Brief Report: The Go/No-Go Task Online: Inhibitory Control Deficits in Autism in a Large Sample.

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC, also referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorders) entail difficulties with inhibition: inhibiting action, inhibiting one's own point of view, and inhibiting distractions that may interfere with a response set. However, the association between inhibitory control (IC) and ASC, especially in adulthood, is unclear. The current study measured IC, using the Go/No-Go task online, in a large adult sample of 201 people with ASC and 240 controls. Number of both False Alarm and False Positive responses were significantly associated with autistic traits and diagnostic status, separately, but not jointly. These findings suggest that deficits in inhibition are associated with ASC. Future studies need to investigate the role of inhibition in ASC in everyday difficulties.This research was supported by the Autism Research Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and EU-AIMS. FU was supported by the British Friends of Haifa University, the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 449/14), the British Friends of Hebrew University, and the Joseph Levy Charitable Foundatio

Values in Families with Young Children: Insights from Two Cultural Milieus in Germany

Are children’s value priorities different from their parents’ generation? We present data from the youngest children’s sample that has been included in a comprehensive family study of values so far: Our study is based on self-reported values of 127 six- to eleven-year-old German children (M=7.89, SD=1.35) and their mothers and fathers. We further took into account two potentially interacting developmental variables that have been suggested in the literature: (1) family members’ gender and (2) cultural milieu (we looked specifically at families with Turkish immigration background and families without immigration background). While values of self-transcendence, self-enhancement, and openness to change did not differ significantly between the two generations, children found conservation significantly more important than their parents. This contrasts with findings from previous studies with older participants. We discuss to what extent this effect may be unique to this developmental stage of middle childhood that had not been covered by previous research. Females valued conservation more than males, and conservation was more important in families with as compared to families without Turkish immigration background. There was neither a gender x generation nor a cultural milieu x generation interaction

Parent-Child Value Similarity in Families with Young Children: The Predictive Power of Prosocial Educational Goals

Value transmission from one generation to the next is a key issue in every society, but it is not clear which parents are the most successful in transmitting their values to their children. We propose parents’ prosocial educational goals as key predictors of parent-child value similarity and accordingly hypothesized that the more parents wanted their children to endorse values of self-transcendence (helping, supporting, and caring for others) and the less parents wanted their children to endorse the opposing values of self-enhancement (striving for power and achievement), the higher would be parent-child overall value similarity. Findings from two studies of families – Study 1: 261 Swiss families, children aged 7-9 years; Study 2: 157 German families, children aged 6-11 years – confirmed this hypothesis. The effect was even stronger after controlling for values that prevail in the Swiss and German society, respectively. We integrate evidence from this study of values in families with young children with existing findings from studies with adolescent and adult children, and we discuss potential pathways from parents’ educational goals to parent-child value similarity

Cognitive empathy boosts honesty in children and young adolescents

Children and young adolescents often tend to behave dishonestly in order to serve their self-interests. This study focused on how empathic abilities affect children's tendency to deceive others. Deception is the act of causing others to form a false belief to get them to act in a way that serves the deceiver's interests. As such, it requires the ability to predict how others might use the provided information. In two experiments, 274 participants (aged 10-16 years) played a game in which they could send a deceptive message to another participant to boost their own payoff at the other player's expense. We measured participants' cognitive and emotional empathy using different measures. We found that a measure of cognitive empathy, namely the fantasy scale, was associated with less deception of another player when that other player was not identified and was presented only as "Player B." However, when Player B was identified by name, empathy did not predict deception. In such cases, the only factors affecting deception rates were the gain for the participant (higher possible gains lead to more deception) and loss to the other player (higher possible losses lead to less deception). Overall, the findings suggest that even by 11 years of age, children can understand the impact of their unethical behavior on another child and adjust their actions accordingly. However, when the other child is not identified, children need to possess high levels of cognitive empathy toward imagined individuals to resist the temptation to deceive the other child.</p

Epigenetic and Genetic Factors Predict Women's Salivary Cortisol following a Threat to the Social Self

10.1371/journal.pone.0048597PLoS ONE711

Physiological Correlates of Volunteering

We review research on physiological correlates of volunteering, a neglected but promising research field. Some of these correlates seem to be causal factors influencing volunteering. Volunteers tend to have better physical health, both self-reported and expert-assessed, better mental health, and perform better on cognitive tasks. Research thus far has rarely examined neurological, neurochemical, hormonal, and genetic correlates of volunteering to any significant extent, especially controlling for other factors as potential confounds. Evolutionary theory and behavioral genetic research suggest the importance of such physiological factors in humans. Basically, many aspects of social relationships and social activities have effects on health (e.g., Newman and Roberts 2013; Uchino 2004), as the widely used biopsychosocial (BPS) model suggests (Institute of Medicine 2001). Studies of formal volunteering (FV), charitable giving, and altruistic behavior suggest that physiological characteristics are related to volunteering, including specific genes (such as oxytocin receptor [OXTR] genes, Arginine vasopressin receptor [AVPR] genes, dopamine D4 receptor [DRD4] genes, and 5-HTTLPR). We recommend that future research on physiological factors be extended to non-Western populations, focusing specifically on volunteering, and differentiating between different forms and types of volunteering and civic participation

