A Group Level of Aspiration Technique as a Measure of Personality Rigidity

The problem of personality rigidity or the persistence of maladaptive behavior is becoming increasingly important in our culture. As part of a series of studies of the Preventive Psychiatry Project of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station concerning this variable, it was decided to develop a group level of aspiration technique which would provide an operational measure of this concept. Inherent in such a technique is the opportunity for the subject to make numerous shifts of his goal level. The capacity to change goals in the light of new experience is an integral aspect of flexibility, and conversely an inability to shift goals may be an expression of rigidity. Most level of aspiration tasks are individually administered and data collection is a slow process. Those level of aspiration situations (4) which are group administered lack criterion validity. A valid group level of aspiration technique would, therefore, offer the advantages of more rapid and more extensive sampling, without loss of the predictive value of the individual task. If this group level of aspiration technique provides a valid measure of rigidity, it is predicted that those subjects considered highly rigid in terms of this measure would tend to receive higher scores on the California Ethnocentrism Scale (1) and could also be discriminated from flexible subjects on a Short Form of the Wesley Rigidity Scale (11). Another cross validation of the group level of aspiration technique as a measure of rigidity would be a high degree of relationship with a generally accepted, standard, individual level of aspiration technique, in this case the Rotter Board. In addition, if this group form meets the criteria of an adequate level of aspiration situation, a positive correlation should exist between goal setting behavior in these two distinct tasks

Situation Differences in Punitiveness of Iowa School Children

The present report is part of a larger study in which punitiveness of grade school children was found to be related to certain facets of what is commonly called the authoritarian personality. Punitiveness was measured by means of hypothetical situations involving transgressions by children. The subject is asked to prescribe the proper action to be taken against the transgressor by adults or peers involved. The test consists of 28 such problem situations each having six possible choices of action of which three are classed as punitive and three non-punitive. Punitive action includes physical and verbal punishments, coercion, and deprivation

Studies in Intolerance of Ambiguity, II: The Effects of Set on the Decision-Location Test

Recent interest among personality theorists has centered around the proposed variable tolerance-intolerance of ambiguity. Tolerance-intolerance of ambiguity or simply intolerance of ambiguity as it is commonly called, was put forth by Frenkel-Brunswik as the unifying concept of the syndrome of the so-called authoritarian personality (Frenkel-Brunswik, 19+9). According to Frenkel-Brunswik, the individual who is intolerant of ambiguity tends to use black-white solutions of problems, both cognitive and interpersonal, and to subdivide the phenomena he encounters into strict categories and dichotomies rather than to view them as continua. He has a tendency to avoid ambiguous and unstructured situations, but upon finding himself in the midst of such circumstances, will subjectively structure the situation as soon as possible, even if the structuring conflicts drastically with reality. Following from this theoretical description, it has been hypothesized (Levitt, 1952) that the intolerant of ambiguity person tends to believe popular misconceptions and superstitions since such misbeliefs flourish in an atmosphere of ambiguity. Recent studies have attempted, with some success, to relate operational measures of intolerance of ambiguity to measures of ethnocentrism and authoritarianism in adults. One study (Levitt, 1953) has demonstrated that a perceptual measure of intolerance of ambiguity is related both to a measure of authoritarianism and to belief in popular misconceptions in grade school children. The perceptual measure is called the Decision-Location Test (DLT), and is adequately described by the instructions to subjects taking the test

Anyonic interferometry and protected memories in atomic spin lattices

Strongly correlated quantum systems can exhibit exotic behavior called topological order which is characterized by non-local correlations that depend on the system topology. Such systems can exhibit remarkable phenomena such as quasi-particles with anyonic statistics and have been proposed as candidates for naturally fault-tolerant quantum computation. Despite these remarkable properties, anyons have never been observed in nature directly. Here we describe how to unambiguously detect and characterize such states in recently proposed spin lattice realizations using ultra-cold atoms or molecules trapped in an optical lattice. We propose an experimentally feasible technique to access non-local degrees of freedom by performing global operations on trapped spins mediated by an optical cavity mode. We show how to reliably read and write topologically protected quantum memory using an atomic or photonic qubit. Furthermore, our technique can be used to probe statistics and dynamics of anyonic excitations.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Understanding and acting on the developmental origins of health and disease in Africa would improve health across generations.

Data from many high- and low- or middle-income countries have linked exposures during key developmental periods (in particular pregnancy and infancy) to later health and disease. Africa faces substantial challenges with persisting infectious disease and now burgeoning non-communicable disease.This paper opens the debate to the value of strengthening the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) research focus in Africa to tackle critical public health challenges across the life-course. We argue that the application of DOHaD science in Africa to advance life-course prevention programmes can aid the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and assist in improving health across generations. To increase DOHaD research and its application in Africa, we need to mobilise multisectoral partners, utilise existing data and expertise on the continent, and foster a new generation of young African scientists engrossed in DOHaD

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks