Interaction behaviors of primary versus secondary caretaker fathers.

A comparison was made between the videotaped behaviors of primary caretaker mothers and both primary and secondary caretaker fathers during face-to-face interactions with their 4-mo-old infants. The sample consisted of 36 infants, 12 observed with their primary caretaker mothers, 12 with primary caretaker fathers, and 12 with secondary caretaker fathers. Fathers in general tended to engage in significantly more game playing and less holding of their infants. Primary caretaker fathers and mothers engaged in significantly more smiling, imitative grimaces, and high-pitched imitative vocalizations than did secondary caretaker fathers. These differences were related to the primary caretaker mothers' and fathers' greater familiarity with their infants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of the mother's presence on children's doll play aggression.

"Twenty children were observed in two sessions of doll play. The first session involved the child and an experimenter. During the second session, the child's mother was an audience for one group and an adult female, not previously known to the child, watched the sessions of the second group. As is usual in doll play, boys are more aggressive than girls. Each of the ten children observed by their mothers were more agressive in the second than in the first session. Eight of the ten children watched by a stranger decreased their aggressions in the second session. The findings are discussed in terms of modifications of the displacement theory of aggression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acceptance by Swedish users of a multimedia program for primary and secondary prevention of malignant melanoma

A case control study was conducted among cases with schizophrenia (DSM IV criteria) and screened adult controls from three cohorts. Bi-allelic polymorphisms in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTT) were examined in conjunction with those of the serotonin 5-HT2a receptor (HTR2). No significant association with 5-HTT was detected among US Caucasians (n = 207), African-Americans (n = 84) or Caucasians from Sweden (n = 221). However, survival analysis suggested an association with the age at onset among the Swedish cases. The association should be considered tentative as it was not evident in the smaller US samples. The following exploratory analyses among the US samples were also not significant: associations with subgroups of patients based on familiality or response to medications, or altered risk due to the joint effects of 5-HTT and HTR2 genotypes.     

The presence of psychiatric consultations in relation to divorce

In this study all couples who during a period of 1 year were divorced at a Swedish district court, and who had children living at home, were examined for psychiatric consultations before, during and after the divorce period. Psychiatric consultation was defined as having a psychiatric record at the only psychiatric clinic in the catchment area. The divorced couples were compared with a matched group of married people. The results showed that there was a 4.1-fold higher risk for divorced men and a 2.5-fold higher risk for divorced women of acquiring a psychiatric record. The increased rate of psychiatric consultations was evident before as well as after the divorce period, but was most striking during the divorce period. A greater proportion of men than women started and continued to experience their psychiatric problems before and during the divorce period, while women more often started and continued to experience their psychiatric problems during the divorce period and afterwards.     

Therapeutic approaches to primary and secondary brain tumours

INTRODUCTION: This study examined the long-term effects of hysterectomy, with and without bilateral oophorectomy, and treatment with estrogen replacement on bone mineral density in older hysterectomized women. METHODS: Subjects were 346 women 60-89 years of age, who were participants in the Rancho Bernardo Study and attended a follow-up clinic visit in 1988-1991. Bone density was measured at the ultradistal wrist, midshaft radius, lumbar spine and hip. RESULTS: Of these women, 182 had a hysterectomy with conservation of one or both ovaries and 164 had a hysterectomy with bilateral oophorectomy. Current estrogen users had the highest bone densities; those who never used estrogen replacement had the lowest. Only 9.1% of oophorectomized women, compared to 19.2% of those with ovarian conservation had never used estrogen (P < .01). After adjustment for covariates including estrogen replacement therapy, hysterectomized women with ovarian conservation had marginally higher bone densities at the wrist (P < .09) and spine (P < .06) than oophorectomized women. We found significant differences only among women currently using estrogen (P < .05 for wrist and P < .01 for spine densities, respectively). Bone density did not differ at any site by oophorectomy status among past or never users of estrogen. CONCLUSIONS: Hysterectomized women who use estrogen replacement therapy have better bone density, regardless of a bilateral oophorectomy. In addition, bilateral oophorectomy may not have a long-term negative effect on bone density; hysterectomized women who do not use estrogen appear to have equivalent bone density whether or not they had a bilateral oophorectomy.     

Interests of fathers and sons.

