Inequality in oral health related to early and later life social conditions: a study of elderly in Norway and Sweden.

PubMed

Gülcan, Ferda; Ekbäck, Gunnar; Ordell, Sven; Lie, Stein Atle; Åstrøm, Anne Nordrehaug

2015-02-10

A life course perspective recognizes influences of socially patterned exposures on oral health across the life span. This study assessed the influence of early and later life social conditions on tooth loss and oral impacts on daily performances (OIDP) of people aged 65 and 70 years. Whether social inequalities in oral health changed after the usual age of retirement was also examined. In accordance with "the latent effect life course model", it was hypothesized that adverse early-life social conditions increase the risk of subsequent tooth loss and impaired OIDP, independent of later-life social conditions. Data were obtained from two cohorts studies conducted in Sweden and Norway. The 2007 and 2012 waves of the surveys were used for the present study. Early-life social conditions were measured in terms of gender, education and country of birth, and later-life social conditions were assessed by working status, marital status and size of social network. Logistic regression and Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) were used to analyse the data. Inverse probability weighting (IPW) was used to adjust estimates for missing responses and loss to follow-up. Early-life social conditions contributed to tooth loss and OIDP in each survey year and both countries independent of later-life social conditions. Lower education correlated positively with tooth loss, but did not influence OIDP. Foreign country of birth correlated positively with oral impacts in Sweden only. Later-life social conditions were the strongest predictors of tooth loss and OIDP across survey years and countries. GEE revealed significant interactions between social network and survey year, and between marital status and survey year on tooth loss. The results confirmed the latent effect life course model in that early and later life social conditions had independent effects on tooth loss and OIDP among the elderly in Norway and Sweden. Between age 65 and 70, inequalities in tooth loss related to marital

Lay theories about social class buffer lower-class individuals against poor self-rated health and negative affect.

PubMed

Tan, Jacinth J X; Kraus, Michael W

2015-03-01

The economic conditions of one's life can profoundly and systematically influence health outcomes over the life course. Our present research demonstrates that rejecting the notion that social class categories are biologically determined-a nonessentialist belief-buffers lower-class individuals from poor self-rated health and negative affect, whereas conceiving of social class categories as rooted in biology-an essentialist belief-does not. In Study 1, lower-class individuals self-reported poorer health than upper-class individuals when they endorsed essentialist beliefs but showed no such difference when they rejected such beliefs. Exposure to essentialist theories of social class also led lower-class individuals to report greater feelings of negative self-conscious emotions (Studies 2 and 3), and perceive poorer health (Study 3) than upper-class individuals, whereas exposure to nonessentialist theories did not lead to such differences. Discussion considers how lay theories of social class potentially shape long-term trajectories of health and affect of lower-class individuals. © 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Combined effects of education level and perceived social class on self-rated health and life satisfaction: Results of Korean labor and income panel study wave 8-wave 15.

PubMed

Kim, Jae-Hyun; Yoo, Ki-Bong; Park, Eun-Cheol; Lee, Sang Gyu; Kim, Tae Hyun

2015-11-02

To examine the combined effects of education level and perceived social class on self-rated health and life satisfaction in South Korea. We used data drawn from the 8 to 15th wave of the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS). Using wave 8 at baseline, data included 11,175 individuals. We performed a longitudinal analysis at baseline estimating the prevalence of self-rated health and life satisfaction among individuals by education level (high, middle, and low education level) and perceived social class (high, middle, and low social class). For self-rated health, odds ratio (OR) of individuals with low education and low perceived social class was 0.604 times lower (95% CI: 0.555-0.656) and the OR of individuals with low education and middle perceived social class was 0.853 time lower (95% CI: 0.790-0.922) when compared to individuals with high education and high perceived social class. For life satisfaction, OR of individuals with low education and low perceived social class was 0.068 times lower (95% CI: 0.063-0.074) and the OR of individuals with middle education and middle perceived social class was 0.235 time lower (95% CI: 0.221-0.251) compared to individuals with high education and high perceived social class. This study shows that the combined effects of education level and perceived social class associated with self-rated health and life satisfaction. Our study suggests increasing education level and perceived social class. Additionally, it will be important to develop multi-dimensional measurement tools including education level and subjective social class.

Gender and social class differences in the association between early retirement and health in Spain.

PubMed

Artazcoz, Lucia; Cortès, Imma; Borrell, Carme; Escribà-Agüir, Vicenta; Cascant, Lorena

2010-01-01

We sought to examine the association between reasons for early retirement and health status and to assess whether this association differs by gender and social class. The sample was all people currently working or retired between 50 and 64 years of age (2,497 men and 1,420 women) who were interviewed in the 2006 Spanish National Health Survey. The health outcomes analyzed were self-perceived health status and mental health. Multiple logistic regression models stratified by gender and occupational social class were fitted. Female manual workers who were forced into early retirement due to organizational reasons were more likely to report poor self-perceived health status (adjusted odds ration [aOR], 4.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.44-11.32) and poor mental health (aOR, 2.70; 95% CI, 1.15-6.33), whereas no such association was observed among male workers or among female nonmanual workers. Early retirement on health grounds was associated with both health outcomes in all groups, but retirement because of age, voluntary retirement, and retirement for other reasons were not related to poor health outcomes in any group analyzed. Forced early retirement owing to organizational reasons is related to poor health indicators only among female manual workers. Results highlight the importance of paying more attention to the potential vulnerability of female manual workers in downsizing processes as well as in early retirement policies. Copyright © 2010 Jacobs Institute of Women's Health. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sibling cooperation in earwig families provides insights into the early evolution of social life.

PubMed

Falk, Joachim; Wong, Janine W Y; Kölliker, Mathias; Meunier, Joël

2014-04-01

The evolutionary transition from solitary to social life is driven by direct and indirect fitness benefits of social interactions. Understanding the conditions promoting the early evolution of social life therefore requires identification of these benefits in nonderived social systems, such as animal families where offspring are mobile and able to disperse and will survive independently. Family life is well known to provide benefits to offspring through parental care, but research on sibling interactions generally focused on fitness costs to offspring due to competitive behaviors. Here we show experimentally that sibling interactions also reflect cooperative behaviors in the form of food sharing in nonderived families of the European earwig, Forficula auricularia. Food ingested by individual offspring was transferred to their siblings through mouth-to-anus contacts and active allo-coprophagy. These transfers occurred in both the presence and the absence of the tending mothers, even though the direct contact with the mothers limited sibling food sharing. Neither food deprivation or relatedness influenced the total amount of transferred food, but relatedness affected frass release and the behavioral mechanisms mediating food sharing. Related offspring obtained food predominately through allo-coprophagy, whereas unrelated offspring obtained food through mouth-to-anus contacts. Overall, this study emphasizes that sibling cooperation may be a key process promoting the early evolution of social life.

Early-Life Social Origins of Later-Life Body Weight: The Role of Socioeconomic Status and Health Behaviors over the Life Course

PubMed Central

Logan, Ellis Scott; Richman, Aliza

2014-01-01

Using the 1957-2004 data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we apply structural equation modeling to examine gender-specific effects of family socioeconomic status (SES) at age 18 on body weight at age 65. We further explore SES and health behaviors over the life course as mechanisms linking family background and later-life body weight. We find that early-life socioeconomic disadvantage is related to higher body weight at age 65 and a steeper weight increase between midlife and late life. These adverse effects are stronger among women than men. Significant mediators of the effect of parents' SES include adolescent body mass (especially among women) as well as exercise and SES in midlife. Yet, consistent with the critical period mechanism, the effect of early-life SES on late-life body weight persists net of all mediating variables. This study expands current understanding of life-course mechanisms that contribute to obesity and increase biological vulnerability to social disadvantage. PMID:24767590

The Changing Pattern of Nutrition Intake by Social Class in Contemporary China, 1991-2011.

PubMed

Xu, Zhun; Zhang, Wei

2017-11-01

To explore the changing pattern of nutrition intake by social class in contemporary China. We defined social class in 2 ways. The first definition was based on employment, and the second definition was based on per capita household income levels. We used China Health and Nutrition Survey data from 1991 to 2011 to show the changes in the relation between social class and nutrition intake. The relation between social class and nutrition intake in China changed significantly within the 2 decades. For example, in the early 1990s, the lowest social class (defined by employment or income) had more caloric intake than did the highest social class; 20 years later, however, the relation reversed, and the lowest social class consumed significantly fewer calories. China has seen a great reversal in its social class-nutrition relationship since the early 1990s. Our study calls for wider recognition that insufficient consumption of food and nutrition is increasingly an issue for people in the lower social classes in China.

Early Elementary Class-Size Reduction: A Neo-Institutional Analysis of the Social, Political, and Economic Influences on State-Level Policymaking.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mitchell, Ross E.

This paper examines the social, political, and economic factors that influenced the adoption and diffusion of early-elementary school class-size-reduction policies at the state level. It applies a neo-institutional framework to explain the rapid spread of class-size reduction policies throughout many state legislatures and boards of education. It…

Early-Life Social Isolation Impairs the Gonadotropin-Inhibitory Hormone Neuronal Activity and Serotonergic System in Male Rats.

PubMed

Soga, Tomoko; Teo, Chuin Hau; Cham, Kai Lin; Idris, Marshita Mohd; Parhar, Ishwar S

2015-01-01

Social isolation in early life deregulates the serotonergic system of the brain, compromising reproductive function. Gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) neurons in the dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus are critical to the inhibitory regulation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone neuronal activity in the brain and release of luteinizing hormone by the pituitary gland. Although GnIH responds to stress, the role of GnIH in social isolation-induced deregulation of the serotonin system and reproductive function remains unclear. We investigated the effect of social isolation in early life on the serotonergic-GnIH neuronal system using enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP)-tagged GnIH transgenic rats. Socially isolated rats were observed for anxious and depressive behaviors. Using immunohistochemistry, we examined c-Fos protein expression in EGFP-GnIH neurons in 9-week-old adult male rats after 6 weeks post-weaning isolation or group housing. We also inspected serotonergic fiber juxtapositions in EGFP-GnIH neurons in control and socially isolated male rats. Socially isolated rats exhibited anxious and depressive behaviors. The total number of EGFP-GnIH neurons was the same in control and socially isolated rats, but c-Fos expression in GnIH neurons was significantly reduced in socially isolated rats. Serotonin fiber juxtapositions on EGFP-GnIH neurons were also lower in socially isolated rats. In addition, levels of tryptophan hydroxylase mRNA expression in the dorsal raphe nucleus were significantly attenuated in these rats. These results suggest that social isolation in early-life results in lower serotonin levels, which reduce GnIH neuronal activity and may lead to reproductive failure.

Early Life Stress Affects Mortality Rate More than Social Behavior, Gene Expression or Oxidative Damage in Honey Bee Workers

PubMed Central

Rueppell, Olav; Yousefi, Babak; Collazo, Juan; Smith, Daniel

2017-01-01

Early life stressors can affect aging and life expectancy in positive or negative ways. Individuals can adjust their behavior and molecular physiology based on early life experiences but relatively few studies have connected such mechanisms to demographic patterns in social organisms. Sociality buffers individuals from environmental influences and it is unclear how much early life stress affects later life history. Workers of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) were exposed to two stressors, Varroa parasitism and paraquat exposure, early in life. Consequences were measured at the molecular, behavioral, and demographic level. While treatments did not significantly affect levels of oxidative damage, expression of select genes, and titers of the common deformed wing virus, most of these measures were affected by age. Some of the age effects, such as declining levels of deformed wing virus and oxidative damage, were opposite to our predictions but may be explained by demographic selection. Further analyses suggested some influences of worker behavior on mortality and indicated weak treatment effects on behavior. The latter effects were inconsistent among the two experiments. However, mortality rate was consistently reduced by Varroa mite stress during development. Thus, mortality was more responsive to early life stress than our other response variables. The lack of treatment effects on these measures may be due to the social organization of honey bees that buffers the individual from the impact of stressful developmental conditions. PMID:28122251

Early life stress affects mortality rate more than social behavior, gene expression or oxidative damage in honey bee workers.

PubMed

Rueppell, Olav; Yousefi, Babak; Collazo, Juan; Smith, Daniel

2017-04-01

Early life stressors can affect aging and life expectancy in positive or negative ways. Individuals can adjust their behavior and molecular physiology based on early life experiences but relatively few studies have connected such mechanisms to demographic patterns in social organisms. Sociality buffers individuals from environmental influences and it is unclear how much early life stress affects later life history. Workers of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) were exposed to two stressors, Varroa parasitism and Paraquat exposure, early in life. Consequences were measured at the molecular, behavioral, and demographic level. While treatments did not significantly affect levels of oxidative damage, expression of select genes, and titers of the common deformed wing virus, most of these measures were affected by age. Some of the age effects, such as declining levels of deformed wing virus and oxidative damage, were opposite to our predictions but may be explained by demographic selection. Further analyses suggested some influences of worker behavior on mortality and indicated weak treatment effects on behavior. The latter effects were inconsistent among the two experiments. However, mortality rate was consistently reduced by Varroa mite stress during development. Thus, mortality was more responsive to early life stress than our other response variables. The lack of treatment effects on these measures may be due to the social organization of honey bees that buffers the individual from the impact of stressful developmental conditions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Working Life and Retirement Expectancies at Age 50 by Social Class: Period and Cohort Trends and Projections for Finland.

PubMed

Leinonen, Taina; Martikainen, Pekka; Myrskylä, Mikko

2018-01-11

The balance between the amount of time spent in work and in retirement underlies the long-term sustainability of the social security system. We examined socioeconomic differences in how increasing longevity is distributed between labor market statuses in Finland. We used register data and the Sullivan method to analyze life expectancy at age 50 spent in different labor market statuses over the period 1989-2012 and across cohorts born in 1938-1953. We projected the future mortality and labor market participation rates of partially observed cohorts. Both working life expectancy at age 50 and the share of remaining life spent in work have increased across periods following the recession of the early 1990s, and across successive cohorts. The trends were similar across the social classes, but there were large differences in the numbers of years spent in various states: for the most recent period and the youngest cohort, we find that compared with upper non-manual employees, male and female manual workers were expected to spend 3.6-3.7 fewer years in work, 1.7-4.7 fewer years in statutory retirement, and 3.2-3.9 more years in other forms of nonemployment. Our finding that the share of remaining life at age 50 spent in work is increasing implies that pressure on the welfare system is not as severe as is commonly thought. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Signs of Social Class: The Experience of Economic Inequality in Everyday Life

PubMed Central

Kraus, Michael W.; Park, Jun Won; Tan, Jacinth J. X.

2017-01-01

By some accounts, global economic inequality is at its highest point on record. The pernicious effects of this broad societal trend are striking: Rising inequality is linked to poorer health and well-being across countries, continents, and cultures. The economic and psychological forces that perpetuate inequality continue to be studied, and in this theoretical review, we examine the role of daily experiences of economic inequality—the communication of social class signals between interaction partners—in this process. We theorize that social class signals activate social comparison processes that strengthen group boundaries between the haves and have nots in society. In particular, we argue that class signals are a frequent, rapid, and accurate component of person perception, and we provide new data and analyses demonstrating the accuracy of class signaling in 60-s interactions, Facebook photographs, and isolated recordings of brief speech. We suggest that barriers to the reduction of economic inequality in society arise directly from this class signaling process through the augmentation of class boundaries and the elicitation of beliefs and behaviors that favor the economic status quo. PMID:28544871

Signs of Social Class: The Experience of Economic Inequality in Everyday Life.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Park, Jun Won; Tan, Jacinth J X

2017-05-01

By some accounts, global economic inequality is at its highest point on record. The pernicious effects of this broad societal trend are striking: Rising inequality is linked to poorer health and well-being across countries, continents, and cultures. The economic and psychological forces that perpetuate inequality continue to be studied, and in this theoretical review, we examine the role of daily experiences of economic inequality-the communication of social class signals between interaction partners-in this process. We theorize that social class signals activate social comparison processes that strengthen group boundaries between the haves and have nots in society. In particular, we argue that class signals are a frequent, rapid, and accurate component of person perception, and we provide new data and analyses demonstrating the accuracy of class signaling in 60-s interactions, Facebook photographs, and isolated recordings of brief speech. We suggest that barriers to the reduction of economic inequality in society arise directly from this class signaling process through the augmentation of class boundaries and the elicitation of beliefs and behaviors that favor the economic status quo.

Peer and teacher ratings of third- and fourth-grade children's social behavior as a function of early maternal employment.

PubMed

Youngblade, Lise M

2003-05-01

One of the more controversial issues related to maternal employment in the United States concerns the timing of entry into the workforce and its effect on children, particularly during the first year of the child's life. Some studies show deleterious effects on children, such as increases in aggression and noncompliance, while others document few negative and even positive effects of early employment. This study examined the long-term effects of maternal employment during the child's first year of life on the social behavior of 171 third- and fourth-grade children in two-parent families. The moderating effects of child gender and social class were investigated. The extent to which stability in alternative care arrangements statistically explained links between early maternal employment and child outcomes was tested. After controlling for child gender, and maternal ethnicity, social class, and current employment status, third- and fourth-grade children whose mothers were employed during their first year of life evinced more acting out and less frustration tolerance and were nominated more often by peers for 'hitting' and 'being mean' than children whose mothers were not employed. There was some evidence that these associations were moderated by child gender and social class: boys, but not girls, whose mothers were employed during the first year were subsequently rated by teachers as acting out more than other children, and were also more likely to be nominated by peers for hitting. Higher nominations for hitting were only found in the working class. Finally, there was partial evidence that the number of alternative child-care arrangements during the first year accounted for the links between early maternal employment and subsequent child outcomes. These results are congruent with extant research that posits a risk of early employment on socioemotional development, but show that this risk is partially attributable to child-care instability.

Divorce and social class during the early stages of the divorce revolution: evidence from Flanders and the Netherlands.

PubMed

Kalmijn, Matthijs; Vanassche, Sofie; Matthijs, Koenraad

2011-01-01

In times of low divorce rates (such as the nineteenth century and early twentieth century), the authors expect higher social strata to have the highest divorce chances as they are better equipped to break existing barriers to divorce. In this article, the authors analyze data from marriage certificates to assess whether there was a positive effect of occupational class on divorce in Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands. Their results for the Netherlands show a positive association between social class and divorce, particularly among the higher cultural groups. In Flanders, the authors do not find this, but they observe a negative association between illiteracy and divorce, an observation pointing in the same direction.

Early-Life Social Isolation Impairs the Gonadotropin-Inhibitory Hormone Neuronal Activity and Serotonergic System in Male Rats

PubMed Central

Soga, Tomoko; Teo, Chuin Hau; Cham, Kai Lin; Idris, Marshita Mohd; Parhar, Ishwar S.

