Using hippocampal‐dependent eyeblink conditioning to predict individual differences in spatial reorientation strategies in 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds

The hippocampus is a subcortical structure in the medial temporal lobe involved in cognitive functions such as spatial navigation and reorientation, episodic memory, and associative learning. While much is understood about the role of hippocampal function in learning and memory in adults, less is known about the relations between the hippocampus and the development of these cognitive skills in young children due to the limitations of using standard methods (e.g., MRI) to examine brain structure and function in developing populations. This study used hippocampal‐dependent trace eyeblink conditioning (EBC) as a feasible approach to examine individual differences in hippocampal functioning as they relate to spatial reorientation and episodic memory performance in young children. Three‐ to six‐year‐old children (N = 50) completed tasks that measured EBC, spatial reorientation, and episodic memory, as well as non‐hippocampal‐dependent processing speed abilities. Results revealed that when age was held constant, individual differences in EBC performance were significantly related to individual differences in performance on the spatial reorientation test, but not on the episodic memory or processing speed tests. When the relations between hippocampal‐dependent EBC and different reorientation strategies were explored, it was found that individual differences in hippocampal function predicted the use of geometric information for reorienting in space as opposed to a combined strategy that uses both geometric information and salient visual cues. The utilization of eyeblink conditioning to examine hippocampal function in young populations and its implications for understanding the dissociation between spatial reorientation and episodic memory development are discussed.     

A novel,short and easy-to-perform method to evaluate newborns’ social olfactory preferences

Animal Cognition - Humans’ early olfactory perception has been studied mainly within the framework of mother–offspring interactions and only a few studies have focused on...     

Load effects in attention: Comparing tasks and age groups

Attention is limited in terms of both capacity (i.e., amount of information attended) and selectivity (i.e., the degree to which non-attended information is nonetheless processed). One of the seminal theories in the field, load theory, predicts that these two aspects of attention interact in systematic ways. Specifically, load theory predicts that when the amount of information to attend is less than the available capacity, spare attention will naturally leak out to unattended items. While load theory has found a great deal of empirical support, the robustness of the findings has recently been called into question, in particular with respect to the extent to which the predictions are borne out across different tasks and populations. Here we report tests of perceptual load effects in two different tasks (change detection and enumeration) and in two populations (adults and 7- to 8-year-old children). Adults’ accuracies did not demonstrate the predicted interaction between the capacity and selection dimensions, whereas children’s performance, in addition to being overall worse than adults, did show the interaction. The overall lower accuracy of children was seen to be the result of a larger performance decrement in response to capacity demands, distracting information, and their interaction. Interestingly, while these results were seen at the level of the two tasks, there was no within-participants correlation across tasks. Overall, these results suggest that maturation-related changes attenuate the magnitude of distractor effects in attention, which in turn limits the evidence for interactions between capacity and selection in high-functioning populations.

     

When Do Motives to Sexually Please a Male Partner Benefit Women’s Own Sexual Agency?

Motivation to please a partner sexually, also known as sexual communal strength (SCS), has been positively associated with sexual and relationship functioning, particularly for partners. We used a critical sexuality studies approach to examine SCS as it relates to women’s own sexual agency. We also examined the potential moderating role of partner sexual coercion, defined as persistent pressure to attain sex. Specifically, we investigated whether frequency of partner sexual coercion moderates the effect of SCS on three different aspects of women’s sexual agency: sexual desire, sexual refusal assertiveness, and relational power. Participants were 172 U.S. women in dating relationships with men who responded to self-report measures. Results showed that SCS was positively related to women’s own sexual desire, regardless of how often women experienced partner sexual coercion. SCS and partner sexual coercion frequency were associated with sexual refusal assertiveness: The least assertive women reported both higher SCS and more frequent partner coercion. Sexual coercion frequency was negatively related to women’s relational power, regardless of their own SCS. These findings support educational and clinical interventions to reduce sexual coercion and suggest the concept of SCS be further refined to better account for the potential roles sexual coercion and heterosexual norms play more broadly.

