Prenatal depression effects and interventions: A review

This review covers research on the negative effects of prenatal depression and cortisol on fetal growth, prematurity and low birthweight. Although prenatal depression and cortisol were typically measured at around 20 weeks gestation, other research suggests the stability of depression and cortisol levels across pregnancy. Women with Dysthymia as compared to Major Depression Disorder had higher cortisol levels, and their newborns had lower gestational age and birthweight. The cortisol effects in these studies were unfortunately confounded by low serotonin and low dopamine levels which in themselves could contribute to non-optimal pregnancy outcomes. The negative effects of depression and cortisol were also potentially confounded by comorbid anxiety, by demographic factors including younger age, less education and lower SES of the mothers and by the absence of a partner or a partner who was unhappy about the pregnancy or a partner who was depressed. Substance use (especially caffeine use) was still another risk factor. All of these problems including prenatal depression, elevated cortisol, prematurity and low birthweight and even postpartum depression have been reduced by prenatal massage therapy provided by the women's partners. Massage therapy combined with group interpersonal psychotherapy was also effective for reducing depression and cortisol levels. Several limitations of these studies were noted and suggestions for future research included exploring other predictor variables like progesterone/estriol ratios, immune factors and genetic determinants. Further research is needed both on the potential use of cortisol as a screening measure and the use of other therapies that might reduce prenatal depression and cortisol in the women and prematurity and low birthweight in their infants.     

Behaving as expected: Public information and fairness norms

What is considered to be fair depends on context‐dependent expectations. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation—that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders show a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-presentation and gender on MySpace

Within the cultural context of MySpace, this study explores the ways emerging adults experience social networking. Through focus group methodology, the role of virtual peer interaction in the development of personal, social, and gender identities was investigated. Findings suggest that college students utilize MySpace for identity exploration, engaging in social comparison and expressing idealized aspects of the selves they wish to become. The public nature of self and relationship displays introduce feedback mechanisms by which emerging adults can legitimize images as associated with the self. Also, male–female differences in self-presentation parallel, and possibly intensify, gender norms offline. Our study suggests that social networking sites provide valuable opportunities for emerging adults to realize possible selves; however, increased pressure for female sexual objectification and intensified social comparison may also negatively impact identity development. A balanced view, presenting both opportunities and drawbacks, should be encouraged in policies regarding youth participation in social networking sites.     

Swedish norms for word fluency tests: FAS, animals and verbs

Verbal fluency tests are useful measures of acquired language impairment and cognitive decline of various etiologies. The aim of this study was to provide normative data for the Swedish population on the three verbal fluency tests, FAS, Animals and Verbs. A group of 165 healthy participants ranging from 16 to 89 years of age were assessed with the verbal fluency tests and tests of level of intellectual functioning. The sample was stratified by education, age and gender. Level of education had a substantial influence on the performance on verbal fluency, most clearly so in FAS and Verbs. Intellectual level had a positive and significant correlation with all measures of word fluency. Moreover, there was an interaction between age and gender such that women aged between 30 and 64 years outperformed elderly men on FAS and Verbs. Guidelines for instructions and scoring in Swedish are given in the article.     

Beyond the Class Norm: Bullying Behavior of Popular Adolescents and its Relation to Peer Acceptance and Rejection

This study examined to what extent bullying behavior of popular adolescents is responsible for whether bullying is more or less likely to be accepted or rejected by peers (popularity-norm effect) rather than the behavior of all peers (class norm). Specifically, the mean level of bullying by the whole class (class norm) was split into behavior of popular adolescents (popularity-norm) and behavior of non-popular adolescents (non-popularity-norm), and examined in its interaction with individual bullying on peer acceptance and peer rejection. The data stem from a peer-nominations subsample of TRAILS, a large population-based sample of adolescent boys and girls (N = 3312). The findings of multilevel regression analyses demonstrated that the negative impact of individual bullying on peer acceptance and the positive impact on peer rejection were particularly weakened by bullying by popular adolescents. These results place the class-norm effects found in previous person-group dissimilarity studies in a different light, suggesting that particularly bullying by popular adolescents is related to the social status attached to bullying.

