College Students May Forget Class Content to Protect Self-Image

New research suggests forgetting content from a stressful math class may be one way to protect an individual’s belief that they are good at math.

The phenomenon is similar to repression, the psychological process in which people forget emotional or traumatic events to protect themselves.

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers found that the students who forgot the most content from the class were those who reported a high level of stress during the course.

However, paradoxically, the study also found that the strong relationship between stress level and the tendency to forget course material was most prevalent among the students who are most confident in their own mathematical abilities.

The phenomenon, which the authors call “motivated forgetting,” may occur because students are subconsciously protecting their own self-image as excellent mathematicians, said Dr. Gerardo Ramirez, a UCLA assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author.

For the study, researchers analyzed 117 undergraduates in an advanced calculus course at UCLA.

The students generally consider themselves to be strong in mathematics and plan to pursue careers that rely on high-level mathematical skills, so the logical assumption would be that they would be likely to remember most of the material from the course.

Researchers asked students a series of questions at the start of the course, including having them assess to what extent they see themselves as “math people.”

Each week throughout the course, students were asked to gauge how stressful they thought the course was. Then, the study’s authors examined students’ performance on the course’s final exam and on another similar test two weeks later. On average, students’ grades were 21 percent lower on the follow-up.

Among students who strongly considered themselves to be “math people,” those who experienced a lot of stress performed measurably worse on the follow-up exam than those whose stress levels were lower.

The results were striking because, in the cases of the students whose stress levels were highest, test scores dropped by as much as a full letter grade, from an A-minus to a B-minus, for example.

Ramirez explains that the behaviors make sense from a psychological perspective.

“Students who found the course very stressful and difficult might have given in to the motivation to forget as a way to protect their identity as being good at math,” he said.

“We tend to forget unpleasant experiences and memories that threaten our self-image as a way to preserve our psychological well-being. And ‘math people’ whose identity is threatened by their previous stressful course experience may actively work to forget what they learned.”

The idea that people are motivated to forget unpleasant experiences — activating a sort of “psychological immune system” — goes back to Sigmund and Anna Freud, the pioneers of psychoanalysis, Ramirez said.

The students who think of themselves as excellent at math and felt high levels of stress were also more likely to report they avoided thinking about the course after it ended more than other students did. Previous studies by other researchers also seem to support the concept of motivated forgetting.

For example, a 2011 Harvard University study found that when people were asked to memorize an “honor code” and then pay themselves for solving a series of problems, those who cheated and overpaid themselves remembered less of the honor code at the end of the experiment than those who did not cheat.

“Motivated forgetting, or giving in to the desire to forget what we find threatening, is a defense mechanism people use against threats to the way they like to depict themselves,” Ramirez said. “The students are highly motivated to do well and can’t escape during the course, but as soon as they take their final exam, they can give in their desire to forget and try to suppress the information.”

Ramirez said there are steps teachers can take to help students retain information. Some of them:

• Emphasize the material’s real-world applications. This will give students incentives to remember information and review it later on. “I think we often do a poor job of showing students why the content is relevant to their lives and future job skills,” Ramirez said.
• Cover the entire course in final exams. And not just the most recent material. “Non-cumulative exams tell students they can forget what they have already been tested on,” he said.
• Guard against learning-by-photo. Specifically, Ramirez advises students not to try to capture course notes by taking photos with their smartphones — it might subtly create an impression that they don’t need to actually learn the information.
• Embrace the challenges. When his students struggle, Ramirez tells them the challenge they’re facing will lead to deeper learning. “I try to change what ‘struggle’ means for them so that they don’t feel threatened when they are stressed out about the material,” he said.

Source: UCLA

Pregnancy Warning Signs on Alcohol Tied to Reduced Drinking by Expectant Women

Alcohol consumption among pregnant women has dropped 11 percent in states with point-of-sale warning signs, according to a new study conducted by a health economist at the University of Oregon.

The benefits show up in fewer extremely premature births (less than 32 weeks gestation) and very-low-birth-weight babies (less than 3.5 pounds). The greatest effects were found among women aged 30 and older.

Health economist Gulcan Cil published her findings in the Journal of Health Economics. Her complex breakdown of extensive data points to reduced drinking by pregnant women in areas with required warning signs and suggests a likely causal relationship between drinking while pregnant and birth outcomes.

“The signage is working,” said Cil, a visiting instructor in the Department of Economics and postdoctoral fellow in the department’s Mikesell Environmental and Resource Economics Research Lab. “Drinking alcohol while pregnant has been an issue that many policies have tried to address over the last few decades. An 11 percent change in the prevalence of drinking is not trivial. It is big enough to show up in the birth outcomes.”

The study involved regression analyses of data available in two national sources and information from the 23 states and Washington, D.C., which have adopted such signage, and a group of states that have not. The study’s control group included women who had lived in non-adopting states and women who lived in adopting states before signage requirements were implemented.

Comparing data from sign-adopting states and those not using signage allowed Cil to identify the direct relationship between drinking while pregnant and birth outcomes, reducing the likelihood that other factors such as cigarette smoking, drug abuse, nutritional deficiencies, and other risky life choices were at play in behavioral changes.

“It’s very hard to isolate one thing from another,” she said. “One thing that we do in empirical economics, in general, or applied econometrics is to try to find something that changes one variable at a time.”

Overall, point-of-sale signage, said Cil, appears to be an effective, low-cost approach to protect the health of pregnant women and their babies.

“Some people never get exposed to these kinds of educational campaigns,” Cil said. “I found that the issue has never been studied and evaluated as a public education program or public awareness program.”

The idea for the study was sparked when Cil noticed a sign in a Eugene, Oregon grocery store. She added that the signage used in Oregon contains an eye-catching graphic depicting a pregnant woman, while signs used in other states do not. All contain similar language. A future study might explore whether variations in signage — graphics, fonts, colors, and language — may best influence behavioral change.

Source: University of Oregon

Money Anxiety During Pregnancy May Lead to Low-Birth Weight Baby

New research suggests a mother’s financial worries during pregnancy could contribute to birth of a smaller, medically vulnerable infant.

Ohio State University investigators found that pregnancy-specific distress, such as concerns that the baby’s needs won’t be met, appears to be a pathway between financial strain and higher likelihood of a low-birth-weight infant.

The study appears in the journal Archives of Women’s Mental Health.

Although money worries are relatively common, researchers believe solutions to minimize the perceived stress are available.

“There is an opportunity here to look for interventions during pregnancy that could help mitigate the effects of financial strain on birth outcomes,” said lead author Amanda Mitchell, a postdoctoral researcher in Ohio State Wexner Medical Center’s Stress and Health in Pregnancy Research Program.

While larger efforts to improve access to housing, jobs, and support for low-income women is critical, there are potential low-cost, stress-reduction techniques that could help reduce risk, Mitchell said. Meditation and breathing exercises could prove useful, for instance, she said.

“It’s important for all women who experience pregnancy-related stress to seek out help coping with that stress,” Mitchell said.

“And ob-gyns and other medical providers should also talk about stress during their visits with expecting moms.”

