The Dubowitz neurological examination of the full-term newborn

In an ideal world, each neonate should have a comprehensive neurological examination but in practice this is often difficult. In this review we will describe what a routine neurological evaluation in the full-term neonate should consist of and how the Dubowitz examination is performed. The examination has been used for over 20 years and can be easily performed in a short time as the recording sheet provides simple instructions together with simple diagrams to make the recording and the scoring easier. We will also indicate how the examination can be used to identify infants with neurological abnormalities, describing clinical signs which can help to differentiate infants with peripheral neuromuscular disorders from those with central nervous system involvement. The correlation between clinical and imaging findings in infants with neonatal brain lesions will also be reported. Finally we will briefly describe how and when to apply an optimality scoring system in a research setting.     

Age-related differences in familiarity and recollection: ERP evidence from a recognition memory study in children and young adults

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined the relative contributions of familiarity and recollection to recognition memory for items and their study contexts in school-aged children and adults. Whereas adults were able to selectively accept target items and to reject familiar nontarget items in an exclusion task, this discrimination was more difficult for children, as was evident in the high false alarm rates to nontargets even when item memory was controlled for. The analysis of the adults’ ERPs revealed more flexible and task-appropriate retrieval mechanisms, as was evident in the correlates of familiarity, recollection, and nontarget retrieval, as well as in postretrieval evaluation. In contrast, children’s ERPs revealed a parietal old/new effect for targets taken as a putative correlate of recollection. These findings suggest that children rely predominantly on recollection during recognition judgments, even in the absence of efficient memory control processes. The latter processes enable adults to monitor and verify the retrieved information and to control nontarget retrieval in the service of adequate source memory performance.     

Sour Grapes: Transgenerational Family Pathology in the Hebrew Bible

An analysis of Bible stories about the patriarchs' treatment of their children reveals pathological family patterns, which reoccur in subsequent generations. The outcome of parental favoritism and of unhealthy coalitions is sibling rivalry, leading to hatred and to violence among the children. The transgenerational chain of pathologies is traced back to God's differential treatment of Cain and Abel and to the resultant murder. The legitimization of family pathologies by the biblical stories is discussed.     

“Change my selfie”: Relationships between self-objectification and selfie-behavior in young Italian women

Self-objectification is a pervasive phenomenon, related to specific socio-cultural context, that can lead to many psychological and interpersonal consequences. With the present study, we investigated the correlates of self-objectification in young Italian women analyzing both its traditional antecedents and its consequences for self-presentation on social network sites (SNS). A total of 676 Italian university female students completed a self-reported questionnaire on self-objectification, internalization of a thin-ideal and related influences, internalized sexism, self-esteem, SNS use, selfie-posting on SNS and selfies’ manipulation. Results indicated that media and peers, but not family pressures, were positively associated with thin-ideal internalization, which, in turn, was positively associated with self-objectification. Moreover, both sexism and self-esteem were significantly associated with self-objectification. Regarding self-objectification consequences for SNS usage, results revealed that self-objectification was positively associated with time spent on SNS, frequency of selfie-posting and selfie-editing. It was concluded that objectification theory can be extended into the context of image-related behaviors on SNS. Results suggest that young women with low self-esteem, traditional attitudes toward gender roles and high levels of internalization of thin-ideal may report high levels of self-objectification which, in turn, may be related to specific self-promotion behaviors on social media. The limitations of the present study, particularly in terms of sampling and implications for future research on selfie-behavior are discussed.     

Opioid mechanisms are involved in the disruption of arcaine-induced amnesia by context pre-exposure

Previous exposure to the training context disrupts glutamatergic N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAr) antagonist-induced amnesia, indicating that novelty is necessary for such an amnestic effect. While there are reports that novelty-related release of opioids cause amnesia, no study has addressed whether the amnestic effect of NMDAr antagonists involve opioid mechanisms. In this study we investigated whether pharmacological manipulation of the opioid system immediately after context pre-exposure alters the amnestic effect of arcaine, a NMDAr antagonist. Adult male Wistar rats were habituated (pre-exposed) to a fear conditioning training apparatus or to a different context (open field). Immediately after pre-exposure, animals were injected with saline or naloxone (0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) or anti-beta-endorphin antibody (1:500, i.c.v.). Forty eight hours after pre-exposure session, all animals were subjected to fear conditioning acquisition protocol and saline or arcaine (30 mg/kg, i.p.) was administered immediately after training. Testing was carried out 24 h later, and freezing responses due to re-exposure to the training apparatus were recorded. Pre-exposure to the training apparatus prevented the impairment of memory induced by post-training arcaine. Administration of naloxone or anti-beta-endorphin antibody, immediately after pre-exposure to the training apparatus, reinstated the amnesic effect of post-training arcaine. The results suggest that endogenous opioid mechanisms are involved in the pre-exposure-induced loss of the amnestic effect of arcaine.     

