In brief: Anger harms health in oldest adults, tactical grunting, and more research

Outstretched hand

Follow your dreams

People who persist toward their goals and approach life with a positive outlook are at lower risk for mood and anxiety disorders, according to a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 3,294 U.S. adults who were surveyed three times over 18 years. Participants were asked about their goal persistence, whether they approached challenges with a positive outlook, and their overall self-mastery ("I can do anything I set my mind to"). Participants who reported stronger goal persistence at their first assessment, as well as those who reported the greatest increase in persistence over the study period, experienced lower rates of depression, anxiety and panic disorders across the 18 years of the study. Adopting a positive approach to challenges was also associated with lower rates of disorders, while self-mastery was not. DOI: 10.1037/abn0000428opens in new window

Mother and toddler

Talk more to raise children's skills

Young children exposed to large amounts of adult speech tend to have better cognitive skills, even in areas unrelated to vocabulary, suggests a study in Developmental Psychology. Researchers captured interactions between 107 U.K. children ages 2 to 4 and their primary caregivers over a three-day period, using tiny microphones embedded in the children’s clothing. The quantity of adult spoken words that children heard was positively associated with the children’s abilities in areas such as reasoning, numeracy and shape awareness. In addition, children who interacted with adults with more diverse vocabularies knew a greater variety of words themselves. Finally, children with responsive, encouraging parents showed fewer restless, aggressive and disobedient behaviors. DOI: 10.1037/dev0000733opens in new window

Don't shoot the messenger

People tend to dislike bearers of bad news, suggests a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Across a series of online and in-person experiments, researchers studied people’s responses upon being told bad or good news. In the first study, a researcher picked a number out of a hat to determine if participants won 2ドル. The researcher’s colleague announced the results. Participants who were told they did not win rated the colleague as less likable than did participants who received good news. The effect held across a variety of scenarios and was stronger when the bad news was unexpected or made less sense. The experiments also suggest that the reason people dislike a bearer of bad news is that they believe he or she has nefarious motives. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000586opens in new window

Suicide spike

The Netflix show "13 Reasons Why," about a young woman who takes her own life, was associated with a 29% increase in suicides among U.S. youth ages 10 to 17 in the month following the show’s release in March 2017, according to a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about deaths due to suicide between Jan. 1, 2013, and Dec. 31, 2017. They found that the number of suicide deaths for 10- to 17-year-olds in April 2017 was greater than in any other single month over the five-year study period. This increase was observed primarily in young males. The researchers did not find any significant trends in suicide rates in people ages 18 to 64 during the same month. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2019年04月02日0opens in new window

Tennis player

Tactical grunting

The grunting sounds some tennis players make when hitting the ball give their opponents the impression that the ball will travel farther than it really will, suggests a study in PLOS ONE. Researchers asked 31 experienced tennis players in Germany to view video clips of tennis rallies in which grunt intensity was experimentally manipulated, and then asked the viewers to predict where the ball would land. Louder grunts led participants to judge that the ball would fly farther but did not affect their judgments of the direction the ball was flying. The evidence from this and other studies did not support alternative hypotheses that grunting serves to distract opponents or to block the sound of the racket hitting the ball. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214819opens in new window

Troubled fathers, troubled daughters

Growing up with a harsh, troubled father can influence women’s expectations of men, and, in turn, their sexual behavior, suggests a study in Developmental Psychology. Researchers surveyed 223 pairs of full biological sisters in the United States whose parents divorced before the younger sister turned 14. At the time of the survey, the mean ages of the older and younger sisters were 29.5 and 23.9, respectively. On average, the older sisters had lived with the fathers 5.6 years longer than the younger sisters had. The researchers found that older sisters who had more exposure to poor-quality fathers reported lower expectations of male partners, and more sexual partners, compared with older sisters who had lived with warmer, higher-quality fathers. The younger sisters, in contrast, were not affected by paternal behavior on these measures. DOI: 10.1037/dev0000741opens in new window

Stretch of the imagination

Creative individuals are better at imagining distant experiences than are other people with similar levels of education and career success, suggests research from a series of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In the first two studies, researchers analyzed the word choices in essays about far-off situations (e.g., "Imagine what the world will be like in 500 years") written by participants recruited from the general population and from various professions. The researchers found that scores on an established creativity task were associated with an enhanced ability to imagine distant scenarios, and that experts in such fields as writing and visual arts showed higher levels of creativity and imagination than experts in other fields, such as medicine and law. Using fMRI on a different set of participants in a third experiment, the researchers found that creative experts were more likely than other professionals to activate the brain’s dorsomedial subsystem when imagining situations beyond the present time, place or social situation. DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000148opens in new window