2015-01-01

Social isolation in early life deregulates the serotonergic system of the brain, compromising reproductive function. Gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) neurons in the dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus are critical to the inhibitory regulation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone neuronal activity in the brain and release of luteinizing hormone by the pituitary gland. Although GnIH responds to stress, the role of GnIH in social isolation-induced deregulation of the serotonin system and reproductive function remains unclear. We investigated the effect of social isolation in early life on the serotonergic–GnIH neuronal system using enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP)-tagged GnIH transgenic rats. Socially isolated rats were observed for anxious and depressive behaviors. Using immunohistochemistry, we examined c-Fos protein expression in EGFP–GnIH neurons in 9-week-old adult male rats after 6 weeks post-weaning isolation or group housing. We also inspected serotonergic fiber juxtapositions in EGFP–GnIH neurons in control and socially isolated male rats. Socially isolated rats exhibited anxious and depressive behaviors. The total number of EGFP–GnIH neurons was the same in control and socially isolated rats, but c-Fos expression in GnIH neurons was significantly reduced in socially isolated rats. Serotonin fiber juxtapositions on EGFP–GnIH neurons were also lower in socially isolated rats. In addition, levels of tryptophan hydroxylase mRNA expression in the dorsal raphe nucleus were significantly attenuated in these rats. These results suggest that social isolation in early-life results in lower serotonin levels, which reduce GnIH neuronal activity and may lead to reproductive failure. PMID:26617573

[The construction of life profiles by social class in Chile].

PubMed

Torres, C

1989-11-01

The author develops a series of life profiles for men and women living in the Greater Santiago area of Chile over the past 25 years. These profiles, which are based on the concept of life expectancy at birth, illustrate the length of time individuals take to go through such life cycle stages as education, employment, unemployment, and retirement. The concept is used to analyze changes in the life profile over time and how these differ by class. (SUMMARY IN ENG)

Culture and social class.

PubMed

Miyamoto, Yuri

2017-12-01

A large body of research in Western cultures has demonstrated the psychological and health effects of social class. This review outlines a cultural psychological approach to social stratification by comparing psychological and health manifestations of social class across Western and East Asian cultures. These comparisons suggest that cultural meaning systems shape how people make meaning and respond to material/structural conditions associated with social class, thereby leading to culturally divergent manifestations of social class. Specifically, unlike their counterparts in Western cultures, individuals of high social class in East Asian cultures tend to show high conformity and other-orientated psychological attributes. In addition, cultures differ in how social class impacts health (i.e. on which bases, through which pathways, and to what extent). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Education, Social Class and Social Exclusion.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whitty, Geoff

2001-01-01

Concerned about working-class failure, argues that recent (British) government policies have insufficiently considered sociological studies on how social class affects educational success or failure. Social-inclusion policies must address forms of middle-class self-exclusion from mainstream public education as well as working-class social…

Sex-specific effects of early life stress on social interaction and prefrontal cortex dendritic morphology in young rats.

PubMed

Farrell, M R; Holland, F H; Shansky, R M; Brenhouse, H C

2016-09-01

Early life stress has been linked to depression, anxiety, and behavior disorders in adolescence and adulthood. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is implicated in stress-related psychopathology, is a target for stress hormones, and mediates social behavior. The present study investigated sex differences in early-life stress effects on juvenile social interaction and adolescent mPFC dendritic morphology in rats using a maternal separation (MS) paradigm. Half of the rat pups of each sex were separated from their mother for 4h a day between postnatal days 2 and 21, while the other half remained with their mother in the animal facilities and were exposed to minimal handling. At postnatal day 25 (P25; juvenility), rats underwent a social interaction test with an age and sex matched conspecific. Distance from conspecific, approach and avoidance behaviors, nose-to-nose contacts, and general locomotion were measured. Rats were euthanized at postnatal day 40 (P40; adolescence), and randomly selected infralimbic pyramidal neurons were filled with Lucifer yellow using iontophoretic microinjections, imaged in 3D, and then analyzed for dendritic arborization, spine density, and spine morphology. Early-life stress increased the latency to make nose-to-nose contact at P25 in females but not males. At P40, early-life stress increased infralimbic apical dendritic branch number and length and decreased thin spine density in stressed female rats. These results indicate that MS during the postnatal period influenced juvenile social behavior and mPFC dendritic arborization in a sex-specific manner. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social Class Dialogues and the Fostering of Class Consciousness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madden, Meredith

2015-01-01

How do critical pedagogies promote undergraduate students' awareness of social class, social class identity, and social class inequalities in education? How do undergraduate students experience class consciousness-raising in the intergroup dialogue classroom? This qualitative study explores undergraduate students' class consciousness-raising in an…

Early social networks predict survival in wild bottlenose dolphins.

PubMed

Stanton, Margaret A; Mann, Janet

2012-01-01

A fundamental question concerning group-living species is what factors influence the evolution of sociality. Although several studies link adult social bonds to fitness, social patterns and relationships are often formed early in life and are also likely to have fitness consequences, particularly in species with lengthy developmental periods, extensive social learning, and early social bond-formation. In a longitudinal study of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.), calf social network structure, specifically the metric eigenvector centrality, predicted juvenile survival in males. Additionally, male calves that died post-weaning had stronger ties to juvenile males than surviving male calves, suggesting that juvenile males impose fitness costs on their younger counterparts. Our study indicates that selection is acting on social traits early in life and highlights the need to examine the costs and benefits of social bonds during formative life history stages.

Work-related social support modulates effects of early life stress on limbic reactivity during stress.

PubMed

Leicht-Deobald, Ulrich; Bruch, Heike; Bönke, Luisa; Stevense, Amie; Fan, Yan; Bajbouj, Malek; Grimm, Simone

2017-12-15

Early life stress (ELS) affects stress- reactivity via limbic brain regions implicated such as hippocampus and amygdala. Social support is a major protective factor against ELS effects, while subjects with ELS experience reportedly perceive less of it in their daily life. The workplace, where most adults spend a substantial amount of time in their daily lives, might serve as a major resource for social support. Since previous data demonstrated that social support attenuates stress reactivity, we here used a psychosocial stress task to test the hypothesis that work-related social support modulates the effects of ELS. Results show decreased amygdala reactivity during stress in ELS subjects who report high levels of work- related social support, thereby indicating a signature for reduced stress reactivity. However, this effect was only observable on the neural, but not on the behavioral level, since social support had no buffering effect regarding the subjective experience of stress in daily life as well as regarding feelings of uncontrollability induced by the stress task. Accordingly, our data suggest that subjects with ELS experiences might benefit from interventions targeted at lowering their subjective stress levels by helping them to better perceive the availability of social support in their daily lives.

Increased behavioral output but intact goal-directed and habitual responding for food reward following early-life social deprivation in rats.

PubMed

Lomanowska, Anna M; Kraemer, Gary W

2014-09-01

Early-life social adversity, such as child neglect and institutionalized rearing, is associated with later-life difficulties of inhibitory control that may reflect altered attribution of salience to external stimuli. Studies in rats demonstrate that early-life social deprivation results in enhanced responsiveness to reward stimuli and conditioned reward cues. This study examined whether these effects are related to fundamental changes in appetitive conditioning processes involving instrumental goal-directed and habitual responding for food reward. Rats were reared either by the mother (maternal rearing; MR) or in complete isolation from the mother and litter (artificial rearing; AR) and tested as adults in two appetitive conditioning tasks. AR and MR rats did not differ in the amount of goal-directed effort they exerted to obtain food reward on progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement. AR and MR rats also did not differ in the shift from goal-directed to habitual responding on a random interval schedule and they were equally sensitive to changes in reward value. The major difference between AR and MR rats was that AR rats exhibited more non-instrumental responses (empty food magazine entries, ineffective lever presses). Thus, early-life social deprivation of rats through AR affects the expression of unreinforced extraneous behaviors when motivational requirements are high, but does not affect conditioned goal-directed and habitual responding to reward. The findings have implications for understanding what aspects of responsiveness to external stimuli may be selectively affected in disorders of inhibition associated with early-life social adversity. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Exploring social class: voices of inter-class couples.

PubMed

McDowell, Teresa; Melendez-Rhodes, Tatiana; Althusius, Erin; Hergic, Sara; Sleeman, Gillian; Ton, Nicky Kieu My; Zimpfer-Bak, A J

2013-01-01

Social class is not often discussed or examined in-depth in couple and family therapy research and literature even though social class shapes familial relationships and is considered an important variable in marital satisfaction. In this qualitative study, we explored the perceptions of eight couples who made lasting commitments across class lines by asking them about the impact of their social class backgrounds on their relationships. Three categories of themes emerged including: (a) differences and similarities in values and attitudes toward education, work, money, and class awareness/classism, (b) relationship issues involving families of origin, friends, and class-based couple conflict, and (c) differences in economic resources, social capital and privileges/opportunities. Implications for assessment and treatment of couples are included. © 2012 American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Adverse early life experience and social stress during adulthood interact to increase serotonin transporter mRNA expression

PubMed Central

Gardner, Katherine L.; Hale, Matthew W.; Lightman, Stafford L.; Plotsky, Paul M.; Lowry, Christopher A.

2009-01-01

Anxiety disorders, depression and animal models of vulnerability to a depression-like syndrome have been associated with dysregulation of serotonergic systems in the brain. To evaluate the effects of early life experience, adverse experiences during adulthood, and potential interactions between these factors on serotonin transporter (slc6a4) mRNA expression, we investigated in rats the effects of maternal separation (180 min/day from days 2–14 of life; MS180), neonatal handing (15 min/day from days 2–14 of life; MS15), or normal animal facility rearing control conditions (AFR) with or without subsequent exposure to adult social defeat on slc6a4 mRNA expression in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DR) and caudal linear nucleus. At the level of specific subdivisions of the DR, there were no differences in slc6a4 mRNA expression between MS15 and AFR rats. Among rats exposed to a novel cage control condition, increased slc6a4 mRNA expression was observed in the dorsal part of the DR in MS180 rats, relative to AFR control rats. In contrast, MS180 rats exposed to social defeat as adults had increased slc6a4 mRNA expression throughout the DR compared to both MS15 and AFR controls. Social defeat increased slc6a4 mRNA expression, but only in MS180 rats and only in the “lateral wings” of the DR. Overall these data demonstrate that early life experience and stressful experience during adulthood interact to determine slc6a4 mRNA expression. These data support the hypothesis that early life experience and major stressful life events contribute to dysregulation of serotonergic systems in stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders. PMID:19781533

Latent class analysis of early developmental trajectory in baby siblings of children with autism.

PubMed

Landa, Rebecca J; Gross, Alden L; Stuart, Elizabeth A; Bauman, Margaret

2012-09-01

Siblings of children with autism (sibs-A) are at increased genetic risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and milder impairments. To elucidate diversity and contour of early developmental trajectories exhibited by sibs-A, regardless of diagnostic classification, latent class modeling was used. Sibs-A (N = 204) were assessed with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning from age 6 to 36 months. Mullen T scores served as dependent variables. Outcome classifications at age 36 months included: ASD (N = 52); non-ASD social/communication delay (broader autism phenotype; BAP; N = 31); and unaffected (N = 121). Child-specific patterns of performance were studied using latent class growth analysis. Latent class membership was then related to diagnostic outcome through estimation of within-class proportions of children assigned to each diagnostic classification. A 4-class model was favored. Class 1 represented accelerated development and consisted of 25.7% of the sample, primarily unaffected children. Class 2 (40.0% of the sample), was characterized by normative development with above-average nonverbal cognitive outcome. Class 3 (22.3% of the sample) was characterized by receptive language, and gross and fine motor delay. Class 4 (12.0% of the sample), was characterized by widespread delayed skill acquisition, reflected by declining trajectories. Children with an outcome diagnosis of ASD were spread across Classes 2, 3, and 4. Results support a category of ASD that involves slowing in early non-social development. Receptive language and motor development is vulnerable to early delay in sibs-A with and without ASD outcomes. Non-ASD sibs-A are largely distributed across classes depicting average or accelerated development. Developmental trajectories of motor, language, and cognition appear independent of communication and social delays in non-ASD sibs-A. © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2012 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Latent Class Analysis of Early Developmental Trajectory in Baby Siblings of Children with Autism

PubMed Central

Landa, Rebecca J.; Gross, Alden L.; Stuart, Elizabeth A.; Bauman, Margaret

2012-01-01

Background Siblings of children with autism (sibs-A) are at increased genetic risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and milder impairments. To elucidate diversity and contour of early developmental trajectories exhibited by sibs-A, regardless of diagnostic classification, latent class modeling was used. Methods Sibs-A (n=204) were assessed with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning from age 6–36 months. Mullen T scores served as dependent variables. Outcome classifications at age 36 months included: ASD (n=52); non-ASD social/communication delay (broader autism phenotype; BAP) (n=31); and unaffected (n=121). Child-specific patterns of performance were studied using latent class growth analysis. Latent class membership was then related to diagnostic outcome through estimation of within-class proportions of children assigned to each diagnostic classification. Results A 4-class model was favored. Class 1 represented accelerated development and consisted of 25.7% of the sample, primarily unaffected children. Class 2 (40.0% of the sample), was characterized by normative development with above-average nonverbal cognitive outcome. Class 3 (22.3% of the sample) was characterized by receptive language, and gross and fine motor delay. Class 4 (12.0% of the sample), was characterized by widespread delayed skill acquisition, reflected by declining trajectories. Children with an outcome diagnosis of ASD were spread across Classes 2, 3, and 4. Conclusions Results support a category of ASD that involves slowing in early non-social development. Receptive language and motor development is vulnerable to early delay in sibs-A with and without ASD outcomes. Non-ASD sibs-A are largely distributed across classes depicting average or accelerated development. Developmental trajectories of motor, language, and cognition appear independent of communication and social delays in non-ASD sibs-A. PMID:22574686

Effects of Early-Life Stress on Social and Anxiety-Like Behaviors in Adult Mice: Sex-Specific Effects

PubMed Central

Lepeshko, Arina A.; Reshetnikov, Vasiliy V.

2018-01-01

Stressful events in an early postnatal period have critical implications for the individual's life and can increase later risk for psychiatric disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of early-life stress on the social behavior of adult male and female mice. C57Bl/6 mice were exposed to maternal separation (MS, 3 h once a day) or handling (HD, 15 min once a day) on postnatal day 2 through 14. Adult male and female mice were tested for social behavior in the social interaction test and for individual behavior in the plus-maze and open-field tests. Female mice exposed to maternal separation had increased social behavior and increased anxiety. MS male mice had no changes in social behavior but had significantly disrupted individual behavior, including locomotor and exploratory activity. Handling had positive effects on social behavior in males and females and decreased anxiety in males. Our results support the hypothesis that brief separation of pups from their mothers (handling), which can be considered as moderate stress, may result in future positive changes in behavior. Maternal separation has deleterious effects on individual behavior and significant sex-specific effects on social behavior. PMID:29619126

Social Class and Japanese Mothers' Support of Young Children's Education: A Qualitative Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yamamoto, Yoko

2015-01-01

The impact of social class backgrounds on young children's educational experiences has attracted increasing attention in early childhood research. However, few longitudinal studies related to social class and parental involvement in young children's education are available, especially in East Asian contexts. In this longitudinal qualitative study,…

Effects of early life abuse differ across development: Infant social behavior deficits are followed by adolescent depressive-like behaviors mediated by the amygdala

PubMed Central

Raineki, Charlis; Cortés, Millie Rincón; Belnoue, Laure; Sullivan, Regina M.

2012-01-01

Abuse during early life, especially from the caregiver, increases vulnerability to develop later life psychopathologies such as depression. Although signs of depression are typically not expressed until later life, signs of dysfunctional social behavior have been found earlier. How infant abuse alters the trajectory of brain development to produce pathways to pathology is not completely understood. Here we address this question using two different but complementary rat models of early-life abuse from postnatal days (PN) 8–12: a naturalistic paradigm, where the mother is provided with insufficient bedding for nest building and a more controlled paradigm, where infants undergo olfactory classical conditioning. Amygdala neural assessment (c-Fos), as well as social behavior and forced swim tests were performed at preweaning (PN20) and adolescence (PN45). Our results show that both models of early life abuse induce deficits in social behavior, even during the preweaning period; however, depressive-like behaviors were observed only during adolescence. Adolescent depressive-like behavior corresponds with an increase in amygdala neural activity in response to forced swim test. A causal relationship between the amygdala and depressive-like behavior was suggested through amygdala temporary deactivation (muscimol infusions), which rescued the depressive-like behavior in the forced swim test. Our results indicate that social behavior deficits in infancy could serve as an early marker for later psychopathology. Moreover, the implication of the amygdala in the ontogeny of depressive-like behaviors in infant abused animals is an important step toward understanding the underlying mechanisms of later life mental disease associated with early-life abuse. PMID:22649253

Quality of life at the retirement transition: Life course pathways in an early 'baby boom' birth cohort.

PubMed

Wildman, Josephine M; Moffatt, Suzanne; Pearce, Mark

2018-06-01

Promoting quality of life (QoL) in later life is an important policy goal. However, studies using prospective data to explore the mechanisms by which earlier events influence QoL in older age are lacking. This study is the first to use prospective data to investigate pathways by which a range of measures of life-course socioeconomic status contribute to later-life QoL. The study uses data from the Newcastle Thousand Families Study cohort (N = 1142), an early 'baby-boom' birth cohort born in 1947 in Newcastle upon Tyne, an industrial city in north-east England. Using prospective survey data collected between birth and later adulthood (N = 393), a path analysis investigated the effects and relative contributions of a range of life-course socioeconomic factors to QoL at age 62-64 measured using the CASP-19 scale. Strong positive effects on later-life QoL were found for advantaged occupational status in mid-life and better self-reported health, employment and mortgage-freedom in later adulthood. Significant positive indirect effects on QoL were found from social class at birth and achieved education level, mediated through later-life socioeconomic advantage. Experiencing no adverse events by age five had a large total positive effect on QoL at age 62-64, comprising a direct effect and indirect effects, mediated through education, mid-life social class and later-life self-reported health. Results support a pathway model with the effects of factors in earlier life acting via later-life factors, and an accumulation model with earlier-life factors having large total, cumulative effects on later-life QoL. The presence of a direct effect of adverse childhood events by age five on QoL suggests a 'critical period' and indicates that policies across the life-course are needed to promote later-life QoL, with policies directed towards older adults perhaps too late to 'undo the damage' of earlier adverse events. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Early-life social experiences in mice affect emotional behaviour and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function.

PubMed

Ros-Simó, Clara; Valverde, Olga

2012-09-01

Early-life stressful experiences are associated to alterations in behavioural responses and development of psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. In rodents, individual housing is considered as a stressful condition whilst enriched environment can protect against stress and its negative consequences. Neuroendocrine responses to stress can also be altered by early-life experiences and seem to contribute to behavioural alterations induced by changes in housing conditions. To develop an improved procedure of social isolation throughout development (from pre-adolescence to adulthood) in CD1 mice and to elucidate its effects on behavioural parameters related to stress and neuroendocrine responses compared to enriched or social conditions. CD1 male mice (PND 21) were housed in social/standard conditions, enriched conditions or isolated conditions during seven weeks. After that, different relevant behaviours were evaluated, including locomotor activity, anxiety-like and despair behaviour. Levels of plasma corticosterone were also analysed before and after a stressful event. CD1 mice exposed to an isolated environment exhibited higher locomotion and anxiety-like responses than animals exposed to social or enriched conditions. In addition, isolated animals showed lower basal plasma corticosterone than social or enriched ones but after a stressful event the elevation of plasma corticosterone was higher, suggesting an enhanced response of the HPA axis to a novel and stressful situation. Social interaction is an important feature to display an appropriate behavioural and neuronal development. Habituation to novel stimuli is impaired in subjects exposed to social isolation and induces increased excitability response to stressful events. Social deprivation increases the possibility of altered neuronal function and could facilitate the development of neuropsychiatric disorders in adulthood. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Relationship between mediation analysis and the structured life course approach

PubMed Central

Howe, Laura D; Smith, Andrew D; Macdonald-Wallis, Corrie; Anderson, Emma L; Galobardes, Bruna; Lawlor, Debbie A; Ben-Shlomo, Yoav; Hardy, Rebecca; Cooper, Rachel; Tilling, Kate; Fraser, Abigail

2016-01-01

Abstract Many questions in life course epidemiology involve mediation and/or interaction because of the long latency period between exposures and outcomes. In this paper, we explore how mediation analysis (based on counterfactual theory and implemented using conventional regression approaches) links with a structured approach to selecting life course hypotheses. Using theory and simulated data, we show how the alternative life course hypotheses assessed in the structured life course approach correspond to different combinations of mediation and interaction parameters. For example, an early life critical period model corresponds to a direct effect of the early life exposure, but no indirect effect via the mediator and no interaction between the early life exposure and the mediator. We also compare these methods using an illustrative real-data example using data on parental occupational social class (early life exposure), own adult occupational social class (mediator) and physical capability (outcome). PMID:27681097

Classes of conduct disorder symptoms and their life course correlates in a US national sample.

PubMed

Breslau, J; Saito, N; Tancredi, D J; Nock, M; Gilman, S E

2012-05-01

Population data on conduct disorder (CD) symptoms can help determine whether hypothesized subtypes of CD are sufficiently disparate in their familial, psychiatric and life course correlates to distinguish separate diagnostic entities. Latent class analysis (LCA) of CD symptoms occurring before age 15 was conducted in a national sample of adults aged 18-44 years from the National Epidemiological Study of Alcohol and Related Conditions. Associations of latent class membership with parental behavior problems, onset of psychiatric disorders and anti-social behaviors after age 15, adolescent life events (e.g. high school drop-out), and past-year life events (e.g. divorce/separation, bankruptcy) were estimated. LCA identified a no-CD class with low prevalence of all symptoms, three intermediate classes - deceit/theft, rule violations, aggression - and a severe class. The prevalence of CD, according to DSM-IV criteria, was 0% in the no-CD class, between 13.33% and 33.69% in the intermediate classes and 62.20% in the severe class. Latent class membership is associated with all the familial, psychiatric and life course outcomes examined. Among the intermediate classes, risk for subsequent mood/anxiety disorders and anti-social behavior was higher in the deceit/theft and aggressive classes than in the rule violations class. However, risk for adolescent life events is highest in the rule violations class. CD symptoms tend to occur in a partially ordered set of classes in the general population. Prognostically meaningful distinctions can be drawn between classes, but only at low levels of symptoms.

Early-Life Origins of the Race Gap in Men's Mortality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Warner, David F.; Hayward, Mark D.

2006-01-01

Using a life course framework, we examine the early life origins of the race gap in men's all-cause mortality. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men (1966-1990), we evaluate major social pathways by which early life conditions differentiate the mortality experiences of blacks and whites. Our findings indicate that early life…

Social power and social class: conceptualization, consequences, and current challenges.

PubMed

Rucker, Derek D; Galinsky, Adam D

2017-12-01

This article offers a primer on social power and social class with respect to their theoretical importance, conceptual distinction, and empirical relationship. We introduce and define the constructs of social power, social class, and one's psychological sense of power. We next explore the complex relationship between social power and social class. Because social class can produce a sense of power within an individual, studies on social power can inform theory and research on social class. We conclude with a discussion of the current challenges and future opportunities for the study of social power and social class. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Relationship between mediation analysis and the structured life course approach.

PubMed

Howe, Laura D; Smith, Andrew D; Macdonald-Wallis, Corrie; Anderson, Emma L; Galobardes, Bruna; Lawlor, Debbie A; Ben-Shlomo, Yoav; Hardy, Rebecca; Cooper, Rachel; Tilling, Kate; Fraser, Abigail

2016-08-01

Many questions in life course epidemiology involve mediation and/or interaction because of the long latency period between exposures and outcomes. In this paper, we explore how mediation analysis (based on counterfactual theory and implemented using conventional regression approaches) links with a structured approach to selecting life course hypotheses. Using theory and simulated data, we show how the alternative life course hypotheses assessed in the structured life course approach correspond to different combinations of mediation and interaction parameters. For example, an early life critical period model corresponds to a direct effect of the early life exposure, but no indirect effect via the mediator and no interaction between the early life exposure and the mediator. We also compare these methods using an illustrative real-data example using data on parental occupational social class (early life exposure), own adult occupational social class (mediator) and physical capability (outcome). © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association.

Interactions of sex and early life social experiences at two developmental stages shape nonapeptide receptor profiles.

PubMed

Hiura, Lisa C; Ophir, Alexander G

2018-05-31

Early life social experiences are critical to behavioral and cognitive development, and can have a tremendous influence on developing social phenotypes. Most work has focused on outcomes of experiences at a single stage of development (e.g., perinatal, or post-weaning). Few studies have assessed the impact of social experience at multiple developmental stages and across sex. Oxytocin and vasopressin are profoundly important for modulating social behavior and these nonapeptide systems are highly sensitive to developmental social experience, particularly in brain areas important for social behavior. We investigated whether oxytocin receptor (OTR) and vasopressin receptor (V1aR) distributions of prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) change as a function of parental composition within the natal nest or social composition after weaning. We raised pups either in the presence or absence of their fathers. At weaning, offspring were housed either individually or with a same-sex sibling. We also examined whether changes in receptor distributions are sexually dimorphic because the impact of the developmental environment on the nonapeptide system could be sex-dependent. We found that differences in nonapeptide receptor expression were region-, sex-, and rearing condition-specific, indicating a high level of complexity in the ways that early life experiences shape the social brain. We found many more differences in V1aR density compared to OTR density, indicating that nonapeptide receptors demonstrate differential levels of neural plasticity and sensitivity to environmental and biological variables. Our data highlight that critical factors including biological sex and multiple experiences across the developmental continuum interact in complex ways to shape the social brain. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Social class, sense of control, and social explanation.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Piff, Paul K; Keltner, Dacher

2009-12-01

Lower social class is associated with diminished resources and perceived subordinate rank. On the basis of this analysis, the authors predicted that social class would be closely associated with a reduced sense of personal control and that this association would explain why lower class individuals favor contextual over dispositional explanations of social events. Across 4 studies, lower social class individuals, as measured by subjective socioeconomic status (SES), endorsed contextual explanations of economic trends, broad social outcomes, and emotion. Across studies, the sense of control mediated the relation between subjective SES and contextual explanations, and this association was independent of objective SES, ethnicity, political ideology, and self-serving biases. Finally, experimentally inducing a higher sense of control attenuated the tendency for lower subjective SES individuals to make more contextual explanations (Study 4). Implications for future research on social class as well as theoretical distinctions between objective SES and subjective SES are discussed.

Early Life Factors and Adult Leisure Time Physical Inactivity Stability and Change.

PubMed

Pinto Pereira, Snehal M; Li, Leah; Power, Chris

2015-09-01

Physical inactivity has a high prevalence and associated disease burden. A better understanding of influences on sustaining and changing inactive lifestyles is needed. We aimed to establish whether leisure time inactivity was stable in midadulthood and whether early life factors were associated with inactivity patterns. In the 1958 British birth cohort (n = 12,271), leisure time inactivity (frequency, less than once a week) assessed at 33 and 50 yr was categorized as "never inactive," "persistently inactive," "deteriorating," or "improving." Early life factors (birth to 16 yr) were categorized into three (physical, social, and behavioral) domains. Using multinomial logistic regression, we assessed associations with inactivity persistence and change of factors within each early life domain and the three domains combined with and without adjustment for adult factors. Inactivity prevalence was similar at 33 and 50 yr (approximately 31%), but 17% deteriorated and 18% improved with age. In models adjusted for all domains simultaneously, factors associated with inactivity persistence versus never inactive were prepubertal stature (8% lower risk/height SD), poor hand control/coordination (17% higher risk/increase on four-point scale), cognition (16% lower/SD in ability) (physical); parental divorce (25% higher), class at birth (7% higher/reduction on four-point scale), minimal parental education (16% higher), household amenities (2% higher/increase in 19-point score (high = poor)) (social); and inactivity (22% higher/reduction in activity on four-point scale), low sports aptitude (47% higher), smoking (30% higher) (behavioral). All except stature, parental education, sports aptitude, and smoking were associated also with inactivity deterioration. Poor hand control/coordination was the only factor associated with improved status (13% lower/increase on four-point scale) versus persistently inactive. Adult leisure time inactivity is moderately stable. Early life factors are

Preventing Obesity Across Generations: Evidence for Early Life Intervention.

PubMed

Haire-Joshu, Debra; Tabak, Rachel

2016-01-01

To prevent the intergenerational transfer of obesity and end the current epidemic, interventions are needed across the early life stages, from preconception to prenatal to infancy through the age of 2 years. The foundation for obesity is laid in early life by actions and interactions passed from parent to child that have long-lasting biologic and behavioral consequences. The purpose of this paper is to examine the best evidence about (a) factors in parents and offspring that promote obesity during the early life stages, (b) the social determinants and dimensions of obesity in early life, (c) promising and effective interventions for preventing obesity in early life, and (d) opportunities for future research into strategies to disrupt the intergenerational cycle of obesity that begins early in life. The pathway for halting the intergenerational obesity epidemic requires the discovery and development of evidence-based interventions that can act across multiple dimensions of influence on early life.

Preventing Obesity Across Generations: Evidence for Early Life Intervention

PubMed Central

Haire-Joshu, Debra; Tabak, Rachel

2017-01-01

To prevent the intergenerational transfer of obesity and end the current epidemic, interventions are needed across the early life stages, from preconception to prenatal to infancy through the age of 2 years. The foundation for obesity is laid in early life by actions and interactions passed from parent to child that have long-lasting biologic and behavioral consequences. The purpose of this paper is to examine the best evidence about (a) factors in parents and offspring that promote obesity during the early life stages, (b) the social determinants and dimensions of obesity in early life, (c) promising and effective interventions for preventing obesity in early life, and (d) opportunities for future research into strategies to disrupt the intergenerational cycle of obesity that begins early in life. The pathway for halting the intergenerational obesity epidemic requires the discovery and development of evidence-based interventions that can act across multiple dimensions of influence on early life. PMID:26989828

Social-class differences in self-concept clarity and their implications for well-being.

PubMed

Na, Jinkyung; Chan, Micaela Y; Lodi-Smith, Jennifer; Park, Denise C

2018-06-01

A consistent/stable sense of the self is more valued in middle-class contexts than working-class contexts; hence, we predicted that middle-class individuals would have higher self-concept clarity than working-class individuals. It is further expected that self-concept clarity would be more important to one's well-being among middle-class individuals than among working-class individuals. Supporting these predictions, self-concept clarity was positively associated with higher social class. Moreover, although self-concept clarity was associated with higher life satisfaction and better mental health, the association significantly attenuated among working-class individuals. In addition, self-concept clarity was not associated with physical health and its association with physical health did not interact with social class.

Social-class differences in self-concept clarity and their implications for well-being

PubMed Central

Na, Jinkyung; Chan, Micaela Y.; Lodi-Smith, Jennifer; Park, Denise C.

2017-01-01

A consistent/stable sense of the self is more valued in middle-class contexts than working-class contexts; hence we predicted that middle-class individuals would have higher SCC than working-class individuals. It is further expected that SCC would be more important to one’s well-being among middle-class individuals than among working-class individuals. Supporting these predictions, SCC was positively associated with higher social-class. Moreover, although SCC was associated with higher life satisfaction and better mental health, the association significantly attenuated among working-class individuals. In addition, SCC was not associated with physical health and its association with physical health did not interact with social class. PMID:27114215

Social Relationships and Health Behavior Across Life Course

PubMed Central

Umberson, Debra; Crosnoe, Robert; Reczek, Corinne

2011-01-01

Sociological theory and research point to the importance of social relationships in affecting health behavior. This work tends to focus on specific stages of the life course, with a division between research on childhood/adolescent and adult populations. Yet recent advances demonstrate that early life course experiences shape health outcomes well into adulthood. We synthesize disparate bodies of research on social ties and health behavior throughout the life course, with attention to explaining how various social ties influence health behaviors at different life stages and how these processes accumulate and reverberate throughout the life course. PMID:21921974

Intimate Relationship Development during the Transition to Adulthood: Differences by Social Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meier, Ann; Allen, Gina

2008-01-01

This article examines differences in young adults' intimate relationships by social class. Lower-class adolescents are more likely to engage in intimate-relationship practices such as cohabitation, early marriage, and sexual activity that may lead to further economic and educational deprivation. Such adolescents have limited access to the special…

Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: how the rich are different from the poor.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Piff, Paul K; Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo; Rheinschmidt, Michelle L; Keltner, Dacher

2012-07-01

Social class is shaped by an individual's material resources as well as perceptions of rank vis-à-vis others in society, and in this article, we examine how class influences behavior. Diminished resources and lower rank create contexts that constrain social outcomes for lower-class individuals and enhance contextualist tendencies--that is, a focus on external, uncontrollable social forces and other individuals who influence one's life outcomes. In contrast, abundant resources and elevated rank create contexts that enhance the personal freedoms of upper-class individuals and give rise to solipsistic social cognitive tendencies--that is, an individualistic focus on one's own internal states, goals, motivations, and emotions. Guided by this framework, we detail 9 hypotheses and relevant empirical evidence concerning how class-based contextualist and solipsistic tendencies shape the self, perceptions of the social environment, and relationships to other individuals. Novel predictions and implications for research in other socio-political contexts are considered. Copyright 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Social class rank, essentialism, and punitive judgment.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Keltner, Dacher

2013-08-01

Recent evidence suggests that perceptions of social class rank influence a variety of social cognitive tendencies, from patterns of causal attribution to moral judgment. In the present studies we tested the hypotheses that upper-class rank individuals would be more likely to endorse essentialist lay theories of social class categories (i.e., that social class is founded in genetically based, biological differences) than would lower-class rank individuals and that these beliefs would decrease support for restorative justice--which seeks to rehabilitate offenders, rather than punish unlawful action. Across studies, higher social class rank was associated with increased essentialism of social class categories (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and decreased support for restorative justice (Study 4). Moreover, manipulated essentialist beliefs decreased preferences for restorative justice (Study 3), and the association between social class rank and class-based essentialist theories was explained by the tendency to endorse beliefs in a just world (Study 2). Implications for how class-based essentialist beliefs potentially constrain social opportunity and mobility are discussed.

Operationalizing Max Weber's probability concept of class situation: the concept of social class.

PubMed

Smith, Ken

2007-03-01

In this essay I take seriously Max Weber's astonishingly neglected claim that class situation may be defined, not in categorial terms, but probabilistically. I then apply this idea to another equally neglected claim made by Weber that the boundaries of social classes may be determined by the degree of social mobility within such classes. Taking these two ideas together I develop the idea of a non-categorial boundary 'surface' between classes and of a social class 'corridor' made up of all those people who are still to be found within the boundaries of the social class into which they were born. I call social mobility within a social class 'intra-class social mobility' and social mobility between classes 'inter-class social mobility'. I also claim that this distinction resolves the dispute between those sociologists who claim that late industrial societies are still highly class bound and those who think that this is no longer the case. Both schools are right I think, but one is referring to a high degree of intra-class social mobility and the other to an equally high degree of inter-class mobility. Finally I claim that this essay provides sociology with only one example among many other possible applications of how probability theory might usefully be used to overcome boundary problems generally in sociology.

Latent class analysis of the feared situations of social anxiety disorder: A population-based study.

PubMed

Peyre, Hugo; Hoertel, Nicolas; Rivollier, Fabrice; Landman, Benjamin; McMahon, Kibby; Chevance, Astrid; Lemogne, Cédric; Delorme, Richard; Blanco, Carlos; Limosin, Frédéric

2016-12-01

Little is known about differences in mental health comorbidity and quality of life in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) according to the number and the types of feared situations. Using a US nationally representative sample, the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, we performed latent class analysis to compare the prevalence rates of mental disorders and quality of life measures across classes defined by the number and the types of feared social situations among individuals with SAD. Among the 2,448 participants with a lifetime diagnosis of SAD, we identified three classes of individuals who feared most social situations but differed in the number of feared social situations (generalized severe [N = 378], generalized moderate [N = 1,049] and generalized low [N = 443]) and a class of subjects who feared only performance situations [N = 578]. The magnitude of associations between each class and a wide range of mental disorders and quality of life measures were consistent with a continuum model, supporting that the deleterious effects of SAD on mental health may increase with the number of social situations feared. However, we found that individuals with the "performance only" specifier may constitute an exception to this model because these participants had significantly better mental health than other participants with SAD. Our findings give additional support to the recent changes made in the DSM-5, including the introduction of the "performance only" specifier and the removal of the "generalized" specifier to promote the dimensional approach of the number of social fears. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Effects of social support and stressful life events on health-related quality of life in coronary artery disease patients.

PubMed

Staniute, Margarita; Brozaitiene, Julija; Bunevicius, Robertas

2013-01-01

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of social support and stressful life events on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients. Five hundred sixty consecutive patients with CAD attending cardiac rehabilitation program were invited to participate in the study. Data on stressful life events, perceived social support, and HRQoL were collected from the self-administered questionnaires, Social Readjustment Rating Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and 36-Item Short Form Medical Outcome Questionnaire, respectively. In male patients, multivariate linear regression analyses revealed that physical domains of the HRQoL, specifically physical functioning, were associated with clinical aspects of the CAD, such as New York Heart Association class and angina pectoris class, and psychological domains of the HRQoL such as mental health, energy/vitality, and social functioning were associated with social characteristics such as stressful life events and perceived social support. In women, both physical and psychological domains of the HRQoL were associated only with social characteristics, especially with perceived social support. Perceived social support and stressful life events have independent significant effects on the HRQoL in CAD patients, especially in female patients. When planning cardiac rehabilitation programs, special attention should be paid to patients who experience high levels of stress and have low social support.

Interrupted Trajectories: The Impact of Academic Failure on the Social Mobility of Working-Class Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Byrom, Tina; Lightfoot, Nic

2013-01-01

Higher education (HE) is often viewed as a conduit for social mobility through which working-class students can secure improved life-chances. However, the link between HE and social mobility is largely viewed as unproblematic. Little research has explored the possible impact of academic failure (in HE) on the trajectories of working-class students…

Early Life Stress, Air Pollution, Inflammation, and Disease: An Integrative Review and Immunologic Model of Social-Environmental Adversity and Lifespan Health.

PubMed

Olvera Alvarez, Hector A; Kubzansky, Laura D; Campen, Matthew J; Slavich, George M

2018-06-03

Socially disadvantaged individuals are at greater risk for simultaneously being exposed to adverse social and environmental conditions. Although the mechanisms underlying joint effects remain unclear, one hypothesis is that toxic social and environmental exposures have synergistic effects on inflammatory processes that underlie the development of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and certain types of cancer. In the present review, we examine how exposure to two risk factors that commonly occur with social disadvantage-early life stress and air pollution-affect health. Specifically, we identify neuroimmunologic pathways that could link early life stress, inflammation, air pollution, and poor health, and use this information to propose an integrated, multi-level model that describes how these factors may interact and cause health disparity across individuals based on social disadvantage. This model highlights the importance of interdisciplinary research considering multiple exposures across domains and the potential for synergistic, cross-domain effects on health, and may help identify factors that could potentially be targeted to reduce disease risk and improve lifespan health. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Teaching Social Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tablante, Courtney B.; Fiske, Susan T.

2015-01-01

Discussing socioeconomic status in college classes can be challenging. Both teachers and students feel uncomfortable, yet social class matters more than ever. This is especially true, given increased income inequality in the United States and indications that higher education does not reduce this inequality as much as many people hope. Resources…

Social Class and Social Action: The Middle-Class Bias of Democratic Theory in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schutz, Aaron

2008-01-01

Background: This article examines the emergence of the middle and working classes in America and describes key characteristics of these cultures as they manifest themselves today. It then explores the effects of social class on our conceptions of democracy. Purpose: To help educators understand the relationship between social action strategies and…

Social Class and Work-Related Decisions: Measurement, Theory, and Social Mobility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fouad, Nadya A.; Fitzpatrick, Mary E.

2009-01-01

In this reaction to Diemer and Ali's article, "Integrating Social Class Into Vocational Psychology: Theory and Practice Implications," the authors point out concerns with binary schema of social class, highlight the contribution of social class to the social cognitive career theory, argue for a more nuanced look at ways that work…

Loneliness and Life Satisfaction in Turkish Early Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Self Esteem and Social Support

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kapikiran, Sahin

2013-01-01

This study aimed to measure whether self-esteem and social support are mediators in the relationship between loneliness and life satisfaction. The study includes early teenagers from the 6th, 7th and 8th grades aged between 11 and 15 (M = 13.31, SD = 1.09). The study group consisted of 431 secondary school students from large and medium sized…

Social Class and the Extracurriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barratt, Will

2012-01-01

Social class is a powerful and often unrecognized influence on student participation in the extracurriculum. Spontaneous student-created extracurricular experiences depend on students affiliating and interacting with each other; student social class is a powerful influence on student affiliations. Students tend to exercise consciousness of kind-…

Asperger syndrome and "non-verbal learning problems" in a longitudinal perspective: neuropsychological and social adaptive outcome in early adult life.

PubMed

Hagberg, Bibbi S; Nydén, Agneta; Cederlund, Mats; Gillberg, Christopher

2013-12-15

Co-existence of Asperger syndrome (AS) and non-verbal learning disability (NLD) has been proposed based on the observation that people with AS tend to have significantly higher verbal than performance IQ (VIQ > PIQ by ≥ 15 points), one of the core features of NLD. In the present study we examined neuropsychological and social adaptive profiles with "non-verbal learning problems" associated with NLD in a group of individuals with AS followed from childhood into early adult life. The group was divided into three subgroups: (i) persistent NLD (P-NLD), i.e. NLD (VIQ > PIQ) both in childhood and early adulthood occasions, (ii) childhood NLD (CO-NLD), i.e. NLD (VIQ > PIQ) only at original diagnosis, or (iii) No NLD (VIQ > PIQ) ever (NO-NLD). All three subgroups were followed prospectively from childhood into adolescence and young adult life. One in four to one in five of the whole group of males with AS had P-NLD. The P-NLD subgroup had poorer neuropsychological outcome in early adult life than did those with CO-NLD and those with NO-NLD. There were no unequivocal markers in early childhood that predicted subgroup status in early adult life, but early motor delay and a history of early speech-language problems tended to be associated with P-NLD. © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Gender, social class, and women's employment.

PubMed

McGinn, Kathleen L; Oh, Eunsil

2017-12-01

People in low-power positions, whether due to gender or class, tend to exhibit other-oriented rather than self-oriented behavior. Women's experiences at work and at home are shaped by social class, heightening identification with gender for relatively upper class women and identification with class for relatively lower class women, potentially mitigating, or even reversing, class-based differences documented in past research. Gender-class differences are reflected in women's employment beliefs and behaviors. Research integrating social class with gendered experiences in homes and workplaces deepens our understanding of the complex interplay between sources of power and status in society. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Early-life experience affects honey bee aggression and resilience to immune challenge

PubMed Central

Rittschof, Clare C.; Coombs, Chelsey B.; Frazier, Maryann; Grozinger, Christina M.; Robinson, Gene E.

2015-01-01

Early-life social experiences cause lasting changes in behavior and health for a variety of animals including humans, but it is not well understood how social information ‘‘gets under the skin’’ resulting in these effects. Adult honey bees (Apis mellifera) exhibit socially coordinated collective nest defense, providing a model for social modulation of aggressive behavior. Here we report for the first time that a honey bee’s early-life social environment has lasting effects on individual aggression: bees that experienced high-aggression environments during pre-adult stages showed increased aggression when they reached adulthood relative to siblings that experienced low-aggression environments, even though all bees were kept in a common environment during adulthood. Unlike other animals including humans however, high-aggression honey bees were more, rather than less, resilient to immune challenge, assessed as neonicotinoid pesticide susceptibility. Moreover, aggression was negatively correlated with ectoparasitic mite presence. In honey bees, early-life social experience has broad effects, but increased aggression is decoupled from negative health outcomes. Because honey bees and humans share aspects of their physiological response to aggressive social encounters, our findings represent a step towards identifying ways to improve individual resiliency. Pre-adult social experience may be crucial to the health of the ecologically threatened honey bee. PMID:26493190

Social class, contextualism, and empathic accuracy.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Côté, Stéphane; Keltner, Dacher

2010-11-01

Recent research suggests that lower-class individuals favor explanations of personal and political outcomes that are oriented to features of the external environment. We extended this work by testing the hypothesis that, as a result, individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people. In three studies, lower-class individuals (compared with upper-class individuals) received higher scores on a test of empathic accuracy (Study 1), judged the emotions of an interaction partner more accurately (Study 2), and made more accurate inferences about emotion from static images of muscle movements in the eyes (Study 3). Moreover, the association between social class and empathic accuracy was explained by the tendency for lower-class individuals to explain social events in terms of features of the external environment. The implications of class-based patterns in empathic accuracy for well-being and relationship outcomes are discussed.

Is social class standardisation appropriate in occupational studies?

PubMed Central

Brisson, C; Loomis, D; Pearce, N

1987-01-01

Social class standardisation has been proposed as a method for separating the effects of occupation and "social" or "lifestyle" factors in epidemiological studies, by comparing workers in a particular occupation with other workers in the same social class. The validity of this method rests upon two assumptions: (1) that social factors have the same effect in all occupational groups in the same social class, and (2) that other workers in the same social class as the workers being studied are free of occupational risk factors for the disease of interest. These assumptions will not always be satisfied. In particular, the effect of occupation will be underestimated when the comparison group also has job-related exposures which cause the disease under study. Thus, although adjustment for social class may minimise bias due to social factors, it may introduce bias due to unmeasured occupational factors. This difficulty may be magnified when occupational category is used as the measure of social class. Because of this potential bias, adjustment for social class should be done only after careful consideration of the exposures and disease involved and should be based on an appropriate definition of social class. Both crude and standardised results should be presented when such adjustments are made. PMID:3455422

The Subjective Experience of Social Class and Upward Mobility Among African American Men in Graduate School

PubMed Central

Sánchez, Francisco J.; Liu, William Ming; Leathers, Leslie; Goins, Joyce; Vilain, Eric

2011-01-01

We used Consensual Qualitative Research Methodology to analyze responses from 14 African American men (MdnAge = 25 years-old) in graduate school at a predominantly-White university in the Midwestern region of the United Sates regarding how they acquired awareness of their social-class status; how social class was related to their sense of masculinity; how social class was related to race and skin tone; and the role that education and a romantic partner could play in upward mobility. School peers were the main source for their early awareness of social class. Many believed that discrimination maintains social class stratification that disadvantages racial minorities and that one's race will always trump any personal characteristics—including having light-complected skin and an advanced degree. Finally many overcame several obstacles during their educational career, and most believed that a romantic relationship with a woman from a privileged background could facilitate upward mobility. Psychological scientists and practitioners are encouraged to consider the role that social class plays when examining men's well-being. PMID:22058659

Social class at birth and risk of psychosis.

PubMed

O'Donoghue, Brian; Fanning, Felicity; Lyne, John; Renwick, Laoise; Madigan, Kevin; Kinsella, Anthony; Lane, Abbie; Turner, Niall; O'Callaghan, Eadbhard; Clarke, Mary

2015-12-01

Individuals with psychotic disorders are represented more in the lower social classes, yet there is conflicting evidence to whether these individuals drift into the lower social classes or whether lower social class is a risk factor for developing psychosis. The aim of this study was to examine whether the social class at birth is a risk factor for developing psychosis. We included individuals with a first episode of psychosis (FEP) whose social class at birth was determined from birth records. We employed a case-control study design and also compared the distribution of the social classes at birth of the cases to that of the general population. A total of 380 individuals with an FEP and 760 controls were included in the case-control study. The odds ratio for developing an FEP associated with social class (low vs high) was .62 (95% confidence interval (CI): .46-.85, p < .001), indicating that individuals from a lower social class at birth have a reduced risk of psychosis. Individuals born between 1961 and 1980 with an FEP were more likely to be from a higher social class at birth compared to the general population (60.8% vs 36.7%, χ(2) = 60.85, df = 1, p < .001). However, this association was not observed for those born between 1981 and 1990. A higher social class at birth is associated with a greater risk for developing a psychotic disorder; however, this effect may show temporal variation. © The Author(s) 2015.

Uncovering the Stories about Social Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harper, Vernon B., Jr.

2006-01-01

Social class remains one of the chief prisms through which reality is interpreted. It is vital for a student to understand how this prism influences their internal representations of themselves and others. In this activity, social class is viewed as a social construction of perceived financial and/or economic status developed through societal…

Children's Understanding of Social Class Differences.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naimark, Hedwin

Investigated were school children's recognition of social class distinctions, cues they used, and the relationship of their ideas about social class to other beliefs and attitudes about the social world. An ethnically mixed group of 201 male and female subjects participated in the study. Five age groups were represented: second, fifth, and sixth…

Social space, social class and Bourdieu: health inequalities in British Columbia, Canada.

PubMed

Veenstra, Gerry

2007-03-01

This article adopts Pierre Bourdieu's cultural-structuralist approach to conceptualizing and identifying social classes in social space and seeks to identify health effects of class in one Canadian province. Utilizing data from an original questionnaire survey of randomly selected adults from 25 communities in British Columbia, social (class) groupings defined by cultural tastes and dispositions, lifestyle practices, social background, educational capital, economic capital, social capital and occupational categories are presented in visual mappings of social space constructed by use of exploratory multiple correspondence analysis techniques. Indicators of physical and mental health are then situated within this social space, enabling speculations pertaining to health effects of social class in British Columbia.

Inadvertent Exemplars: Life History Portraits of Two Socially Just Principals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scanlan, Martin

2012-01-01

This study creates life history portraits of two White middle-class native-English-speaking principals demonstrating commitments to social justice in their work in public elementary schools serving disproportionately high populations of students who are marginalized by poverty, race, and linguistic heritage. Through self-reported life histories of…

Early-Life State-of-Residence Characteristics and Later Life Hypertension, Diabetes, and Ischemic Heart Disease.

PubMed

Rehkopf, David H; Eisen, Ellen A; Modrek, Sepideh; Mokyr Horner, Elizabeth; Goldstein, Benjamin; Costello, Sadie; Cantley, Linda F; Slade, Martin D; Cullen, Mark R

2015-08-01

We examined how state characteristics in early life are associated with individual chronic disease later in life. We assessed early-life state of residence using the first 3 digits of social security numbers from blue- and white-collar workers from a US manufacturing company. Longitudinal data were available from 1997 to 2012, with 305 936 person-years of observation. Disease was assessed using medical claims. We modeled associations using pooled logistic regression with inverse probability of censoring weights. We found small but statistically significant associations between early-state-of-residence characteristics and later life hypertension, diabetes, and ischemic heart disease. The most consistent associations were with income inequality, percentage non-White, and education. These associations were similar after statistically controlling for individual socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and current state characteristics. Characteristics of the state in which an individual lives early in life are associated with prevalence of chronic disease later in life, with a strength of association equivalent to genetic associations found for these same health outcomes.

Social class, power, and selfishness: when and why upper and lower class individuals behave unethically.

PubMed

Dubois, David; Rucker, Derek D; Galinsky, Adam D

2015-03-01

Are the rich more unethical than the poor? To answer this question, the current research introduces a key conceptual distinction between selfish and unethical behavior. Based on this distinction, the current article offers 2 novel findings that illuminate the relationship between social class and unethical behavior. First, the effects of social class on unethical behavior are not invariant; rather, the effects of social class are moderated by whether unethical behavior benefits the self or others. Replicating past work, social class positively predicted unethical behavior; however, this relationship was only observed when that behavior was self-beneficial. When unethical behavior was performed to benefit others, social class negatively predicted unethical behavior; lower class individuals were more likely than upper class individuals to engage in unethical behavior. Overall, social class predicts people's tendency to behave selfishly, rather than predicting unethical behavior per se. Second, individuals' sense of power drove the effects of social class on unethical behavior. Evidence for this relationship was provided in three forms. First, income, but not education level, predicted unethical behavior. Second, feelings of power mediated the effect of social class on unethical behavior, but feelings of status did not. Third, two distinct manipulations of power produced the same moderation by self-versus-other beneficiary as was found with social class. The current theoretical framework and data both synthesize and help to explain a range of findings in the social class and power literatures. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Time and Money Explain Social Class Differences in Students' Social Integration at University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rubin, Mark; Wright, Chrysalis L.

2017-01-01

Working-class students tend to be less socially integrated at university than middle-class students. The present research investigated two potential reasons for this working-class social exclusion effect. First, working-class students may have fewer finances available to participate in social activities. Second, working-class students tend to be…

Social class differences in self, attribution, and attention: socially expansive individualism of middle-class Americans.

PubMed

Bowman, Nicholas A; Kitayama, Shinobu; Nisbett, Richard E

2009-07-01

Although U.S. culture strongly sanctions the ideal of independence, the specific ways in which independence is realized may be variable depending, among other factors, on social class. Characterized by relative scarcity of social and material resources, working-class (WC) Americans were expected to strongly value self-reliance. In contrast, with choices among abundant resources, middle-class (MC) Americans were expected to value personal control and social expansiveness. In support of this analysis, relative to their WC counterparts, MC Americans reported more support from friends and greater likelihood of giving and receiving advice but less self-reliance (Study 1). Furthermore, we found evidence that this social difference has cognitive consequences: College students with MC backgrounds were more likely than their WC counterparts were to endorse situational attributions for others' behavior (Studies 2a and 2b) as well as to show holistic visual attention (Study 3).

Early Life Stress Increases Metabolic Risk, HPA Axis Reactivity, and Depressive-Like Behavior When Combined with Postweaning Social Isolation in Rats.

PubMed

Vargas, Javier; Junco, Mariana; Gomez, Carlos; Lajud, Naima

2016-01-01

Early-life stress is associated with depression and metabolic abnormalities that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Such associations could be due to increased glucocorticoid levels. Periodic maternal separation in the neonate and rearing in social isolation are potent stressors that increase hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis activity. Moreover, social isolation promotes feed intake and body weight gain in rats subjected to periodic maternal separation; however, its effects on metabolic risks have not been described. In the present study, we evaluated whether periodic maternal separation, social isolation rearing, and a combination of these two stressors (periodic maternal separation + social isolation rearing) impair glucose homeostasis and its relation to the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and depressive-like behavior. Periodic maternal separation increased basal corticosterone levels, induced a passive coping strategy in the forced swimming test, and was associated with a mild (24%) increase in fasting glucose, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia. Rearing in social isolation increased stress reactivity in comparison to both controls and in combination with periodic maternal separation, without affecting the coping strategy associated with the forced swimming test. However, social isolation also increased body weight gain, fasting glucose (120%), and insulin levels in rats subjected to periodic maternal separation. Correlation analyses showed that stress-induced effects on coping strategy on the forced swimming test (but not on metabolic risk markers) are associated with basal corticosterone levels. These findings suggest that maternal separation and postweaning social isolation affect stress and metabolic vulnerability differentially and that early-life stress-related effects on metabolism are not directly dependent on glucocorticoid levels. In conclusion, our study supports the cumulative stress hypothesis, which suggests that

[Social representations of elders' quality of life].

PubMed

Silva, Luípa Michele; Silva, Antonia Oliveira; Tura, Luiz Fernando Rangel; Moreira, Maria Adelaide Silva Paredes; Rodrigues, Rosalina Aparecida Partezani; Marques, Maria do Céu

2012-03-01

This study aimed to identify elders' social representations of quality of life. This is an exploratory study with a sample of 240 elders, of both sexes. For data collection we used a Free Association Test with Words, using the inductive stimulus 'quality of life" and sociodemographic variables. The interviews were analyzed with the software Alceste. Of the 240 studied eslders, 167 were women, with the dominant age from 60 to 69 years, income between two and three minimum wages, most of the married and with catholicism as the predominant religion. The results from Alceste pointed towards seven hierarchical classes: accessibility, work, activity, support affection, care and interactions. Social representations of quality of life by elders can support professionals in understanding the adhesion to preventive practices for the elderly and in strengthening policies directed to this population.