Researchers followed 138 pregnant women who filled out questionnaires to assess financial strain, depressive symptoms, pregnancy-specific distress, perceived stress, and general anxiety.

Moms in the racially diverse study group were between five and 31 weeks pregnant and 29 years old on average at the time of the assessment. The study, which was primarily designed to evaluate flu vaccine effectiveness, ran from 2013 to 2015.

After the participants’ babies were born, researchers were able to review medical records to compare birth weight against moms’ questionnaire responses during pregnancy.

The researchers knew from previous studies that pregnant moms who are socioeconomically disadvantaged have a higher likelihood of having smaller babies and worse birth outcomes.

What they wanted to learn was whether specific factors could be driving that connection — factors that could lead to positive interventions for women at risk of delivering low-birth-weight babies.

Statistical models designed to identify those drivers landed on one statistically significant factor: pregnancy-specific distress.

“This includes concerns about labor and delivery, about relationships changing, about working after the baby arrives, paying for medical care, and whether the baby will be unhealthy,” said study senior author Lisa Christian.

Financial strain was assessed based on a five-point scale derived from moms’ responses to three questions:

• “How difficult is it for you to live on your total household income right now?”
• “In the next two months, how likely is it that you and your family will experience actual hardships, such as inadequate housing, food, or medical attention?”
• “How likely is it that you and your family will have to reduce your standard of living to the bare necessities of life?”

The issue is salient as low-birth-weight babies often suffer from serious health problems and spend their first weeks or months in intensive care. About eight percent of babies born in the United States are underweight at birth.

Low birth weight is clinically defined as below 2,500 grams, or five pounds and eight ounces.

“It’s important to understand the factors that make it more likely for a woman with lower socioeconomic conditions to have a baby at higher risk of complications and death,” Mitchell said.

Limitations of the study include the fact that it was a secondary analysis of data collected during a different study, and that the overall number of low-birth-weight babies was small, at 11. The researchers suggest that replicating this study in a larger group would be beneficial.

Researchers are working on another study looking at blood biomarkers that might better explain what biological changes could be at play, including inflammation, Mitchell said.

Source: Ohio State University/EurekAlert

Bullies, Victims Want More Plastic Surgery

Teenagers who are affected by bullying in any way — whether by being bullied or by being the bully — have a greater desire to have plastic surgery, according to a new study at the University of Warwick in England.

The findings show that bullies want to have plastic surgery to improve their appearance and increase their social status, while victims of bullying want to go under the knife because their mental health is affected by being picked on giving them lower self-esteem, more emotional problems, and a desire to change their appearance.

Researchers from the Department of Psychology and Warwick Medical School screened nearly 2,800 adolescents aged 11 to 16 in UK secondary schools for their involvement in bullying, both through self and peer assessment.

A sample group of around 800 students — including bullies, victims, those who both bully and are bullied, and those who are unaffected by bullying — was analyzed for emotional problems, levels of self-esteem and body-esteem, and how much they desired to have plastic surgery.

The findings revealed that the __teens involved in bullying in any role were more interested in cosmetic surgery, compared to those not involved in bullying. Desire for cosmetic surgery was highest among victims of bullying, but was also increased in bullying perpetrators.

The study showed that 11.5 percent of bullying victims have an extreme desire to have cosmetic surgery, as well as 3.4 percent of bullies, and 8.8 percent of teenagers who both bully and are bullied — this is compared with less than one percent of those who are unaffected by bullying.

Girls have more desire for plastic surgery than boys. Of the sample group, 7.3 percent of the girls had an extreme wish to have plastic surgery, compared with two percent of boys.

The authors say that young people might have less of a desire for plastic surgery if their mental health issues due to bullying are addressed. They suggest that cosmetic surgeons screen potential patients for a history of bullying, and any related mental health issues.

“Being victimized by peers resulted in poor psychological functioning, which increased desire for cosmetic surgery. For bullies, cosmetic surgery may simply be another tactic to increase social status […] to look good and achieve dominance,” said Professor Dieter Wolke and co-authors.

“The desire for cosmetic surgery in bullied adolescents is immediate and long-lasting. Our results suggest that cosmetic surgeons should screen candidates for psychological vulnerability and history of bullying.”

The study, titled “Adolescent Desire for Cosmetic Surgery: Associations with Bullying and Psychological Functioning,” is published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Source: University of Warwick

Antidepressants in Early Pregnancy May Not Hike Risk of Autism, ADHD

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association contradicts prior research, finding that antidepressants used during early pregnancy does not increase the risk of children developing autism or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The University of Indiana study found significant evidence for only a slight increase in risk for premature birth in the infants of mothers who used antidepressants during the first trimester of pregnancy.

“To our knowledge, this is one of the strongest studies to show that exposure to antidepressants during early pregnancy is not associated with autism, ADHD or poor fetal growth when taking into account the factors that lead to medication use in the first place,” said study leader Dr. Brian D’Onofrio.

“Balancing the risks and benefits of using antidepressants during pregnancy is an extremely difficult decision that every woman should make in consultation with her doctor,” he said. “However, this study suggests use of these medications while pregnant may be safer than previously thought.”

Researchers called the study unique because its methodology included the review of an entire population rather than common techniques using smaller samples.

Researchers reported that after controlling for multiple other risk factors, they did not find any increased risk of autism, ADHD or reduced fetal growth among exposed offspring. The risk for premature birth was about 1.3 times higher for exposed offspring compared to unexposed offspring.

The analysis, conducted in collaboration with researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, drew upon data on all live births in Sweden from 1996 to 2012.

It also incorporated data reporting the country’s antidepressant prescriptions in adults, autism and ADHD diagnoses in children, genetic relationships between parents and children, parents’ age and education levels, and other factors.

With over 1.5 million infants, the study comprises one of the largest and most comprehensive populations ever analyzed to understand the impact of antidepressant use during pregnancy.

The increased risk for premature birth was found after controlling for other factors that affect health, such as a mother’s age at childbearing, in siblings whose mothers used antidepressants during one pregnancy but not during another pregnancy.

“The ability to compare siblings who were differentially exposed to antidepressants in pregnancy is a major strength of this study,” D’Onofrio said.

“Most analyses rely upon statistical matching to control for differences in factors such as age, race and socioeconomic status. But it’s difficult to know if you’ve made a perfect match because you can’t be certain you have all the relevant measures to control for these differences.”

When comparing unrelated children and controlling for related risk factors, the researchers found a slightly higher risk for all four conditions: 1.4 times higher odds for premature birth, 1.1 times higher odds for low fetal growth and 1.6 times higher risk for autism and ADHD.

In an uncontrolled analysis — which did not take these factors into account — antidepressant use in early pregnancy was associated with 1.5 times higher odds for premature birth, 1.2 times higher odds for fetal growth, 2.0 times higher risk for autism and 2.2 times increased risk for ADHD.

The majority of the antidepressants examined in the study — 82 percent — were selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, the most common type of antidepressants. Commonly used SSRIs include fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft) and citalopram (Celexa).

In addition to the use of these medications during early pregnancy, the study looked at concurrent antidepressant use in fathers, as well as mothers’ use of antidepressants before but not during pregnancy.

These uses were associated with increased risk for autism, ADHD and poor fetal growth, providing evidence that family factors, such as genetics or environmental factors, influence these outcomes, as opposed to antidepressant use during pregnancy.

“The additional comparisons provide further evidence that other factors — not first-trimester exposure to antidepressants — explain why women who took these medications during early pregnancy were more likely to have offspring with these pregnancy and neurodevelopmental problems,” D’Onofrio said.

Source: University of Indiana

Better Visualizers of the Future May Be More Impulsive

University of Pennsylvania researchers Dr. Joseph Kable and doctoral student Trishala Parthasarathi wanted to understand why some people are more impulsive than others, and whether that could change within an individual.

So they hypothesized, based on the field’s most recent research, that strong visualization of the future might motivate someone to wait to receive a larger reward rather than take a smaller amount right away — delaying gratification, in other words.

In fact, they found that the opposite was true.

Great visualizers turned out to be more impulsive, Kable and Parthasarathi discovered. Their findings are published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

“When people have to make tradeoffs between something that’s in front of them right now and something that they can only get in the future, they differ in the extent to which they go for each outcome,” said Kable.

As it turns out, “people who have imaginations with more vivid details are more likely to not delay gratification.”

Or as Parthasarathi, a fifth-year Ph.D. student, explained, “Better visualizers tend to be more impulsive when they’re making choices about a smaller reward, accepting it immediately rather than waiting for a larger reward in the future.”

To reach this conclusion, the research team devised an experiment that brought 38 adults with a median age of approximately 25 into the lab for a four-week intervention.

At the start, each participant completed several decision-making tests and self-reporting surveys, including the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, which asked participants to imagine in great detail a friend’s face or a setting sun, then rate on a scale of one to five how clearly they could see each.

“A lower score on the scale indicated people were better able to imagine things than a higher score, which indicated people imagined things less clearly,” Parthasarathi said.

The participants were then randomly split into two groups, one in which they got trained on improving their visualization skills, the other in which they practiced meditation. Twice weekly for the month, they worked with a health-and-wellness counselor on their respective areas.

“People in the visualization group would think about two future goals, one at a time, and the process used to achieve each, how they felt after they achieved each and so on,” Parthasarathi said.

“Those in the relaxation group were trained to think in the present, so breath awareness and attention to your body. Nothing related to thinking about the future.”

Once the study period ended, participants completed the same battery of tests they’d taken at the beginning. Analyzing comparison data from the experiments start and finished provided the researchers with their counterintuitive results.

“It certainly wasn’t what we expected. It’s surprising in light of the most recent work,” Kable said. But, he added, it’s less so if you think about findings from one of the original delayed-gratification experiments.

Kable is referring to what’s today commonly called the Marshmallow Test. In the 1960s, Stanford University psychologist Walter Mischel offered children the opportunity to eat a single treat immediately or get double the amount if they could wait alone in the room until the researcher returned.

Two plates — one with a single reward, the other with multiple — sat in plain view.

“The thought was, ‘Your goal is right in front of you. You’ll be able to work toward it more,'” Kable explained. In fact, Mischel “found the direction of the association that we see: When the kids could see what they would get if they waited, they were more impulsive.”

Interestingly, Parthasarathi and Kable also learned that improving someone’s visualization abilities can actually make that person more impatient.

Despite results counter to what they expected, the researchers feel their work has real-world implications regarding impulsive behaviors. They now know that those keen on taking an immediate reward are more likely to use drugs or do poorly in school.

They’re more likely to smoke and have a harder time quitting. So the psychologists can adjust behavior-changing treatments that accompany smoking cessation toward meditation and away from visualization, for instance.

“The reason why we studied this task is we think it’s a microcosm that can tell us what people are doing outside the lab,” Kable said. “We’re still interested in what we can do to help people become more patient.”

Source: University of Pennsylvania

Early Abuse May Lead to Attention Issues Later in Life

According to a new study, veterans with a history of physical or sexual abuse or witnessing family violence before the age of 18 have a reduced ability to concentrate compared to veterans who were not abused.

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the Translational Research Center for TBI and Stress Disorders at the VA Boston Healthcare System compared two groups of young veterans. One group had a history of early life abuse, while the other did not.

Both groups performed a concentration test while their brain activity was measured. The group that experienced trauma prior to 18 had worse concentration and abnormal communication between “emotional” regions (amygdala) and “attentional” regions of the brain (prefrontal cortex).

The amygdala is a core region for emotion, and frontal areas that help maintain focus.

The study, which appears in the journal Brain and Behavior, offers a new perspective on the long-term impact of psychological trauma years, if not decades, after childhood.

“Trauma during one’s youth may not just cause difficulties with emotions later in life but may also impact day-to-day functioning like driving, working, education, and relationships due to brain changes that stem from the trauma,” explained senior author Michael Esterman, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at BUSM and associate director of the VA Boston Neuroimaging Center.

“Our results suggest that early psychological interventions could result in better cognitive abilities as an adult.”

According to the researchers, this study suggests that interpersonal abuse before 18 can have dramatic and long-lasting effects on brain development that are only now beginning to be understood.

Source: Boston University Medical Center/EurekAlert

Specific Brain Region Influences Anxiety and Emotions in Healthy Adults

Emerging research suggests the size of a specific area of the brain appears to influence emotional regulation in healthy people.

In a study of healthy college students, University of Illinois investigators discovered individuals with a relatively small inferior frontal cortex (IFC) — a brain region behind the temples that helps regulate thoughts and emotions — are more likely than others to suffer from anxiety.

These individuals also tend to view neutral or even positive events in a negative light, researchers report.

Investigators evaluated sixty-two students. Brain structural data from neuroimaging scans and responses to standard questionnaires were used to determine anxiety levels and predilection for negative bias.

Previous studies of people diagnosed with anxiety have found similar correlations between the size of the IFC and anxiety and negative bias, said University of Illinois psychology postdoctoral researcher Sanda Dolcos, who led the study with graduate student Yifan Hu.

But the new findings are the first to see these same dynamics in healthy adults, the researchers said.

“You would expect these brain changes more in clinical populations where anxiety is very serious, but we are seeing differences even in the brains of healthy young adults,” Dolcos said.

The study, reported in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, also found that the relationship between the size of the IFC and a student’s negative bias was mediated by their level of anxiety.

“People who have smaller volumes have higher levels of anxiety; people who have larger IFCs tend to have lower levels of anxiety,” Dolcos said.

And higher anxiety is associated with more negative bias, she said. “How we see this is that the higher volume of the IFC confers resilience.”

“We found that larger IFC volume is protecting against negative bias through lower levels of trait anxiety,” Hu said.

Anxiety appears to be on the rise on college campuses. According to the American College Health Association, nearly 60 percent of students report at least one troubling bout of anxious worry every year.

“There is a very high level of anxiety in the student population, and this is affecting their life, their academic performance, everything,” Dolcos said. “We are interested in identifying what is going on and preventing them from moving to the next level and developing clinical anxiety.”

Anxiety can interfere with many dimensions of life, causing a person to be on high alert for potential problems even under the best of circumstances, Hu said. Negative bias also can interfere with a person’s commitment to activities that might further their life goals, she said.

