Maternal gestational stress alters adaptive and social behavior in adolescent rhesus monkey offspring

Data from rodent studies have indicated that stress experienced by pregnant mothers may result in behavioral and biological abnormalities in their offspring. However, few studies have examined the effects of prenatal stress on the offspring beyond the childhood period. In this study, 7 prenatally stressed (PNS) monkeys and 7 monkeys from undisturbed pregnancies were tested under mildly challenging conditions at 4 years of age. Following separation from cagemates and group formation, PNS monkeys showed more locomotion, abnormal and disturbance behavior than controls. Controls showed approximately six times more play than PNS animals. The PNS males showed the most clinging to others and the largest increase in contact with other animals over the period. Group differences were also found when the monkeys were observed as groups or alone in a playroom. Controls showed more explanatory behavior in the playroom, whereas PNS monkeys showed more inactivity. Control animals showed a decrease in distress vocalizations over time in the playroom, whereas PNS animals showed the opposite pattern. Control animals spent more time in proximity to and contact with cagemates than PNS animals. These results indicate that prenatal stress can have effects on adaptive and social behavior that persist into adolescence.     

Communicative and other cognitive characteristics of bottlenose dolphins

Scientists have tried to capture the rich cognitive life of dolphins through field and laboratory studies of their brain anatomy, social lives, communication and perceptual abilities. Encopheliration quotient data sugest a level of intelligence or cognitive processing in the large-brained dolphin that is closer to the human range than are our nearest primate relatives. Field studies indicate a fission-fusion type of social structure, showing social complexity rivaling that found in chimpanzee societies. Notably, cetaceans are the only mammals other than humans that clearly demonstrate vocal learning and parallels in stages of vocal learning have been reported for humans, birds and dolphins. The dolphin's vocal plasticity from infancy through adulthood, in what is probably an 'open' communication system, is likely to be related to their fission-fusion social structure and, specifically, to the fluidity of their short-term associations. However, conflicting evidence exists on the composition and organization of the dolphins whistle repertoire. In general, the level of dolphin performance on complex auditory learning and memory tasks has been compared with that of primates on similar visual tasks; however, dolphins have also demonstrated sophistrcated visual processing abilities. Laboratory studies have also provided suggestive, evidence of minor self-recognition in the dolphin, an ability previously thought to be exclusive to humans humans and apes.     

CONTRIBUTIONS OF COGNITIVE THEORY TO NEW BEHAVIORAL TREATMENTS

Abstract— Although clinical, social, and cognitive psychologists alt use the concept of 'cognition,' they often use a in different ways to refer to different phenomena. We offer a heuristic framework for distinguishing among three general uses of the word cognition, and apply this framework to an evaluation of the experiential avoidance concept presented by Hayes and Gifford (this issue) While acknowledging the promise of such work, we raise concerns about its possible limitations. We recommend that clinical applications of the cognition concept be grounded in the theories and methods of contemporary cognitive and neural sciences In support of our recommendation, we present three examples from experiments from out own research.     

Self-perceptions of reactions to doing well or poorly: The roles of stability and level of self-esteem

We examined how individual differences in stability and level of self-esteem relate to self-perceptions of reactions to evaluative events. After exposure to either positive or negative mood-inducing stimuli, participants indicated the likelihood that they would react in reasonable, defensive/aggrandizing, and self-deprecating ways to doing well or poorly at something. Compared to stable high self-esteem individuals (stable high SEs), unstable high SEs reported a greater likelihood of reactions that appear to reflect fragile feelings of self-worth (e.g. more defensive/aggrandizing reactions). Fewer differences as a function of stability of self-esteem emerged among low SEs. Mood interacted with the self-esteem variables in the prediction of several reaction categories. These findings lend support for a multifaceted conceptualization of self-esteem and its role in psychological functioning.     

Buffalo Creek Survivors in the Second Decade: Comparison with Unexposed and Nonlitigant Groups1

This study investigated the second-decade effects of the Buffalo Creek dam collapse and flood that occurred in West Virginia in 1972. One hundred twenty-one survivors who had participated in an earlier lawsuit against the coal company that built the collapsed dam were compared to 78 nonlitigant survivors on self-reported symptoms, clinical ratings, and diagnoses. A nonexposed sample from a geographically and culturally similar neighborhood was investigated as well. Findings showed no differences between the litigant and nonlitigant survivor groups. The survivor groups together showed higher rates of anxiety, depression, and hostility symptoms and diagnoses than the nonexposed sample. The findings were discussed in the context of the nature of the traumatic event, social and cultural influences on recovery, and the constellation of symptoms which differentiated the groups.     

Effects of varying modality,surface features,and retention interval on priming in word-fragment completion

Subjects in Experiment i studied a list of words under varying presentation conditions (visual or auditory) and in two typographies within the visual condition (typed or hand printed) and then received a word-fragment completion test (e.g., —YS—E—Y formystery) in which the test cues also varied in typography. The main findings were that (1) priming occurred for all study items, relative to nonstudied items, but greater priming occurred for visual than for auditory presentation, and (2) performance in the visual conditions was better when typographies matched between study and test than when the typographies mismatched, but only for words studied in hand-printed form. These findings were generally replicated when the test was delayed 1 week, although priming declined across this retention interval (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3 subjects studied words that were either in focus or blurred and showed greater priming when test fragments were presented in the same manner as at study. Priming in the word-fragment completion task depends on matching surface characteristics of items between study and test and exemplifies the requirement of performing similar mental operations at study and test for maximizing performance (transfer-appropriate processing).