Cultural shaping of neural responses: Feedback‐related potentials vary with self‐construal and face priming

Previous work shows that when an image of a face is presented immediately prior to each trial of a speeded cognitive task (face‐priming), the error‐related negativity (ERN) is upregulated for Asians, but it is downregulated for Caucasians. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that images of “generalized other” vary cross‐culturally such that they evoke anxiety for Asians, whereas they serve as safety cues for Caucasians. Here, we tested whether the cross‐cultural variation in the face‐priming effect would be observed in a gambling paradigm. Caucasian Americans, Asian Americans, and Asian sojourners were exposed to a brief flash of a schematic face during a gamble. For Asian Americans, face‐priming resulted in significant increases of both negative‐going deflection of ERP upon negative feedback (feedback‐related negativity [FRN]) and positive‐going deflection of ERP upon positive feedback (feedback‐related positivity [FRP]). For Caucasian Americans, face‐priming showed a significant reversal, decreasing both FRN and FRP. The cultural difference in the face‐priming effect in FRN and FRP was partially mediated by interdependent self‐construal. Curiously, Asian sojourners showed a pattern similar to the one for Caucasian Americans. Our findings suggest that culture shapes neural pathways in both systematic and highly dynamic fashion.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116365/1/psyp12554.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116365/2/psyp12554_am.pd

Socioeconomic Status, Reactions to Choice Deprivation in Group Contexts, and the Role of Perceived Restrictions on Personal Freedom

This research examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) predicts reactions to situations in which a group member decides for the entire group, thereby depriving other group members of personal choice. We found, as predicted, that Americans with higher subjective SES accepted choice deprivation less and demanded personal choice more than subjectively lower SES Americans. Subjective SES was a better predictor for reactions to choice deprivation than objective indicators of SES. The degree to which participants interpreted the deprivation of choice as a violation of their personal freedom partially mediated the relationship between subjective SES and reactions to choice deprivation. The results highlight the role subjective SES measurements can play and the need to consider social status and associated models of agency when interpreting behavior and motivation related to choice in American contexts

アジア ノ ケイザイ ハッテン ト ソノ ショ モンダイ

アジアの経済発展は目覚しい。特に中国においては脅威に値するほどである。こうした発展は4つの問題をはらんでいる。第一は外資の導入問題、第二は都市農村格差の問題、第三は労働力移動の問題、第四は最低生活水準の保障問題である。Economic Development in Asia is remarkable. Especially the people\u27s republic of China has made exciting progress. The first aspect is on introducing of foreign capital because of the lack of domestic capital. The second aspect is to enlarge disparity between urban areas and rural areas throughout 1990s. The third aspect is on the mobility of manpower. The fourth aspect is to guarantee the minimum standard of living to all the people, so to speak, the problem of social safety net

A Case of Meningococcal Meningitis in Tokyo and A Carrier Rate of Neisseria meningitidis in Those Close to The Patient.

Serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis was isolated from a 3-year-old girl with acute meningitis. The patient was completely recovered from the disease by the successful treatment by ampicillin and cefotaxime. From nasopharyngeal swab culture, N. meningitidis was isolated from her parents and 5 out of 93 pupils and kindergarten staff. The isolates from the parents were serogroup B and those from the pupils of the kindergarten were serogroup A. Since the mother of the patient reported an episode of common cold-like symptoms a few days before the patient\u27s illness, we speculate that the mother was the possible source of infection

Inhibition of Citrinin Production in Penicillium citrinum Cultures by Neem [Azadirachta indica A. Juss (Meliaceae)]

The efficacy of different concentrations of aqueous neem leaf extract (3.12 to 50 mg/mL) on growth and citrinin production in three isolates of Penicillium citrinum was investigated under laboratory conditions. Mycotoxin production by the isolates was suppressed, depending on the concentration of the plant extract added to culture media at the time of spore inoculation. Citrinin production in fungal mycelia grown for 21 days in culture media containing 3.12 mg/mL of the aqueous extract of neem leaf was inhibited by approximately 80% in three isolates of P. citrinum. High-performance liquid chromatography was performed to confirm the spectrophotometric results. Vegetative growth was assessed, but neem extract failed to inhibit it. Neem leaf extract showed inhibition of toxin production without retardation in fungal mycelia growth

An ecological systems model of trait resilience: Cross-cultural and clinical relevance

© 2016. The study explored how scores on the three dimensions of the Engineering, Ecological, and Adaptive Capacity (EEA) trait resilience scale, derived from Holling's ecological systems theory of resilience, demonstrate fit within higher-order bifactor models of measurement, cultural invariance, and associations with clinical caseness of affect. Three samples (295 US adults, and 179 Japanese and 251 Polish university students) completed the EEA trait resilience scale. In addition, a subsample of US adults were administered the Ten-Item Personality Inventory and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Across all samples, a higher-order bifactor model provided the best fit of the data, with salience of loadings on the three group factors. A multi-group comparison found configural invariance, but neither metric nor scalar invariance, for EEA resilience scores across the three samples. Among the US sample, engineering and adaptive trait resilience scores predicted clinical caseness of depression, and adaptive trait resilience scores predicted clinical caseness of anxiety, after controlling for sex, age, income, education, employment, and personality. The findings suggest the cross-cultural replicability of the structure (but not the meaning) of the three-factor EEA measure of trait resilience, and its relevance for predicting clinical caseness of affect among a US sample

Effect of Neem Leaf Extract and Neem Oil on Penicillium Growth, Sporulation, Morphology and Ochratoxin A Production

In vitro trials were conducted to evaluate the effect of Azadirachta indica (neem) extracts on mycelial growth, sporulation, morphology and ochratoxin A production by P. verrucosum and P. brevicompactum. The effect of neem oil extract from seeds and leaf was evaluated at 0.125; 0.25 and 0.5% and 6.25 and 12.5 mg/mL, respectively, in Yeast Extract Sucrose (YES) medium. Ochratoxin A production was evaluated by a thin-layer chromatography technique. Oil extracts exhibited significant (p ≤ 0.05) reduction of growth and sporulation of the fungi. No inhibition of ochratoxin A production was observed. Given its accessibility and low cost, neem oil could be implemented as part of a sustainable integrated pest management strategy for plant disease, as it has been shown to be fungitoxic by inhibition of growth and sporulation

Cross-cultural invariances in the architecture of shame

This set of experiments shows that in 15 traditional small-scale societies there is an extraordinarily close correspondence between (i) the intensity of shame felt if one exhibited specific acts or traits and (ii) the magnitude of devaluation expressed in response to those acts or traits by local audiences, and even foreign audiences. Three important and widely acknowledged sources of cultural variation between communities—}geographic proximity, linguistic similarity, and religious similarity{—}all failed to account for the strength of between-community correlations in the shame{–}devaluation link. This supplies a parallel line of evidence that shame is a universal system, part of our species{’} cooperative biology, rather than a product of cultural evolution.Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species{’} social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action{’}s direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame{’s match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution