Effects of Environmental Enrichment on Visual Discrimination Learning with Rats
Sarah Jones, Lauren Cleland, Cheyenne Elliott, Sydney Wilson, & Kenneth Leising
Environmental enrichment has been shown to increase cortical thickness in the brain and exploratory behaviors in rats. In the present study, 16 rats were placed for two hours a day in an enriched environment consisting of a large play cage with two ramps and several toys. Rats in the control condition were handled each day but then immediately returned to their home cage. Following 30 days of enrichment, rats were tested for anxiety and exploration behavior by placing them on a plus maze. The plus maze includes two open arms and two closed arms (i.e., with walls enclosing the arm). Rats were then trained on a visual discrimination task in an iPad-equipped operant box. In the task, rats were reinforced for a touch to one of two response locations after the presentation of a visual stimulus (e.g., clip art of clouds or a star). Half of the stimuli were reinforced when the rat responded to the right response location, and the other stimuli after a touch to the left response location. The rats were further divided into those receiving differential outcomes and a control condition. Rats in the differential outcome procedure received one outcome (e.g., pellets) after a left response and a different outcome (e.g., sucrose) after a right response. Rats in the control condition received the same outcome following both responses. Acquisition of the discrimination was compared across the enriched and control groups to examine the effect of environmental enrichment on learning of a visual discrimination.

Introduction:  Interparental conflict is characterized by threats, hostility, and withdrawal, and is related to higher levels of negative emotions in children (Cummings et al., 2003). Although destructive interparental conflict has been shown to correlate with more negative emotionality in children, depressive symptoms have been less of a focus, specifically in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children with ASD have more social and behavioral difficulties than their typically developing (TD) counterparts (Ashwood et al., 2015). They often have other comorbid disorders, with depression being one of the most common (Ghaziuddin et al., 2002). Thus, destructive marital conflict may be associated with higher rates of depressive symptoms in children with ASD. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of interparental conflict on depressive symptoms in children with ASD versus TD children.

Method: Families with high functioning children with ASD (n = 21) and families with TD children (n = 29) participated in this study. The children completed the child depression inventory (CDI), and also reported on the level of interparental conflict in their home using the Security in the Interparental Subsystem scale (SIS).

Results: A moderated regression was performed on depressive symptoms as a function of diagnosis (ASD vs. TD) and destructive family representations. A main effect of diagnosis on depressive symptoms was found with children with ASD reporting higher depressive symptoms than TD children, b = -3.27 (SE = .56), t = 2.86, p ≤ .01. Also, as scores on the destructive family representations subscale increased, so did the child’s report of their depressive symptoms, b = .53 (SE = .19), t = 2.73, p ≤ .01. There was not a significant difference between slopes of the interaction of diagnosis and scores on the destructive family representation subscale, b = -.08 (SE = .41), t = .22, p = .82.

Discussion: Consistent with previous research (Ghaziuddin et al., 2002), this study shows that children with ASD report higher levels of depressive symptoms than their TD counterparts. Regardless of diagnosis, an increase in destructive family representations was associated with more depressive symptoms. For children with and without an ASD, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to reduce depression symptoms (McGillivray & Evert, 2014). It would be beneficial for both TD and ASD children who report high destructive family representations to partake in CBT to help lower depression symptoms. Future research should incorporate more measures of conflict, including parental and child reports as a predictor of child depressive symptoms.

References/Citations:
• Ashwood, Karen & Tye, Charlotte & Azadi, Bahare & Cartwright, Sally & Asherson, Philip & Bolton, Patrick. (2015). Brief report: Adaptive functioning in children with ASD, ADHD and ASD+ADHD. Journal of autism and developmental disorders. 45. doi: 10.1007/s10803-014-2352-y.
• Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Papp, L. M. (2003). Children's responses to everyday marital conflict tactics in the home. Child Development, 74, 1918−1929.
• Ghaziuddin M, Ghaziuddin N, Greden J. (2002). Depression in persons with autism: Implications for research and clinical care. Journal of Autism Developmental Disorders, 32, 299 –306.
• McGillivray, J. A., & Evert, H. T. (2014). Group cognitive behavioral therapy program shows potential in reducing symptoms of depression and stress among young people with ASD. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, 44(8), 2041-2051. doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2087-9

People all over the world value facial attractiveness when selecting a romantic partner. An evolutionary explanation for this is that facial attractiveness could be a signal of good health. While many researchers have argued that facial attractiveness is, in fact, a reliable cue of good health, previous studies have found mixed results when investigating this relationship. These results have raised the question in our field as to the reliability of certain physical cues as honest indicators of genetic quality, which comprises health, immunocompetence, reproductive success, and longevity. To clarify the nature of the relationship between facial attractiveness and good health, a large dataset (N= 160) has been utilized from a previous study which contains photographs of participants, personal and family sickness history, as well as actual biological health markers of immunocompetence (e.g., NK cell killing % and mitogen induced proliferation). Participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk were recruited to rate the target photographs for facial attractiveness and perceived health. By comparing these ratings to the actual measures of health history and immunocompetence obtained in the previous study, results provide insight as to the true nature of the relationship between facial attractiveness, perceived, and actual health.

Attitude representation theory thus implies that people can change their attitudes through biased assimilation of new information about a group, even when the new information they receive is objectively balanced, some of it positive and some of it negative, because people give more weight to new information that confirms rather than disconfirms their initial attitudes. With all the studies that have followed up on the original Lord, Ross, & Lepper 1979 biased assimilation article, though, not one of them has investigated whether two pieces of new information, one positive and one negative, might polarize initially negative attitudes toward a group. The present study tests this prediction. By using MTurk workers as participants, we tested for interactions with factors like age and education, and are able to examine attitude polarization in a more general sample. In the different versions of this study, we had participants with pre-established negative attitudes or positions about either Muslims, Republicans and Democrats, or PETA members read two articles about the target group, one negative and one positive, and measured attitude change. Results are examined and implications for attitude polarization are discussed.

When communicating with others, individuals spend about half of the time listening to what the other person has to say (Dobkin & Pace, 2010). Actively attending to stimuli in our environment is a crucial part of being able to respond to a given task or command. For example, if a child is instructed to choose a red ball on the playground, it is important for the child to listen, interpret, and respond to that task by picking the red ball. The child must discriminate between both the spoken words (auditory stimuli) and the visual stimulus (the red ball versus other colored balls or objects). This study is intended to examine how the order of stimulus presentation influences one’s ability to learn these types of word-object relationships. In previous research, it has been found that the learning process is more effective when the auditory stimulus is presented to the learner prior to the visual stimuli (Petursdottir & Aguilar, 2015). Although there has been research related to presenting auditory before visual stimuli (sample-first) and presenting visual stimuli before auditory (comparison-first), there has been little research into the presentation of the visual (comparison) and audio (sample) simultaneously or into the repetition of the auditory with the visual stimuli. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of children’s acquisition of new word-object relations in auditory-visual identification tasks when simultaneously presenting the visual stimuli and auditory stimulus and when presenting the auditory stimulus first and then presenting the auditory stimulus again when the visual stimulus appears, in comparison to the previously studied sample-first method. Effects of the three presentation arrangement on acquisition rate are assessed in a single-case multi-element design. Data collection is currently in progress.