     

Surrogacy and the Construction of the Maternal-Foetal Relationship: The Feminist Dilemma Examined

The feminist movement remains fundamentally divided over the issue of surrogacy. Within the confines of this article it is argued that the inadequacy of positions on both sides of the debate rests upon their common tendency to deal with the ethical consequences of surrogacy for isolated agents, without sufficient concern for the broader social implications for all pregnant women in society. In order to clarify the issues involved, feminist theorists must consider the implications of surrogacy in a broader social spectrum. Such an analysis will illustrate that the two-person dichotomous model of the maternal-foetal relationship proposed by the surrogacy arrangement has hugely prejudicial effects on the treatment received by non-contract mothers when they interact with agents of certain social institutions whose prior contact with surrogate mothers has made them more susceptible to conceiving the maternal-foetal relationship as fundamentally disconnected. In a climate of increased medical surveillance and intervention in the non-clinical context of pregnancy, the dangers of adopting this dichotomous model are palpable. Given the oppressive physical and psychological effect that this would have upon the liberty of the majority of pregnant women in society, this article argues that the feminist movement must abandon any promotion of the abstracted model of the mother-foetus relationship that is implicit in its arguments in favour of surrogacy.     

Accuracy of Predicting a Child's Response to Potential Threat: A Comparison of Children and Their Mothers

Considerable research has indicated that children and their parents often demonstrate marked discrepancies in their reporting of anxiety-related phenomena. In such cases, the question arises as to whether children are capable of accurately reporting on their anxiety. In the present study, 50 children (aged 5 to 14 years) were asked to approach a large, German Shepherd dog. Prior to the task, both the mother and child independently predicted the closest point likely to be reached by the child and the degree of anxiety likely to be experienced. These predictions were then compared with the actual phenomena displayed by the child during the task. On the behavioural measure (closest step reached), both the child and mother demonstrated equivalent predictive accuracy. On the subjective measure (fear ratings) children were considerably more accurate than their mothers. The data were not influenced by gender, age, or clinical status. The results indicate the ability of children to accurately predict their anxious responses, and support the value of incorporating children's self-reports in the assessment of emotional disorders.     

Processing of mass/count information in Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment

This study examines the processing of a specific linguistic distinction, the mass/count distinction, in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Fourteen AD and 10 MCI subjects were tested using a sentence grammaticality judgement task where grammaticality violations were caused by determiner–noun mismatches, as well as a sentence–picture matching task to assess their ability to access mass and count readings of dual nouns. Considerable heterogeneity was observed within each subject group, and performance across groups was almost identical. It is concluded that a combination of linguistic and attentional and/or learning factors are responsible for the range of impairments; specifically, a subset of subjects exhibit no linguistic nor attentional/learning impairment, another subset exhibit only an attentional and/or learning impairment but no linguistic impairment, and a third subset (comprising more than half of the subjects included in this study) exhibit a linguistic impairment. It is postulated that the latter group have difficulty processing sense extensions in metonymous nouns. It is further claimed that, at least within the limits of the study, language impairments can be of the same severity and nature across AD and MCI subjects.     

A slice of life: Ecologically valid methods for research on social relationships and health across the life span

This paper describes “slice of life” methods—detailed observations of moment‐to‐moment intraindividual processes that occur over short timescales in the natural environment—as an important research tool in exploring social relationships and health across the life span. Such methods, including ecological momentary assessment, experience sampling, daily diaries, measurement burst, and other slice of life designs, are important supplements to more traditional laboratory, epidemiological, and long‐term longitudinal research methods. Specifically, we highlight how slice of life methods (with a focus on ecological momentary assessment) allow researchers to compare the relative importance of different social relationships (or features thereof) for health outcomes, understand temporal dynamics, identify potentially causal mechanistic pathways at different timescales through which social relationships influence health, and design, implement, and evaluate innovative interventions that target these pathways at different timescales. We conclude with recommendations and future directions for slice of life methods for research on social relationships and health across the life span.     

Risk behaviour and mental workload: Multimodal assessment techniques applied to motorbike riding simulation

We present data from an ongoing research project on the cognitive, emotional and neuropsychological basis of risk behaviour. The main aim of the project is to build a model of risk behaviour so that if we know certain cognitive, behavioural and emotional variables, we will be able to predict decisions made in the face of uncertainty and risk, with the final goal of designing programs for evaluating, preventing and controlling risk behaviour. The objective of the present study was to look for individual differences in hazard perception during a static riding simulation and their relationship with mental workload. We used a multidimensional methodology, including behavioural, subjective and physiological data. The behavioural measures were obtained in a static riding simulation during eight hazard situations. We evaluated whether eye activity measures correlated with cognitive workload and different types of risky behaviours. Eye movement parameters were measured using a video-based eye tracking system. We found that risk-prone individuals showed specific patterns of risky behaviours and that peak of saccadic velocity and subjective mental workload indexes were both reliable indicators of risk proneness. Mental workload was higher for participants showing attitudes to risk behaviours probably because of a lack of conscious awareness of specific cues indicating dangerous scenarios.