Understanding the interrelatedness of brain structure, function and personality traits such as anxiety and their behavioral effects such as negative bias will help scientists develop interventions to target specific brain regions in healthy populations, Hu said.

“We hope to be able to train the brain to function better,” she said. “That way, we might prevent these at-risk people from moving on to more severe anxiety.”

Source: University of Illinois

Low-Income Kids May Miss Out On Complex Language Skills

Children from lower socioeconomic communities have fewer opportunities to build complex language skills both at home and at school, putting them at a disadvantage in their kindergarten year, according to a new study led by New York University (NYU).

The findings add to the growing body of research showing that children’s academic achievement is predicted by the combined socioeconomic status of both the family and the school. These two factors together have an impact on children’s access to learning resources, including adults who create language-rich opportunities when they speak with children.

“We found that the quality of one’s educational opportunities is highly dependent on the streets where you live. Tragically, the children who need the greater opportunity to learn appear to be the least likely to get it,” said lead author Dr. Susan B. Neuman, professor of childhood and literacy education at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

“Children may go from a home with limited physical and psychological resources for learning and language to a school with similar constraints, resulting in a double dose of disadvantage,” said Neuman. “Our study suggests that neighborhoods matter and can have a powerful influence on nurturing success or failure.”

For the study, the researchers looked at language-advancing resources in both the homes and schools of 70 children who recently made the transition from preschool to kindergarten. Half of the families lived in poor neighborhoods in Detroit, while the other half lived in more demographically diverse Michigan communities that were primarily working class.

The researchers followed the children through their kindergarten year, conducting four hour-long home visits in which they observed interactions between parents and children in order to understand the degree and quality of cognitive stimulation in the home.

The researchers also conducted four half-day observations in kindergarten classrooms during which the teachers’ lectures were recorded. The language spoken by parents and teachers was then analyzed for both quantity (number of words spoken) and quality (using varied vocabulary and complex sentences).

These observations were combined with assessments of the children’s school readiness skills, including vocabulary knowledge and letter and word identification.

The findings show that children in low-income neighborhoods had fewer supports for language and early literacy developments than did those in working-class communities. In both settings, there were significant differences in the quality of language directed at children, but there was no difference in the quantity of language overall.

At home, parents of lower socioeconomic status used shorter sentences, fewer different words, and had lower reading comprehension than did parents from working class neighborhoods.

In the classroom, low-income children attended kindergartens in which teachers used simpler sentences, less varied vocabulary, and fewer unique word types — potentially oversimplifying their language for students.

“Children’s early exposure to a rich set of language practices can set in motion the processes that they use for learning to read, including the vocabulary and background knowledge necessary for language and reading comprehension,” Neuman said.

“Consequently, children who have limited experience with these kinds of linguistic interactions may have fewer opportunities to engage in the higher-order exchanges valued in school.”

All the children in the study experienced learning across their kindergarten year, but those in the working class communities outpaced their low-income peers, particularly in expressive vocabulary.

The study further suggests that no matter the strength of the early boost children receive in preschool, differences in later environmental influences can either support or undermine this early advantage.

“Too often we have focused on what happens within early childhood programs instead of the environmental supports that surround them. We need to account for the multiple contexts of home and school in our understanding of children’s early development,” Neuman said.

The findings are published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

Source: New York University

Social Media Seen to Improve Teen Friendships, Mood

Although social media is often criticized, a new study finds that teen use of Instagram can actually strengthen the closeness of friendships.

Researchers from the University of Leuven discovered that the social media channel may also improve teens’ mental health.

In the study, researcher Eline Frison set up a large-scale longitudinal panel study to investigate the relationships between Flemish adolescents’ social networking site use and their well-being.

Students filled out paper-and-pencil surveys between six month periods. The surveys asked students about their use of social networking sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, and their well-being (depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, loneliness).

The data analyzed revealed that frequent use of Instagram at one point was related to greater depression six months later. However, using Instagram at one point was also related to increased closeness to friends (perception that they are appreciated and loved by their friends) six months later, which in turn was related to lower levels of depression.

Various researchers have investigated the impact of using Facebook on young people’s well-being, and some have examined the impact of Instagram on individuals’ mental health.

This study is the first to investigate the longitudinal relationship between Instagram use and well-being in an adolescent sample, and the first to examine the role of adolescents’ closeness to friends in this relationship.

“This age group may be particularly at risk for the impact of Instagram, given the increasing popularity of Instagram in adolescence and given the increase of depressive symptoms during this stage of life,” said Frison.

“This study offers practitioners greater insight into the outcomes of adolescents’ Instagram use. More specifically, using Instagram can be both beneficial and harmful for adolescents’ well-being.

If using Instagram stimulates adolescents’ closeness to friends, it is beneficial in the long run, but if Instagram is not capable of that stimulation, it is harmful in the long run.”

The study will be presented at the 67th Annual International Communication Association Conference in San Diego, Calif., in May.

Source: International Communication Association/EurekAlert

Deep Brain Stimulation Can Ease Tics in Severe Tourette’s

Thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS), a surgical technique that sends electrical impulses to the brain’s medial thalamus, has been shown to reduce tics, or involuntary movements and vocal outbursts, in severe cases of Tourette syndrome, according to a new study at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center.

DBS has been used to treat other neurological conditions that cannot be sufficiently controlled by medication, including Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, dystonia, and epilepsy.

The findings, published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, add to the growing body of evidence supporting DBS as a safe and effective treatment for severe cases of Tourette syndrome and may ultimately lead to approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“Our study shows that deep brain stimulation is a safe, effective treatment for young adults with severe Tourette syndrome that cannot be managed with current therapies,” said Alon Mogilner, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor in the departments of neurosurgery and anesthesiology, at NYU Langone, and director of its Center for Neuromodulation.

“This treatment has the potential to improve the quality of life for patients who are debilitated through their teenage years and young adulthood.”

Tourette syndrome is a disorder that typically begins in childhood, and although many patients improve as they get older, some patients’ symptoms become so severe that they become socially isolated and unable to work or attend school.

Mogilner and his colleague, Michael H. Pourfar, M.D., an assistant professor in the departments of neurosurgery and neurology and co-director of the Center for Neuromodulation, have pioneered the largest U.S. case series of thalamic DBS to treat severe Tourette syndrome in young adults. Worldwide, only an estimated 160 cases have been performed to date.

In a multi-step procedure, surgeons insert two electrodes into a region of the brain called the medial thalamus, part of the brain circuit that functions abnormally in Tourette’s. During a second surgery the following day or a few days later, a pacemaker-like device called a neurostimulator is connected to the electrodes to emit electrical impulses into the medial thalamus. These impulses are adjusted during a series of follow-up outpatient visits to find the combination of settings that best control symptoms.

In the study, the NYU Langone team followed 13 patients with at least six months of follow-up visits. Study participants ranged in age from 16 years to 33 years. To determine the effectiveness of the procedure, the researchers measured the severity of tics before and after surgery using the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS).

They found that the severity of tics decreased on average 37 percent from the time of the procedure to the first follow-up visit. At their latest visit, patients’ tic scores decreased by an average of 50 percent.