Older adult man

Anger harms health in oldest adults

Anger may be more harmful to an older person’s physical health than sadness, and that may be due to anger leading to increased inflammation, according to a study in Psychology and Aging. Researchers administered questionnaires to 226 Canadian adults ages 59 to 93 about how angry or sad they felt, and took blood samples and medical histories from each participant. The researchers found that experiencing anger daily was related to higher levels of inflammation and chronic illness for people older than 80, but not for younger seniors. No such effects were found for sadness. The researchers suggest that younger seniors may be able to channel their anger to overcome age-related challenges and losses, whereas anger becomes problematic for older seniors whose challenges may be insurmountable. DOI: 10.1037/pag0000348opens in new window

Pokemon characters

"Pokémon" on the brain

"Pokémon" characters activate a specific region of the brain’s visual cortex in adults who played the "Pokémon" video game extensively as children, according to research in Nature Human Behaviour. Recent studies suggest regions dedicated to a novel category of objects can develop in the visual cortex of monkeys when the monkeys are exposed to those objects early in life. To test whether this occurs in humans, researchers used fMRI to scan the brains of 11 adult participants (mean age was about 24) who spent considerable time playing "Pokémon" as children. Experience with the game was verified by their ability to name 40 "Pokémon" characters by sight, relative to a control group. When the adult participants were shown images of hundreds of "Pokémon" characters, a specific area of the visual cortex called the occipitotemporal sulcus responded more strongly to the images, compared with the control group. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0594-6opens in new window

Purpose brings healthy living

Previous research has found that purpose in life is associated with health, and a study in Health Psychology points to potential mechanisms underlying this association. Researchers presented 220 adults in the United States who had a sedentary lifestyle with health messages related to exercise while their brains were scanned using fMRI. Later, outside the scanner, the participants rated how much they agreed with those messages and responded to a survey that measured their sense of life purpose. Those who reported a stronger sense of purpose were more likely to agree with the health messages and showed less activity in multiple brain regions associated with processing conflicting information while considering the health messages, as revealed in the fMRI scans. DOI: 10.1037/hea0000729opens in new window

Two women

Support and self-esteem

A study in Health Psychology finds that the physical health benefits derived from the support of family and friends go to people with high, but not low, self-esteem. Researchers asked 1,054 healthy American adults to rate the level of support they receive from family members and close friends. Participants also answered questions about their self-esteem. Two years later, the researchers measured levels of c-reactive protein, an inflammation biomarker, in blood samples taken from the same participants. Results showed that higher levels of perceived social support were linked to lower levels of c-reactive protein, but only in people with high self-esteem. The researchers suggest people with negative self-views may actually feel more stress when others offer help because they worry they may not be worthy of the support. DOI: 10.1037/hea0000746opens in new window

Young punishers

Children as young as 3 are willing to punish other children’s bad behavior, even if it comes at a personal cost, suggests a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Researchers brought more than 200 3- to 6-year-old children, all visitors at a U.S. children’s museum, one at a time into a room where they were allowed to play on a slide and asked to draw a picture. The children were then shown a video of another child tearing up someone else’s drawing. Half the children—including some as young as 3—chose to close down the slide so that the offending child could not use it, even though they would also no longer be able to enjoy it. Rates of punishment increased with age: 5- and 6-year-olds enacted the punishment at about three times the rate of 3- and 4-year-olds. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000613opens in new window

The learning myth is hard to shake

Many people, including educators, believe that "learning styles" are set at birth and predict both academic and career success, even though there is no scientific evidence to support this view, according to a study in the Journal of Educational Psychology. Confirming previous studies, 90% of 331 online survey respondents in the United States, including 21 educators and 310 individuals in other professions, reported they believed that people learn better if they are taught in their predominant learning style, whether that is visual, auditory or tactile. Half the believers thought that learning styles are heritable, "hard-wired" in the brain and mark distinct kinds of people, while the other half viewed them as malleable, overlapping and more determined by environmental factors. A second online survey of 337 adults, including 135 educators, found that educators who work with young children were more likely to believe the heritable version of the learning-styles concept. DOI: 10.1037/edu0000366opens in new window

Radio wave

Diagnosis via speech analysis

A machine-learning algorithm can detect signs of anxiety and depression in the speech patterns of young children, according to a study in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. Researchers recorded 42 U.S. children ages 3 to 7—13 of whom had an internalizing disorder diagnosis—improvising a three-minute story during which they were judged on their performance and twice interrupted with a loud beep, in an effort to make the task more stressful. The researchers found that the algorithm was able to identify the children with anxiety and depression diagnoses through an analysis of pitch patterns and repeated content in their speech. Such analysis could provide a faster, easier way of identifying conditions that are often overlooked in young children, the researchers say. DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2019.2913590opens in new window