"Estimation of 'true' resemblance must represent resemblance between fathers and sons, as such, and not resemblance between all men, or even the general resemblance between men in any two samples under consideration. Correlations between chance pairs have been deducted from correlations between true pairs to provide a more accurate measure of resemblance. Father-son resemblance must be construed to mean resemblance in certain respects but not in all respects… . An interest profile should express a pattern of interests even better than a single scale. On such a basis one may explain the higher resemblance between profiles (.40) than between scores on interest scales (.30 to .35) and the definitely higher correlation between profiles than between items (.27)." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asthma among secondary schoolchildren in relation to the school environment

BACKGROUND: Poor indoor air quality has been suggested to be related to the increase in the prevalence of asthma that has occurred in the western world, especially among children and young persons. Apart from the home, school is the most important indoor environment for children. OBJECTIVES: The aims were to study the prevalence of current asthma among secondary pupils and its relationship to the school environment, but also to personal factors and domestic exposures. METHODS: Data on asthmatic symptoms, other health aspects, and domestic exposures were gathered using a questionnaire which was sent to 762 pupils in the seventh form (13-14 years old) in 11 randomly chosen schools in the county of Uppsala in Sweden. Pupils answering 'yes' to having had asthma diagnosed by a physician, and having had recent asthma attacks, or who used asthma medication were defined as having current asthma. Data on exposures at school were gathered by measurements in 28 classrooms. The relationship between asthma and exposures was analysed by multiple logistic regression. RESULTS: The questionnaire was completed by 627 (82%). Current asthma was found among 40 pupils (6.4%). Current asthma was more common in those who had an atopic disposition, or food allergy, or who had attended a day care centre for several years. Controlling for these factors, current asthma was related to several factors in the school environment. There were more pupils with current asthma in schools that were larger, had more open shelves, lower room temperature, higher relative air humidity, higher concentrations of formaldehyde or other volatile organic compounds, viable moulds or bacteria or more cat allergen in the settled dust. CONCLUSIONS: Although the pupils attended school for a minor part of their time, our study indicates that the quality of the school environment is of importance and may affect asthmatic symptoms.     

Source memory and divided attention: Reciprocal costs to primary and secondary tasks.

Source memory, in comparison with item memory, is more sensitive to frontal lesions and may require more strategic processing. Divided attention was used to restrict attentional resources and strategic processing on memory tasks. Participants encoded and retrieved items (i.e., words) and source (i.e., voice or spatial location) while concurrently performing a fingertapping (FT) or visual reaction-time (VRT) task. Memory accuracy costs under divided attention were greater for retrieval of source than item and were greater with VRT than FT. Similarly, costs to the secondary task were greater when concurrently retrieving source as opposed to item and were greater for VRT than FT. Effects were stronger when spatial location was used as the source task. Findings support the idea that processing source information requires more attentional resources and effort than processing item information. Furthermore, concurrent performance of VRT produced greater interference with a task that was more dependent on intact frontal functioning and better simulated the performance of patients with frontal dysfunction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computed tomography-determined body composition in relation to cardiovascular risk factors in Indian and matched Swedish males

Relationships between cardiovascular risk factors, body composition, and tissue distributions were examined in 10 Indian and 10 Swedish males matched by age, height, and weight. The body was divided into 29 compartments by means of a multiscan computed tomography (CT) technique. Fasting glucose, insulin, and triglycerides (TG) were higher in Indians than in Swedes. During the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), the glucose area was similar in both groups, whereas the insulin area was 80% larger in Indians. Adipose tissue (AT) and skin volumes were larger and remaining lean tissues were smaller in Indians. Indians had proportionally less muscle and more skeleton in the legs, but no ethnic difference could be demonstrated with respect to AT distribution. The visceral AT to total AT volume ratio was positively related to insulin and TG, and with higher risk factors for Indians at any given ratio. TG and glucose were negatively related to the leg muscle to total muscle volume ratio, and this ratio was smaller in Indians. It is concluded that the metabolic disturbances of Indians are not necessarily dependent on a preponderance of visceral AT, and also that an upper-body muscle distribution-recognized as a new phenotypic companion to the metabolic syndrome-is statistically related to cardiovascular risk factors.     