Equally significant, all patients reported in a survey six months after surgery that their symptoms improved either “much” or “very much,” and all said they would have the surgery again — even those who had complications or experienced relatively less pronounced results.

“The survey represents an important aspect of the study,” said Pourfar, “because the YGTSS, though a validated scale, may not fully capture the impact of DBS on quality of life for a person with Tourette syndrome.”

Source: NYU Langone Medical Center

Confidence Boost Can Help Girls Move into Science Professions

New research suggests it is a matter of perception and not ability when it comes to girls advancing in sciences such as mathematics.

In the study, Florida State University investigators found that girls rate their abilities markedly lower than boys, even when there is no observable difference between the two.

“The argument continues to be made that gender differences in the ‘hard’ sciences is all about ability,” said Lara Perez-Felkner, assistant professor of higher education and sociology in the College of Education.

“But when we hold mathematics ability test scores constant, effectively taking it out of the equation, we see boys still rate their ability higher, and girls rate their ability lower.”

The research team, composed of Perez-Felkner as the lead author and doctoral students Samantha Nix and Kirby Thomas as co-authors, found perception gaps are even wider at the upper levels of mathematics ability. Interesting, the gap was highest among those students with the most talent and potential in these fields.

Boys are significantly more confident in challenging mathematics contexts than otherwise identically talented girls. Specifically, boys rated their ability 27 percent higher than girls did.

The study appears in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Perceived ability under challenge was measured using a nationally representative longitudinal study that followed 10th grade students over a six-year period until two years after high school.

A series of questions in the 10th and 12th grade surveys asked students to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as “I’m certain I can understand the most difficult material presented in math texts.”

“That’s important because those confidence levels influence the math and science courses students choose later in high school,” Perez-Felkner said.

“It influences whether they choose colleges that are strong in certain science majors. It also influences the majors they intend to pursue and the majors they actually declare and continue on with in degrees and potential careers.”

These conclusions address perceived ability beliefs in a critical time where more talented young women tend to depart from male-dominated science career pathways during high school and college.

Over recent decades and across the globe women have surpassed men in college enrollment and degree attainment yet women remain underrepresented in physical, engineering, mathematics, and computer sciences (PEMC).

In fact, women are projected to comprise nearly 60 percent of university students by 2025 but earn a clear minority of PEMC undergraduate degrees.

Perez-Felkner and colleagues argue gender differences in confidence in their mathematics ability in challenging contexts has considerable longer term consequences.

Gender disparities in college major choice are associated with the gender pay gap as well as an insufficiently large and diverse labor pool of scientific talent in our increasingly scientific global economy.

The authors note boys are encouraged from a young age to pursue challenge — including the risk of failure — while girls tend to pursue perfection, judging themselves and being judged by more restrictive standards reinforced by media and society at large.

Creative methods to recruit girls in middle and high school include increased opportunities such as science camps like SciGirls, and steering girls to participate in upper level science courses or extracurricular activities.

Informal science learning experiences and increasing visibility and access to women scientists — both fictional and real — are other methods to sustain girls interest and engagement in so called “hard science” fields.

Furthermore, increasing access to advanced science coursework in high school and the early years of post-secondary school can improve chances of students — most notably girls — entering these fields.

Other results included:

• Women have a 4.7 percent chance of declaring PEMC majors compared to 14.9 percent of men.
• Girls in the 12th grade with most negative perceptions had a 1.8 percent chance of choosing a PEMC major, while girls with the most positive perceptions about their ability under challenge had a 5.6 percent chance of choosing a PEMC major.
• Boys had a 19.1 percent chance if their perceptions were positive and boys with negative perceptions had 6.7 chance of choosing a PEMC major.
• Boys are more likely than girls to hold a growth mindset, that is, the perception that mathematical ability can be developed through learning rather than being a fixed talent you are born with.
• Tenth grade mathematics ability under challenge was most influential in determining whether students stayed in the natural sciences when pursuing postsecondary education.
• Mathematics ability beliefs in the 12th grade were positively associated with switching into natural science majors, among students not initially intending to pursue them.

Source: Florida State University/EurekAlert

Teacher Quit Letters Point To A Broken System

In recent years, an increasing number of teachers are posting their resignation letters online, offering researchers the unique opportunity to investigate why so many teachers are leaving the education system.

In a trio of studies, Michigan State University (MSU) education expert Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn and co-researchers found that educators at all grade and experience levels are frustrated and disheartened by a nationwide focus on standardized tests, scripted curricula and punitive teacher-evaluation systems.

In other words, they are leaving what they see as a broken education system.

“The reasons teachers are leaving the profession has little to do with the reasons most frequently touted by education reformers, such as pay or student behavior,” said Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education.

“Rather, teachers are leaving largely because oppressive policies and practices are affecting their working conditions and beliefs about themselves and education.”

For example, the following is part of an open resignation letter written by Boston elementary school teacher Suzi Sluyter, posted on a Washington Post blog:

“In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools,” she wrote in part, “I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in a classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children.”

Sluyter, a teacher for more than 25 years, concluded with the statement: “I did not feel I was leaving my job. I felt then and feel now that my job left me. It is with deep love and a broken heart that I write this letter.”

Such feelings of abandonment were common in the resignation letters, the researchers said in one of the studies. That paper, published in the April issue of the journal Linguistics and Education, is titled “With regret: The genre of teachers’ public resignation letters.” Dunn’s co-authors were Jennifer VanDerHeide, MSU assistant professor of teacher education, and MSU doctoral student Matthew Deroo.

The findings of a second study indicate that by posting their resignation letters online, educators are gaining a voice in the public sphere they didn’t have before. That paper, which will appear in the May issue of the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, was co-authored by MSU doctoral students Scott Farver, Amy Guenther, and Lindsay Wexler.

“All of the teachers’ resignation letters and their later interviews [with researchers] attested to the lack of voice and agency that teachers felt in policymaking and implementation,” the authors write.

Dunn suggests the importance of administrators allowing teachers to engage in the development of curriculum and educational policies so they do not feel like they have no choice but to resign (and then publicly declare it) in order to get their voices heard.

The third study, forthcoming in the journal Teachers College Record, suggests the public resignation letters combat the “teacher blame game” and the prevalent narrative of the “bad” teacher. Unfortunately, these are common claims whereby teachers are blamed for school and societal failures.

Overall, the resignation letters reveal the teachers’ intense feelings about the situation. “The letters are filled with emotion, with regret, and with an overarching personal and professional commitment to the best needs of the children,” the study says.

Ultimately, Dunn said, policymakers should heed teachers’ testimonies and support a move away from efforts to “marketize, capitalize, incentivize, and privatize public education, in order to do what is best for children, not for the bottom line.”

“In the absence of such moves, teachers’ working conditions, and thus students’ learning conditions, are likely to remain in jeopardy.”

Teacher turnover costs more than $2.2 billion in the U.S. each year and has been shown to decrease student achievement in the form of reading and math test scores.

Source: Michigan State University

NICU Preemies Need More Loving Touch, Less Pain

It is very important that premature babies being cared for in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) receive plenty of caring and supportive touch experiences and as few painful procedures as possible, as these events can significantly impact brain development, according to new research published in the journal Current Biology.

