Extinction of conditioned odor potentiation of startle

Several recent studies with rats (Sprague-Dawley strain) have documented that an odor previously paired with shock potentiates the acoustic startle response, a phenomenon referred to as conditioned odor potentiation of startle (OPS). A surprising finding in these studies was that OPS did not extinguish even though the odor was present throughout the 25-min test session. Therefore, the present study more fully examined extinction of OPS. The results of Experiment 1, which employed both within-subject and between-group comparisons, showed that extinction of OPS occurred in adult rats only after several days of testing. Experiment 2 used the between-group procedure and found similar results with 23-day-old rats, the youngest age that exhibits the OPS effect. Experiment 2 also showed that giving rats 15 odor-shock pairings at 16 days of age, an age where they acquire the odor-shock association but cannot express it via OPS, does not increase subsequent resistance to extinction following odor-shock pairings at 23 days of age. Taken together, the results of this study show that (1) although OPS is somewhat resistant to extinction, it does extinguish with repeated tests and (2) suggests that there are no age differences in the rate of extinction of OPS.     

Got Pain? Racial Bias in Perceptions of Pain

In the days of slavery, White people assumed that Black people felt less pain than did White people. This belief was used to justify slavery; it was also used to justify the inhumane treatment of Black men and women in medical research. Today, White Americans continue to believe that Black people feel less pain than do White people although this belief has changed from its historical, explicitly racist form. Racial attitudes do not moderate the bias, suggesting that racial bias in perceptions of others' pain is not rooted (solely) in racial prejudice. Moreover, Black Americans too believe that Black people feel less pain than do White people, suggesting that the bias is no longer grounded in intergroup dynamics. Rather, contemporary forms of this bias stem from assumptions that Black people face more hardship and “thus” can withstand more pain and assumptions that Black people's bodies are not only different but also superhuman. Although this new instantiation of the pain perception bias is decidedly more “benevolent”, it can nonetheless lead to negative outcomes. Here, we consider how racial bias in perceptions of others' pain may affect racial disparities in health care and intergroup relations more generally. We also discuss potential avenues for interventions aimed at preventing this bias among children and reducing this bias among adults.     

Botswana school child parents: their personal and community relationships contexts for counselling

The study determined personal-socio-contextual influences that predicted the perceived quality of relationships with Batswana early teenage mothers. The participants were 86 Botswana high school students (mean age 18.97, SD = 1.76) with motherhood. They completed a numerical measure of adjustment to teenage motherhood in the context of family, school and community and also culture and social policy. A proportion of the teenagers (10%) participated in focus group discussion on the same aspects. The quantitative data were analysed to predict family, interpersonal, school and community interpersonal relationships from the teenage mothers' age, age of parents and living arrangements. The qualitative focus group discussion data were thematically analysed. Findings suggest that supportive living arrangements were instrumental to perceived quality of interpersonal relationships in the family and the school and community relationships. Gendered roles of the parents were social capital for family and school and community relationships with teenage-hood. Living arrangements and parental social discounting qualities reliably predicted teen mothers' social outcomes important for early parenthood counselling.     

A New Interpretation of the Weighted Kappa Coefficients

Reliability and agreement studies are of paramount importance. They do contribute to the quality of studies by providing information about the amount of error inherent to any diagnosis, score or measurement. Guidelines for reporting reliability and agreement studies were recently provided. While the use of the kappa-like family is advised for categorical and ordinal scales, no further guideline in the choice of a weighting scheme is given. In the present paper, a new simple and practical interpretation of the linear- and quadratic-weighted kappa coefficients is given. This will help researchers in motivating their choice of a weighting scheme.     

Nuclear Waste Facing the Test of Time: The Case of the French Deep Geological Repository Project

The purpose of this article is to consider the socio-anthropological issues raised by the deep geological repository project for high-level, long-lived nuclear waste. It is based on fieldwork at a candidate site for a deep storage project in eastern France, where an underground laboratory has been studying the feasibility of the project since 1999. A project of this nature, based on the possibility of very long containment (hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer), involves a singular form of time. By linking project performance to geology’s very long timescale, the project attempts “jump” in time, focusing on a far distant future, without understanding it in terms of generations. But these future generations remain measurements of time on the surface, where the issue of remembering or forgetting the repository comes to the fore. The nuclear waste geological storage project raises questions that neither politicians nor scientists, nor civil society, have ever confronted before. This project attempts to address a problem that exists on a very long timescale, which involves our responsibility toward generations in the far future.     

Mirror Neuron System and Mentalizing System connect during online social interaction

Two sets of brain areas are repeatedly reported in neuroimaging studies on social cognition: the Mirror Neuron System and the Mentalizing System. The Mirror System is involved in goal understanding and has been associated with several emotional and cognitive functions central to social interaction, ranging from empathy to gestural communication and imitation. The Mentalizing System is recruited in tasks requiring cognitive processes such as self-reference and understanding of other’s intentions. Although theoretical accounts for an interaction between the two systems have been proposed, little is known about their synergy during social exchanges. In order to explore this question, we have recorded brain activity by means of functional MRI during live social exchanges based on reciprocal imitation of hand gestures. Here, we investigate, using the method of psychophysiological interaction, the changes in functional connectivity of the Mirror System due to the conditions of interest (being imitated, imitating) compared with passive observation of hand gestures. We report a strong coupling between the Mirror System and the Mentalizing System during the imitative exchanges. Our findings suggest a complementary role of the two networks during social encounters. The Mirror System would engage in the preparation of own actions and the simulation of other’s actions, while the Mentalizing System would engage in the anticipation of the other’s intention and thus would participate to the co-regulation of reciprocal actions. Beyond a specific effect of imitation, the design used offers the opportunity to tackle the role of role-switching in an interpersonal account of social cognition.     

The Bilingual Therapist and Transference to Language: Language use in Therapy and its Relationship to Object Relational Context

Through the concept of transference to language, this paper examines the clinical impact of language-related selves of a bilingual therapist, the origin of which is based on the idea that language develops in an object relation context.