Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information

Attending where others gaze is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of social cognition. The present study is the first to examine the impact of the attribution of mind to others on gaze-guided attentional orienting and its ERP correlates. Using a paradigm in which attention was guided to a location by the gaze of a centrally presented face, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the gazer: gaze behavior was believed to result either from operations of a mind or from a machine. In Experiment 1, beliefs were manipulated by cue identity (human or robot), while in Experiment 2, cue identity (robot) remained identical across conditions and beliefs were manipulated solely via instruction, which was irrelevant to the task. ERP results and behavior showed that participants' attention was guided by gaze only when gaze was believed to be controlled by a human. Specifically, the P1 was more enhanced for validly, relative to invalidly, cued targets only when participants believed the gaze behavior was the result of a mind, rather than of a machine. This shows that sensory gain control can be influenced by higher-order (task-irrelevant) beliefs about the observed scene. We propose a new interdisciplinary model of social attention, which integrates ideas from cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as philosophy in order to provide a framework for understanding a crucial aspect of how humans' beliefs about the observed scene influence sensory processing

CIP2A expression predicts recurrences of tamoxifen-treated breast cancer

CIP2A is emerging as an oncoprotein overexpressed commonly across many tumours and generally correlated with higher tumour grade and therapeutic resistance. CIP2A drives an oncogenic potential through inhibiting protein phosphatase 2A, stabilizing MYC, and promoting epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, although further biological mechanisms for CIP2A are yet to be defined. CIP2A protein expression was studied by immunohistochemistry in oestrogen receptor–positive primary breast cancers (n = 250) obtained from the Leeds Tissue Bank. In total, 51 cases presented with a relapse or metastasis during adjuvant treatment with tamoxifen and were regarded as tamoxifen resistant. CIP2A expression was scored separately for cytoplasmic, nuclear, or membranous staining, and scores were tested for statistically significant relationships with clinicopathological features. Membranous CIP2A was preferentially expressed in cases who experienced a recurrence during tamoxifen treatment thus predicting a worse overall survival (log rank = 8.357, p = 0.004) and disease-free survival (log rank = 21.766, p < 0.001). Cox multivariate analysis indicates that it is an independent prognostic indicator for overall survival (hazard ratio = 4.310, p = 0.013) and disease-free survival (hazard ratio = 5.449, p = 0.002). In this study, we propose the assessment of membranous CIP2A expression as a potential novel prognostic and predictive indicator for tamoxifen resistance and recurrence within oestrogen receptor–positive breast cancer

BRCA1 and BRCA2 5′ noncoding region variants identified in breast cancer patients alter promoter activity and protein binding

© 2018 The Authors. Human Mutation published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The widespread use of next generation sequencing for clinical testing is detecting an escalating number of variants in noncoding regions of the genome. The clinical significance of the majority of these variants is currently unknown, which presents a significant clinical challenge. We have screened over 6,000 early-onset and/or familial breast cancer (BC) cases collected by the ENIGMA consortium for sequence variants in the 5′ noncoding regions of BC susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, and identified 141 rare variants with global minor allele frequency \u3c 0.01, 76 of which have not been reported previously. Bioinformatic analysis identified a set of 21 variants most likely to impact transcriptional regulation, and luciferase reporter assays detected altered promoter activity for four of these variants. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays demonstrated that three of these altered the binding of proteins to the respective BRCA1 or BRCA2 promoter regions, including NFYA binding to BRCA1:c.-287C\u3eT and PAX5 binding to BRCA2:c.-296C\u3eT. Clinical classification of variants affecting promoter activity, using existing prediction models, found no evidence to suggest that these variants confer a high risk of disease. Further studies are required to determine if such variation may be associated with a moderate or low risk of BC

The acceptability and feasibility of using the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT) to inform practice in care homes

Background: The Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT) measures social care related quality of life (SCRQoL) and can be used to measure outcomes and demonstrate impact across different social care settings. This exploratory study built on previous work by collecting new inter-rater reliability data on the mixed-methods version of the toolkit and exploring how it might be used to inform practice in four case study homes. Method: We worked with two care home providers to agree an in-depth study collecting SCRQoL data in four case-study homes. Data was collected about residents’ age, ethnicity, cognitive impairment, ability to perform activities of daily living and SCRQoL in the four homes. Feedback sessions with staff and managers were held in the homes two weeks after baseline and follow-up data collected three months later. Interviews with managers explored their views of the feedback and recorded any changes that had been made because of it. Results: Participant recruitment was challenging, despite working in partnership with the homes. Resident response rates ranged from 23 to 54 % with 58 residents from four care homes taking part in the research. 53 % lacked capacity to consent. Inter-rater reliability for the ASCOT ratings of SCRQoL were good at time one (IRR = 0.72) and excellent at time two (IRR = 0.76). During the study, residents’ ability to perform activities of daily living declined significantly (z = -2.67, p < .01), as did their expected needs in the absence of services (z = -2.41, p < .05). Despite these rapid declines in functionings, residents’ current SCRQoL declined slightly but not significantly (Z = -1.49, p = .14). Staff responded positively to the feedback given and managers reported implementing changes in practice because of it. Conclusion: This exploratory study faced many challenges in the recruitment of residents, many of whom were cognitively impaired. Nevertheless, without a mixed-methods approach many of the residents living in the care homes would have been excluded from the research altogether or had their views represented only by a representative or proxy. The value of the mixed-methods toolkit and its potential for use by providers is discussed

Does a child’s language ability affect the correspondence between parent and teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms?