Clinical diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis in women and relation to presence of HLA-B27

Protein and amino acid contents of liver of normal (untreated) adult male garden lizard, Calotes versicolor, were quantitatively determined by the method of Lowry et al. and ninhydrin reaction, respectively, and compared with the protein and amino acid contents in the liver of adult male garden lizards exposed to cold, heat, UV- and gamma-radiations. With a decrease in protein contents, a simultaneous increase in the amino acid contents was observed. The decrease in protein content was 80, 60, 30 and 20% after exposure to cold, heat, UV- and gamma-radiations, respectively. Consequently, the increase in amino acid content was 57, 40, 20 and 5% after exposure to cold, heat, UV- and gamma-radiations, respectively.     

Height, weight and menarche in Swedish urban school children in relation to socio-economic and regional factors

During the period 1964-1973, a defined sample of 740 Swedish urban school children (360 girls and 380 boys) from 40 different urban areas all over the country were followed longitudinally. Height and weight were measured twice a year and age at menarche was recorded. Mean ages at peak height velocity (PHV) and peak weight velocity (PWV) were 11-91 years (SD 0-95) and 12-50 years (SD 1-08) for girls with average values of 8-30 cm/year (SD 1-32) and 7-37 kg/year (SD 1-94). Mean age at menarche was 13-05 years (SD 1-03). PHV and PWV in boys occurred on average at 14-09 years (SD 1-11) and 14-30 years (SD 1-11) with magnitudes of 9-84 cm/year (SD 1-40) and 9-07 kg/year (SD 2-04). No significant differences between socio-economic strata defined by father's occupation and family income were found either for height and weight or for ages at PHV, PWV and menarche. Girls but not boys in the lowest social group (III) had more weight for height during puberty than had girls in social groups I and II. Between the three main geographical regions of Sweden some differences were found. Boys in the South were at the ages of 17 and 18 on average heavier than boys from the rest of the country. Boys and girls in the South had PHV, PWV and menarche half a year later than children in Middle Sweden. In analysis of variance for age at PHV significant interaction terms were found for regions times urbanization. In the South and North age at PHV was earlier the higher the urbanization level, but in Middle Sweden the reverse occurred.     

Visual attention to mother's and stranger's faces and facial contrast in 1-month-old infants.

Although some research (e.g., G. C. Carpenter, 1974; D. Maurer and P. Salapatek, 1976) has suggested that visual recognition of the mother by an infant may occur within the 1st month of life, most research in this area has indicated a later onset of such an ability. An experiment is described that failed to find differential visual attention to the mother in 31 1-mo-olds; however, a post hoc analysis did find significantly greater attention to faces with dark hair. It is suggested that such a differential response reflects contrast preferences and that future studies of face perception should take such preferences into account. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diagnostic laparoscopy in primary and secondary infertility

PURPOSE: Our purpose was to compare the diagnostic efficacy of laparoscopy between primary and secondary infertility and to define a subgroup in which the positive findings are low. METHODS: A retrospective review of the cases of 206 infertile women who underwent laparoscopy was conducted. RESULTS: Eighty-two (39.8%) patients were found to have evidence of pelvic disease--20 (22.2%) with primary infertility and 62 (54.3%) with secondary infertility. The ratio of positive findings in secondary infertility was significant in comparison with the positive findings in primary infertility. In only 3 of the 20 patients with primary infertility was there no history of an abdominal operation, pelvic inflammatory disease, or an abnormal hysterosalpingography. Of the 62 women who suffered secondary infertility and had positive findings in laparoscopy, 15 had no history of suspect findings. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnostic yield of laparoscopy for primary infertility in the absence of indications of mechanical factors is low. Therefore the need for diagnostic laparoscopy in these cases should be reconsidered.     

Genetic alterations in primary and secondary hyperparathyroidism

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate treatment of patients with primary liver cancer. DESIGN: Prospective protocol including subsets of randomised studies. SETTING: University hospital, Sweden. SUBJECTS: 123 patients with primary liver cancer. INTERVENTIONS: 64 patients underwent hepatic resection, 25 were included in a trial of adjuvant chemotherapy. 24 further patients whose tumours were not resectable were included in a trial of intra-arterial infusion of doxorubicin. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Survival and postoperative morbidity. RESULTS: The median survival time for patients who had had resections was 11 months (range 0-111). Twelve per cent survived more than 5 years. No prognostic factor had any significant effect on outcome. The postoperative mortality was 11% (7/64). The patients allocated to adjuvant chemotherapy survived a median of 10 months (range 1-47) and the controls 29 months (range 8-111) (p=0.04). Patients with unresectable liver cancer treated with intra-arterial doxorubicin lived no longer than untreated controls (median 8 months (range 1-56) compared with 7 months (range 1-28)). CONCLUSIONS: Treatment of patients with primary liver cancer is still an unsolved problem. Adjuvant chemotherapy with doxorubicin had no beneficial effect on survival.     