Disruptions in the normal development of the somatosensory system — a baby’s first sensory system that perceives temperature, the body’s position in space, movement, and all degrees of touch, from the lightest to most painful — can affect the child’s socio-emotional development.

Healthy sensory processing allows young children to learn from their experiences, and provides the foundation for developing higher-level perceptual and cognitive abilities.

“Parents should know that every minute they hold their baby counts,” says first author Nathalie Maitre, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Pediatrics, medical director of the NICU Follow-up Program and a principal investigator in the Center for Perinatal Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

“Touch is a critical building block of infant learning,” says Maitre, adjunct professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences and former assistant professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt. “It helps babies learn how to move their bodies, how to discover the world around them and how to communicate with their families.”

The findings show that exposure to painful procedures can impact brain development even when sedatives and analgesics are used.

“Until new research can prove which medications work at preventing these changes in brain function, we need to focus on effective non-pharmacological alternatives,” said Mark Wallace, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School at Vanderbilt and the study’s co-senior author with Micah Murray, Ph.D., of the University of Lausanne.

Wallace says that “it is absolutely essential to minimize exposure to painful procedures that infants can often experience during hospitalizations.”

For the study, the researchers compared the cortical responses to light touch among 125 premature and full-term infants at Vanderbilt. They found that preterm infants exhibited decreased responses to light touch when they were discharged from the NICU compared to full-term infants and that the decreases were greatest among the most premature.

However, when these NICU babies were given more supportive touch experiences, including skin-to-skin care and breastfeeding, their brains responded more strongly to light touch.

Promoting optimal development and function may help keep these newborns’ brains on track to establish the sensory building blocks of cognition, behavior, and communication, the researchers concluded.

The study was conducted by an international research team from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, Monroe Carell’s Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, and Lausanne University in Switzerland.

Source: Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Kids of Older Moms May Do Better in Psychosocial Areas

New research from Denmark finds that waiting to have babies can be a good strategy for older women as their children have less behavioral, social, and emotional problems.

Nevertheless, the widespread recommendation not to have children too late also has validity. Issues such as declining fertility and health risks during pregnancy and while giving birth are associated with advanced maternal age.

“However, when estimating the consequences of the rising maternal age it’s important to consider both the physical and psychosocial pros and cons,” said Dr. Dion Sommer from Aarhus BSS.

Previous research has indicated that a higher maternal age is associated with increased psychosocial well-being during the pregnancy and the early days after the child is born.

In the new study, published in European Journal of Developmental Psychology, investigators determined that the advantages for the older mothers and their children extend all the way into the children’s school age, but decline before age 15.

Researchers discovered several factors influence 21st Century women to have children later in life. One reason is that we live longer, women have more educational and career opportunities, and contraception has improved.

Today, the average pregnancy age is 30.9 years. This also means that most children today are born when their mother is over 30 years old. Moreover, the proportion of children whose mother was over 40 years old when they were born has quadrupled compared to 1985.

Older mothers are at greater risk of experiencing complications during pregnancy and while giving birth than younger mothers. They are at greater risk of having a miscarriage, giving birth prematurely, and having children with deformities.

On the other hand, studies show that older women thrive better during the first part of motherhood. They worry less during the pregnancy, are more positive about becoming parents, and generally have a more positive attitude towards their children.

Previous studies that have tracked children up until their school age indicate that children with older mothers — regardless of their parents’ background, education, and finances — have a better language and have fewer behavioral, social, and emotional problems.

In the new study, investigators tracked children of school age and found that children with older mothers had fewer behavioral, social, and emotional problems at age seven and 11, but not at age 15.

Researchers believe the reason is that older mothers have more stable relationships, are more educated, and have obtained better access to material resources.

However, investigators wanted to look at the significance of age when these factors are removed from the equation. In such analyses, age can be interpreted as an indicator of psychological maturity.

“We know that people become more mentally flexible with age, are more tolerant of other people, and thrive better emotionally themselves. That’s why psychological maturity may explain why older mothers do not scold and physically discipline their children as much,” Sommer said.

“This style of parenting can thereby contribute to a positive psychosocial environment which affects the children’s upbringing,” he said.

Source: Aarhus University

Relationship Strategies for Parents of Autistic Children

Maintaining relationship quality is a challenging task for many parents. The task becomes more daunting for couples who have a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

A new study looks at the daily experiences of parents of ASD children to provide a more detailed picture of the strengths and vulnerabilities couples may face.

“I think we can use these findings to develop more effective therapies and strategies to address potential challenges in couple relationships for parents of children with ASD,” said Dr. Sigan Hartley, lead author of the new study.

Previous findings have shown that, on average, couples with a child with ASD have higher risks of divorce and lower satisfaction with their marriages when compared to couples with a typically developing child.

“What has been missing is research that really gets at the details of what is actually happening in the day-to-day lives of these couples,” said Hartley, a Waisman Center researcher and 100 Women Chair in Human Ecology at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

To fill in this gap in the research, Hartley and her colleagues examined the daily experiences of 174 couples who have a child with ASD and 179 couples with a typically developing child.

Each couple kept separate “daily diaries” for two weeks, and recorded information like how much time they spent with their partners, how supported they felt, how close they felt to their partners, and the positive or negative interactions they had with them.

“These measures really let us understand how couple relationships are being altered for parents of children with ASD,” said Hartley.

As presented in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, researchers found a combination of vulnerabilities and strengths.

Couples parenting a child with ASD reported spending an average of 21 fewer minutes per day with their partners compared to couples with a typically developing child.

That may not sound like a lot of time, but “those 21 minutes add up over weeks and months to almost 128 fewer hours spent together over a year,” says Hartley.

Spending less time together could account for why parents of children with ASD reported feeling less closeness to their partners than those raising typically developing children.

The ASD group of parents also reported fewer positive interactions, such as sharing jokes, having a meaningful conversation, or being intimate.

“Parents of children with ASD may have more demands on their time,” said Hartley. “They may have to navigate therapy sessions or manage special education or interventions.”

On the other hand, parents of a child with ASD showed no increase in negative interactions, like critical comments or avoiding their partner, when compared to couples with a typically developing child.

These couples also felt as supported by their partners as couples with typically developing children.

“These are important relationship strengths that couples who are parenting a child with ASD can build on,” Hartley said. Finding ways to strengthen their couple dynamics can help their children as well.

“Just like any child, a child with ASD affects, and is affected by, the entire family,” said Hartley.

“Developing therapies or strategies that help parents thrive and keep their relationships strong is critical for the long-term success of children.”

Source: University of Wisconsin

Families Face Long Waits for Developmental Pediatricians

Developmental pediatricians are specifically trained to treat children with developmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorders, or cerebral palsy.

And while these conditions are quite common — an estimated one in six children in the United States has a development disorder — there are only 1,000 developmental pediatricians in the country.

In fact, a new study at Rutgers University finds that the wait time to see one of these specialists is particularly lengthy — averaging between five and six months — further delaying the start of intervention strategies designed to treat the young patients’ behavioral, emotional, social, and/or educational struggles.