Patterns of Adolescent Depression to Age 20: The Role of Maternal Depression and Youth Interpersonal Dysfunction

Considerable research has focused on youth depression, but further information is needed to characterize different patterns of onset and recurrence during adolescence. Four outcome groups by age 20 were defined (early onset-recurrent, early-onset-desisting, later-onset, never depressed) and compared on three variables predictive of youth depression: gender, maternal depression, and interpersonal functioning. Further, it was hypothesized that the association between maternal depression and youth depression between 15 and 20 is mediated by early-onset depression and interpersonal dysfunction by age 15. Eight hundred sixteen community youth selected for depression risk by history (or absence) of maternal depression were interviewed at age 15, and 699 were included in the 5-year follow-up. Controlling for gender, early onset and interpersonal dysfunction mediated the link between maternal depression and late adolescent major depression. Different patterns for males and females were observed. For males maternal depression’s effect was mediated by early onset but not interpersonal difficulties, while for females maternal depression’s effect was mediated by interpersonal difficulties but not early onset. Maternal depression did not predict first onset of major depression after age 15. The results suggest the need for targeting the impact of maternal depression’s gender-specific effects on early youth outcomes, and also highlight the different patterns of major depression in youth and their likely implications for future course of depression.

Accuracy of judging others’ traits and states: Comparing mean levels across tests

Tests of accuracy in interpersonal perception take many forms. Often, such tests use designs and scoring methods that produce overall accuracy levels that cannot be directly compared across tests. Therefore, progress in understanding accuracy levels has been hampered. The present article employed several techniques for achieving score equivalency. Mean accuracy was converted to a common metric, pi [Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1989). Effect size estimation for one-sample multiple-choice-type data: Design, analysis, and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 332–337] in a database of 109 published results representing tests that varied in terms of scoring method (proportion accuracy versus correlation), content (e.g., personality versus affect), number of response options, item preselection, cue channel (e.g., face versus voice), stimulus duration, and dynamism. Overall, accuracy was midway between guessing level and a perfect score, with accuracy being higher for tests based on preselected than unselected stimuli. When item preselection was held constant, accuracy was equivalent for judging affect and judging personality. However, comparisons must be made with caution due to methodological variations between studies and gaps in the literature.     

The darker side of accommodating others: Examining the interpersonal structure of maladaptive constructs

To better understand the greater prevalence of depression among women, compared to men, we explored the darker side of accommodating others by examining where maladaptive relational constructs fit within a general structural framework provided by the interpersonal circumplex and 5-factor model of personality. Participants were four samples of undergraduate students (Ns = 302–2070) who completed questionnaires. Results indicated two clusters of maladaptive items: Submission with Connection and Submission without Connection. In general, the most maladaptive relational constructs were concentrated in the first cluster and were located in the low agency, low communion region of the interpersonal circumplex.     

Who do you think I think I am? Accuracy in perceptions of others’ self-esteem

This study was conducted to assess the accuracy of perceptions of others’ self-esteem and to examine the potential moderating variables of target gender, perceiver gender, and degree of acquaintance. Degree of acquaintance was the only hypothesized moderator reliably related to accuracy. An overall tendency to overestimate targets’ self-esteem was evinced, but was not related to any of the hypothesized moderators. The data suggested that perceivers are influenced by a false consensus effect when estimating others’ level of self-esteem, independent of their degree of acquaintance with targets. Implications of the findings and directions for future investigation are discussed.     

Substantive and procedural norms in normative multiagent systems

Procedural norms are instrumental norms addressed to agents playing a role in the normative system, for example to motivate these role playing agents to recognize violations or to apply sanctions. Procedural norms have first been discussed in law, where they address legal practitioners such as legislators, lawyers and policemen, but they are discussed now too in normative multiagent systems to motivate software agents. Procedural norms aim to achieve the social order specified using regulative norms like obligations and permissions, and constitutive norms like counts-as obligations. In this paper we formalize procedural, regulative and constitutive norms using input/output logic enriched with an agent ontology and an abstraction hierarchy. We show how our formalization explains Castelfranchi's notion of mutual empowerment, stating that not only the agents playing a role in a normative system are empowered by the normative system, but the normative system itself is also empowered by the agents playing a role in it. In our terminology, the agents are not only institutionally empowered, but they are also delegated normative goals from the system. Together, institutional empowerment and normative goal delegation constitute a mechanism which we call delegation of power, where agents acting on behalf of the normative system become in charge of recognizing which institutional facts follow from brute facts.