Profiles of adversity and resilience resources: A latent class analysis of two samples

Adversities refer to events that are characterized by perceived or actual threat to human functioning. Often considered deleterious for health and well-being, recent work supports an alternative picture of the effects of adversity on human functioning, such that a moderate amount of adversity – when compared with none or high levels – can be beneficial. We extend this body of work in the current study by considering the breadth or type of adversities experienced simultaneously (referred to as polyadversity), with a focus on individual profiles of lifetime adversities. Latent class analysis was employed to explore different configurations of lifetime adversity experiences in two independent samples and examine how these latent classes differed with regard to resilience resources (i.e., optimism, hope, self-efficacy, and bounce-back ability). University students (N = 348) and members from the broader community (N = 1,506) completed measures of lifetime adversity exposure and resilience resources. Three polyadversity classes were revealed in each sample, with both producing a high and a low polyadversity class. The third class differed between samples; in the student sample, this class represented experiences of vicarious adversity, whereas in the community sample, it represented moderate levels of exposure to adversity. Support for the adaptive nature of a moderate amount of adversity exposure was found in the community sample but not in the student sample. This study produces initial evidence of how lifetime adversity experiences group together and how class membership is related to resilience resources.     

Warning: Hegemonic Masculinity May Not Matter as Much as You Think for Confidant Patterns among Older Men

Sex Roles - Previous scholarship shows that cisgender women are more likely to have confidants than cisgender men and that the latter are more likely to have confidants outside the family and keep...     

Sensation weighting in duration discrimination: A univariate,multivariate, and varied-design study of presentation-order effects

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Stimulus discriminability is often assessed by comparisons of two successive stimuli: a fixed standard (St) and a varied comparison stimulus (Co)....     

Is the P600/SPS affected by the richness of semantic content? A linguistic ERP study in Swedish

The study investigated whether the P600/SPS component is sensitive to the richness of semantic content in sentences. ERPs were recorded while 30 native Swedish speakers read sentences, of which half were syntactically correct and half contained a syntactic violation. Both kinds of sentences came in one of three types of descending semantic completeness: semantically coherent sentences, sentences which were incoherent due to violations of selectional restrictions, or sentences of pseudo words, hence void of lexical content. In the semantically coherent sentences a P600/SPS was found for the syntactic violation. A less salient positivity was found for the violation in the semantically incoherent sentences. No P600/SPS was found for the syntactic violation in the pseudo word sentences and no LAN component in any sentence type. The results are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that the P600/SPS component reflects a semantically based reanalysis process.     

School outcomes of a community-wide intervention model aimed at preventing problem behavior

The Early Intervention for Children at Risk for Developing Behavioral Problems (EICR) is a community-wide intervention model preventing and treating problem behavior and promoting social competence in children. The aim of the study was to test whether EICR would result in fewer incidences of problem behavior and improved learning climate in elementary schools in a Norwegian municipality. The municipality was divided in two, each section having equal chance of being assigned to the intervention condition. Participants were principals and school staff. One year after the initiation of EICR, the prevalence of student problem behavior was significantly lower, and student relations were significantly better for schools located in the intervention area than for schools located in the comparison area. The findings support further development, implementation and research on the EICR model.     

Intellectual function in children with teacher reported language problems

We predicted that teacher reported language problems are associated with low IQ, even when gender and behavior-emotional disorders are controlled for. All subjects were participants in a population based study. In stage 1, teachers completed a questionnaire containing four items pertaining to language function. A case-control sample (n= 294) was assessed using WISC-III and Kiddie-SADS-PL. A child was defined with "language problems" (LP) if s/he obtained a score indicating severe problems on at least one item. Teacher reported LP was found in 9.9% of the population sample and 20.7% of the case-control sample, with a three-fold higher risk for boys than girls. The LP group obtained significantly lower scores on all WISC-III factors compared with the non-LP group. The differences were not accounted for by the presence of behavioral-emotional disorders. When primary school teachers report LP, further assessment of the child's cognitive function is warranted.     

Psychological stress reactivates dextran sulfate sodium-induced chronic colitis in mice

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic condition with alternating active and quiescent phases of inflammation. Stress has been suggested as a factor triggering a relapse of IBD. We investigated the role of repetitive psychological stress [water avoidance stress (WAS)] in reactivating colonic inflammation in a murine model of dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced chronic colitis. Colitis was induced in C57BL/6 female mice by exposure to 3% DSS (5 days). During chronic inflammation(day 34), mice underwent repetitive WAS (1 h/day/7 days) and were given a sub-threshold concentration of DSS (1%, 5 days)or normal water to drink. At euthanasia (day 40), inflammatory parameters were assessed (colon inflammatory score, levels of inflammatory markers and histology). Mice with chronic colitis exposed to WAS had higher macroscopic and microscopic colonic inflammatory scores and levels of inflammatory markers (mainly IL-1beta, IL12p40 and CCL5) than non-stressed mice. Inflammatory responses were further enhanced by the presence of a sub-threshold concentration of DSS (1%). In mice without chronic inflammation, neither WAS nor 1% DSS, individually or in combination, elicited any inflammation. Hence stress, per se, reactivates a quiescent chronic inflammation, but does not initiate inflammation in healthy mice. Stress should be regarded as an environmental factor triggering IBD relapses in humans.     

Stress in cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) subjected to long-distance transport and simulated transport housing conditions

The stress associated with transportation of non-human primates used in scientific research is an important but almost unexplored part of laboratory animal husbandry. The procedures and routines concerning transport are not only important for the animals' physical health but also for their mental health as well. The transport stress in cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) was studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 25 adult female cynomolgus monkeys were divided into five groups of five animals each that received different diets during the transport phase of the experiment. All animals were transported in conventional single animal transport cages with no visual or tactile contact with conspecifics. The animals were transported by lorry for 24 h at ambient temperatures ranging between 20 degrees C and 35 degrees C. Urine produced before, during and after transport was collected and analysed for cortisol by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). All monkeys exhibited a significant increase in cortisol excretion per time unit during the transport and on the first day following transport.Although anecdotal reports concerning diet during transport, including the provision of fruits and/or a tranquiliser, was thought likely to influence stress responses, these were not corrobated by the present study. In Experiment 2, behavioural data were collected from 18 cynomolgus macaques before and after transfer from group cages to either single or pair housing, and also before and after a simulated transport, in which the animals were housed in transport cages. The single housed monkeys were confined to single transport cages and the pair housed monkeys were kept in their pairs in double size cages. Both pair housed and singly housed monkeys showed clear behavioural signs of stress soon after their transfer out of their group cages.However, stress-associated behaviours were more prevalent in singly housed animals than in pair housed animals, and these behaviours persisted for a longer time after the simulated transport housing event than in the pair housed monkeys. Our data confirm that the transport of cynomolgus monkeys is stressful and suggest that it would be beneficial for the cynomolgus monkeys to be housed and transported in compatible pairs from the time they leave their group cages at the source country breeding facility until they arrive at their final laboratory destination in the country of use.     

Betting Against Hard Determinism

The perennial fear associated with the free will problem is the prospect of hard determinism being true. Unlike prevalent attempts to reject hard determinism by defending compatibilist analyses of freedom and responsibility, this article outlines a pragmatic argument to the effect that we are justified in betting that determinism is false even though we may retain the idea that free will and determinism are incompatible. The basic argument is that as long as we accept that libertarian free will is worth wanting, there is a defensible rationale, given the uncertainty which remains as to whether determinism is true or false, to refrain from acting on hard determinism, and thus to bet that libertarian free will exists. The article closes by discussing two potentially decisive objections to this pragmatic argument.