Social class rank, threat vigilance, and hostile reactivity.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Horberg, E J; Goetz, Jennifer L; Keltner, Dacher

2011-10-01

Lower-class individuals, because of their lower rank in society, are theorized to be more vigilant to social threats relative to their high-ranking upper-class counterparts. This class-related vigilance to threat, the authors predicted, would shape the emotional content of social interactions in systematic ways. In Study 1, participants engaged in a teasing interaction with a close friend. Lower-class participants--measured in terms of social class rank in society and within the friendship--more accurately tracked the hostile emotions of their friend. As a result, lower-class individuals experienced more hostile emotion contagion relative to upper-class participants. In Study 2, lower-class participants manipulated to experience lower subjective socioeconomic rank showed more hostile reactivity to ambiguous social scenarios relative to upper-class participants and to lower-class participants experiencing elevated socioeconomic rank. The results suggest that class affects expectations, perception, and experience of hostile emotion, particularly in situations in which lower-class individuals perceive their subordinate rank.

Air pollution in early life and adult mortality from chronic rheumatic heart disease.

PubMed

Phillips, David I W; Osmond, Clive; Williams, Martin L; Jones, Alexander

2017-08-01

Chronic rheumatic heart disease (RHD) remains a globally important cause of heart disease. The reasons for the continuing high prevalence of this disease are obscure, but it may have its origins in the poor social and economic conditions with which the disease has been consistently and strongly linked. Mortality studies from the UK have suggested the importance of adverse environmental factors in early life; these studies demonstrated specific geographical associations between high rates of chest infection during infancy and subsequent RHD. They raised the possibility that early air pollution, which is known to be strongly linked with chest infection during infancy, may predispose to RHD. We related estimates of air pollution and social conditions developed by Daly in 1951-52 for 78 urban areas in England and Wales to their subsequent RHD mortality rates at ages 35-74 in men and women during 1993-2012. There were strong relationships between domestic air pollution and RHD [relative risk per standard deviation (SD) increase in pollution 1.168, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.128 to 1.210, P < 0.001). Inclusion of published data on social class, education, crowding and population density in multiple regression analyses showed that the air pollution association was independent of these; only overcrowding was separately linked with RHD. We present the first evidence of an association between air pollution in early life and RHD. Although there are several limitations to this study, the strength and consistency of the results, together with their biological plausibility, suggest a causal link. This deserves attention because it may have important consequences for the control of RHD in resource-poor countries where widespread use of biomass fuels and domestic pollution remain a problem. © The Author 2016; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association

Class, Social Suffering, and Health Consumerism.

PubMed

Merrild, Camilla Hoffmann; Risør, Mette Bech; Vedsted, Peter; Andersen, Rikke Sand

2016-01-01

In recent years an extensive social gradient in cancer outcome has attracted much attention, with late diagnosis proposed as one important reason for this. Whereas earlier research has investigated health care seeking among cancer patients, these social differences may be better understood by looking at health care seeking practices among people who are not diagnosed with cancer. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among two different social classes in Denmark, our aim in this article is to explore the relevance of class to health care seeking practices and illness concerns. In the higher middle class, we predominantly encountered health care seeking resembling notions of health consumerism, practices sanctioned and encouraged by the health care system. However, among people in the lower working class, health care seeking was often shaped by the inseparability of physical, political, and social dimensions of discomfort, making these practices difficult for the health care system to accommodate.

Life Satisfaction in Early Adolescence: Personal, Neighborhood, School, Family, and Peer Influences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oberle, Eva; Schonert-Reichl, Kimberly A.; Zumbo, Bruno D.

2011-01-01

Drawing from an ecological assets framework as well as research and theory on positive youth development, this study examined the relationship of early adolescents' satisfaction with life to trait optimism and assets representing the social contexts in which early adolescents spend most of their time. Self-reports of satisfaction with life,…

The undervalued self: social class and self-evaluation

PubMed Central

Kraus, Michael W.; Park, Jun W.

2014-01-01

Social class ranks people on the social ladder of society, and in this research we examine how perceptions of economic standing shape the way that individuals evaluate the self. Given that reminders of one’s own subordinate status in society are an indicator of how society values the self in comparison to others, we predicted that chronic lower perceptions of economic standing vis-à-vis others would explain associations between objective social class and negative self-evaluation, whereas situation-specific reminders of low economic standing would elicit negative self-evaluations, particularly in those from lower-class backgrounds. In Study 1, perceptions of social class rank accounted for the positive relationship between objective material resource measures of social class and self-esteem. In Study 2, lower-class individuals who received a low (versus equal) share of economic resources in an economic game scenario reported more negative self-conscious emotions—a correlate of negative self-evaluation—relative to upper-class individuals. Discussion focused on the implications of this research for understanding class-based cultural models of the self, and for how social class shapes self-evaluations chronically. PMID:25538654

The undervalued self: social class and self-evaluation.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Park, Jun W

2014-01-01

Social class ranks people on the social ladder of society, and in this research we examine how perceptions of economic standing shape the way that individuals evaluate the self. Given that reminders of one's own subordinate status in society are an indicator of how society values the self in comparison to others, we predicted that chronic lower perceptions of economic standing vis-à-vis others would explain associations between objective social class and negative self-evaluation, whereas situation-specific reminders of low economic standing would elicit negative self-evaluations, particularly in those from lower-class backgrounds. In Study 1, perceptions of social class rank accounted for the positive relationship between objective material resource measures of social class and self-esteem. In Study 2, lower-class individuals who received a low (versus equal) share of economic resources in an economic game scenario reported more negative self-conscious emotions-a correlate of negative self-evaluation-relative to upper-class individuals. Discussion focused on the implications of this research for understanding class-based cultural models of the self, and for how social class shapes self-evaluations chronically.

Early life stress impairs social recognition due to a blunted response of vasopressin release within the septum of adult male rats.

PubMed

Lukas, Michael; Bredewold, Remco; Landgraf, Rainer; Neumann, Inga D; Veenema, Alexa H

2011-07-01

Early life stress poses a risk for the development of psychopathologies characterized by disturbed emotional, social, and cognitive performance. We used maternal separation (MS, 3h daily, postnatal days 1-14) to test whether early life stress impairs social recognition performance in juvenile (5-week-old) and adult (16-week-old) male Wistar rats. Social recognition was tested in the social discrimination test and defined by increased investigation by the experimental rat towards a novel rat compared with a previously encountered rat. Juvenile control and MS rats demonstrated successful social recognition at inter-exposure intervals of 30 and 60 min. However, unlike adult control rats, adult MS rats failed to discriminate between a previously encountered and a novel rat after 60 min. The social recognition impairment of adult MS rats was accompanied by a lack of a rise in arginine vasopressin (AVP) release within the lateral septum seen during social memory acquisition in adult control rats. This blunted response of septal AVP release was social stimulus-specific because forced swimming induced a rise in septal AVP release in both control and MS rats. Retrodialysis of AVP (1 μg/ml, 3.3 μl/min, 30 min) into the lateral septum during social memory acquisition restored social recognition in adult MS rats at the 60-min interval. These studies demonstrate that MS impairs social recognition performance in adult rats, which is likely caused by blunted septal AVP activation. Impaired social recognition may be linked to MS-induced changes in other social behaviors like aggression as shown previously. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social Class Experiences of Working-Class Students: Transitioning out of College

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Treager Huber, Carey

2010-01-01

Issues surrounding social class are often overlooked and rarely discussed in higher education; however, they affect students and institutions in critical ways. Although research has demonstrated that social class is a predictor of access to college, retention, academic performance, overall undergraduate and graduate experience, and college…

Social Class and Education: Global Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weis, Lois, Ed.; Dolby, Nadine, Ed.

2012-01-01

"Social Class and Education: Global Perspectives" is the first empirically grounded volume to explore the intersections of class, social structure, opportunity, and education on a truly global scale. Fifteen essays from contributors representing the US, Europe, China, Latin America and other regions offer an unparralleled examination of…

Early-Life Stressors, Personality Development, and Fast Life Strategies: An Evolutionary Perspective on Malevolent Personality Features.

PubMed

Csathó, Árpád; Birkás, Béla

2018-01-01

Life history theory posits that behavioral adaptation to various environmental (ecological and/or social) conditions encountered during childhood is regulated by a wide variety of different traits resulting in various behavioral strategies. Unpredictable and harsh conditions tend to produce fast life history strategies, characterized by early maturation, a higher number of sexual partners to whom one is less attached, and less parenting of offspring. Unpredictability and harshness not only affects dispositional social and emotional functioning, but may also promote the development of personality traits linked to higher rates of instability in social relationships or more self-interested behavior. Similarly, detrimental childhood experiences, such as poor parental care or high parent-child conflict, affect personality development and may create a more distrustful, malicious interpersonal style. The aim of this brief review is to survey and summarize findings on the impact of negative early-life experiences on the development of personality and fast life history strategies. By demonstrating that there are parallels in adaptations to adversity in these two domains, we hope to lend weight to current and future attempts to provide a comprehensive insight of personality traits and functions at the ultimate and proximate levels.

Economic inequality, working-class power, social capital, and cause-specific mortality in wealthy countries.

PubMed

Muntaner, Carles; Lynch, John W; Hillemeier, Marianne; Lee, Ju Hee; David, Richard; Benach, Joan; Borrell, Carme

2002-01-01

This study tests two propositions from Navarro's critique of the social capital literature: that social capital's importance has been exaggerated and that class-related political factors, absent from social epidemiology and public health, might be key determinants of population health. The authors estimate cross-sectional associations between economic inequality, working-class power, and social capital and life expectancy, self-rated health, low birth weight, and age- and cause-specific mortality in 16 wealthy countries. Of all the health outcomes, the five variables related to birth and infant survival and nonintentional injuries had the most consistent association with economic inequality and working-class power (in particular with strength of the welfare state) and, less so, with social capital indicators. Rates of low birth weight and infant deaths from all causes were lower in countries with more "left" (e.g., socialist, social democratic, labor) votes, more left members of parliament, more years of social democratic government, more women in government, and various indicators of strength of the welfare state, as well as low economic inequality, as measured in a variety of ways. Similar associations were observed for injury mortality, underscoring the crucial role of unions and labor parties in promoting workplace safety. Overall, social capital shows weaker associations with population health indicators than do economic inequality and working-class power. The popularity of social capital and exclusion of class-related political and welfare state indicators does not seem to be justified on empirical grounds.

Early childhood behavioral inhibition, adult psychopathology and the buffering effects of adolescent social networks: a twenty-year prospective study.

PubMed

Frenkel, Tahl I; Fox, Nathan A; Pine, Daniel S; Walker, Olga L; Degnan, Kathryn A; Chronis-Tuscano, Andrea

2015-10-01

We examined whether the temperament of behavioral inhibition is a significant marker for psychopathology in early adulthood and whether such risk is buffered by peer social networks. Participants (N = 165) were from a prospective study spanning the first two decades of life. Temperament was characterized during infancy and early childhood. Extent of involvement in peer social networks was measured during adolescence, and psychopathology was assessed in early adulthood. Latent Class Analyses generated comprehensive variables at each of three study time-points. Regressions assessed (a) the direct effect of early behavioral inhibition on adult psychopathology (b) the moderating effect of adolescent involvement in social peer networks on the link between temperamental risk and adult psychopathology. Stable behavioral inhibition in early childhood was negatively associated with adult mental health (R(2 ) = .07, p = .005, β = -.26), specifically increasing risk for adult anxiety disorders (R(2) = .04, p = .037, β = .19). These temperament-pathology relations were significantly moderated by adolescent peer group social involvement and network size (Total R(2) = .13, p = .027, β = -.22). Temperament predicted heightened risk for adult anxiety when adolescent social involvement was low (p = .002, β = .43), but not when adolescent social involvement was high. Stable behavioral inhibition throughout early childhood is a risk factor for adult anxiety disorders and interacts with adolescent social involvement to moderate risk. This is the first study to demonstrate the critical role of adolescent involvement in socially active networks in moderating long-lasting temperamental risk over the course of two decades, thus informing prevention/intervention approaches. © 2015 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Social Class in English Language Education in Oaxaca, Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

López-Gopar, Mario E.; Sughrua, William

2014-01-01

This article explores social class in English-language education in Oaxaca, Mexico. To this end, first, we discuss social class in Mexico as related to coloniality; second, for illustration, the paper presents the authors' own social-class analysis as language educators in Oaxaca; third, we discuss how social class impacts English education…

Is subjective social status a summary of life-course socioeconomic position?

PubMed

Ferreira, Wasney de Almeida; Camelo, Lidyane; Viana, Maria Carmen; Giatti, Luana; Barreto, Sandhi Maria

2018-01-01

Very little is known about the association between objective indicators of socioeconomic position in childhood and adolescence and low subjective social status in adult life, after adjusting for adult socioeconomic position. We used baseline data (2008-2010) from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil), a multicenter cohort study of 15,105 civil servants from six Brazilian states. Subjective social status was measured using the The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, which represents social hierarchy in the form of a 10-rung ladder with the top rung representing the highest subjective social status. Participants who chose the bottom four rungs in the ladder were assigned to the low subjective social status category. The following socioeconomic position indicators were investigated: childhood (maternal education), adolescence (occupational social class of the household head; participant's occupational social class of first job; nature of occupation of household head; participant's nature of occupation of first job), and adulthood (participant's occupational social class, nature of occupation and education). The associations between low subjective social status and socioeconomic position were determined using multiple logistic regression, after adjusting for sociodemographic factors and socioeconomic position indicators from other stages of life. After adjustments, low socioeconomic position in childhood, adolescence and adulthood remained significantly associated with low subjective social status in adulthood with dose-response gradients. The magnitude of these associations was stronger for intra-individual than for intergenerational socioeconomic positions. Results suggest that subjective social status in adulthood is the result of a complex developmental process of acquiring socioeconomic self-perception, which is intrinsic to subjective social status and includes current and past, individual and family household experiences.

Breast cancer and psychosocial factors: early stressful life events, social support, and well-being.

PubMed

Ginzburg, Karni; Wrensch, Margaret; Rice, Terri; Farren, Georgianna; Spiegel, David

2008-01-01

The allostasis theory postulates that stress causes the body to activate physiologic systems in order to maintain stability. The authors sought to examine the relationship between earlier stress and later development of breast cancer (BC). Authors correlated discrete and interactive relationships of stressful life events, social support, and well-being during childhood and adolescence with the occurrence of BC in adulthood among 300 women with primary BC and 305 matched control subjects. BC patients and control subjects reported similar childhood experiences. Yet, although childhood stressful life events were associated with reports of less family support and well being among the controls, those in the BC group who experienced high stress in early childhood actually expressed higher levels of family support and well-being than did those who had experienced lower levels of stress. These findings may reflect a tendency toward a repressive coping style among the BC group, which may be either a risk factor for the disease or a result of having it.

Early-life income inequality and adolescent health and well-being.

PubMed

Elgar, Frank J; Gariépy, Geneviève; Torsheim, Torbjørn; Currie, Candace

2017-02-01

A prevailing hypothesis about the association between income inequality and poor health is that inequality intensifies social hierarchies, increases stress, erodes social and material resources that support health, and subsequently harms health. However, the evidence in support of this hypothesis is limited by cross-sectional, ecological studies and a scarcity of developmental studies. To address this limitation, we used pooled, multilevel data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study to examine lagged, cumulative, and trajectory associations between early-life income inequality and adolescent health and well-being. Psychosomatic symptoms and life satisfaction were assessed in surveys of 11- to 15-year-olds in 40 countries between 1994 and 2014. We linked these data to national Gini indices of income inequality for every life year from 1979 to 2014. The results showed that exposure to income inequality from 0 to 4 years predicted psychosomatic symptoms and lower life satisfaction in females after controlling lifetime mean income inequality, national per capita income, family affluence, age, and cohort and period effects. The cumulative income inequality exposure in infancy and childhood (i.e., average Gini index from birth to age 10) related to lower life satisfaction in female adolescents but not to symptoms. Finally, individual trajectories in early-life inequality (i.e., linear slopes in Gini indices from birth to 10 years) related to fewer symptoms and higher life satisfaction in females, indicating that earlier exposures mattered more to predicting health and wellbeing. No such associations with early-life income inequality were found in males. These results help to establish the antecedent-consequence conditions in the association between income inequality and health and suggest that both the magnitude and timing of income inequality in early life have developmental consequences that manifest in reduced health and well-being in adolescent girls

The persisting effect of unemployment on health and social well-being in men early in working life.

PubMed

Wadsworth, M E; Montgomery, S M; Bartley, M J

1999-05-01

In our studies of the effects of unemployment in the early working life of men in a British national birth cohort we have shown elsewhere that this experience was part of a longer term accumulation of social and health disadvantage. This present study asks whether men's unemployment also inflicted potential longterm damage to future socio-economic chances and health. We therefore constructed indicators of socio-economic circumstances and health at 33 years from factors already shown to be associated with health in later life. For the socio-economic indicator we used a combination of income, occupational status and home ownership and described this as socio-economic capital. For the health indicator we combined scores of body mass index, leisure time exercise, frequency of eating fresh fruit and of smoking, and described this as health capital. After controlling for pre-labour market socio-economic and health factors, prolonged unemployment is shown here to reduce significantly both socio-economic and health capital by age 33 years. We conclude that the experience of prolonged unemployment early in the working life of this population of young men looks likely to have a persisting effect on their future health and socio-economic circumstances.

Work-life balance/imbalance: the dominance of the middle class and the neglect of the working class.

PubMed

Warren, Tracey

2015-12-01

The paper was stimulated by the relative absence of the working class from work-life debates. The common conclusion from work-life studies is that work-life imbalance is largely a middle-class problem. It is argued here that this classed assertion is a direct outcome of a particular and narrow interpretation of work-life imbalance in which time is seen to be the major cause of difficulty. Labour market time, and too much of it, dominates the conceptualization of work-life and its measurement too. This heavy focus on too much labour market time has rendered largely invisible from dominant work-life discourses the types of imbalance that are more likely to impact the working class. The paper's analysis of large UK data-sets demonstrates a reduction in hours worked by working-class men, more part-time employment in working-class occupations, and a substantial growth in levels of reported financial insecurity amongst the working classes after the 2008-9 recession. It shows too that economic-based work-life imbalance is associated with lower levels of life satisfaction than is temporal imbalance. The paper concludes that the dominant conceptualization of work-life disregards the major work-life challenge experienced by the working class: economic precarity. The work-life balance debate needs to more fully incorporate economic-based work-life imbalance if it is to better represent class inequalities. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.

The OBELIX project: early life exposure to endocrine disruptors and obesity.

PubMed

Legler, Juliette; Hamers, Timo; van Eck van der Sluijs-van de Bor, Margot; Schoeters, Greet; van der Ven, Leo; Eggesbo, Merete; Koppe, Janna; Feinberg, Max; Trnovec, Tomas

2011-12-01

The hypothesis of whether early life exposure (both pre- and early postnatal) to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) may be a risk factor for obesity and related metabolic diseases later in life will be tested in the European research project OBELIX (OBesogenic Endocrine disrupting chemicals: LInking prenatal eXposure to the development of obesity later in life). OBELIX is a 4-y project that started in May 2009 and which has the following 5 main objectives: 1) to assess early life exposure in humans to major classes of EDCs identified as potential inducers of obesity (ie, dioxin-like compounds, non-dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorine pesticides, brominated flame retardants, phthalates, and perfluorinated compounds) by using mother-child cohorts from 4 European regions with different food-contaminant exposure patterns; 2) to relate early life exposure to EDCs with clinical markers, novel biomarkers, and health-effect data related to obesity; 3) to perform hazard characterization of early life exposure to EDCs for the development of obesity later in life by using a mouse model; 4) to determine mechanisms of action of obesogenic EDCs on developmental programming with in vivo and in vitro genomics and epigenetic analyses; and 5) to perform risk assessments of prenatal exposure to obesogenic EDCs in food by integrating maternal exposure through food-contaminant exposure and health-effect data in children and hazard data in animal studies.

Health inequalities in later life in a social democratic welfare state.

PubMed

Dahl, E; Birkelund, G E

1997-03-01

The paper examines inequalities in mental health and "serious" illness, i.e. illness with significant consequences, among 964 men and women aged 65 and over in Norway. The aim is to analyse the extent to which the assumed class differentials in ill health in later life are accounted for by current socioeconomic circumstances and social and economic conditions during upbringing. Multiple logistic regression analyses suggest that the bivariate relationship between previous class location and present health condition among elderly men remains or may be attributed to current income. For women, their previous class location is not significantly related to either health outcome. However, women's current income and present economic difficulties are significantly related to both health measures in the expected direction. In addition, serious illness is related to long-standing illness in childhood, and poorer mental health is associated with economic hardship in childhood and dissension in the family of upbringing. For neither sex was father's social class during upbringing an important predictor of ill health. It is concluded that health inequalities in later life may, at least to some extent, be attributed to the "legacy of the past", and that the social democratic welfare state has not succeeded in eradicating health inequalities despite its egalitarian age pension policy.

Broadening Participation in the Life Sciences with Social-Psychological Interventions.

PubMed

Tibbetts, Yoi; Harackiewicz, Judith M; Priniski, Stacy J; Canning, Elizabeth A

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have recently documented the positive effects of social-psychological interventions on the performance and retention of underrepresented students in the life sciences. We review two types of social-psychological interventions that address either students' well-being in college science courses or students' engagement in science content. Interventions that have proven effective in RCTs in science courses (namely, utility-value [UV] and values-affirmation [VA] interventions) emphasize different types of student values-students' perceptions of the value of curricular content and students' personal values that shape their educational experiences. Both types of value can be leveraged to promote positive academic outcomes for underrepresented students. For example, recent work shows that brief writing interventions embedded in the curriculum can increase students' perceptions of UV (the perceived importance or usefulness of a task for future goals) and dramatically improve the performance of first-generation (FG) underrepresented minority students in college biology. Other work has emphasized students' personal values in brief essays written early in the semester. This VA intervention has been shown to close achievement gaps for women in physics classes and for FG students in college biology. By reviewing recent research, considering which interventions are most effective for different groups, and examining the causal mechanisms driving these positive effects, we hope to inform life sciences educators about the potential of social-psychological interventions for broadening participation in the life sciences. © 2016 Y. Tibbetts et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2016 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http

Living with Internationalization: The Changing Face of the Academic Life of Chinese Social Scientists

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xie, Meng

2018-01-01

Internationalization is an integral part of the strategies of leading Chinese universities to strive for world-class standing. It has left its marks on the academic life of China's social scientists. This article explores the impact of internationalization on the academic life of Chinese social scientists using Tsinghua University as an example.…

Early Life Adversity during the Infant Sensitive Period for Attachment:, Programming of Behavioral Neurobiology of Threat Processing and Social Behavior

PubMed Central

Opendak, Maya; Gould, Elizabeth; Sullivan, Regina

2017-01-01

Animals, including humans, require a highly coordinated and flexible system of social behavior and threat evaluation. However, trauma can disrupt this system, with the amygdala implicated as a mediator of these impairments in behavior. Recent evidence has further highlighted the context of infant trauma as a critical variable in determining its immediate and enduring consequences, with trauma experienced from an attachment figure, such as occurs in cases of caregiver-child maltreatment, as particularly detrimental. This review focuses on the unique role of caregiver presence during early-life trauma in programming deficits in social behavior and threat processing. Using data primarily from rodent models, we describe the interaction between trauma and attachment during a sensitive period in early life, which highlights the role of the caregiver’s presence in engagement of attachment brain circuitry and suppressing threat processing by the amygdala. These data suggest that trauma experienced directly from an abusive caregiver and trauma experienced in the presence of caregiver cues produce similar neurobehavioral deficits, which are unique from those resulting from trauma alone. We go on to integrate this information into social experience throughout the lifespan, including consequences for complex scenarios, such as dominance hierarchy formation and maintenance. PMID:28254197

Effects of early life stress on amygdala and striatal development

PubMed Central

Fareri, Dominic S.; Tottenham, Nim

2016-01-01

Species-expected caregiving early in life is critical for the normative development and regulation of emotional behavior, the ability to effectively evaluate affective stimuli in the environment, and the ability to sustain social relationships. Severe psychosocial stressors early in life (early life stress; ELS) in the form of the absence of species expected caregiving (i.e., caregiver deprivation), can drastically impact one’s social and emotional success, leading to the onset of internalizing illness later in life. Development of the amygdala and striatum, two key regions supporting affective valuation and learning, is significantly affected by ELS, and their altered developmental trajectories have important implications for cognitive, behavioral and socioemotional development. However, an understanding of the impact of ELS on the development of functional interactions between these regions and subsequent behavioral effects is lacking. In this review, we highlight the roles of the amygdala and striatum in affective valuation and learning in maturity and across development. We discuss their function separately as well as their interaction. We highlight evidence across species characterizing how ELS induced changes in the development of the amygdala and striatum mediate subsequent behavioral changes associated with internalizing illness, positing a particular import of the effect of ELS on their interaction. PMID:27174149

Effects of early life stress on amygdala and striatal development.

PubMed

Fareri, Dominic S; Tottenham, Nim

2016-06-01

Species-expected caregiving early in life is critical for the normative development and regulation of emotional behavior, the ability to effectively evaluate affective stimuli in the environment, and the ability to sustain social relationships. Severe psychosocial stressors early in life (early life stress; ELS) in the form of the absence of species expected caregiving (i.e., caregiver deprivation), can drastically impact one's social and emotional success, leading to the onset of internalizing illness later in life. Development of the amygdala and striatum, two key regions supporting affective valuation and learning, is significantly affected by ELS, and their altered developmental trajectories have important implications for cognitive, behavioral and socioemotional development. However, an understanding of the impact of ELS on the development of functional interactions between these regions and subsequent behavioral effects is lacking. In this review, we highlight the roles of the amygdala and striatum in affective valuation and learning in maturity and across development. We discuss their function separately as well as their interaction. We highlight evidence across species characterizing how ELS induced changes in the development of the amygdala and striatum mediate subsequent behavioral changes associated with internalizing illness, positing a particular import of the effect of ELS on their interaction. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Smoking in Scottish youths: personal income, parental social class and the cost of smoking

PubMed Central

West, Patrick; Sweeting, Helen; Young, Robert

2007-01-01

Objective To examine the relation of young people's personal income and parental social class with smoking from early to mid adolescence. Design Longitudinal, school based, study of a cohort of 2586 eleven year‐olds followed up at ages 13 and 15. Setting West of Scotland. Participants 93% baseline participation, reducing to 79% at age 15. Main outcome measures Ever smoked (age 11), current and daily smoking (ages 13 and 15) and the proportion of income spent on tobacco (13 and 15) based on recommended retail prices of usual brands. Results Strong independent effects of parental social class and personal income were found at 11 years, both reducing with age. The higher incomes of lower class participants attenuated the social class effect on smoking at ages 11 and 13, but not at 15. Analysis within class groups showed variation in the effect of income on smoking, being strongest among higher class youths and weak or non‐existent among lower class youths. This was despite the fact that the proportion of weekly income apparently spent on tobacco was greater among lower class youths. Conclusions The results confirm the importance of personal income and parental social class for youth smoking, but they also show that personal income matters more for those from higher class backgrounds. This suggests both that lower class youths have greater access to tobacco from family and friends and to cheaper sources of cigarettes from illegal sources. This complicates the relation between fiscal policies and smoking and might have the unintended consequence of increasing class differentials in youth smoking rather than the reverse. PMID:17897992

Exploring the affective dimension of the life review process: Facilitators' interactional strategies for fostering personhood and social value among older adults with early dementia.

PubMed

Williams, Beverly R; Blizard, Tracie I; Goode, Patricia S; Harada, Caroline N; Woodby, Lesa L; Burgio, Kathryn L; Sims, Richard V

2014-07-01

We employed an auto-ethnography approach to explore the affective dimension of life review sessions with community-dwelling older military veterans with minor cognitive impairment (MCI) and early dementia. Using researchers' analytic memos, we identified facilitators' interactional strategies that fostered the participant's sense of personal identity, dignity and social self-worth. Interaction among participant, caregiver, and facilitators evoked a range of emotional responses, offering a window into the affective world of MCI and early dementia. Positive emotional responses outnumbered negative emotional responses by a ratio of two-to-one in the life review sessions; however, negative emotions were more revelatory of current struggles with declines in health and function. Facilitators utilized two interactional strategies, in particular, to foster personhood and social value of participants: focusing on the participant and creating an empathic connection with the participant. Further work is needed to understand the role of emotions in research interactions and to examine the psychosocial mechanisms through which positive affect functions in promoting identity, personhood and social value among persons with MCI and early dementia. © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.

Academic and Social Functioning Associated with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Latent Class Analyses of Trajectories from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade.

PubMed

DuPaul, George J; Morgan, Paul L; Farkas, George; Hillemeier, Marianne M; Maczuga, Steve

2016-10-01

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are known to exhibit significantly lower academic and social functioning than other children. Yet the field currently lacks knowledge about specific impairment trajectories experienced by children with ADHD, which may constrain early screening and intervention effectiveness. Data were analyzed from a nationally representative U.S. cohort in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) for 590 children (72.7 % male) whose parents reported a formal diagnosis of ADHD. Children's math, reading, and interpersonal skills were assessed at 5 time points between kindergarten and fifth grade. Growth mixture model analyses indicated 4 latent trajectory classes for reading, 8 classes for math, and 4 classes for interpersonal skills. Membership in reading and math trajectory classes was strongly related; overlaps with interpersonal skills classes were weaker. Trajectory class membership was correlated with demographic characteristics and behavioral functioning. Children with ADHD display substantial heterogeneity in their reading, math, and interpersonal growth trajectories, with some groups of children especially likely to display relatively severe levels of academic and social impairment over time. Early screening and intervention to address impairment, particularly reading difficulties, among kindergarten students with ADHD is warranted.

Early Life Exposures and Cancer

Cancer.gov

Early-life events and exposures have important consequences for cancer development later in life, however, epidemiological studies of early-life factors and cancer development later in life have had significant methodological challenges.

Effects of resource variation during early life and adult social environment on contest outcomes in burying beetles: a context-dependent silver spoon strategy?

PubMed

Hopwood, Paul E; Moore, Allen J; Royle, Nick J

2014-06-22

Good early nutritional conditions may confer a lasting fitness advantage over individuals suffering poor early conditions (a 'silver spoon' effect). Alternatively, if early conditions predict the likely adult environment, adaptive plastic responses might maximize individual performance when developmental and adult conditions match (environmental-matching effect). Here, we test for silver spoon and environmental-matching effects by manipulating the early nutritional environment of Nicrophorus vespilloides burying beetles. We manipulated nutrition during two specific early developmental windows: the larval environment and the post-eclosion environment. We then tested contest success in relation to variation in adult social environmental quality experienced (defined according to whether contest opponents were smaller (good environment) or larger (poor environment) than the focal individual). Variation in the larval environment influenced adult body size but not contest success per se for a given adult social environment experienced (an 'indirect' silver spoon effect). Variation in post-eclosion environment affected contest success dependent on the quality of the adult environment experienced (a context-dependent 'direct' silver spoon effect). By contrast, there was no evidence for environmental-matching. The results demonstrate the importance of social environmental context in determining how variation in nutrition in early life affects success as an adult.

Defining Social Class Across Time and Between Groups.

PubMed

Cohen, Dov; Shin, Faith; Liu, Xi; Ondish, Peter; Kraus, Michael W

2017-11-01

We examined changes over four decades and between ethnic groups in how people define their social class. Changes included the increasing importance of income, decreasing importance of occupational prestige, and the demise of the "Victorian bargain," in which poor people who subscribed to conservative sexual and religious norms could think of themselves as middle class. The period also saw changes (among Whites) and continuity (among Black Americans) in subjective status perceptions. For Whites (and particularly poor Whites), their perceptions of enhanced social class were greatly reduced. Poor Whites now view their social class as slightly but significantly lower than their poor Black and Latino counterparts. For Black respondents, a caste-like understanding of social class persisted, as they continued to view their class standing as relatively independent of their achieved education, income, and occupation. Such achievement indicators, however, predicted Black respondents' self-esteem more than they predicted self-esteem for any other group.

Social class and prosocial behavior: current evidence, caveats, and questions.

PubMed

Piff, Paul K; Robinson, Angela R

2017-12-01

This review synthesizes research on social class and prosocial behavior. Individuals of lower social class display increased attention to others and greater sensitivity to others' welfare compared to individuals of higher social class, who exhibit more self-oriented patterns of social cognition. As a result, lower-class individuals are more likely to engage in other-beneficial prosocial behavior, whereas higher-class individuals are more prone to engage in self-beneficial behavior. Although the extant evidence indicates that higher social class standing may tend to undermine prosocial impulses, we propose that the effects of social class on prosocial behavior may also depend on three crucial factors: motivation, identity, and inequality. We discuss how and why these factors may moderate class differences in prosociality and offer promising lines of inquiry for future research. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Early life social stress and resting state functional connectivity in postpartum rat anterior cingulate circuits.

PubMed

Nephew, Benjamin C; Febo, Marcelo; Huang, Wei; Colon-Perez, Luis M; Payne, Laurellee; Poirier, Guillaume L; Greene, Owen; King, Jean A

2018-03-15

Continued development and refinement of resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) fMRI techniques in both animal and clinical studies has enhanced our comprehension of the adverse effects of stress on psychiatric health. The objective of the current study was to assess both maternal behavior and resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) changes in these animals when they were dams caring for their own young. It was hypothesized that ECSS exposed dams would express depressed maternal care and exhibit similar (same networks), yet different specific changes in RSFC (different individual nuclei) than reported when they were adult females. We have developed an ethologically relevant transgenerational model of the role of chronic social stress (CSS) in the etiology of postpartum depression and anxiety. Initial fMRI investigation of the CSS model indicates that early life exposure to CSS (ECSS) induces long term changes in functional connectivity in adult nulliparous female F1 offspring. ECSS in F1 dams resulted in depressed maternal care specifically during early lactation, consistent with previous CSS studies, and induced changes in functional connectivity in regions associated with sensory processing, maternal and emotional responsiveness, memory, and the reward pathway, with robust changes in anterior cingulate circuits. The sample sizes for the fMRI groups were low, limiting statistical power. This behavioral and functional neuroanatomical foundation can now be used to enhance our understanding of the neural etiology of early life stress associated disorders and test preventative measures and treatments for stress related disorders. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Life satisfaction in early adolescence: personal, neighborhood, school, family, and peer influences.

PubMed

Oberle, Eva; Schonert-Reichl, Kimberly A; Zumbo, Bruno D

2011-07-01

Drawing from an ecological assets framework as well as research and theory on positive youth development, this study examined the relationship of early adolescents' satisfaction with life to trait optimism and assets representing the social contexts in which early adolescents spend most of their time. Self-reports of satisfaction with life, optimism, and ecological assets in the school (school connectedness), neighborhood (perceived neighborhood support), family (perceived parental support), and peer group (positive peer relationships) were assessed in a sample of 1,402 4th to 7th graders (47% female) from 25 public elementary schools. Multilevel modeling (MLM) was conducted to analyze the variability in life satisfaction both at the individual and the school level. As hypothesized, adding optimism and the dimensions representing the ecology of early adolescence to the model significantly reduced the variability in life satisfaction at both levels of analysis. Both personal (optimism) and all of the ecological assets significantly and positively predicted early adolescents' life satisfaction. The results suggest the theoretical and practical utility of an assets approach for understanding life satisfaction in early adolescence.

Class Discussions: Locating Social Class in Novels for Children and Young Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McLeod, Cynthia Anne

2008-01-01

Few studies on representations of social class in children's literature have been published in the United States. As a language arts teacher and media specialist in a high poverty school, the author describes children's novels that directly address social class and the subtopic of the labor movement and consider the continued relevance of social…

Delayed age at transfer of adoptees to adoptive parents is associated with increased mortality irrespective of social class of the adoptive parents: a cohort study.

PubMed

Petersen, Liselotte; Andersen, Per Kragh; Sørensen, Thorkild I A; Mortensen, Erik Lykke

2018-04-24

Adverse early life experience and development may have long-term health consequences, but later environmental conditions may perhaps protect against the effects of such early life adversities. The aim was to investigate whether cause-specific and overall mortality rates among adoptees are associated with the age at which they were transferred to the adoptive family and whether the social class of the adoptive family modifies this association. A cohort of 10,592 non-familial adoptions (biologically unrelated adoptee and adoptive parents) of Danish-born children formally granted in 1924-47 and with follow-up of total and cause-specific mortality through ages up to 85 years. The rates of death after the age of 16 from all causes combined, all natural causes, all external causes, and suicide were compared according to the age at which adoptees were transferred to their adoptive family by estimating hazard ratios in Cox regression models. Death rates from all causes were significantly higher in adoptees transferred between age 1 month and 4 years compared to those transferred immediately after birth with the hazard ratio peaking at 1.19 (95% confidence limit: 1.08 to 1.32) for adoptees transferred between 6 and 11 months. This result was primarily driven by a similar pattern for natural causes of death. For death from external causes and for suicide the hazard ratios were increasing with increasing age at transfer, and tests for trend were statistically significant. The social class of the adoptive family did not significantly modify these associations. Transfer to an adoptive family later than at the time of birth may have adverse long-term consequences affecting overall and cause-specific mortality. These effects were not modified by the environment provided by the adoptive family as indicated by the social class of these families.

