Shared lesion correlates of semantic and letter fluency in post-stroke aphasia

Lesion–symptom mapping studies have reported a temporal versus frontal dissociation between semantic and letter fluency, and mixed evidence regarding the role of white matter. Mass-univariate and multivariate lesion–symptom mapping was used to identify regions associated with semantic and letter fluency deficits in post-stroke aphasia. Multivariate LSM revealed broad networks including underlying white matter, and substantial overlap between both types of fluency, suggesting that semantic fluency and letter fluency largely rely on the same neural system. All data are available on OSF.     

Growth and social behavior of previously undernourished mice

Developing mice were growth-retarded by underfeeding of their mothers during lactation. Control mothers were well nourished throughout. All offspring were fed ad libitum from weaning till their behaviour was tested in adulthood. The undernourished mice had weight deficits at weaning of 49% compared with controls. Nevertheless, they showed partial catch-up growth thereafter, in that their absolute weight deficits decreased between weaning and adulthood. Social behaviour observations were made on pairs of mice of the same treatment group. Previously undernourished mice were slower to start attacking one another, spent more time near or in contact with one another and did less tail-rattling than their controls.     

Neuronal changes in normal human aging and Alzheimer's disease

This article discusses age-related changes in brain weight, total number of cortical neurons, cortical dendrites, spine, and synapse density. The conclusion is that the present outlook is less grim than it was 30 years ago. Age-related reduction appears to be specific to brain region and cortical layer rather than a general feature. In addition, we describe a different pattern of changes that occur in Alzheimer's disease patients. This review concludes that the association cortices in particular are affected in aging and Alzheimer's disease and that the primary visual and somatosensory cortices are relatively spared.     

Does Smoking by Pregnant Women Influence IQ, Birth Weight, and Developmental Disabilities in Their Infants? A Methodological Review and Multivariate Analysis

Neuropsychologists are asked frequently to address the issue of the cause of a variety of central nervous system problems that may affect higher cortical function. One such issue is the relationship of maternal smoking to adverse reproductive outcomes involving neocortical insult including mental retardation, learning disabilities, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other insults that may be related to prolonged hypoxic states in utero. The instant paper develops the issue of causation as a scientific inquiry, reviews several traditional, applicable models, and critiques these models. An additional model of motility is proposed and discussed. The issue of the relationship of maternal smoking to adverse reproductive outcomes is then addressed from a review perspective along with new empirical analyses, the latter demonstrating that researchers tend to draw causal conclusions independent of whether the respective design of their studies would support conclusions about the causation of an event. Causal conclusions in the absence of causal designs have often lead to incomplete and incorrect conclusions. It is necessary to match conclusions not only to the outcomes of a research project but also to its design and accompanying limitations.     

Body Size Beliefs and Weight Concerns Among Mothers and Their Adolescent Children

African American and White mother/adolescent pairs were examined for familial associations in body size and weight concerns. Mothers' and adolescents' estimates of adolescents' body mass index (BMI) were significantly correlated. Compared to boys, girls had greater body dissatisfaction, higher weight concerns, and perceived higher family/friend weight concerns. By race, White adolescents had more body dissatisfaction and greater concern about weight than African American adolescents. Four items explained 70.4% of the variance in adolescents' weight concern scores: adolescents' weight management practices, mothers' reports of adolescents' saying they were too fat, adolescents' perceptions of family/friends' weight concerns, and adolescents' body dissatisfaction. Our study suggests White girls are more concerned about their weight and perceive greater weight and dieting concerns among family/friends than African American girls.     

Physiological and self-reported disgust reactions to obesity

There is accumulating evidence that disgust plays an important role in prejudice toward individuals with obesity, but that research is primarily based on self-reported emotions. In four studies, we examined whether participants displayed a physiological marker of disgust (i.e. levator labii activity recorded using facial electromyography) in response to images of obese individuals, and whether these responses corresponded with their self-reported disgust to those images. All four studies showed the predicted self-reported disgust response toward images of obese individuals. Study 1 further showed that participants exhibited more levator activity to images of obese individuals than to neutral images. However, Studies 2–4 failed to provide any evidence that the targets’ body size affected levator responses. These findings suggest that disgust may operate at multiple levels, and that the disgust response to images of obese individuals may be more of a cognitive-conceptual one than a physiological one.     

Weight bias as a function of person variables and contact experiences

ABSTRACT

We tested a mediation model of weight bias that considers person attributes and contact experiences with overweight individuals. In Study 1, we administered a survey to assess Openness, Agreeableness, Attributional Complexity, contact experiences with overweight individuals, and weight bias. Mediation analyses found that Agreeableness predicted less weight bias through contact experiences. In Study 2, we asked participants to interact with a peer whose weight and attributions regarding the weight were experimentally manipulated. We then measured acceptance of the peer. Agreeableness was found to indirectly predict more acceptance of an overweight peer through Empathy and contact experiences. These results show that contact theory is applicable to the domain of weight bias, and support person-situation approaches to prejudice.     

Modeling the effect of reward amount on probability discounting

The present study with college students examined the effect of amount on the discounting of probabilistic monetary rewards. A hyperboloid function accurately described the discounting of hypothetical rewards ranging in amount from $20 to $10,000,000. The degree of discounting increased continuously with amount of probabilistic reward. This effect of amount was not due to changes in the rate parameter of the discounting function, but rather was due to increases in the exponent. These results stand in contrast to those observed with the discounting of delayed monetary rewards, in which the degree of discounting decreases with reward amount due to amount-dependent decreases in the rate parameter. Taken together, this pattern of results suggests that delay and probability discounting reflect different underlying mechanisms. That is, the fact that the exponent in the delay discounting function is independent of amount is consistent with a psychophysical scaling interpretation, whereas the finding that the exponent of the probability-discounting function is amount-dependent is inconsistent with such an interpretation. Instead, the present results are consistent with the idea that the probability-discounting function is itself the product of a value function and a weighting function. This idea was first suggested by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), although their prospect theory does not predict amount effects like those observed. The effect of amount on probability discounting was parsimoniously incorporated into our hyperboloid discounting function by assuming that the exponent was proportional to the amount raised to a power. The amount-dependent exponent of the probability-discounting function may be viewed as reflecting the effect of amount on the weighting of the probability with which the reward will be received.     

Emotional responses to behavioral economic incentives for health behavior change

Many people aim to change their lifestyle, but have trouble acting on their intentions. Behavioral economic incentives and related emotions can support commitment to personal health goals, but the related emotions remain unexplored. In a regret lottery, winners who do not attain their health goals do not get their prize but receive feedback on what their forgone earnings would have been. This counterfactual feedback should provoke anticipated regret and increase commitment to health goals. We explored which emotions were actually expected upon missing out on a prize due to unsuccessful weight loss and which incentive-characteristics influence their likelihood and intensity. Participants reported their expected emotional response after missing out on a prize in one of 12 randomly presented incentive-scenarios, which varied in incentive type, incentive size and deadline distance. Participants primarily reported feeling disappointment, followed by regret. Regret was expected most when losing a lottery prize (vs. a fixed incentive) and intensified with prize size. Multiple features of the participant and the lottery incentive increase the occurrence and intensity of regret. As such, our findings can be helpful in designing behavioral economic incentives that leverage emotions to support health behavior change.