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