Validation of a Four Factor Measure: Scale of Perceived Instructor Support.

Academic-related stressors are common for college students, such as future career decisions or pressures to succeed academically. Furthermore, the impact of health and finance issues may add to the burden. Perceived support from an academic community, peers, or family can provide a buffer to mitigate the effects of these stressors. Several studies have emphasized the importance of support by instructors in particular and found that students' perceptions of instructor support can counteract academic stress and promote retention. The purpose of the present study was to validate a scale for instructor support, which consisted of four factors: autonomy, expectation, interpersonal relationships, and engagement. A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated good fit for the items within each factor. Results also indicated that students who planned to return to the university next semester were more likely to report higher levels of autonomy and expectation. The Scale of Perceived Instructor Support (SPIS) is a short, 24 item-inventory that can be used by faculty advisors as part of a formal advising practice or informally by class instructors.

Infidelity and kin selection: does cheating seem as bad when it's "all in the family"?

The current study explored people's perceptions of how they would feel if their partners cheated on them by having sex with their relatives, such as if a man's wife had sex with his brother. Kin selection theory suggests that in such situations, victims of infidelity might feel slightly better if their partners had sex with biological relatives (compared to sex with nonrelatives) because some of the victims' genes could still get passed on through their relatives. In two experiments, participants reported how they would feel in various scenarios involving their partners having sex with participants' relatives and nonrelatives. As expected, participants generally reported being very disapproving of a partner's hypothetical infidelity with both their relatives and nonrelatives. However, contrary to predictions generated by kin selection theory, participants tended to report that they would feel worse if their partners had sex with their relatives. We propose several explanations for the current findings and discuss their implications for kin selection theory.

Untreated prenatal maternal depression and the potential risks to offspring: a review.

Research exploring the effects of prenatal maternal depression on a developing fetus and child is underrepresented in the literature. Empirical papers have typically focused on the effects of postpartum depression (after birth) instead of prepartum depression (before birth). Disparate empirical findings have produced ongoing debate regarding the effects of prenatal depression on a developing fetus and later in infancy and early childhood. Even more controversial is determining the role of antidepressant medication on offspring outcomes and whether research that does not include the proper control population (e.g., unmedicated depressed participants) can adequately address questions about risks and benefits of treatment during pregnancy. The current review systematically summarizes the literature focusing on unmedicated prenatal depression and offspring outcome and concludes that prepartum depression is highly prevalent, is associated with negative outcomes in offspring, and remains understudied.

When word identification fails: ERP correlates of recognition without identification and of word identification failure.

Recognition without identification (RWI) refers to people's ability to discriminate studied from unstudied items when the items themselves fail to be identified, as when people fail to identify words from fragments. We sought to identify the ERP correlates of word fragment RWI in an effort to better understand its underlying mechanisms; in so doing, we also examined the ERP correlates of word identification failure vs. success. We found the ERP correlate of the RWI effect to be the N300; greater negativity was shown for unidentified fragments of studied words than for unidentified fragments of unstudied words between 300-325 ms post test fragment onset. We further separated the ERPs according to whether subjects showed the behavioral RWI effect or not; the N300 effect emerged only among those subjects who showed the behavioral effect, suggesting that the N300 is related to the behavioral effect itself. With regard to the ERP correlates of word identification failure vs. success, we found very early indicators of later word identification success vs. failure (starting at 125 ms) that were independent of priming. These early effects may be preconscious markers of downstream word identification success vs. failure. We also found a later persistent negativity associated with successfully identified words that we propose to be associated with executive function and possibly the successful suppression of irrelevant words that might initially come to mind when attempting to complete a unique word fragment; word fragment identification failure may sometimes be due to a failure to suppress irrelevant or incorrect words.

P50 sensory gating is related to performance on select tasks of cognitive inhibition.

P50 suppression deficits have been documented in clinical and nonclinical populations, but the behavioral correlates of impaired auditory sensory gating remain poorly understood. In the present study, we examined the relationship between P50 gating and healthy adults' performance on cognitive inhibition tasks. On the basis of load theory (Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert, & Viding, 2004), we predicted that a high perceptual load, a possible consequence of poor auditory P50 sensory gating, would have differential (i.e., positive vs. negative) effects on performance of cognitive inhibition tasks. A dissociation was observed such that P50 gating was negatively related to interference resolution on a Stroop task and positively related to response inhibition on a go/no-go task. Our findings support the idea that a high perceptual load may be beneficial to Stroop performance because of the reduced processing of distractors but detrimental to performance on the go/no-go task because of interference with stimulus discrimination.

The role of metabotropic glutamate receptors and cortical adaptation in habituation of odor-guided behavior.

Decreases in behavioral investigation of novel stimuli over time may be mediated by a variety of factors including changes in attention, internal state, and motivation. Sensory cortical adaptation, a decrease in sensory cortical responsiveness over prolonged stimulation, may also play a role. In olfaction, metabotropic glutamate receptors on cortical afferent pre-synaptic terminals have been shown to underlie both cortical sensory adaptation and habituation of odor-evoked reflexes. The present experiment examined whether blockade of sensory cortical adaptation through bilateral infusion of the group III metabotropic glutamate receptor antagonist cyclopropyl-4-phosphonophenylglycine (CPPG) into the anterior piriform cortex could reduce habituation of a more complex odor-driven behavior such as investigation of a scented object or a conspecific. The results demonstrate that time spent investigating a scented jar, or a conspecific, decreases over the course of a continuous 10 minute trial. Acute infusion of CPPG bilaterally into the anterior piriform cortex significantly enhanced the time spent investigating the scented jar compared to investigation time in control rats, without affecting overall behavioral activity levels. Infusions into the brain outside of the piriform cortex were without effect. CPPG infusion into the piriform cortex also produced an enhancement of time spent investigating a conspecific, although this effect was not significant.