbid ADHD, although they were most prominent in those with comorbidity. The findings suggest that adolescents with BPD have functional deficits on tasks requiring executive functioning skills that are not explicable solely on the basis of comorbid ADHD.     

Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: evidence of enhanced system justification among the disadvantaged

According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support, defend, and justify existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. Variations on this hypothesis were tested in five US national survey studies. We found that (a) low‐income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to support limitations on the rights of citizens and media representatives to criticize the government; (b) low‐income Latinos were more likely to trust in US government officials and to believe that ‘the government is run for the benefit of all’ than were high‐income Latinos; (c) low‐income respondents were more likely than high‐income respondents to believe that large differences in pay are necessary to foster motivation and effort; (d) Southerners in the USA were more likely to endorse meritocratic belief systems than were Northerners and poor and Southern African Americans were more likely to subscribe to meritocratic ideologies than were African Americans who were more affluent and from the North; (e) low‐income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary; and (f) stronger endorsement of meritocratic ideology was associated with greater satisfaction with one's own economic situation. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the dissonance‐based argument that people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. Implications for theories of system justification, cognitive dissonance, and social change are also discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.