In addition, the researchers found that there is an insufficient number of programs that offer accommodations for non-English speaking families.

“Relative to the number of children who would benefit from seeing a developmental pediatrician, the number of specialized physicians in the field is relatively few,” said Manuel Jimenez, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of pediatrics, and family medicine and community health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, who led the study.

“This has the potential to limit access to rigorous diagnostic evaluations which in turn can ensure access to specialized services and therapies. Given that individuals with limited English proficiency often have difficulty navigating the health care system, we were especially interested to see if there would be differences when we called in English versus Spanish.”

After finding no documented evidence on the subject, the researchers first investigated the barriers to obtaining an appointment for an initial evaluation. Some of the researchers, who were posing as “mystery shoppers,” made phone calls to request an appointment at specialized developmental pediatric programs associated with children’s hospitals across the country.

Of the 140 unique programs that were called, 75 provided a wait time with an average of nearly five and a half months. Among these, 62 were reached in Spanish within a 24-hour period of the initial call. Only 55 percent offered a wait time estimate and nearly one-third did not offer any Spanish-language services for the caller.

Although Jimenez said he was not particularly surprised at finding long wait times nationally, he was surprised at the number of programs that did not offer a wait time in Spanish, although a wait time had been offered in English just 24 hours prior. He was equally surprised at the lack of accommodations for families for whom English is a second language.

“Our study serves as a reminder to physicians to be mindful of the difficulty our patients experience to obtain an initial assessment including an extended waiting period and barriers to language services,” said Jimenez, who also is an attending developmental and behavioral pediatrician at PSE&G Children’s Specialized Hospital.

“For researchers and policy makers, our findings underscore the importance of evaluating different care models to leverage the strengths of professionals to ensure that children with developmental concerns reach the appropriate providers at the appropriate time.”

Jimenez emphasized that more work is needed to identify strategies that provide better access to all children who are in need of specialized services, as developmental and behavioral problems are among the most prevalent health concerns faced by children.

The findings are published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.

Source: Rutgers University

Mouse Study Links Vitamin D to Autism Prevention

VIDEO: https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/135858.php

A new study has found that giving vitamin D supplements to mice during pregnancy prevented autism in their offspring.

The discovery provides further evidence of the crucial role vitamin D plays in brain development, according to lead researcher Professor Darryl Eyles from the University of Queensland.

“Our study used the most widely accepted developmental model of autism in which affected mice behave abnormally and show deficits in social interaction, basic learning, and stereotyped behaviors,” Eyles said. “We found that pregnant females treated with active vitamin D in the equivalent of the first trimester of pregnancy produced offspring that did not develop these deficits.”

In human studies, researchers at the university’s Queensland Brain Institute recently found a link between pregnant women with low Vitamin D levels and the increased likelihood of having a child with autistic traits.

Sun exposure is the major source of vitamin D, but it is also found in some foods.

Dr. Wei Luan, a postdoctoral researcher involved in the study, noted vitamin D is crucial for maintaining healthy bones, but the active hormonal form of vitamin D cannot be given to pregnant women because it may affect the skeleton of the developing fetus.

“Recent funding will now allow us to determine how much cholecalciferol — the supplement form that is safe for pregnant women — is needed to achieve the same levels of active hormonal vitamin D in the bloodstream,” said Luan.

“This new information will allow us to further investigate the ideal dose and timing of vitamin D supplementation for pregnant women.”

Researchers also noted that while it was previously thought vitamin D had a protective anti-inflammatory effect during brain development, their study didn’t find this to be the case.

The study was published in Molecular Autism.

Source: University of Queensland

More Time Online Tied to Loneliness in Young Adults

A new report suggests the more time a young adult uses social media, the more likely they are to feel socially isolated.

In a national analysis, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC) scientists also found that in addition to the time spent online, the frequency of use was associated with increased social isolation.

The finding contradicts the belief that social media help to reduce social isolation among young adults. That is, social media is not a true panacea to help reduce perceived social isolation when a person lacks a sense of social belonging, true engagement with others and fulfilling relationships.

“We do not yet know which came first — the social media use or the perceived social isolation,” said senior author Elizabeth Miller, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at Pitt and chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

“It’s possible that young adults who initially felt socially isolated turned to social media. Or it could be that their increased use of social media somehow led to feeling isolated from the real world. It also could be a combination of both. But even if the social isolation came first, it did not seem to be alleviated by spending time online, even in purportedly social situations.”

In the past, social isolation has been independently associated with an increased risk for mortality.

“This is an important issue to study because mental health problems and social isolation are at epidemic levels among young adults,” said lead author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., director of Pitt’s Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health.

“We are inherently social creatures, but modern life tends to compartmentalize us instead of bringing us together. While it may seem that social media presents opportunities to fill that social void, I think this study suggests that it may not be the solution people were hoping for.”

In 2014, Primack and his colleagues sampled 1,787 U.S. adults ages 19 through 32, using questionnaires to determine time and frequency of social media use by asking about the 11 most popular social media platforms. Media platforms included Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine, and LinkedIn.

The scientists measured participants’ perceived social isolation using a validated assessment tool called the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System.

Even when the researchers controlled for a variety of social and demographic factors, participants who used social media more than two hours a day had twice the odds for perceived social isolation than their peers who spent less than half an hour on social media each day.

And participants who visited various social media platforms 58 or more times per week had about triple the odds of perceived social isolation than those who visited fewer than nine times per week.

The researchers have several theories for how increased use of social media could fuel feelings of social isolation, including:

• social media use displaces more authentic social experiences because the more time a person spends online, the less time there is for real-world interactions;
• certain characteristics of social media facilitate feelings of being excluded, such as when one sees photos of friends having fun at an event to which they were not invited;
• exposure to highly idealized representations of peers’ lives on social media sites may elicit feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier and more successful lives.

Primack, a family medicine physician, and Miller, a pediatrician, both encourage doctors to ask patients about their social media use and counsel them in reducing that use if it seems linked to symptoms of social isolation. However, they noted, much more study is needed to understand nuances around social media use.

“People interact with each other over social media in many different ways,” said Primack, also a professor of medicine, pediatrics, and clinical and translational science at Pitt.

“In a large population-based study such as this, we report overall tendencies that may or may not apply to each individual. I don’t doubt that some people using certain platforms in specific ways may find comfort and social connectedness via social media relationships. However, the results of this study simply remind us that, on the whole, use of social media tends to be associated with increased social isolation and not decreased social isolation.”

The study is published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Source: University of Pittsburg

Too Much TV Tied to Poor Math Scores, Particularly in Low-Income Kids

Kindergartners, particularly those from low-income families, who spend more than a couple of hours per day watching television tend to score lower in tests of math and executive function, according to a new study by researchers at New York University’s (NYU) Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Université Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia.

Studies have shown that TV watching is linked to declines in early academic skills, but little is known about how socioeconomic status influences television viewing and child development. In the new study, the researchers looked at whether the negative relationship between watching television and school readiness varied by family income.

“Given that studies have reported that children often watch more than the recommended amount, and the current prevalence of technology such as smartphones and tablets, engaging in screen time may be more frequent now than ever before,” said lead author Andrew Ribner, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt.

