Similarities and Differences in Maternal Responsiveness in Three Societies: Evidence From Fiji, Kenya, and the United States.

The first relationship between an infant and her caregiver, typically the mother, lays the foundation for cognitive, social, and emotional development. Maternal responsiveness and affect mirroring have been studied extensively in Western societies yet very few studies have systematically examined these caregiving features in non-Western settings. Sixty-six mother-infant dyads (7 months, SD = 3.1) were observed in a small-scale, rural island society in Fiji, a village in Kenya, and an urban center in the United States. Mothers responded similarly to infant bids overall, but differences were found across societies in the ways mothers selectively respond to affective displays. This has implications for understanding early emotion socialization as well as understanding variation in infant social ecologies across the globe.

Adaptive content biases in learning about animals across the life course.

Prior work has demonstrated that young children in the US and the Ecuadorian Amazon preferentially remember information about the dangerousness of an animal over both its name and its diet. Here we explore if this bias is present among older children and adults in Fiji through the use of an experimental learning task. We find that a content bias favoring the preferential retention of danger and toxicity information continues to operate in older children, but that the magnitude of the bias diminishes with age and is absent in adults. We also find evidence that fitness costs likely impact the types of mistakes that participants make in their attributions of dangerousness and poisonousness. These results suggest that natural selection has shaped the way in which we learn and make inferences about unfamiliar animal species over ontogeny, and that future research is needed on how content biases may vary across the life course.

Choosing your partner for the PROM: a review of evidence on patient-reported outcome measures for use in primary and community care.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are assessments of health status from the patient's perspective. The systematic and routine collection and use of PROMs in healthcare settings adds value in several ways, including quality improvement and service evaluation. We address the issue of instrument selection for use in primary and/or community settings. Specifically, from the large number of available PROMs, which instrument delivers the highest level of performance and validity? For selected generic PROMs, we reviewed literature on psychometric properties and other instrument features (e.g., health domains captured). Briefly we summarize key strengths of the three PROMs that received the most favourable psycho-metric and overall evaluation. The Short-Form 36 has a number of strengths, chiefly, its strong psychometric properties such as responsiveness. The PROMIS/Global Health Scale scored highly on most criteria and warrants serious consideration, especially as it is free to use. The EQ-5D scored satisfactorily on many criteria and, beneficially, it has a low response burden.

On the nature of cultural transmission networks: evidence from Fijian villages for adaptive learning biases.

Unlike other animals, humans are heavily dependent on cumulative bodies of culturally learned information. Selective processes operating on this socially learned information can produce complex, functionally integrated, behavioural repertoires-cultural adaptations. To understand such non-genetic adaptations, evolutionary theorists propose that (i) natural selection has favoured the emergence of psychological biases for learning from those individuals most likely to possess adaptive information, and (ii) when these psychological learning biases operate in populations, over generations, they can generate cultural adaptations. Many laboratory experiments now provide evidence for these psychological biases. Here, we bridge from the laboratory to the field by examining if and how these biases emerge in a small-scale society. Data from three cultural domains-fishing, growing yams and using medicinal plants-show that Fijian villagers (ages 10 and up) are biased to learn from others perceived as more successful/knowledgeable, both within and across domains (prestige effects). We also find biases for sex and age, as well as proximity effects. These selective and centralized oblique transmission networks set up the conditions for adaptive cultural evolution.

The effect of rainfall during gestation and early childhood on adult height in a foraging and horticultural society of the Bolivian Amazon.

Recent research documents the effects of adverse conditions during gestation and early childhood on growth responses and health throughout life. Most research linking adverse conditions in early life with adult health comes from industrial nations. We know little about the plasticity of growth responses to environmental perturbations early in life among foragers and horticulturalists. Using 2005 data from 211 women and 215 men 20+ years of age from a foraging-horticultural society of native Amazonians in Bolivia (Tsimane'), we estimate the association between (a) adult height and (b) rainfall amount and variability during three stages in the life cycle: gestation (year 0), birth year (year 1), and years 2-5. We control for confounders such as height of the same-sex parent. Rainfall amount and variability during gestation and birth year bore weak associations with adult height, probably from the protective role of placental physiology and breastfeeding. However, rainfall variability during years 2-5 of life bore a negative association with adult female height. Among women, a 10% increase in the coefficient of variation of rainfall during years 2-5 was associated with 0.7-1.2% lower adult height (1.08-1.93 cm). Environmental perturbations that take place after the cessation of weaning seem to leave the strongest effect on adult height. We advance possible explanations for the absence of effects among males.