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Mental confusion in the elderly can be manifested by impairments in the areas of memory, orientation, concentration, and judgment. The number and classification of drugs prescribed for elderly residents of nursing care facilities can contribute to the development of mental confusion. As the number of drugs prescribed for confused elderly increases, the potential for these persons to engage in group social behavior decreases.
Project constraints often require social primates, such as macaques, to be housed individually. However, we believed the amount of time spent housed alone prior to renewed social exposure would effect an animal's behavior. We observed the behavior of adult male bonnet macaques (Macaca radiata) during time spent in an exercise pen with other adult males. We studied 2 groups (n = 3 males/group). Group one (group LT) was composed of males that had been housed alone for 24 months prior to the study, and the other group (group ST) consisted of male macaques that had been housed alone for 1 month prior to the study. One day each week for 8 weeks, members of each group were placed in an exercise pen containing items that would encourage foraging and object exploration. Seven 5-min focal observations were recorded for macaques during each session. The 2 most notable differences in social behavior were that macaques of group LT spent significantly (P = 0.003) more time alone than did macaques of group ST, whereas macaques of group ST spent significantly (P = 0.002) more time involved in social grooming than did macaques of group LT. Thus, prior duration of prior individual housing appeared to significantly affect social behavior.
The stress and burden of caregiving have been well established as correlates of changes in the relationship with a person needing care, but there has been less research on the association of caregiving with psychosocial variables, especially relationship patterns. In this article, these issues were addressed using Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB; Benjamin, 1974, 1984, 1993), a self-report measure of perceptions of interpersonal relationships and self-concept, and the Symptom Check List-90--Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1983), a self-report measure of distress and symptoms. SASB variables measuring attachment, interdependence, and interpersonal/intrapsychic conflict successfully differentiated community-active caregivers from noncaregivers. SASB measures provided substantially greater discrimination and classification accuracy than SCL-90-R variables.
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Compared observations of family interactions among anorexic, bulimic-anorexic, bulimic, and normal families. A total of 74 family triads participated, including father, mother, and teenage daughter. Each family was videotaped during a 10-min discussion of the daughter's separation from the family. These tapes were coded using Benjamin's structural analysis of social behavior (SASB) model and observational schema. The results showed that the SASB methodology differentiated clinical from normal families and that there were unique patterns among subtypes of eating disorders. Specifically, parents of anorexics communicated a double message of nurturant affection combined with neglect of their daughter's needs to express themselves and their feelings. Anorexic daughters, in turn, were ambivalent about disclosing their feelings versus submitting to their parents. In contrast, bulimics and their parents were hostilely enmeshed and, for them, this appeared to undermine the daughter's separation and self-assertion. These findings are consistent with current theory and research on anorexia and bulimia.
The neural cell adhesion molecule CHL1 is implicated in neural development in the mouse and has been related to psychiatric disorders in humans. Here we report that mice constitutively deficient for CHL1 display reduced reactivity to environmental stimuli and reduced expression of social behaviors, whereas cognitive, motor and olfactory functions are normal. Basal synaptic transmission and plasticity in seven major excitatory connections in the hippocampus were analyzed to test whether dysfunctions in this brain region, which controls complex behaviors, correlate with the behavioral alterations of CHL1 deficient mice. We found that basal synaptic transmission in lateral and medial perforant path projections to the dentate gyrus is elevated in CHL1-deficient mice. Taking in consideration the function of these synapses in processing information from cortical areas, we hypothesize that constitutive ablation of CHL1 leads to reduced capability to react to external stimuli due to dysfunctions in the dentate gyrus.
The abuse of cocaine in pregnant women could affect emotional behaviors in their descendents. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on spontaneous and cocaine-induced motor and social behaviors in mice. Three kinds of prenatal treatment were used: non-treated animals; mice treated daily with physiological saline during the last week of pregnancy; and finally, those treated with cocaine (25 mg/kg) during the same period. Behavioral studies took place on adult males, which were housed in two different conditions: grouped (non-aggressive), or isolated (aggressive). Cocaine-pretreated animals exhibited slight differences in spontaneous motor activity, but alterations in their social relationship with conspecifics were presented, with decreases in isolated but increases in grouped mice. The cocaine challenge increased aggression specifically in grouped prenatally cocaine-treated mice, but increases in motor activity or avoidance and flee behavior were presented in those animals pretreated with either saline or cocaine. Isolated saline-or cocaine-treated animals exhibited greater concentrations of DA and DOPAC than those grouped. A decrease in 5-HIAA concentrations was presented in pretreated animals, irrespective of their housing conditions. In conclusion, cocaine administration during pregnancy induces long lasting effects on the offspring, for both behavioral abnormalities and cocaine response, which last to adult life.
OBJECTIVE: To examine differences in home, school, and medical functioning between preschool-age children with attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and normal control children. METHOD: A sample of 94 children (58 with ADHD, 36 normal controls) between 3 and 5 years old participated. Dependent measures included parent and teacher ratings of problem behavior and social skills, parent ratings of stress and family functioning, medical functioning data, observations of parent-child interactions and classroom behavior, and a test of preacademic skills. RESULTS: Young children with ADHD exhibited more problem behavior and were less socially skilled than their normal counterparts according to behavior ratings. Parents of children with ADHD experienced greater stress and were coping less adaptively than parents of non-ADHD children. Children with ADHD exhibited more noncompliant and inappropriate behavior than normal controls, particularly during task situations. Parents of children with ADHD were more likely to display negative behavior toward their children. Children with ADHD exhibited more negative social behavior in preschool settings and scored significantly lower on a test of preacademic skills. No significant differences in injuries or utilization of medical services were found. CONCLUSIONS: Preschool-age children with ADHD are at significant risk for behavioral, social, familial, and academic difficulties relative to their normal counterparts.
38 schizoid and 70 hysterical patients with neurotic disturbances are compared with regard to social data, intelligence and triggering situation. Schizoids are more frequently single, childless and live alone, while hysterics are married, remarried or divorced, have one child and live with their partner and the child. With nearly the same education and intelligence, schizoid patients are more often workers/skilled workers, pupils/apprentices/students or have no profession; hysterically structured individuals, being predominantly women, are more frequently housewives. Nearly half of the most frequent triggering events are equally distributed in both structure groups; these are particularly events signalling a change during development, which, in degree of severity, can just as well be minor threshold situations as serious reverses. With an earlier age of onset, schizoids decompensate significantly more often in "developmental stages", whereas hysterical patients are more likely to do so in connection with events of "love-sexuality" and those which provoke hysterical anxieties. Of the 15 most frequent events, only 6 each occur in either the schizoids (starting school, puberty, moving away from home, entering into a heterosexual relationship in terms of a casual encounter, beginning an apprenticeship or studies, failure in a test) or the hysterically structured individuals (vacation, marriage, pregnancy/delivery, marital disharmony, extra-marital relationship and severe illness of the patient).
Across vertebrates, androgens are rapidly elevated within minutes in response to aggressive or reproductive stimuli, yet it is unclear what the causal relationship is between fast androgen elevation and the ongoing (minute-by-minute) expression of behavior. This study tested the hypothesis that rapid increases in plasma steroid levels induce similarly rapid increases in both vocal behavior and the neurophysiological output of a central pattern generator that governs vocal behavior. In Gulf toadfish (Opsanus beta), males call to attract females to their nesting sites, and both males and females vocalize in aggressive interactions. Previous field experiments with males showed that simulated territorial challenges produce rapid and concurrent elevations in ongoing calling behavior and circulating levels of the teleost-specific androgen 11-ketotestosterone (11kT), but not the glucocorticoid cortisol. The current field experiments showed that non-invasive (food) delivery of 11kT, but not cortisol, induced an elevation within 10 min in the ongoing calling behavior of males. Electrophysiological experiments revealed that intramuscular injections of either 11kT or cortisol, but neither testosterone nor 17-beta-estradiol, induced increases within 5 min in the output of the vocal pattern generator in males, whereas only cortisol had similarly fast effects in females. The field behavioral results support predictions generated by the challenge hypothesis and also parallel the 11kT-dependent modulation of the vocal pattern generator in males. The cortisol effect on the vocal pattern generator in both sexes predicts that glucocorticoids regulate vocalizations in non-advertisement contexts. Together, these experiments provide strong support for the hypothesis that surges in circulating steroid levels play a causal role in shaping rapid changes in social behavior (vocalizations) through non-genomic-like actions on neural (vocal motor) circuits that directly encode behavioral patterning.
BACKGROUND: Psychosocial and behavioral interventions trials targeting a broad range of complex social and behavioral problems such as smoking, obesity and family caregiving have proliferated in the past 30 years. At the same time the use of Data and Safety Monitoring Boards (DSMBs) to monitor the progress and quality of intervention trials and the safety of study participants has increased substantially. Most of the existing literature and guidelines for safety monitoring and reporting of adverse events focuses on medical interventions. Consequently, there is little guidance for investigators conducting social and behavior trials. PURPOSE: This paper summarizes how issues associated with safety monitoring and adverse event reporting were handled in the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH II) program, a multi-site randomized clinical trial, funded by the National Institutes on Aging (NIA) and the National Institutes of Nursing Research (NINR), that tested the efficacy of a multicomponent social/behavioral intervention for caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease. METHODS: A task force was formed to define adverse events for the trial and protocols for reporting and resolving events that occurred. The task force conducted a review of existing polices and protocols for data and safety monitoring and adverse event reporting and identified potential risks particular to the study population. An informal survey regarding data and safety monitoring procedures with investigators on psychosocial intervention trials was also conducted. RESULTS: Two categories of events were defined for both caregivers and patients; adverse events and safety alerts. A distinction was also made between events detected at baseline assessment and those detected post-randomization. Standardized protocols were also developed for the reporting and resolution of events that occurred and training of study personnel. Results from the informal survey indicated wide variability in practices for data safety and monitoring across psychosocial intervention trials. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the REACH II experience demonstrates that existing guidelines regarding safety monitoring and adverse event reporting pose unique challenges for social/behavioral intervention trials. Challenges encountered in the REACH II program included defining and classifying adverse events, defining "resolution" of adverse events and attributing causes for events that occurred. These challenges are highlighted and recommendations for addressing them in future studies are discussed.
Fish form social aggregations called shoals which often consist of fish with similar morphologies. Experiments using zebrafish pigment variants demonstrate that fish can select shoal mates solely on the basis of their color patterns, and that early experience plays a key role in determining these shoaling preferences.
The Missouri Institute of Psychiatry Library Current Contents Service offers free dissemination of ISI's Current Contents: Behavioral, Social and Management Sciences to 144 mental health professionals employed at twelve locations in the Missouri Division of Mental Health system. The service includes free document delivery of up to 100 articles per subscription. Sixty percent of the participants in the project are sharing copies of CCBSMS with their colleagues. Operation of the service is described, and data on degree of use are analyzed by user professional orientation and hospital location. The most frequently cited journal titles are compared to lists of heavily used titles derived from other sources. These lists of titles are offered as empirical guides to frequently consulted behavioral science journals. After six months experience participants appear to be highly satisfied. Ninetytwo percent responding to an evaluative questionnaire want to continue the service another year.
Infant rhesus monkeys were (a) fed a diet high in phenylalanine or (b) fed a diet high in p-chlorophenylalanine for the 1st 12 months of life, (c) selected from mothers fed a diet high in phenylalanine during pregnancy, (d) fed a diet low in phenylalanine, (e) maintained as controls, or (f) maintained as pair-fed controls. Tested during the 1st year of life with familiar peers, during the 2nd year with unfamiliar stimulus animals and with a movie film, the 3 groups of phenylketonuric monkeys showed less play and other positive social behavior and more withdrawal and more aggressive behavior than did the 2 control groups. The results support learning data suggesting that phenylketonuric monkeys are more emotionally reactive.
One hundred and seventy-four male college students completed a student version of the Jenkins Activity Scale, the Macmillan stress inventory, measures of social insecurity, and items concerning personal habits and preferences. Social insecurity and Type A behavior emerged as independent but additive factors associated with negative stress experience. Type A's as compared to Type B's, reported feeling more stress, having and desiring less social support, being more interested in various performance standards and being upset for a longer period of time following poor school performance. Interestingly, no difference emerged between A's and B's regarding the temporal impact of successful school performance. High Social Insecurity subjects reported feeling more stress, having less social support, being more upset following poor school performance and being more interested in social comparison information as compared to their Low Social Insecurity counterparts. The results are interpreted as supportive of the notion that social insecurity and Type A behavior may contribute to coronary heart disease by affecting one's exposure and physiological reactions to everyday life stressors.
In their work to construct psychological theories about women's development, Carol Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller both highlight the centrality of interpersonal connections in women's lives. As they describe how women's senses of self and morality are organized around relationships, Gilligan and Miller tend to contrast affiliation with autonomy. The message that readers often take from this view is that autonomy has no meaning for women--is somehow beneath them, beyond them, or unnatural to them. Although Miller and Gilligan dichotomize affiliation and autonomy, they also provide numerous examples in which women's feelings of worth, ability, and self-consideration enhance relatedness. We argue that autonomy can be understood as a sense of freedom and personal integrity that encompasses these same characteristics, and we use the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior to clarify how autonomy makes critical contributions to interpersonal connections.
Pairs of male and female rats were injected with either tertiary naltrexone (NTX) which readily crosses the blood-brain barrier, or quaternary naltrexone (QNTX) which does not, to determine the importance of central opioid systems in the elaboration of juvenile social behavior. In the first experiment, only intraperitoneal injections of NTX (1.0 mg/kg) suppressed the frequency of wrestling pins. Peripheral injections of QNTX (10.0 mg/kg) were without effect. In a second experiment, QNTX (2.0, 4.0, or 8.0 micrograms/4.0 microliters) was injected directly into the lateral ventricles. Intracerebroventricular injection of the moderate dose reliably reduced frequency of pinning while the higher dose was severely incapacitating and the low dose was without effect. The results of these two experiments confirm an important role for brain opioid systems in the control of juvenile social interaction.