Early-life predictors of leisure-time physical inactivity in midadulthood: findings from a prospective British birth cohort.

PubMed

Pinto Pereira, Snehal M; Li, Leah; Power, Chris

2014-12-01

Much adult physical inactivity research ignores early-life factors from which later influences may originate. In the 1958 British birth cohort (followed from 1958 to 2008), leisure-time inactivity, defined as activity frequency of less than once a week, was assessed at ages 33, 42, and 50 years (n = 12,776). Early-life factors (at ages 0-16 years) were categorized into 3 domains (i.e., physical, social, and behavioral). We assessed associations of adult inactivity 1) with factors within domains, 2) with the 3 domains combined, and 3) allowing for adult factors. At each age, approximately 32% of subjects were inactive. When domains were combined, factors associated with inactivity (e.g., at age 50 years) were prepubertal stature (5% lower odds per 1-standard deviation higher height), hand control/coordination problems (14% higher odds per 1-point increase on a 4-point scale), cognition (10% lower odds per 1-standard deviation greater ability), parental divorce (21% higher odds), institutional care (29% higher odds), parental social class at child's birth (9% higher odds per 1-point reduction on a 4-point scale), minimal parental education (13% higher odds), household amenities (2% higher odds per increase (representing poorer amenities) on a 19-point scale), inactivity (8% higher odds per 1-point reduction in activity on a 4-point scale), low sports aptitude (13% higher odds), and externalizing behaviors (i.e., conduct problems) (5% higher odds per 1-standard deviation higher score). Adjustment for adult covariates weakened associations slightly. Factors from early life were associated with adult leisure-time inactivity, allowing for early identification of groups vulnerable to inactivity. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Cumulative early life adversity predicts longevity in wild baboons

PubMed Central

Tung, Jenny; Archie, Elizabeth A.; Altmann, Jeanne; Alberts, Susan C.

2016-01-01

In humans and other animals, harsh circumstances in early life predict morbidity and mortality in adulthood. Multiple adverse conditions are thought to be especially toxic, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested in a prospective, longitudinal framework, especially in long-lived mammals. Here we use prospective data on 196 wild female baboons to show that cumulative early adversity predicts natural adult lifespan. Females who experience ≥3 sources of early adversity die a median of 10 years earlier than females who experience ≤1 adverse circumstances (median lifespan is 18.5 years). Females who experience the most adversity are also socially isolated in adulthood, suggesting that social processes partially explain the link between early adversity and adult survival. Our results provide powerful evidence for the developmental origins of health and disease and indicate that close ties between early adversity and survival arise even in the absence of health habit and health care-related explanations. PMID:27091302

Early life determinants of frailty in old age: the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study.

PubMed

Haapanen, M J; Perälä, M M; Salonen, M K; Kajantie, E; Simonen, M; Pohjolainen, P; Eriksson, J G; von Bonsdorff, M B

2018-04-12

there is evidence suggesting that several chronic diseases have their origins in utero and that development taking place during sensitive periods may affect the aging process. We investigated whether early life determinants would be associated with frailty in old age. at a mean age of 71 years, 1,078 participants belonging to the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study were assessed for frailty according to the Fried frailty criteria. Early life measurements (birth weight, length, mother body mass index [BMI] and parity) were obtained from birth, child welfare and school health records. Multinomial regression analysis was used to assess the association between early life determinants and frailty in old age. weight, length and BMI at birth were all inversely associated with frailty in old age. A 1 kg increase in birth weight was associated with a lower relative risk ratio (RRR) of frailty (age and sex-adjusted RRR = 0.40, 95% CI: 0.19, 0.82) compared to non-frailty. Associations persisted after adjusting for several confounding factors. Compared to cohort members in the upper middle class, those who as adults worked as manual workers or belonged to the lower middle class, were at an increased risk of frailty. those who were small at birth were at an increased risk of developing frailty in old age, suggesting that frailty is at least partly programmed in early life. A less privileged socioeconomic status in adulthood was associated with an increased risk of frailty in old age.

The Privilege of Ease: Social Class and Campus Life at Highly Selective, Private Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Nathan D.

2012-01-01

Active involvement in college activities is linked to a host of student development outcomes, including personal growth, achievement and satisfaction. Yet, to date there has been too little attention to how social class shapes campus involvement. Through an analysis of survey data of students attending a single elite university and a national…

Early life social stress induced changes in depression and anxiety associated neural pathways which are correlated with impaired maternal care.

PubMed

Murgatroyd, Christopher A; Peña, Catherine J; Podda, Giovanni; Nestler, Eric J; Nephew, Benjamin C

2015-08-01

Exposures to various types of early life stress can be robust predictors of the development of psychiatric disorders, including depression and anxiety. The objective of the current study was to investigate the roles of the translationally relevant targets of central vasopressin, oxytocin, ghrelin, orexin, glucocorticoid, and the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) pathway in an early chronic social stress (ECSS) based rodent model of postpartum depression and anxiety. The present study reports novel changes in gene expression and extracellular signal related kinase (ERK) protein levels in the brains of ECSS exposed rat dams that display previously reported depressed maternal care and increased maternal anxiety. Decreases in oxytocin, orexin, and ERK proteins, increases in ghrelin receptor, glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor mRNA levels, and bidirectional changes in vasopressin underscore related work on the adverse long-term effects of early life stress on neural activity and plasticity, maternal behavior, responses to stress, and depression and anxiety-related behavior. The differences in gene and protein expression and robust correlations between expression and maternal care and anxiety support increased focus on these targets in animal and clinical studies of the adverse effects of early life stress, especially those focusing on depression and anxiety in mothers and the transgenerational effects of these disorders on offspring. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Microglia depletion in early life programs persistent changes in social, mood-related, and locomotor behavior in male and female rats.

PubMed

Nelson, Lars H; Lenz, Kathryn M

2017-01-01

Microglia, the innate immune cells of the central nervous system, regulate brain development by promoting cell genesis, pruning synapses, and removing dying, newly-born or progenitor cells. However, the role of microglia in the early life programming of behavior under normal conditions is not well characterized. We used central infusion of liposomal clodronate to selectively deplete microglia from the neonatal rat brain and subsequently assessed the impact of microglial depletion on programming of juvenile and adult motivated behaviors. Liposomal clodronate treatment on postnatal days one and four led to greater than 70% loss of forebrain microglia by postnatal day 6 that lasted for approximately ten days. Neonatal microglia depletion led to reduced juvenile and adult anxiety behavior on the elevated plus maze and open field test, and increased locomotor activity. On a test of juvenile social play, microglial depletion led to decreased chase behaviors relative to control animals. There was no change in active social behavior in adults on a reciprocal social interaction test, but there was decreased passive interaction time and an increased number of social avoidance behaviors in clodronate treated rats relative to controls. There was an overall decrease in behavioral despair on the forced swim test in adult rats treated neonatally with clodronate. Females, but not males, treated neonatally with clodronate showed a blunted corticosterone response after acute stress in adulthood. These results show that microglia are important for the early life programming of juvenile and adult motivated behavior. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Gender, social class and illness among young people.

PubMed

Rahkonen, O; Lahelma, E

1992-03-01

Gender and social class differences in illness among young people have been a neglected area in research on social inequities in health. It has been assumed that the illness differentials among adults persist throughout their lives. Only recently have social class health differentials among young people become a topic for research. The aim of this study is, first, to examine gender and social class differences in self-reported illness among young Finns; secondly, to determine whether the relationship between social class and limiting long-standing illness is similar among young men and women. In addition to the two main aims, we also examined whether several background variables have any impact on the relationship between class and illness or, directly, on illness. The data were derived from a nationwide Finnish 'Level of Living Survey', which was carried out by the Central Statistical Office of Finland in 1986. This interview material represents the noninstitutional Finnish population aged 15 years old or older. The number of respondents were 12,057, and the response rate was 87%. In the present study we only examined those who were 15-24-year-olds (N = 2238); i.e. 1101 men and 1137 women; the response rates were 91% and 92% respectively. Young women reported a limiting long-standing illness more often than young men. The prevalence of limiting long-standing illness increased with age. Cross-tabulation analyses showed virtually no relationship between social class and limiting long-standing illness. This held true irrespective of the various measures of social class that were used. Controlling the impact of several background variables in the logistic regression analyses did not alter this general result.

Social-Class Identity and English Learning: Studies of Chinese Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Feng

2014-01-01

This article first looks at the complex conceptualization of Chinese learners' social-class identities with respect to a shifting Chinese class stratification. It then examines the link between social class and second-language learning in the Chinese context by reviewing several studies on Chinese learners' social-class backgrounds and their…

Social theory and social class.

PubMed

Susser, I

1997-01-01

Concepts of class developed with the emergence of industrial society in the nineteenth century. For an understanding of current divisions, theories must reflect the advances of capitalism and the global economy that characterize the late twentieth century. In industrialized societies, reductions in the industrial workforce and the growth of finance, investment and real-estate industries worldwide have produced a new, largely female, service workforce. Large sectors of industry have departed in search of cheaper labour in poorer countries, which also have a rising number of women workers. In those areas, as a result, a new industrial workforce has emerged. Concomitantly, accumulation of land in less developed agricultural regions for production for the world market has led to an increase in mobile agricultural labour and a shift of landless labourers to the cities of less developed countries. In addition, both upward and downward mobility have occurred for individuals and groups in specific populations, as well as for particular diseases in developed and less developed countries. All these processes have precipitated fundamental changes in class, gender and family relationships and transformed the living conditions of populations in both developed and less developed societies. These changes have major implications for the patterns of health and disease in the world today. Objective measures of social change may be difficult to construct and use in epidemiological cancer research. Since questions of class and shifting social relations are directly implicated in the patterns of disease, they must be assessed in future research as accurately as possible.

Childhood conscientiousness predicts the social gradient of smoking in adulthood: a life course analysis.

PubMed

Pluess, Michael; Bartley, Mel

2015-04-01

The social gradient in smoking is well known, with higher rates among those in less advantaged socioeconomic position. Some recent research has reported that personality characteristics partly explain this gradient. However, the majority of existing work is limited by cross-sectional designs unsuitable to determine whether differences in conscientiousness are a predictor or a product of social inequalities. Adopting a life course perspective, we investigated in the current paper the influence of conscientiousness in early and mid-life on the social gradient in smoking and the role of potential confounding factors in a large longitudinal cohort study. Using data from the 1958 National Child Development Study, we examined the extent to which two measures of conscientiousness, one assessed with a personality questionnaire at age 50 and one derived from three related items at 16 years in childhood, explained the social gradient of smoking at age 50 by comparing nested logistic regression models that included social class at birth, cognitive ability, attention and conduct problems at age 7, and educational qualification. Childhood conscientiousness was a significant predictor of smoking at 50 years (OR=0.86, CI (95%) 0.84 to 0.88), explaining 5.0% of the social gradient independent of all other variables. Childhood conscientiousness was a stronger predictor than adult conscientiousness, statistically accounting for the observed direct association of adult conscientiousness with smoking. Conscientiousness may be a predictor rather than a product of social differences in smoking. Inclusion of personality measures and adoption of a life course perspective add significantly to our understanding of health inequalities. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Social and content aware One-Class recommendation of papers in scientific social networks.

PubMed

Wang, Gang; He, XiRan; Ishuga, Carolyne Isigi

2017-01-01

With the rapid development of information technology, scientific social networks (SSNs) have become the fastest and most convenient way for researchers to communicate with each other. Many published papers are shared via SSNs every day, resulting in the problem of information overload. How to appropriately recommend personalized and highly valuable papers for researchers is becoming more urgent. However, when recommending papers in SSNs, only a small amount of positive instances are available, leaving a vast amount of unlabelled data, in which negative instances and potential unseen positive instances are mixed together, which naturally belongs to One-Class Collaborative Filtering (OCCF) problem. Therefore, considering the extreme data imbalance and data sparsity of this OCCF problem, a hybrid approach of Social and Content aware One-class Recommendation of Papers in SSNs, termed SCORP, is proposed in this study. Unlike previous approaches recommended to address the OCCF problem, social information, which has been proved playing a significant role in performing recommendations in many domains, is applied in both the profiling of content-based filtering and the collaborative filtering to achieve superior recommendations. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed SCORP approach, a real-life dataset from CiteULike was employed. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of the compared approaches, thus providing a more effective method for recommending papers in SSNs.

Social and content aware One-Class recommendation of papers in scientific social networks

PubMed Central

Wang, Gang; He, XiRan

2017-01-01

With the rapid development of information technology, scientific social networks (SSNs) have become the fastest and most convenient way for researchers to communicate with each other. Many published papers are shared via SSNs every day, resulting in the problem of information overload. How to appropriately recommend personalized and highly valuable papers for researchers is becoming more urgent. However, when recommending papers in SSNs, only a small amount of positive instances are available, leaving a vast amount of unlabelled data, in which negative instances and potential unseen positive instances are mixed together, which naturally belongs to One-Class Collaborative Filtering (OCCF) problem. Therefore, considering the extreme data imbalance and data sparsity of this OCCF problem, a hybrid approach of Social and Content aware One-class Recommendation of Papers in SSNs, termed SCORP, is proposed in this study. Unlike previous approaches recommended to address the OCCF problem, social information, which has been proved playing a significant role in performing recommendations in many domains, is applied in both the profiling of content-based filtering and the collaborative filtering to achieve superior recommendations. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed SCORP approach, a real-life dataset from CiteULike was employed. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of the compared approaches, thus providing a more effective method for recommending papers in SSNs. PMID:28771495

Biodemography of Exceptional Longevity: Early-life and Mid-life predictors of Human Longevity

PubMed Central

Gavrilov, Leonid A.; Gavrilova, Natalia S.

2011-01-01

Effects of early-life and middle-life conditions on exceptional longevity are explored in this study using two matched case-control studies. The first study compares 198 validated centenarians born in the United States in 1890-1893 to their shorter-lived siblings. Family histories of centenarians were reconstructed and exceptional longevity validated using early U.S. censuses, Social Security Administration Death Master File, state death indexes, online genealogies and other supplementary data resources. Siblings born to young mothers (<25 years) had significantly higher chances to live to 100 compared to siblings born to older mothers (odds ratio = 2.03, 95% CI = 1.33 - 3.11, P = 0.001) while paternal age and birth order were not associated with exceptional longevity. The second study explores whether people living to 100 and beyond are any different in physical characteristics at young age from their shorter-lived peers. A random representative sample of 240 men born in 1887 and survived to age 100 was selected from the US Social Security Administration database and linked to the US WWI civil draft registration cards collected in 1917 when these men were 30 years old. These validated centenarians were then compared to randomly selected controls matched by calendar year of birth, race and place of draft registration in 1917. It was found that ‘stout’ body build (being in the heaviest 15% of population) was negatively associated with survival to age 100 years. Farmer occupation and large number of children (4+) at age 30 increased the chances of exceptional longevity. Detailed description of dataset development, data cleaning procedure and validation of exceptional longevity is provided for both studies. These results demonstrate that matched case-control design is a useful approach in exploring effects of early-life conditions and middle-life characteristics on exceptional longevity. PMID:22582891

Social Class and School Music

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bates, Vincent C.

2012-01-01

This article takes a practical look at social class in school music by exploring the manifestations and impact of three of its dimensions: financial resources, cultural practices, and social networks. Three suggestions are discussed: provide a free and equal music education for all students, understand and respect each student's cultural…

Explaining Social Class Inequalities in Educational Achievement in the UK: Quantifying the Contribution of Social Class Differences in School "Effectiveness"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hobbs, Graham

2016-01-01

There are large social class inequalities in educational achievement in the UK. This paper quantifies the contribution of one mechanism to the production of these inequalities: social class differences in school "effectiveness," where "effectiveness" refers to a school's impact on pupils' educational achievement (relative to…

Health of women: associations among life events, social support, and personality for selected patient groups.

PubMed

Norlander, T; Dahlin, A; Archer, T

2000-02-01

This study examined the effects of life events, social support, personality traits, and siblings' birth-order on the health of women. 199 middle-class participants were included. 95 women, randomly assigned from four different patient groups, were compared with a control group of 96 randomly selected women without any special health problems. They completed a questionnaire which included questions regarding family background, health, different life events, social support, and signs of disease and a projective test, the Sivik Psychosomatism Test. Analysis indicated that report of negative life events was associated with more physical symptoms than positive life events and that the patient groups reported more negative life events and less social support than the control group.

Early Adolescent Family Experiences and Perceived Social Support in Young Adulthood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gayman, Mathew D.; Turner, R. Jay; Cislo, Andrew M.; Eliassen, A. Henry

2011-01-01

Although the protective role of social support is well established in the health literature, antecedents of perceived social support are not well understood. Research on family experiential factors during early adolescence, an important psychosocial developmental period in the life course, represents a promising line of inquiry. Using a sample of…

Social Inequality, Life Course Transitions, and Adolescent Development: Introduction to the Special Issue.

PubMed

Buchmann, Marlis; Steinhoff, Annekatrin

2017-10-01

Conceptualizing adolescent development within a life course framework that links the perspectives on social inequality and early life course transitions has largely been absent from previous research. Such a conceptual model is needed, however, in order to understand how the individual development of agentic capacities and the opportunities and constraints inherent in the social contexts of growing up interact and jointly affect young people's trajectories across the adolescent life stage. We present the corner stones of the conceptual "trident" of social inequality, life course transitions, and adolescent development and identify three major themes the eleven contributions to this special issue address within this conceptual framework: social and individual prerequisites and consequences of coping with life course transitions; intergenerational transmission belts of social inequality; socialization of agency in and outside the family home. These three themes exemplify the great analytical potential inherent in this framework.

The family, neuroscience, and academic skills: An interdisciplinary account of social class gaps in children's test scores.

