The effects of delay on neonatal retention of habituated head-turning

Recovery of neonatal head orientation following auditory habituation was used to examine the effects of intertrial delay. One of two words served as stimuli with criterion orienting and habituation established before the delay. Fifty-six full-term neonates were assigned randomly to one of four delay groups: 10 (control), 55, 100, or 145 s. The percentage of head-turns toward the sound source (with one turn per trial) for blocks of three trials served as the principal dependent variable. Recovery of localized head-turning increased as length of delay increased, with the 100- and 145-s groups showing greater recovery than the 10- and 55-s groups. Infants presented with control trials systematically turned away from the sound source following habituation. Selective sensory adaptation, spontaneous recovery, and short-term memory interpretations of these data are considered.     

THE GOOD TOOTHBRUSHING GAME: A SCHOOL-BASED DENTAL HYGIENE PROGRAM FOR INCREASING THE TOOTHBRUSHING EFFECTIVENESS OF CHILDREN

There has been a serious lack of experimentally verified, effective dental hygiene programs in the schools. In and of themselves, the instruction-alone programs which comprise children's dental education do not produce proper toothbrushing skills. In the present study, a school-based contingency dental hygiene program designed to increase the effectiveness of children's toothbrushing skills at home was implemented with grade one and two classes. Each class was divided into teams and participated in the “Good Toothbrushing Game.” Each day four children from each team had the cleanliness of their teeth assessed according to the Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (Greene & Vermillion, 1964). The team with the lowest mean oral hygiene score was declared the daily winner. Winning teams received stickers and had their names posted. A multiple baseline across classrooms single-subject group design (Hersen & Barlow, 1976, pp. 228–229) established that the good toothbrushing game greatly increased the effectiveness of children's oral hygiene skills. The treatment terminal level for the grade one scores was 2.0 as compared to a baseline terminal level of 5.0, and for the grade two's was 2.3 compared to 5.7 at the end of baseline. A 9-mo follow-up indicated that these results were maintained. The data strongly suggest that proper implementation of behavioral principles is essential to the success of oral hygiene programs.     

Faculty Development: Responsibility and Accountability Within the Departments

If universities are to support faculty contributions across the full range of the mission of higher education (teaching, research, and service), several changes must occur. Teaching must become a community activity discussed openly and widely: presidents and provosts must hold departments as a whole responsible and accountable for contributions to mission: and learned societies must participate in supporting teaching and, when appropriate, reflective practice in addition to research and scholarship. These points are brought out in the articles contained in this issue and warrant further attention.     

Similarity Index: A New Approach to Measuring Doctor–Patient Communication

This study was designed to measure quality of communication between doctors and patients taking a new bi-directional approach by applying similarity index. Further, this study verified the efficacy of such new measurement in distinguishing the established influence of quality of communication on clinical adherence. A sample of 300 patients with primary hypertension along with 30 doctors were administered the Health Communication Checklist-Parallel Form. Clinical adherence of these patients was rated by Hypertension Compliance Scale. Results found higher adherence in patients belonging to high quality of communication indicating the efficacy of similarity index method. This method requires the use of tailored checklist of parallel form to suit the context of the disease. It helps in evaluative research in the field of biopsychosocial approach to health and well-being.     

Some views are better than others: evidence for a visual bias in object views self‐generated by toddlers

How objects are held determines how they are seen, and may thereby play an important developmental role in building visual object representations. Previous research suggests that toddlers, like adults, show themselves a disproportionate number of planar object views – that is, views in which the objects' axes of elongation are perpendicular or parallel to the line of sight. Here, three experiments address three explanations of this bias: (1) that the locations of interesting features of objects determine how they are held and thus how they are viewed; (2) that ease of holding determines object views; and (3) that there is a visual bias for planar views that exists independently of holding and of interesting surface properties. Children 18 to 24 months of age manually and visually explored novel objects (1) with interesting features centered in planar or ¾ views; (2) positioned inside Plexiglas boxes so that holding biased either planar or non‐planar views; and (3) positioned inside Plexiglas spheres, so that no object properties directly influenced holding. Results indicate a visual bias for planar views that is influenced by interesting surface properties and ease of holding, but that continues to exist even when these factors push for alternative views.     

Severity of anxiety moderates the association between neural circuits and maternal behaviors in the postpartum period

Neuroimaging research has suggested that activity in the amygdala, center of the socioemotional network, and functional connectivity between the amygdala and cortical regions are associated with caregiving behaviors in postpartum mothers. Anxiety is common in the early postpartum period, with severity ranging from healthy maternal preoccupation to clinical disorder. However, little is known about the influence of anxiety on the neural correlates of early caregiving. We examined these relationships in a community cohort of 75 postpartum women (ages 18–22; predominantly low-SES, minority race) who listened to infant cry sounds while undergoing an fMRI assessment. Maternal self-reported symptoms of anxiety were mostly within the subclinical range. Positive and negative caregiving behaviors during filmed face-to-face mother–infant interactions were coded by independent observers. The results from whole-brain analyses showed that anxiety severity moderated the brain–maternal behavior relationships. Specifically, our results showed that the higher a mother’s anxiety, the stronger the association between positive caregiving (i.e., maternal warmth and involvement) and amygdala–right posterior superior temporal sulcus (amygdala–RpSTS) functional connectivity. These results remained significant when we controlled for symptoms of depression and contextual variables. These findings suggest that functional connectivity between the amygdala and a social perception region (RpSTS) plays a particularly important role for anxious mothers in facilitating their positive parenting. These findings extend our understanding of the specific neural circuits that support positive maternal caregiving in the context of maternal anxiety, and they may help inform the future design of personalized and effective interventions.     

SYMPOSIUM ON MASS AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

This study employs the 1983–1985 data from Social Sciences Citation Index's Journal Citation Reports to examine citation linkages of 10 communication journals. Some newly developed citation indices, together with existing ones, are used to examine the citation characteristics of these journals. The citation patterns found in this study are consistent with Reeves and Borgman's findings. There are some indications of gradual development in the field. However, in comparison with other social science fields, communication is still less developed and occupies only a peripheral position in the ecology of knowledge. The relative lack of interflow within the field and between communication and other fields is quite prominent.