Measuring recollection and familiarity: Improving the remember/know procedure

The remember/know (RK) procedure is the most widely used method to investigate recollection and familiarity. It uses trial-by-trial reports to determine how much recollection and familiarity contribute to different kinds of recognition. Few other methods provide information about individual memory judgements and no alternative allows such direct indications of recollection and familiarity influences. Here we review how the RK procedure has been and should be used to help resolve theoretical disagreements about the processing and neural bases of components of recognition memory. Emphasis is placed on procedural weaknesses and a possible confound of recollection and familiarity with recognition memory strength. Recommendations are made about how to minimise these problems including using modified versions of the procedure. The proposals here are important for improving behavioural and lesion research, and vital for brain imaging work.     

Am I my avatar? A tool to investigate virtual body image representation in adolescence

The assessment of body image in adolescence plays a key role in investigating self-esteem development and social adjustment. In particular, these days, adolescents use more and more online tools to communicate with other people, and virtual body image represents a critical aspect for understanding the avatar development. This study aims at investigating the virtual body representation by using the "Drawing Me" graphical test with a group of Italian adolescents. Specifically, we compared body image representation in real (drawings) and virtual (avatar) life by taking gender differences into consideration. Results show that virtual body representation is more characterized by the sexual features related to body, face, and clothes and by a major number of context elements than real body representation. Gender differences confirm that girls tend to represent themselves in greater detail than boys and their avatars are rich with sexual characters. To conclude, our study illustrates that the Drawing Me test is an effective tool that analyzes the virtual body representation in an unobtrusive way, and intervention implications are discussed.     

Risk perception,illusory superiority and personal responsibility during COVID-19: An experimental study of attitudes to staying home

Little is known about how different government communication strategies may systematically affect people’s attitudes to staying home or going out during the COVID-19 pandemic, nor how people perceive and process the risk of viral transmission in different scenarios. In this study, we report results from two experiments that examine the degree to which people’s attitudes regarding the permissibility of leaving one’s home are (1) sensitive to different levels of risk of viral transmission in specific scenarios, (2) sensitive to communication framings that are either imperative or that emphasize personal responsibility, or (3) creating ‘loopholes’ for themselves, enabling a more permissive approach to their own compliance. We find that the level of risk influences attitudes to going out, and that participants report less permissive attitudes to going out when prompted with messages framed in imperative terms, rather than messages emphasizing personal responsibility; for self-loopholes, we find no evidence that participants’ attitudes towards going out in specific scenarios are more permissive for themselves than for others. However, participants report they are more rigorous in staying home than others, which may cause moral licensing. Additionally, we find that age is negatively associated with permissive attitudes, and that male participants are more permissive to going out. Thus, during phases where it is important to promote staying home for all scenarios, including those perceived to be low-risk, imperative communication may be best suited to increase compliance.     

Effects of an Online Stimulus Equivalence Teaching Procedure on Research Design Open-Ended Questions Performance of International Undergraduate Students

The Psychological Record - The purpose of the present study was to assess if training in matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks would yield not only new MTS performance but also written topography-based...     

Evaluation des Screeninginstruments „Autism Mental Status Examination“

Background

Diagnostic procedures for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) include a thorough patient history, a clinical evaluation and the use of specific assessment tools, such as the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS). For initial screening other instruments, such as questionnaires addressing the parents as well as affected children also exist. The autism mental status examination (AMSE) was developed to provide clinicians with a short, structured instrument to collate impressions after a clinical exploration. First studies from the USA showed a sensitivity and specificity which were satisfactory for a screening instrument with a cut-off score of 5.

Aim

The specificity and sensitivity of the German-speaking version of the AMSE for detection of ASD were investigated in a psychiatry cohort of children and adolescents.

Material and methods

This article reports the findings of a pilot study on the first use of the German version of the AMSE in 21 children who were evaluated for ASDs.

Results

The findings show a promising overlap with the ADOS and a satisfactory statistically significant correlation of 0.43.

Conclusion

The German version of the AMSE seems to be a promising screening instrument for ASDs; however, it cannot replace specific diagnostic tools.