The parent?infant dyad and the construction of the subjective self

Developmental psychology and psychopathology has in the past been more concerned with the quality of self-representation than with the development of the subjective agency which underpins our experience of feeling, thought and action, a key function of mentalisation. This review begins by contrasting a Cartesian view of pre-wired introspective subjectivity with a constructionist model based on the assumption of an innate contingency detector which orients the infant towards aspects of the social world that react congruently and in a specifically cued informative manner that expresses and facilitates the assimilation of cultural knowledge. Research on the neural mechanisms associated with mentalisation and social influences on its development are reviewed. It is suggested that the infant focuses on the attachment figure as a source of reliable information about the world. The construction of the sense of a subjective self is then an aspect of acquiring knowledge about the world through the caregiver's pedagogical communicative displays which in this context focuses on the child's thoughts and feelings. We argue that a number of possible mechanisms, including complementary activation of attachment and mentalisation, the disruptive effect of maltreatment on parent-child communication, the biobehavioural overlap of cues for learning and cues for attachment, may have a role in ensuring that the quality of relationship with the caregiver influences the development of the child's experience of thoughts and feelings

Can stereotype threat explain the gender gap in mathematics performance and achievement?

Men and women score similarly in most areas of mathematics, but a gap favoring men is consistently found at the high end of performance. One explanation for this gap, stereotype threat, was first proposed by Spencer, Steele, and Quinn (1999) and has received much attention. We discuss merits and shortcomings of this study and review replication attempts. Only 55% of the articles with experimental designs that could have replicated the original results did so. But half of these were confounded by statistical adjustment of preexisting mathematics exam scores. Of the unconfounded experiments, only 30% replicated the original. A meta-analysis of these effects confirmed that only the group of studies with adjusted mathematics scores displayed the stereotype threat effect. We conclude that although stereotype threat may affect some women, the existing state of knowledge does not support the current level of enthusiasm for this as a mechanism underlying the gender gap in mathematics. We argue there are many reasons to close this gap, and that too much weight on the stereotype explanation may hamper research and implementation of effective interventions

Altruism towards cousins

Recent research on kin investment shows a matrilateral bias as a function of paternity uncertainty. Kin investment, however, is a special case of kin altruism. We thus hypothesize that psychological adaptations have evolved to regulate cousin-directed altruism according to predictably variable levels of paternity uncertainty in different categories of cousins. We develop a formal mathematical model that predicts that individuals should be most willing to act altruistically towards their mother's sister's (MoSis) children and least willing to act altruistically towards their father's brother's (FaBro) children. Altruism towards father's sister's (FaSis) and mother's brother's (MoBro) children are predicted to fall in between. An empirical study (N=195), assessing expressed altruistic proclivities, confirmed the predictions from the model. Participants expressed willingness-to-help following the descending order: (i) MoSis children, (ii) MoBro children, (iii) FaSis children, and (iv) FaBro children. The psychological variables of emotional closeness, empathic concern and contact frequency showed precisely the same pattern across distinct cousins, providing convergent confirmation of the model. The results support the hypothesis of cousin-specific adaptations sensitive to varying probabilities of paternity uncertainty

Dose-escalated donor lymphocyte infusions following reduced intensity transplantation: toxicity, chimerism, and disease responses

Data on the application of donor lymphocyte infusions (DLIs) following reduced-intensity transplantation (RIT) remain limited. Persistence of host antigen-presenting cells might increase the efficacy or toxicity of cellular immunotherapies. We report the results of dose-escalating DLIs in 46 patients undergoing RIT, who received a total of 109 infusions to treat mixed chimerism or residual or progressive disease. Diagnoses were myeloma (n = 19), Hodgkin lymphoma (n = 13), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (n = 10), and other (n = 4). Thirty-two had an HLA-matched family donor and 14 an unrelated donor. Grades II to IV graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) occurred in 5 sibling and 7 unrelated donor recipients. GVHD was more common (P = .002), occurred at lower T-cell doses, and was more severe in the unrelated donor cohort. Conversion from mixed to multilineage full donor chimerism occurred in 30 of 35 evaluable patients. Presence of mixed chimerism in the granulocyte lineage at the time of DLI did not predict for chimerism response or GVHD. Disease responses occurred in 63% of patients with myeloma and 70% of those with Hodgkin lymphoma and were not predicted by changes in chimerism. These data support the presence of clinically relevant graft-versus-Hodgkin activity and indicate that DLI may be associated with a significantly increased toxicity in unrelated compared to sibling donor transplant recipients receiving identical treatment protocols

Does Feedback Type Matter? Investigating the Effectiveness of Feedback Content on Performance Outcomes

Research suggests that feedback plays an important role in improving performance during skill and knowledge acquisition. However, little extant research has compared the relative effectiveness of different types of feedback. Ninety participants from a large southeastern university took part in an experiment in order to test the hypothesis that trainees who received process feedback would outperform those who received velocity feedback or no feedback. Results revealed an interaction between feedback condition and gender. Females performed better when provided with process feedback, while males did better when given velocity feedback. We conclude with implications and suggestions for future research in this area. Copyright 2010 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Inc. All rights reserved