Exploring the Relationship between Racial Factors and Critical Social Analysis among a Group of African American Youth

The aim of this study was to investigate the contributions of racial identity and racial socialization beyond peer and parental influence, to the development of critical social analysis in African American youth. Young people perceive injustice and inequality in their world in varying ways. The recognition of societal inequalities, or the development of critical social analysis may be a contributing factor to activism for youth. Factors such as sense of agency, parental and peer influence and intellectual curiosity have previously been explored as contributors to activism for African American youth (Watts, 1999). Study results indicated support for the link between racial identity, racial socialization and a specific factor of critical social analysis. Implications of the findings as well as future directions are discussed

The Moderating Influence of Strength on Depression and Suicide in African American Women

Strength for African American women and its psychological ramifications are being newly conceptualized and explored empirically in psychological research. The Strong Black Woman Attitudes Scale, (Thompson, 2003) was created to empirically test a three factor theoretical model: self reliance, affect regulation, and caretaking as a reliable culturally relevant coping mechanism for African American women. The primary aim of this study is to explore if cultural coping (SBW) moderates the relationship between depression and suicide in African American women. Other aims include, replicating the factor structure of the SBWAS with a community sample, and examining relationships between the SBW, racial identity, traditional coping, and depression. The Strong Black Woman Attitude Scale (SBWAS) was used to measure cultural coping, and the Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WOCQ) was used to measure traditional coping. Racial regard and centrality subscales from the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI) measured racial identity and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beck Suicide Scale (BSS) measured depression and suicide respectively. Results showed significant moderations for the total SBW score and the affect regulation subscale. Additionally, racial identity was positively associated with cultural coping, and cultural coping was negatively associated with traditional coping. Depression was positively related to the SBW and suicide. The three factor model was also upheld. The results of this study support the notion that strength for African American women can have detrimental psychological effects on women utilizing this coping style

Public File Documents Relating to ISB Staff Interpretive Letter Dated 4/9/99

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_assoc/1729/thumbnail.jp

Psychiatric, neuropediatric, and neuropsychological symptoms in a case of hypomelanosis of Ito

This case report presents a thirteen year-old boy who was diagnosed as having Hypomelanosis of Ito. The developmental history includes severe failure to thrive, and moderate atypical autism as well as diverse clinical and neuropsychological symptoms are present. The pattern of neuropsychological functioning, which can be partially related to the neurophysiological findings, is discussed within the context of existing neuropsychological theories about autistic disorder

Familiality of neural preparation and response control in childhood attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder

Background Patients with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit difficulties in multiple attentional functions. Although high heritability rates suggest a strong genetic impact, aetiological pathways from genes and environmental factors to the ADHD phenotype are not well understood. Tracking the time course of deviant task processing using event-related electrophysiological brain activity should characterize the impact of familiality on the sequence of cognitive functions from preparation to response control in ADHD. Method Preparation and response control were assessed using behavioural and electrophysiological parameters of two versions of a cued continuous performance test with varying attentional load in boys with ADHD combined type (n=97), their non-affected siblings (n=27) and control children without a family history of ADHD (n=43). Results Children with ADHD and non-affected siblings showed more variable performance and made more omission errors than controls. The preparatory Cue-P3 and contingent negative variation (CNV) following cues were reduced in both ADHD children and their non-affected siblings compared with controls. The NoGo-P3 was diminished in ADHD compared with controls whilst non-affected siblings were located intermediate but did not differ from both other groups. No clear familiality effects were found for the Go-P3. Better task performance was further associated with higher CNV and P3 amplitudes. Conclusions Impairments in performance and electrophysiological parameters reflecting preparatory processes and to some extend also for inhibitory response control, especially under high attentional load, appeared to be familially driven in ADHD and may thus constitute functionally relevant endophenotypes for the disorde

Qualitative differences in the spatiotemporal brain states supporting configural face processing emerge in adolescence in autism

BACKGROUND Studying the neural processing of faces can illuminate the mechanisms of compromised social expertise in autism. To resolve a longstanding debate, we examined whether differences in configural face processing in autism are underpinned by quantitative differences in the activation of typical face processing pathways, or the recruitment of non-typical neural systems. METHODS We investigated spatial and temporal characteristics of event-related EEG responses to upright and inverted faces in a large sample of children, adolescents, and adults with and without autism. We examined topographic analyses of variance and global field power to identify group differences in the spatial and temporal response to face inversion. We then examined how quasi-stable spatiotemporal profiles - microstates - are modulated by face orientation and diagnostic group. RESULTS Upright and inverted faces produced distinct profiles of topography and strength in the topographical analyses. These topographical profiles differed between diagnostic groups in adolescents, but not in children or adults. In the microstate analysis, the autistic group showed differences in the activation strength of normative microstates during early-stage processing at all ages, suggesting consistent quantitative differences in the operation of typical processing pathways; qualitative differences in microstate topographies during late-stage processing became prominent in adults, suggesting the increasing involvement of non-typical neural systems with processing time and over development. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that early difficulties with configural face processing may trigger later compensatory processes in autism that emerge in later development

VEZF1 elements mediate protection from DNA methylation

There is growing consensus that genome organization and long-range gene regulation involves partitioning of the genome into domains of distinct epigenetic chromatin states. Chromatin insulator or barrier elements are key components of these processes as they can establish boundaries between chromatin states. The ability of elements such as the paradigm β-globin HS4 insulator to block the range of enhancers or the spread of repressive histone modifications is well established. Here we have addressed the hypothesis that a barrier element in vertebrates should be capable of defending a gene from silencing by DNA methylation. Using an established stable reporter gene system, we find that HS4 acts specifically to protect a gene promoter from de novo DNA methylation. Notably, protection from methylation can occur in the absence of histone acetylation or transcription. There is a division of labor at HS4; the sequences that mediate protection from methylation are separable from those that mediate CTCF-dependent enhancer blocking and USF-dependent histone modification recruitment. The zinc finger protein VEZF1 was purified as the factor that specifically interacts with the methylation protection elements. VEZF1 is a candidate CpG island protection factor as the G-rich sequences bound by VEZF1 are frequently found at CpG island promoters. Indeed, we show that VEZF1 elements are sufficient to mediate demethylation and protection of the APRT CpG island promoter from DNA methylation. We propose that many barrier elements in vertebrates will prevent DNA methylation in addition to blocking the propagation of repressive histone modifications, as either process is sufficient to direct the establishment of an epigenetically stable silent chromatin stat

Visual word form processing deficits driven by severity of reading impairments in children with developmental dyslexia

The visual word form area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex is key to fluent reading in children and adults. Diminished VWFA activation during print processing tasks is a common finding in subjects with severe reading problems. Here, we report fMRI data from a multicentre study with 140 children in primary school (7.9-12.2 years;55 children with dyslexia, 73 typical readers, 12 intermediate readers). All performed a semantic task on visually presented words and a matched control task on symbol strings. With this large group of children, including the entire spectrum from severely impaired to highly fluent readers, we aimed to clarify the association of reading fluency and left vOT activation during visual word processing. The results of this study confirm reduced word-sensitive activation within the left vOT in children with dyslexia. Interestingly, the association of reading skills and left vOT activation was especially strong and spatially extended in children with dyslexia. Thus, deficits in basic visual word form processing increase with the severity of reading disability but seem only weakly associated with fluency within the typical reading range suggesting a linear dependence of reading scores with VFWA activation only in the poorest readers