The effects of group daycare in the context of paid maternal leave and high-quality provision

Social benefits and quality of group daycare vary greatly across countries; the effects on children may depend on the social context. This study used the prospective Norwegian cohort of 24,259 (MoBa; Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study) to examine predictors of group daycare, and the effects of family risk and group daycare on child behaviour at 36 months. The results showed that virtually all 9-month-olds remained in maternal care; while at 18 months over two-thirds attended some form of group daycare. High maternal education and family income very strongly predicted children's attendance in group daycare—a social selection opposite to that found in North America. Group daycare had a statistically significant effect on both distress and aggression, but the effect was very weak. Family risk was associated with both distress and aggression, but this did not differ according to type of care. The findings show a marked difference from those in North America, suggesting that social selection worked in the opposite direction. This was probably due to Norway's generous paid maternal leave and high-quality daycare.     

Gender dimorphic effects of voluntary running in laboratory rats depends on maturational status

This study examined the effect of 24 hr per day wheel access on running, body weight, and food intake for 30- or 50-day-old male and female rats under ad lib feeding conditions. Food intake and body weight were also monitored in a control group housed without access to running wheels. A dimorphic effect was observed after wheel introduction in 50-day-old but not 30-day-old rats: A temporary decline in food intake and a lasting decrease in body weight occurred for active male rats in comparison to their sedentary controls, and wheel access facilitated food intake and preserved body weight gain in female rats in comparison to their sedentary counterparts. Hyperphagia in adult females is interpreted in terms of the evolutionary acquired advantage linked to their reproductive function.     

Investigation of the association between mobbing and musculoskeletal discomfort in academicians

This study aimed to identify the association between exposure to mobbing and musculoskeletal discomfort in academicians. One hundred academicians working at a university were included in the study. Permission was granted by the Rector prior to the study and questionnaires were delivered to the academicians. The Turkish version of the Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terror (LIPT) was used to evaluate mobbing and the Turkish version of the Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire (CMDQ) was used to assess musculoskeletal discomfort. When the data were analyzed, a moderate association was found between mobbing perceived by the academic staff and musculoskeletal discomfort. In conclusion, this study showed that mobbing is a risk factor for musculoskeletal discomfort.     

Intersections Between Nativity, Ethnic Density, and Neighborhood SES: Using an Ethnic Enclave Framework to Explore Variation in Puerto Ricans’ Physical Health

Although past research has demonstrated a “health disadvantage” for Puerto Rican adults, very little is known about correlates of health among this group. Given Puerto Ricans’ unique experiences of migration and settlement, an ethnic enclave framework that integrates nativity, ethnic density, and neighborhood SES may offer insight into factors influencing Puerto Ricans’ health. This study uses a sample of 449 adult mainland- and island-born Puerto Ricans living in New York City and Chicago. The data, collected as a part of the MIDUS Survey of Minority Groups, are stratified by neighborhood ethnic density and neighborhood SES, allowing for the examination of the individual and joint influences of neighborhood characteristics on physical health. Results revealed that ethnic density and neighborhood SES were not independently or interactively related to physical health for mainland-born Puerto Ricans. However, the interaction between ethnic density and neighborhood SES was related to self-reported health, functional limitations, and health symptoms for island-born Puerto Ricans. Island-born Puerto Ricans living in ethnically dense, low SES neighborhoods reported worse health than island-born Puerto Ricans living in other types of neighborhoods. This may be a result of isolation from resources both within and outside the neighborhood.     

Power to the will: How exerting physical effort boosts the sense of agency

The sense of agency refers to the experience of being in control of one’s actions and their consequences. The 19th century French philosopher Maine de Biran proposed that the sensation of effort might provide an internal cue for distinguishing self-caused from other changes in the environment. The present study is the first to empirically test the philosophical idea that effort promotes self-agency. We used intentional binding, which refers to the subjective temporal attraction between an action and its sensory consequences, as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Effort was manipulated independent of the primary task by requiring participants to pull stretch bands of varying resistance levels. We found that intentional binding was enhanced under conditions of increased effort. This suggests not only that the experience of effort directly contributes to the sense of agency, but also that the integration of effort as an agency cue is non-specific to the effort requirement of the action itself.     