Prevalence of Sharing Access Credentials in Electronic Medical Records

Objectives: Confidentiality of health information is an important aspect of the physician patient relationship. The use of digital medical records has made data much more accessible. To prevent data leakage, many countries have created regulations regarding medical data accessibility. These regulations require a unique user ID for each medical staff member, and this must be protected by a password, which should be kept undisclosed by all means. Methods: We performed a four-question Google Forms-based survey of medical staff. In the survey, each participant was asked if he/she ever obtained the password of another medical staff member. Then, we asked how many times such an episode occurred and the reason for it. Results: A total of 299 surveys were gathered. The responses showed that 220 (73.6%) participants reported that they had obtained the password of another medical staff member. Only 171 (57.2%) estimated how many time it happened, with an average estimation of 4.75 episodes. All the residents that took part in the study (45, 15%) had obtained the password of another medical staff member, while only 57.5% (38/66) of the nurses reported this. Conclusions: The use of unique user IDs and passwords to defend the privacy of medical data is a common requirement in medical organizations. Unfortunately, the use of passwords is doomed because medical staff members share their passwords with one another. Strict regulations requiring each staff member to have it's a unique user ID might lead to password sharing and to a decrease in data safety

Reciprocal relations across time between basic values and value-expressive behaviors: A longitudinal study among children

Tracing children’s values and value-expressive behavior over a sixth-month period, we examined stability and change of values and behavior and the reciprocal relations between them. Three hundred and ten sixth-grade students in Italy completed value and value-expressive behavior questionnaires three times in three-month intervals during the scholastic year. We assessed Schwartz's (1992) higher-order values of conservation, openness to change, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence, as well as their respective expressive behaviors. Reciprocal relations over time between values and behaviors were examined using a cross-lagged longitudinal design. Results showed that values and behaviors had reciprocal longitudinal effects on one another, after the stability of the variables was taken into account (i.e., values predicted change in behaviors, but also behaviors predicted change in values). Our findings also revealed that: (1) values were more stable over time than behaviors, and (2) the longitudinal effect of values on behaviors tended to be stronger than the longitudinal effect of behaviors on values. Findings are discussed in light of the recent developmental literature on value change

Medical symptoms and conditions in autistic women.

Funder: National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001739Funder: Templeton World Charitable FoundationFunder: NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in CambridgeFunder: Autism Research TrustSex-steroids, such as testosterone, are thought to be one of the biological factors implicated in autism. This relies on the sex bias in the diagnosis of autism (boys are approximately four times more likely to be diagnosed than girls) and findings of associations with fetal testosterone levels in traits and abilities related to autism. The current study aimed to examine the association between medical conditions and physical symptoms, which tend to manifest in adulthood, and autism in females. Moreover, we examined their association with autistic traits throughout the spectrum. We focused on autistic women because there is little research focusing on the healthcare needs of autistic women, but those that exist suggest heightened vulnerability, and lower access to medical care. We find that conditions related to steroid hormones function are more frequent in autistic women and that they correlate with autistic traits. Specifically, we found that body mass index, reproductive system diagnoses, prediabetes symptoms, irregular puberty onset, and menstrual irregularities were significantly more frequent in autistic women and were significantly correlated with autistic traits in neurotypical women. The findings have important implications for raising awareness in autistic women of the possibility of medical conditions which might need medical attention. In addition, healthcare providers should consider these associations when performing healthcare maintenance checks and/or screening for autism

Values in middle childhood: Social and genetic contributions

Theories of value development often identify adolescence as the period for value formation, and cultural and familial factors as the sources for value priorities. However, recent research suggests that value priorities can be observed as early as in middle childhood, and several studies, including one on preadolescents (Knafo & Spinath, 2011), have suggested a genetic contribution to individual differences in values. In the current study, 174 pairs of monozygotic and dizygotic 7-year old Israeli twins completed the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS–C; Döring et al., 2010). We replicated basic patterns of relations between value priorities and variables of socialisation – gender, religiosity, and socioeconomic status– that have been found in studies with adults. Most important, values of Self-transcendence, Self-enhancement, and Conservation, were found to be significantly affected by genetic factors (29%, 47% and 31% respectively), as well as non-shared environment (71%, 53% and 69% respectively). Openness to change values, in contrast, were found to be unaffected by genetic factors at this age and were influenced by shared (19%) and non-shared (81%) environment. These findings support the recent view that values are formed at earlier ages than had been assumed previously, and they further our understanding of the genetic and environmental factors involved in value formation at young ages