High social class breeds confidence

People who identify as part of a higher social class tend to have an exaggerated belief in their own capabilities, begetting an overconfidence that is often misinterpreted by others as greater competence, suggests a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In one study, researchers found that Mexican business owners with more education, more income and a higher perceived social class had an inflated belief that they would outperform others on a picture-matching task, compared with their lower-class counter­parts. In another study, U.S. undergraduates who self-reported belonging to a higher social class exhibited overconfidence in their performance on a trivia quiz, even though they actually did no better than those who reported belonging to a lower social class. Subsequently, members of this overconfident group were rated by others as more competent in responding to questions during a video-recorded mock job interview, and they were also rated more highly for hiring. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000187opens in new window

'Cold' parenting shortens telomeres

Unsupportive parenting styles may have negative health implications for children, even into their adult years, suggests a study in Biological Psychiatry. In 1976, a large cohort of participants in the United States and Canada were surveyed about their mothers’ parenting styles during their first 15 years of life. Then, between 2003 and 2006, researchers examined the telomeres—protective caps at the ends of DNA strands—of 199 of these participants. Shorter telomeres have been associated with poorer health. The telomeres of participants who reported their mothers’ parenting as "cold" were on average 25% smaller than those of partcipants who reported having mothers whose parenting style they considered "warm." The effects of fathers’ parenting styles were in the same direction but were not significant. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019年03月01日3opens in new window

Addiction attribution

Describing addiction as a disease may make substance users less likely to seek counseling or therapy, suggests a study in the Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology. Researchers recruited 214 substance users to read one of two messages. One was a "growth-mindset message" that described various factors that can contribute to substance use disorder and multiple ways for people to address their addiction. The other was a "disease message" that described changes in the brain that take place during addiction. Participants who received the growth-mindset message reported more confidence in their ability to handle their addiction and stronger intentions to seek counseling or cognitive-behavioral therapy, compared with the participants who got the disease message. There was no difference between groups regarding their intentions to seek pharma­cological treatment. DOI: 10.1521/jscp.2019385.367opens in new window

Man and his dog

The future looks brighter

We tend to be most envious of things that have not yet happened, according to a study in Psychological Science. In one of a series of experiments, researchers asked 620 participants to imagine a close friend getting to have experiences that the participants themselves desired, such as taking a dream vacation. Some were asked to report how they would feel in the days and weeks before the imagined experience happened and others in the days and weeks after. The researchers found that timing mattered: Participants who reported how they would feel about future experiences rated the experiences as more enviable than participants who reported how they would feel about them afterward. Timing also determined the quality of the envy: Participants who pictured future events reported more malicious envy, characterized by feelings of hostility and schadenfreude, while those who thought about past events reported a more benign envy, associated with feelings of inspiration and motivation. DOI: 10.1177/0956797619839689opens in new window

Sleep patterns predict Alzheimer's

Sleep patterns can predict the accumulation of tau and β-amyloid proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease later in life, finds a study in the Journal of Neuroscience. Previous research has found that in young people, two types of hippocampal sleep waves—slow oscillations and sleep spindles—are synced, but in old age they become uncoordinated. Researchers in the United States studied 101 cognitively normal older adults enrolled in a longitudinal study of aging. They used an electroencephalogram to measure the participants’ brain activity during sleep and found that the severity of the decrease in slow oscillation/sleep spindle synchronization was associated with higher tau levels, while reduced slow-wave-activity amplitude was associated with higher β-amyloid levels. The researchers also found that participants whose self-reported sleep quantity decreased as they aged had higher levels of both β-amyloid and tau. The results suggest that changes in brain activity during sleep and a decrease in sleep quantity could serve as early warning signs for Alzheimer’s disease, according to the researchers. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0503-19.2019opens in new window

Earlier autism diagnosis

Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children as young as 14 months are stable, suggests a study in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers studied 1,269 toddlers in the United States who received their first diagnostic evaluation between 12 and 36 months. The children were followed for an average of 20 months, during which they received at least one additional evaluation. Only 50% of children diagnosed with ASD at 12 to 13 months still had that diagnosis at the final evaluation. However, that figure increased to 79% and 84% when the initial diagnosis was at 14 months and 16 months, respectively. The researchers note that screening for ASD at 14 months enables treatment to begin earlier than it usually does currently. DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.0624opens in new window

Young child

Early adversity modifies epigenetics

Children under 3 years old are especially vulnerable to epigenetic changes stemming from adverse experiences, including poverty, family turmoil and financial instability, according to research in Biological Psychiatry. Researchers examined DNA methylation, a common form of epigenetic change, in 1,000 children in the United Kingdom at birth and at age 7. Children who had experienced significant adversity had the highest levels of methylation, which acts to reduce the expression of specific clusters of genes. The researchers found that the early timing of adverse experiences had a more powerful effect on methylation than the number of such experiences or whether they had taken place recently. The researchers next plan to determine whether DNA methylation patterns are associated with subsequent mental health problems. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2018年12月02日3opens in new window