Psychosocial functioning in children of alcoholic fathers.

T. Jacob and K. Leonard (1986) reported that children of alcoholic fathers were comparable to children of depressed fathers in their psychosocial functioning. These results, however, were based on a relatively homogeneous sample. In the current study, previous results were extended by examining a sample of alcoholic fathers who were not screened for additional paternal psychiatric disorders or for major maternal psychopathology. Children in the unscreened and screened samples could not be distinguished in their functioning, and the majority of children of alcoholic fathers were functioning in the normal range of the Child Behavior Checklist. Given the heterogeneous adjustment in children of alcoholic fathers, the authors examined a range of factors that might protect against or exacerbate the risk associated with paternal alcoholism. Maternal depression and certain demographic characteristics were associated with poorer child functioning, particularly for male children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of adult age on primary and secondary memory search.

Conducted 2 experiments with 25 19–29 yr olds, 26 62–85 yr olds, 30 18–32 yr olds, and 30 61–81 yr olds to compare young and elderly adults on the ability to search lists of words stored in primary memory (PM) and in secondary memory (SM). Exp I indicated that age differences in search performance were greatest under SM conditions. Older Ss, unlike the younger ones, appeared biased toward responding that probe items were not members of the memory sets stored in SM. As a result of this apparent bias, older Ss committed a large number of errors on trials in which the probe was a member of the memorized list (i.e., positive probe trials) yet few errors on the trials in which the probe was not a member of the list ( i.e., negative probe trials). The responses of older Ss to negative probe trials were more rapid than were those to positive probe trials. In Exp II, this pattern of responding was examined. It is concluded that age differences were involved in the ability to encode memory sets and transfer them from PM to SM as well as in the ability to retrieve information from SM prior to conducting a memory search. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Immune response to phi X 174 in man. 5. Primary and secondary antibody production in primary biliary cirrhosis

In primary biliary cirrhosis, the primary immune response to the bacteriophage phi X 174 is normal but the secondary response is significantly reduced. The reduction is primarily of IgG antibody, while IgM is proportionately less affected. These changes may be the result of a reduction in helper T lymphocyte function and may contribute to the increase in the ratio of serum concentration of IgM to IgG.     

Psychopathy in a noninstitutional sample: Differences in primary and secondary subtypes.

Early theoretical conceptualizations suggest psychopathy is a heterogeneous construct whereby psychopathic individuals are found in diverse populations. The current study examined male and female psychopathy subtypes in a large sample of undergraduate students (n = 1229). Model-based cluster analysis of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form (PPI-SF) revealed two clusters in both male and female students. In males, the primary subtype evidenced greater psychopathic personality traits (i.e., Social Potency, Fearlessness, and Impulsive Nonconformity) and lower anxiety (i.e., higher Stress Immunity), whereas the secondary subtype displayed fewer psychopathic personality traits (i.e., Machiavellian Egocentricity and Blame Externalization) and higher anxiety (i.e., lower Stress Immunity). In females, the primary subtype exhibited higher scores across all PPI-SF subscales and lower anxiety whereas the secondary subtype reported lower PPI-SF subscale scores and higher anxiety. Across a diverse array of personality, affective, and behavioral external correlates, differences between the subtypes and with nonpsychopaths emerged. Implications for psychopathy in noninstitutional populations with respect to theory, research, and gender are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Compliance and self-assertion: Young children's responses to mothers versus fathers.

To provide data on the development of compliance and self-assertion toward mothers and fathers, 2-, 4-, and 6-yr-old children were observed in their homes. Compared with younger children, older children were more compliant, more likely to use logical argument, and less likely to ignore or to show defiance. Two-year-olds showed more ignoring of their fathers, whereas 4-yr-olds were more ignoring of their mothers and showed greater compliance to their fathers. Regardless of age, boys showed higher levels of compliance to their fathers, whereas girls did not respond differentially to mothers or fathers. Girls were, however, more likely to state their desires and preferences and to use logical argument. Further analyses suggested that none of the gender differences in child response were apparent artifacts of differences in parental treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)