The physical environment and child development: An international review

A growing body of research in the United States and Western Europe documents significant effects of the physical environment (toxins, pollutants, noise, crowding, chaos, and housing, school and neighborhood quality) on children and adolescents' cognitive and socioemotional development. Much less is known about these relations in other contexts, particularly the global South. We thus briefly review the evidence for relations between child development and the physical environment in Western contexts, and discuss some of the known mechanisms behind these relations. We then provide a more extensive review of the research to date outside of Western contexts, with a specific emphasis on research in the global South. Where the research is limited, we highlight relevant data documenting the physical environment conditions experienced by children, and make recommendations for future work. In these recommendations, we highlight the limitations of employing research methodologies developed in Western contexts (Ferguson & Lee, 2013). Finally, we propose a holistic, multidisciplinary, and multilevel approach based on Bronfenbrenner's (1979) bioecological model to better understand and reduce the aversive effects of multiple environmental risk factors on the cognitive and socioemotional development of children across the globe.     

Discontinuities in early development of the understanding of physical causality

Research on early physical reasoning has shown surprising discontinuities in developmental trajectories. Infants possess some skills that seem to disappear and then re-emerge in childhood. It has been suggested that prediction skills required in search tasks might cause these discontinuities (Keen, 2003). We tested 3.5- to 5-year-olds’ understanding of collision events using a forced-choice paradigm with reduced prediction demands. Although the group as a whole performed at chance level, when the preschoolers were subdivided into three age groups, the oldest group performed above chance level. These findings suggest that it is unlikely to be prediction skills that affect young preschoolers’ performance on physical reasoning tasks. The findings lend support to a task-demand hypothesis, which proposes that discontinuities in developmental trajectories can be explained by differences in the extent to which cognitive processes are required by the different tasks.     

Chronic pelvic pain: A meta-analytic review

Abstract

Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) in women of reproductive age is a common complaint; for many women no identifiable pathology can be found. Research has suggested that women who have chronic pelvic pain without obvious pathology differ on a range of psychological characteristics, such as anxiety and depression, compared with those with identified pathology. A meta-analysis of 22 studies was undertaken to clarify these issues. Results showed that there were no significant differences on a range of psychological variables between women who were identified, via laparoscopy and clinical judgement, as having organic disorders and those who were not so identified. When women with chronic pelvic pain were compared with pain-free groups a profile of elevated depression, anxiety, neuroticism and psychopathology was found which is consistent with findings from studies of other painful conditions.     

新生儿疼痛管理方法与培训现状

总结了目前新生儿疼痛管理方法与培训现状.疼痛管理方法包括非药物性止痛方法如口服蔗糖水、非营养性吸吮、襁褓包裹及袋鼠式护理等,药物镇痛如瑞芬太尼与丙泊酚用于小儿气管插管及其他;培训现状包括权威教科书上缺少关于新生儿疼痛管理知识、缺乏特异性调查问卷、缺乏专业师资及培训机构.认为在新生儿的治疗护理中医护人员要坚持科学的认识论,把握医学伦理学的要求,在日常的治疗护理中体现对新生儿的人文关怀,才能进一步提高医疗护理质量,达到医院与患者的双赢.     

Agency and pain: An exploration

The notion of agency has become particularly prominent in social‐science writing. This article identifies some of the weaknesses in the ways it has been employed in contemporary anthropology. It criticises the assumptions of self‐empowerment, responsibility, and constructivism that are held to be essential to moral agency in much of that usage. Present‐day conceptions of agency in this literature introduce—whether intentionally or not—a triumphalist vision of history. Drawing on recent neuro‐physiological research, religious history and ethnography, it focuses on pain in order to think about agency in other than triumphalist terms. Triumphalist versions of agency, the article argues, are not only inherently questionable, they also distract our attention away from the need to understand how different traditions articulate the idea of living sanely in a world that is inevitably painful.