The researchers analyzed data from 807 kindergartners of diverse backgrounds. Their parents reported family income, as well as the number of hours of television their children watch on a daily basis. Video game, tablet, and smartphone use were not included in the measurement.

Children were assessed using measures of math, knowledge of letters and words, and executive function — key cognitive and social-emotional competencies, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, that are viewed as fundamental for school readiness.

The findings show that the number of hours of television young children watch is related to decreases in their school readiness, particularly their math skills and executive function. This association was strongest when children watched more than two hours of television.

As family incomes decreased, the link between television watching and drops in school readiness grew, meaning children from low-income families are more negatively affected by excess television. Those at or near the poverty line (an annual income of around $21,200 for a family of four) saw the largest drop in school readiness when children watched more than two hours of television.

A more modest drop was observed among middle-income families (measured as $74,200 per year for a family of four), while there was no link between school readiness and television viewing in high-income homes (measured as around $127,000 per year for a family of four).

Interestingly, while TV watching was negatively associated with math skills and executive function, a similar link was not found with letter and word knowledge. The researchers hypothesize that TV programming, especially educational programs for children, may help improve literacy among young children in ways that are not found in math.

While the study did not evaluate the type of content the children watched, nor the context of their television viewing, the researchers note that both may play a role in the findings, particularly in explaining why wealthier families seem to be protected from declines in school readiness linked to too much television.

For example, perhaps children in higher-income homes watch more educational programs and less entertainment, a finding shown in previous studies.

Furthermore, affluent parents with more time and resources may be more likely to watch television with their children, offering explanation and discussion that can promote understanding.

“Our results suggest that the circumstances that surround child screen time can influence its detrimental effects on learning outcomes,” said Dr. Caroline Fitzpatrick of Université Sainte-Anne, who is also an affiliate researcher at Concordia University and a coauthor on the study.

The findings, published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, support current guidelines limiting screen time for young children. In 2001, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended that children over the age of two watch no more than two hours of television per day. These guidelines, updated in October 2016, now recommend that children between two and five watch no more than one hour of television.

Source: New York University

Participation in Contact Sports Increases Risk of Opioid/Heroin Use

Parents may need to take notice as a University of Michigan study suggests high school athletes who play high-contact sports (like hockey or football) are at greater risk for heroin use and nonmedical use of prescription opioids.

The study is unique as prior studies have not assessed the potential overlapping use of opioids and heroin among youth athletes, including those involved in different competitive sports.

The University of Michigan study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, focused on high-contact sports such as hockey, football, lacrosse, and wrestling where serious sport-related injuries are more likely.

Researchers examined the past-year prevalence of non-medical use of prescription opioids, heroin use and the concurrent abuse of nonprescription opioids and heroin in a sample of seniors involved in 16 different sports.

The data came from more than 21,000 students from the 2006-2014 cohorts of the Monitoring the Future study.

There were no differences found between 12th-graders who participated in at least one competitive sport and nonparticipants with respect to past-year abuse of prescription opioids, heroin use, and concurrent use of the drugs.

Most of the 16 sports analyzed were not associated with the three drug use outcomes. However, 12th-graders who participated in hockey had substantially greater odds of both past-year heroin use and concurrent use of both heroin and non-prescribed drugs.

Study leader, Philip Veliz, a research assistant professor at University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender explains that hockey may simply have riskier youth who are involved in the sport, or these athletes have greater access to opioids given that it is predominantly populated by white, middle-class youth.

Overall, 8.3 percent of the respondents indicated nonmedical use of nonprescription opioids and 0.9 percent reported heroin use during the past year. Roughly 0.6 percent of respondents indicated concurrent heroin and abuse of nonprescription opioids the past year.

With respect to past-year involvement in competitive sports, 69.3 percent of seniors participated in at least one competitive sport (30.4 percent, one sport only; 17.7 percent, two sports; 21.2 percent, three or more sports).

In particular, the sports with the highest percentage of participants included “other” sports (26 percent), basketball (20.2 percent), football (15.8 percent), baseball (14.5 percent), and soccer (12.9 percent).

Involvement in weightlifting and wrestling were associated with slightly higher odds of past-year nonprescription opioids, while involvement in soccer was modestly associated with lower odds of past-year nonprescription opioids, when compared to respondents who did not participate in these sports during the past-year.

Involvement in both hockey and weightlifting was significantly associated with greater odds of past-year heroin use when compared to respondents who did not participate in these two sports.

“The findings provide critical information to inform doctors and parents of the potential risks associated with participating in certain high contact sports and the need to monitor the use and misuse of prescription drugs that have high abuse potential,” Veliz said.

The study’s authors also included Carol Boyd, professor of nursing and women’s studies, and Sean Esteban McCabe, IRWG research professor.

Source: University of Michigan

Genome Database IDs 18 More Autism Genes

Researchers have identified 18 additional gene variations that appear to increase the risk of autism, according to the latest study from the Autism Speaks MSSNG project, the world’s largest autism genome sequencing program.

The research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, involved the analysis of 5,205 whole genomes from families affected by autism. The omitted letters in MSSNG (pronounced “missing”) represent the missing information about autism that the research program seeks to deliver.

“It’s noteworthy that we’re still finding new autism genes, let alone 18 of them, after a decade of intense focus,” said study co-author Mathew Pletcher, Ph.D., Autism Speaks’ vice president for genomic discovery. “With each new gene discovery, we’re able to explain more cases of autism, each with its own set of behavioral effects and many with associated medical concerns.”

So far, research using the MSSNG genomic database has identified 61 genetic variations that affect autism risk. The researchers have linked several of these variations with additional medical conditions that often accompany autism. The goal, Pletcher said, “is to advance personalized treatments for autism by deepening our understanding of the condition’s many subtypes.”

The researchers found that many of the 18 newly identified autism genes impact the operation of a small subset of biological pathways in the brain. All of these pathways affect how brain cells develop and communicate with each other.

“In all, 80 percent of the 61 gene variations discovered through MSSNG affect biochemical pathways that have clear potential as targets for future medicines,” Pletcher said.

Increasingly, autism researchers are predicting that personalized, more effective treatments will be developed from understanding these common brain pathways and how different gene variations alter them.

“The unprecedented MSSNG database is enabling research into the many ‘autisms’ that make up the autism spectrum,” said the study’s senior investigator, Stephen Scherer, Ph.D.

For example, some of the genetic alterations found in the study occurred in families with one person severely affected by autism and others on the milder end of the spectrum, Scherer said.

“This reinforces the significant neurodiversity involved in this complex condition,” he said. “In addition, the depth of the MSSNG database allowed us to identify resilient individuals who carry autism-associated gene variations without developing autism. We believe that this, too, is an important part of the neurodiversity story.”

The findings reveal how whole genome sequencing can guide medical care today. For example, at least two of the autism-associated gene changes described in the paper were linked to an increased risk for seizures. Another was tied to an increased risk for cardiac defects, and yet another with adult diabetes.

The results show how whole genome sequencing for autism can provide additional medical guidance to individuals, families and their physicians, say the researchers.

Source: Autism Speaks