History of abuse and adolescent hostile-helpless attachment: The mediating role of mother-adolescent punitive interactions.

BACKGROUND: Hostile-Helpless (HH) state of mind is a form of disorganised attachment that is strongly associated with prior experiences of abuse. However, how abuse experiences contribute toward HH states of mind in late adolescence is unknown. Punitive control in adolescent-mother dyads has been implicated in the development of HH states of mind and adolescent sex/gender may influence how punitive interactions contribute to HH mind states. OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to explore how adolescent sex/gender and punitive control within adolescent-mother dyads are related to the links between HH states of mind and childhood abuse. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: A sample of 109 low-moderate income late adolescents (aged 18-23 years, 65 females, 44 males) and their mothers were assessed in a conflict-resolution paradigm. METHODS: Recordings of the interactions were coded using the Goal-Corrected Partnership in Adolescence Coding System for different aspects of attachment-based interactions including punitive control. Late-adolescent HH states of mind features were coded from Adult Attachment Interviews (AAI) and experiences of abuse were coded from adolescent self-reports and the AAI. RESULTS: Moderated mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect pathway from abuse to HH states of mind through punitive control in late adolescent females (B = 0.06, SEBoot = 0.04, 95 % CIBoot 0.01, 0.15), but not males (B = -0.02, SEBoot = 0.02, 95 % CIBoot - 0.07, 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that there are sex/gender-specific pathways to developing HH states of mind. Hostile behavior within mother-daughter dyads therefore may play an important role in linking abuse experiences and contradictory attachment representations in late adolescent females.

Teacher-Student Relationships in Childhood as a Protective Factor against Adolescent Delinquency up to Age 17: A Propensity Score Matching Approach.

In this paper we examined the impact of the quality of teacher-student relationships at age 10 on young people's delinquency at ages 13, 15, and 17 utilizing propensity-score matching. The young people were matched based on 105 characteristics, measured at ages 7 to 10. The sample comprised 1483 (49.4% female) adolescents representing around 80 different countries of origin, residing in Zurich, Switzerland. We found that young people who reported a better relationship with their teacher at age 10, engaged in fewer delinquent acts at ages 13, 15, and 17. These findings suggest that when young people perceive a better relationship with their teachers this serves as a protective factor against their engagement in delinquency up to 7 years later.

Veterinarians' experiences of treating cases of animal abuse: An online questionnaire study.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to examine veterinarians' experiences of treating cases of nonaccidental injury and other forms of animal abuse and to assess their support needs and barriers to reporting cases. METHODS: An online questionnaire was completed by 215 veterinarians. The survey included items on demographics and veterinary experience, experience of nonaccidental injuries during the last 12 months, case studies, perceptions of the roles of veterinarians in identifying and reporting cases, and barriers to reporting. RESULTS: Fifty-three percent reported treating cases and 9% reported suspected cases of abuse in the last 12 months. Experience of abuse in the last 12 months did not vary in terms of veterinarians' age, sex or number of years in practice. The most commonly affected animals were dogs, cats and rabbits, and the most common forms of abuse were neglect and physical abuse. Case studies focused on physical abuse cases, but neglect cases more often resulted in death. Veterinarians showed high concern about animal abuse but varied in their confidence to intervene and perceived barriers to reporting. CONCLUSION: Experience of animal abuse is common, and veterinarians feel a strong moral duty to act, but can lack confidence in intervening. Abuse cases affect stress levels and compassion fatigue; therefore, support and training are needed.

Avian cerebellar floccular fossa size is not a proxy for flying ability in birds.

Extinct animal behavior has often been inferred from qualitative assessments of relative brain region size in fossil endocranial casts. For instance, flight capability in pterosaurs and early birds has been inferred from the relative size of the cerebellar flocculus, which in life protrudes from the lateral surface of the cerebellum. A primary role of the flocculus is to integrate sensory information about head rotation and translation to stabilize visual gaze via the vestibulo-occular reflex (VOR). Because gaze stabilization is a critical aspect of flight, some authors have suggested that the flocculus is enlarged in flying species. Whether this can be further extended to a floccular expansion in highly maneuverable flying species or floccular reduction in flightless species is unknown. Here, we used micro computed-tomography to reconstruct "virtual" endocranial casts of 60 extant bird species, to extract the same level of anatomical information offered by fossils. Volumes of the floccular fossa and entire brain cavity were measured and these values correlated with four indices of flying behavior. Although a weak positive relationship was found between floccular fossa size and brachial index, no significant relationship was found between floccular fossa size and any other flight mode classification. These findings could be the result of the bony endocranium inaccurately reflecting the size of the neural flocculus, but might also reflect the importance of the flocculus for all modes of locomotion in birds. We therefore conclude that the relative size of the flocculus of endocranial casts is an unreliable predictor of locomotor behavior in extinct birds, and probably also pterosaurs and non-avian dinosaurs.

Voice modulations in German ironic speech.

Previous research has shown that in different languages ironic speech is acoustically modulated compared to literal speech,and these modulations are assumed to aid the listener in the comprehension process by acting as cues that mark utterances as ironic. The present study was conducted to identify paraverbal features of German 'ironic criticism' that may possibly act as irony cues by comparing acoustic measures of ironic and literal speech. For this purpose, samples of scripted ironic and literal target utterances produced by 14 female speakers were recorded and acoustically analyzed. Results showed that in contrast to literal remarks, ironic criticism was characterized by a decreased mean fundamental frequency (F0), raised energy levels and increased vowel duration, whereas F0-contours differed only marginally between both speech types. Furthermore, we found ironic speech to be characterized by vowel hyperarticulation,an acoustic feature which has so far not been considered as a possible irony cue. Contrary to our expectations, voice modulations in ironic speech were applied independently from the availability of additional, visual irony cues.The results are discussed in light of previous findings on acoustic features of irony yielded for other languages.

Sound processing in amateur musicians and nonmusicians: event-related potential and behavioral indices.

To increase our understanding of auditory neurocognition in musicians, we compared nonmusicians with amateur band musicians in their neural and behavioral sound encoding accuracy. Mismatch negativity and P3a components of the auditory event-related potentials were recorded to changes in basic acoustic features (frequency, duration, location, intensity, gap) and abstract features (melodic contour and interval size). Mismatch negativity was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians for location changes whereas no statistically significant group difference was observed in response to other feature changes or in abstract-feature mismatch negativity. P3a was observed only in musicians in response to location changes. This suggests that when compared with nonmusicians, even amateur musicians have neural sound processing advantages with acoustic information most essential to their musical genre.