Background: Rating scales are often used to identify children with potential Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), yet there are frequently discrepancies between informants which may be moderated by child characteristics. The current study asked whether correspondence between parent and teacher ratings on the Strengths and Weakness of ADHD symptoms and Normal behaviour scale (SWAN) varied systematically with child language ability. Method: Parent and teacher SWAN questionnaires were returned for 200 children (aged 61–81 months); 106 had low language ability (LL) and 94 had typically developing language (TL). After exploring informant correspondence (using Pearson correlation) and the discrepancy between raters, we report inter-class correlation coefficients, to assess inter-rater reliability, and Cohen’s kappa, to assess agreement regarding possible ADHD caseness. Results: Correlations between informant ratings on the SWAN were moderate. Children with LL were rated as having increased inattention and hyperactivity relative to children with TL; teachers, however, rated children with LL as having more inattention than parents. Inter-rater reliability of the SWAN was good and there were no systematic differences between the LL and TL groups. Case agreement between parent and teachers was fair; this varied by language group with poorer case agreement for children with LL. Conclusion: Children’s language abilities affect the discrepancy between informant ratings of ADHD symptomatology and the agreement between parents and teachers regarding potential ADHD caseness. The assessment of children’s core language ability would be a beneficial addition to the ADHD diagnostic process.</p

Feeling the need of others: Children's emotional ratings of need-of-help depictions

Helping behavior as a prosocial action emerges early in childhood and is of interest for psychologists in a broad range of sub disciplines as well as for society. One necessary precondition for active helping is the ability to recognize that somebody needs help. The NeoHelp stimulus set used in this study was developed to enable the assessment and quantification of need-of-help recognition abilities. Previous research with the NeoHelp stimuli has shown that children of different ages are able to recognize their content. Specific effects of age and gender on need-of-help recognition have also been observed. How children subjectively experience these stimuli and thus how they rate depictions of need-of-help and no-need-of-help situations emotionally has not been assessed before. Here we report analyses of valence and arousal ratings for the complete NeoHelp stimulus set obtained from a diverse sample of 46 children. We employed the SAM-scales because they are an established rating instrument validated for diverse populations of adults. However, their use with children still needs further investigation. Thus, there were two main goals of the presented study: 1) Validating that the SAM arousal and valence scales may be used with young children below school age, and 2) investigating children's subjective emotional experience of need-of-help depictions. Our study demonstrates that the SAM scales, if properly explained, may be used reliably with children at and above five years of age. Ratings of younger and older children covered the whole range of the 5-point scales used. There was a linear relationship between arousal and valence ratings across all pictures: the higher the arousal ratings, the lower the valence ratings. Pictures showing a child in need-of-help were rated as lower in valence and higher in arousal than the corresponding no-need-of-help-stimuli regardless of children’s age or gender. With increasing age, arousal ratings for no-need-of-help depictions decreased, but arousal ratings for need-of-help depictions remained on the same higher level across ages. We thus provide first evidence that need-of-help depictions elicit differential subjective emotional responses in children on both, valence and arousal dimensions. This emotional component of need-of-help recognition has to be considered when assessing children's need-of-help recognition abilities

Finding the odd one out: trivial need-of-help is a salient social stimulus for children

This study explored the prioritization of socially relevant information by investigating children’s processing of need-of-help versus basic categorical contentusing perceptually highly similar visual stimuli.Children (N = 47, 25 girls, M(age) = 8.06 yrs.) were asked to select the onepicture out of four thatwas different from the others.Two tasks, each including two conditions, were implemented in random order: human-bird andneed-of-helpdistinction(n = 80, 20 trials per condition). Accuracy was higher for bird, 84%, 95% CI [.78, .81], compared to child targets, 73%, [.64, .69], and for need-of-help, 84%, [.74, .79], compared to no need-of-help targets, 64%, [.58, .69].Response times were fastest for child, Mdn = 3669 ms, [3520, 3903] followed by bird targets, Mdn = 4281 ms, [4104, 4458], and slowest for the two need-of-help conditions, Mdn = 6188 ms, [5901, 6540], and Mdn = 6500 ms, [6147, 6984].These results suggest that need-of-help situations are more salient social stimuli compared to no-need-of-help stimuli. Need-of-help and human-bird categorizations were overall similarly accurate, but response times indicated that distinction of need-of-help content is more demanding than human-bird categorization. Accuracy and response times therefore likely reflect different processing requirements

Without social cues it's male: Children perceive amorphous drawing of adults as male, but less so in social contexts

Peoples strong tendency to assign male gender to neutrally described persons has been termed the people = male bias. We aimed to assess whether this effect can be elicited using amorphous visual stimuli instead of verbal descriptions and whether it is already evident in childhood. We presented 53 children (4 to 12 yrs., 27 boys) with black-and-white amorphous drawings of humans and asked them whether the adult depicted was a man or a woman. The option to choose "I dont know" was also provided. In order to assess whether social contexts influenced childrens gender attributions (as has been previously reported for adults) we placed the same amorphous humans in three different contexts: 1) the adult was depicted alone, 2) the adult was passively involved in a social situation with a child and 3) the adult was actively helping a child. Children showed a clear tendency to assign male gender to the amorphous adults across all context variations; this was equally true for boys and for girls. However, when the adult was shown in a social context the proportion of male gender attributions was lower compared to the condition without social context. The older the children were, the more likely they were to attribute female gender to a higher proportion of amorphous figures across all contexts. Median response times were higher for "female" ratings, indicating that this decision was associated with greater cognitive effort. Our results show that a strong bias towards attributing male gender to visually presented amorphous figures is evident already in childhood and that it somewhat decreases with age. For children, just as it has been demonstrated for adults, social contexts lead to a larger proportion of female gender attributions. These results encourage future research to include developmental aspects for explaining the mechanisms underlying gender perception and stereotypes