This study examined how exposure to severe poverty related to behavioral self-regulation growth during early childhood as mediated by parenting practices. Ethnic differences were tested. Data were collected across 4 waves from 359 low-income African American and Latino families. The frequency of exposure to severe poverty was indicated by how many times family income fell below 50% of the federal poverty line across 4 waves. Behavioral self-regulation was assessed when children were 3½, 6, and 7 years old (Wave 2-4), and parenting was observed when children were age 2½ years old (Wave 1). More frequent exposure to severe poverty was associated with slower behavioral self-regulation growth, and the effect was partially mediated through less *

Traditional variable-centered research on executive functions (EFs) often infers intraindividual development using group-based averages. Such a method masks meaningful individuality and involves the fallacy of equating group-level data with person-specific changes. We used an intensive longitudinal design to study idiographic executive function fluctuation among ten boys from Grade 4. Each of the participants completed between 33 and 43 measurement occasions (M = 38.8) across approximately three months. Data were collected remotely using a computerized short version of the Dimensional Change Card Sort task. Multi-group analyses of three participant pairs (Participants 5 and 3, 5 and 2, and 5 and 6) demonstrated that Participant 5 differed from Participants 3 and 2 in different ways but Participants 5 and 6 were similar in all comparisons. Dynamic structural equation modeling demonstrated unique individual trajectories, which were not represented by the trajectory of group-averages. Although more than half of the participants showed a negative association between EFs and inattention, two participants showed a positive association between EF and inattention. This study demonstrated meaningful person-specific trajectories of EFs, suggesting that future study should undertake the analysis of individual development before data-aggregation or generalization from aggregate statistics to individuals.

No abstract

While behavioral research suggests an association between cultural worldview and decreased anxiety of death, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain unclear. Using functional MRI, we investigated whether and how the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR), which has been associated with mental disorders such as anxiety and depression, moderates the associations between a cultural trait (i.e., interdependence) and self-report of death anxiety/depression and between interdependence and brain responses to mortality threats. Long/long and short/short allele carriers of the 5-HTTLPR were scanned using fMRI while they performed a one-back task on death-related, death-unrelated negative, and neutral words. Participants' interdependence and death anxiety/depression were assessed using questionnaires after scanning. We found that participants who assessed themselves with greater interdependence reported lower death anxiety/depression and showed decreased neural response to death-related words in emotion-related brain regions including the anterior cingulate, putamen, and thalamus. However, these results were evident in long/long allele carriers of the 5-HTTLPR but not in short/short allele carriers who even showed positive associations between interdependence and neural activities in the anterior cingulate, putamen and thalamus in response to death-related words. Our findings suggest candidate mechanisms for explaining the complex relationship between genotype, cultural traits, and mental/neural responses to mortality threats. Hum Brain Mapp 38:6157-6171, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Romantic relationship satisfaction (RRS) is important for mental/physical health but varies greatly across individuals. To date, we have known little about the biological (genetic and neural) correlates of RRS. We tested the hypothesis that the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR), the promoter region of the gene SLC6A4 that codes for the serotonin transporter protein, is associated with individuals' RRS. Moreover, we investigated neural activity that mediates 5-HTTLPR association with RRS by scanning short-short (s/s) and long-long (l/l) homozygotes of 5-HTTLPR, using functional MRI, during a Cyberball game that resulted in social exclusion. l/l compared with s/s allele carriers reported higher RRS but lower social interaction anxiety. l/l compared with s/s carriers showed stronger activity in the right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) and stronger functional connectivity between the dorsal and rostral ACC when being excluded from the Cyberball game. Moreover, the 5-HTTLPR association with RRS was mediated by the RVPFC activity and the 5-HTTLPR association with social interaction anxiety was mediated by both the dorsal-rostral ACC connectivity and RVPFC activity. Our findings suggest that 5-HTTLPR is associated with satisfaction of one's own romantic relationships and this association is mediated by the neural activity in the brain region related to emotion regulation.

No abstract

BackgroundEmotional responding is sensitive to social context; however, little emphasis has been placed on the mechanisms by which social context effects changes in emotional responding.ObjectiveWe aimed to investigate the effects of social context on neural responses to emotional stimuli to inform on the mechanisms underpinning context-linked changes in emotional responding.DesignWe measured event-related potential (ERP) components known to index specific emotion processes and self-reports of explicit emotion regulation strategies and emotional arousal. Female Chinese university students observed positive, negative, and neutral photographs, whilst alone or accompanied by a culturally similar (Chinese) or dissimilar researcher (British).ResultsThere was a reduction in the positive versus neutral differential N1 amplitude (indexing attentional capture by positive stimuli) in the dissimilar relative to alone context. In this context, there was also a corresponding increase in amplitude of a frontal late positive potential (LPP) component (indexing engagement of cognitive control resources). In the similar relative to alone context, these effects on differential N1 and frontal LPP amplitudes were less pronounced, but there was an additional decrease in the amplitude of a parietal LPP component (indexing motivational relevance) in response to positive stimuli. In response to negative stimuli, the differential N1 component was increased in the similar relative to dissimilar and alone (trend) context.ConclusionThese data suggest that neural processes engaged in response to emotional stimuli are modulated by social context. Possible mechanisms for the social-context-linked changes in attentional capture by emotional stimuli include a context-directed modulation of the focus of attention, or an altered interpretation of the emotional stimuli based on additional information proportioned by the context.

In this paper, a honeycomb sandwich beam and a plate are studied to verify a method of determining the equivalent properties of these structures. The responses of the structures are obtained from both numerical and physical experiments considering free-free boundary conditions. It is shown that a double-layer effect caused by the bonding-stretching process during manufacturing cannot be ignored. It is also found that at low frequencies, the equivalent method gives good agreement with measurements. However at higher frequency range, the response calculated using equivalent method shift towards higher frequency compared with measurements.