PubMed

Potter, Daniel; Mashburn, Andrew; Grissmer, David

2013-03-01

Current explanations of social class gaps in children's early academic skills tend to focus on non-cognitive skills that more advantaged children acquire in the family. Accordingly, social class matters because the cultural resources more abundant in advantaged families cultivate children's repertories and tool kits, which allow them to more easily navigate social institutions, such as schools. Within these accounts, parenting practices matter for children's academic success, but for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Alternatively, findings from current neuroscience research indicate that family context matters for children because it cultivates neural networks that assist in learning and the development of academic skills. That is, children's exposure to particular parenting practices and stimulating home environments contribute to the growth in neurocognitive skills that affect later academic performance. We synthesize sociological and neuroscience accounts of developmental inequality by focusing on one such skill-fine motor skills-to illustrate how family context alters children's early academic performance. Our findings support an interdisciplinary account of academic inequality, and extend current accounts of the family's role in the transmission of social inequality. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Natural Selection on Female Life-History Traits in Relation to Socio-Economic Class in Pre-Industrial Human Populations

PubMed Central

Pettay, Jenni E.; Helle, Samuli; Jokela, Jukka; Lummaa, Virpi

2007-01-01

Life-history theory predicts that resource scarcity constrains individual optimal reproductive strategies and shapes the evolution of life-history traits. In species where the inherited structure of social class may lead to consistent resource differences among family lines, between-class variation in resource availability should select for divergence in optimal reproductive strategies. Evaluating this prediction requires information on the phenotypic selection and quantitative genetics of life-history trait variation in relation to individual lifetime access to resources. Here, we show using path analysis how resource availability, measured as the wealth class of the family, affected the opportunity and intensity of phenotypic selection on the key life-history traits of women living in pre-industrial Finland during the 1800s and 1900s. We found the highest opportunity for total selection and the strongest selection on earlier age at first reproduction in women of the poorest wealth class, whereas selection favoured older age at reproductive cessation in mothers of the wealthier classes. We also found clear differences in female life-history traits across wealth classes: the poorest women had the lowest age-specific survival throughout their lives, they started reproduction later, delivered fewer offspring during their lifetime, ceased reproduction younger, had poorer offspring survival to adulthood and, hence, had lower fitness compared to the wealthier women. Our results show that the amount of wealth affected the selection pressure on female life-history in a pre-industrial human population. PMID:17622351

The influence of social environment in early life on the behavior, stress response, and reproductive system of adult male Norway rats selected for different attitudes to humans.

PubMed

Gulevich, R G; Shikhevich, S G; Konoshenko, M Yu; Kozhemyakina, R V; Herbeck, Yu E; Prasolova, L A; Oskina, I N; Plyusnina, I Z

2015-05-15

The influence of social disturbance in early life on behavior, response of blood corticosterone level to restraint stress, and endocrine and morphometric indices of the testes was studied in 2-month Norway rat males from three populations: not selected for behavior (unselected), selected for against aggression to humans (tame), and selected for increased aggression to humans (aggressive). The experimental social disturbance included early weaning, daily replacement of cagemates from days 19 to 25, and subsequent housing in twos till the age of 2months. The social disturbance increased the latent period of aggressive behavior in the social interaction test in unselected males and reduced relative testis weights in comparison to the corresponding control groups. In addition, experimental unselected rats had smaller diameters of seminiferous tubules and lower blood testosterone levels. In the experimental group, tame rats had lower basal corticosterone levels, and aggressive animals had lower hormone levels after restraint stress in comparison to the control. The results suggest that the selection in two directions for attitude to humans modifies the response of male rats to social disturbance in early life. In this regard, the selected rat populations may be viewed as a model for investigation of (1) neuroendocrinal mechanisms responsible for the manifestation of aggression and (2) interaction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal systems in stress. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Social Life of an Essay: Standardizing Forces in Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheehy, Margaret

2003-01-01

Standardization discourse is dominantly linked to tests; yet standardization occurs in practices of everyday social life, too. This research seeks to understand standardization processes involved in the writing done by a class of seventh grade students, half of whom did not do well in school or on tests. Acting as participant observer in a…

Class and Health Inequality in Later Life: Patterns, Mechanisms and Implications for Policy

PubMed Central

Nazroo, James

2017-01-01

The growth of the post-retirement population, which has occurred as a result of rapid growth in life expectancy coupled with the ageing of the baby boomer cohort, has led to significant concern. This concern, however, typically neglects the heterogeneity of later life experiences and how these are patterned by inequalities that reflect how process of social stratification continue to operate into later life. This paper draws on a programme of work, based on analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, to empirically examine questions of inequality in later life. It begins by illustrating the patterning of health inequality. It then investigates the importance of later life contexts and events in shaping inequality through and after the retirement process. In doing so it examines the extent to which later life continues to reflect stable social structures that shape inequalities and, consequently, health and wellbeing in later life. The paper then illustrates how the effects of socioeconomic position on health in later life can be theorised as a product of class processes, borrowing in part from Bourdieu. Other dimensions of inequality, such as gender, ethnicity, area and sexuality, are not discussed here. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for a close focus on inequalities in later life in research, policy and practice. PMID:29292775

Making Class: Children's Perceptions of Social Class through Illustrations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howard, Adam; Swalwell, Katy; Adler, Karlyn

2018-01-01

Background/Context: Though there has been attention to how class differences impact children's experiences in schools and how young people perceive racial and gender differences, very little research to date has examined how young people make sense of social class differences. Purpose: In this article, the authors examine young children's…

Social class shapes the form and function of relationships and selves.

PubMed

Carey, Rebecca M; Markus, Hazel Rose

2017-12-01

Social class shapes relational realities, which in turn situate and structure different selves and their associated psychological tendencies. We first briefly review how higher class contexts tend to foster independent models of self and lower class contexts tend to foster interdependent models of self. We then consider how these independent and interdependent models of self are situated in and adapted to different social class-driven relational realities. We review research demonstrating that in lower social class contexts, social networks tend to be small, dense, homogenous and strongly connected. Ties in these networks provide the bonding capital that is key for survival and that promotes the interdependence between self and other(s). In higher social class contexts, social networks tend to be large, far-reaching, diverse and loosely connected. Ties in these networks provide the bridging capital that is key for achieving personal goals and that promotes an independence of self from other. We conclude that understanding and addressing issues tied to social class and inequality requires understanding the form and function of relationships across class contexts. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Role of Social Class in English Language Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandrick, Stephanie

2014-01-01

English language educators are often advocates for social justice and often focus on learners' identities, such as their race, gender, and ethnicity; however, they tend not to employ a social class lens in analyzing students, teachers, classrooms, and institutions. Yet social class plays a significant, if unacknowledged, role in the field.…

Social inequalities in childhood are predictors of unemployment in early adulthood.

PubMed

Lander, Flemming; Rasmussen, Kurt; Mortensen, Jens Tølbøll

2012-03-01

The aim of the present study was to establish if social inequalities in early childhood, particularly living in a socially and economically deprived neighbourhood, are predictive of later unemployment. A cohort was established in 1987. It consists of 8-9 year-old children living in a socially deprived suburb who were followed in national registers for all categories of welfare benefits. The follow-up covered the period when participants were 21-27 years of age. A control group with the same age and gender distribution who were living in a neighbouring, relatively privileged middle class district were also followed for the purpose of comparison. The annual unemployment rate during the seven years of follow-up was significantly higher in the deprived neighbourhood group than in the middle class neighbourhood group, whereas long-term unemployment lasting more than two years did not differ significantly between the groups. Childhood background including a mother receiving social benefit was an independent factor associated with increased risk of later unemployment, whereas gender and single parenthood were not. The present findings suggest that socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood substantially increases the risk of unemployment in early adulthood, even during a follow-up period in the first decade of the 21st century when employment opportunities in Denmark were excellent. not relevant. not relevant.

Social class, income, education, area of residence and psychological distress: does social class have an independent effect on psychological distress in Antalya, Turkey?

PubMed

Belek, I

2000-02-01

The aim of this study is to determine the separate effects of social class, income, education and area of residence on psychological distress. The study also assesses whether the association between prevalence of high score on the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ 12) and social class is independent of other variables. Psychological distress was assessed by means of the GHQ 12. The study covered 1,092 adults aged 15 years or more living in two different quarters of Antalya. Social class status was defined by occupational position, with income, education and area of residence treated as confounders. Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate the data. Large inequalities in psychological distress by all variables were observed. Psychological distress was significantly associated with class status, after adjusting for income, education, area of residence and other potential confounders (age, sex and marital status). Class inequalities in psychological distress were observed between blue-collar workers/unqualified employees and bourgeoisie. These findings support the view that the recent widening of inequalities among social classes in Turkey pose a substantial threat to health.

Social class and workplace harassment during the transition to adulthood.

PubMed

McLaughlin, Heather; Uggen, Christopher; Blackstone, Amy

2008-01-01

Young disadvantaged workers are especially vulnerable to harassment due to their age and social class position. As young people enter the workforce, their experiences of, and reactions to, harassment may vary dramatically from those of older adult workers. Three case studies introduce theory and research on the relationship between social class and harassment of young workers. We suggest two mechanisms through which class may structure harassment experiences: (1) extremely vulnerable youth are directly targeted based on their social class origins, and (2) the type and condition of youth employment, which is structured by class background, indirectly affect experiences of harassment.

Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across the human life span

PubMed Central

Yang, Yang Claire; Boen, Courtney; Gerken, Karen; Li, Ting; Schorpp, Kristen; Harris, Kathleen Mullan

2016-01-01

Two decades of research indicate causal associations between social relationships and mortality, but important questions remain as to how social relationships affect health, when effects emerge, and how long they last. Drawing on data from four nationally representative longitudinal samples of the US population, we implemented an innovative life course design to assess the prospective association of both structural and functional dimensions of social relationships (social integration, social support, and social strain) with objectively measured biomarkers of physical health (C-reactive protein, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index) within each life stage, including adolescence and young, middle, and late adulthood, and compare such associations across life stages. We found that a higher degree of social integration was associated with lower risk of physiological dysregulation in a dose–response manner in both early and later life. Conversely, lack of social connections was associated with vastly elevated risk in specific life stages. For example, social isolation increased the risk of inflammation by the same magnitude as physical inactivity in adolescence, and the effect of social isolation on hypertension exceeded that of clinical risk factors such as diabetes in old age. Analyses of multiple dimensions of social relationships within multiple samples across the life course produced consistent and robust associations with health. Physiological impacts of structural and functional dimensions of social relationships emerge uniquely in adolescence and midlife and persist into old age. PMID:26729882

Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across the human life span.

PubMed

Yang, Yang Claire; Boen, Courtney; Gerken, Karen; Li, Ting; Schorpp, Kristen; Harris, Kathleen Mullan

2016-01-19

Two decades of research indicate causal associations between social relationships and mortality, but important questions remain as to how social relationships affect health, when effects emerge, and how long they last. Drawing on data from four nationally representative longitudinal samples of the US population, we implemented an innovative life course design to assess the prospective association of both structural and functional dimensions of social relationships (social integration, social support, and social strain) with objectively measured biomarkers of physical health (C-reactive protein, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index) within each life stage, including adolescence and young, middle, and late adulthood, and compare such associations across life stages. We found that a higher degree of social integration was associated with lower risk of physiological dysregulation in a dose-response manner in both early and later life. Conversely, lack of social connections was associated with vastly elevated risk in specific life stages. For example, social isolation increased the risk of inflammation by the same magnitude as physical inactivity in adolescence, and the effect of social isolation on hypertension exceeded that of clinical risk factors such as diabetes in old age. Analyses of multiple dimensions of social relationships within multiple samples across the life course produced consistent and robust associations with health. Physiological impacts of structural and functional dimensions of social relationships emerge uniquely in adolescence and midlife and persist into old age.

[The Goldthorpe Social Class Classification: reference framework for a proposal for the measurement of social class by the Working Group of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology].

PubMed

Regidor, E

2001-01-01

Two of the most important theory-based social class classifications are that of the neo-Weberian Goldthorpe and that of the neo-Marxist Wright. The social class classification proposal of the SES Working Group employed the Goldthorpe schema as a reference due to the empirical and mainly pragmatic aspects involved. In this article, these aspects are discussed and it is also discussed the problem of the validation of the measurements of social class and the problem of the use of the social class as an independent variable.

Unequally Distributed Psychological Assets: Are There Social Disparities in Optimism, Life Satisfaction, and Positive Affect?

PubMed Central

Boehm, Julia K.; Chen, Ying; Williams, David R.; Ryff, Carol; Kubzansky, Laura D.

2015-01-01

Socioeconomic status is associated with health disparities, but underlying psychosocial mechanisms have not been fully identified. Dispositional optimism may be a psychosocial process linking socioeconomic status with health. We hypothesized that lower optimism would be associated with greater social disadvantage and poorer social mobility. We also investigated whether life satisfaction and positive affect showed similar patterns. Participants from the Midlife in the United States study self-reported their optimism, satisfaction, positive affect, and socioeconomic status (gender, race/ethnicity, education, occupational class and prestige, income). Social disparities in optimism were evident. Optimistic individuals tended to be white and highly educated, had an educated parent, belonged to higher occupational classes with more prestige, and had higher incomes. Findings were generally similar for satisfaction, but not positive affect. Greater optimism and satisfaction were also associated with educational achievement across generations. Optimism and life satisfaction are consistently linked with socioeconomic advantage and may be one conduit by which social disparities influence health. PMID:25671665

Unequally distributed psychological assets: are there social disparities in optimism, life satisfaction, and positive affect?

PubMed

Boehm, Julia K; Chen, Ying; Williams, David R; Ryff, Carol; Kubzansky, Laura D

2015-01-01

Socioeconomic status is associated with health disparities, but underlying psychosocial mechanisms have not been fully identified. Dispositional optimism may be a psychosocial process linking socioeconomic status with health. We hypothesized that lower optimism would be associated with greater social disadvantage and poorer social mobility. We also investigated whether life satisfaction and positive affect showed similar patterns. Participants from the Midlife in the United States study self-reported their optimism, satisfaction, positive affect, and socioeconomic status (gender, race/ethnicity, education, occupational class and prestige, income). Social disparities in optimism were evident. Optimistic individuals tended to be white and highly educated, had an educated parent, belonged to higher occupational classes with more prestige, and had higher incomes. Findings were generally similar for satisfaction, but not positive affect. Greater optimism and satisfaction were also associated with educational achievement across generations. Optimism and life satisfaction are consistently linked with socioeconomic advantage and may be one conduit by which social disparities influence health.

[Inequalities in health according to social class in Catalonia, 1994].

PubMed

Fernández, E; Schiaffino, A; Rajmil, L; Borrell, C; García, M; Segura, A

2000-05-15

To study social inequalities in health in Catalonia. Cross-sectional survey of a representative sample of the population of Catalonia, Spain (Catalan Health Interview Survey, 1994). Responses from 5641 males and 6604 women aged 15 years or over were included for analysis. We analysed the information about self-perceived health, restriction of activity, and presence of chronic conditions according to social class by means of logistic regression models. The proportion of subjects that rated their health as fair or poor was higher in social classes IV-V than in classes I-II (men: 25.0% vs. 14.5%; OR, 1.8, 95% CI, 1.5-2.3; women: 34.4% vs. 21.5%; OR, 1.7, 95% CI, 1.4-2.1). There were differences by social class in respect to restriction of activity and presence of chronic conditions. Despite the decrease of social inequalities in accesibility and use of health services due to the universalisation of health coverage, differences by social class remain in the perception of health status. These inequalities should be addressed by the health system within the framework of broad public and social policies.

Family Capital and the Invisible Transfer of Privilege: Intergenerational Support and Social Class in Early Adulthood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swartz, Teresa Toguchi

2008-01-01

Sociologists have long recognized the relationships between family background and social class attainment. However, by neglecting the multiple ways in which families and parents provide advantages and the extent to which these advantages extend into adulthood, they may still be underestimating the role of families in the reproduction of class…

Early social isolation impairs development, mate choice and grouping behaviour of predatory mites

PubMed Central

Schausberger, Peter; Gratzer, Marian; Strodl, Markus A.

2017-01-01

The social environment early in life is a key determinant of developmental, physiological and behavioural trajectories across vertebrate and invertebrate animals. One crucial variable is the presence/absence of conspecifics. For animals usually reared in groups, social isolation after birth or hatching can be a highly stressful circumstance, with potentially long-lasting consequences. Here, we assessed the effects of social deprivation (isolation) early in life, that is, absence of conspecifics, versus social enrichment, that is, presence of conspecifics, on developmental time, body size at maturity, mating behaviour and group-living in the plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis. Socially deprived protonymphs developed more slowly and were less socially competent in grouping behaviour than socially enriched protonymphs. Compromised social competence in grouping behaviour was evident in decreased activity, fewer mutual encounters and larger interindividual distances, all of which may entail severe fitness costs. In female choice/male competition, socially deprived males mated earlier than socially enriched males; in male choice/female competition, socially deprived females were more likely to mate than socially enriched females. In neither mate choice situation did mating duration or body size at maturity differ between socially deprived and enriched mating opponents. Social isolation-induced shifts in mating behaviour may be interpreted as increased attractiveness or competitiveness or, more likely, as hastiness and reduced ability to assess mate quality. Overall, many of the social isolation-induced behavioural changes in P. persimilis are analogous to those observed in other animals such as cockroaches, fruit flies, fishes or rodents. We argue that, due to their profound and persistent effects, early social deprivation or enrichment may be important determinants in shaping animal personalities. PMID:28502987

Early social isolation impairs development, mate choice and grouping behaviour of predatory mites.

PubMed

Schausberger, Peter; Gratzer, Marian; Strodl, Markus A

2017-05-01

The social environment early in life is a key determinant of developmental, physiological and behavioural trajectories across vertebrate and invertebrate animals. One crucial variable is the presence/absence of conspecifics. For animals usually reared in groups, social isolation after birth or hatching can be a highly stressful circumstance, with potentially long-lasting consequences. Here, we assessed the effects of social deprivation (isolation) early in life, that is, absence of conspecifics, versus social enrichment, that is, presence of conspecifics, on developmental time, body size at maturity, mating behaviour and group-living in the plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis . Socially deprived protonymphs developed more slowly and were less socially competent in grouping behaviour than socially enriched protonymphs. Compromised social competence in grouping behaviour was evident in decreased activity, fewer mutual encounters and larger interindividual distances, all of which may entail severe fitness costs. In female choice/male competition, socially deprived males mated earlier than socially enriched males; in male choice/female competition, socially deprived females were more likely to mate than socially enriched females. In neither mate choice situation did mating duration or body size at maturity differ between socially deprived and enriched mating opponents. Social isolation-induced shifts in mating behaviour may be interpreted as increased attractiveness or competitiveness or, more likely, as hastiness and reduced ability to assess mate quality. Overall, many of the social isolation-induced behavioural changes in P. persimilis are analogous to those observed in other animals such as cockroaches, fruit flies, fishes or rodents. We argue that, due to their profound and persistent effects, early social deprivation or enrichment may be important determinants in shaping animal personalities.

Paradoxical Neurobehavioral Rescue by Memories of Early-Life Abuse: The Safety Signal Value of Odors Learned during Abusive Attachment

PubMed Central

Raineki, Charlis; Sarro, Emma; Rincón-Cortés, Millie; Perry, Rosemarie; Boggs, Joy; Holman, Colin J; Wilson, Donald A; Sullivan, Regina M

2015-01-01

Caregiver-associated cues, including those learned in abusive attachment, provide a sense of safety and security to the child. Here, we explore how cues associated with abusive attachment, such as maternal odor, can modify the enduring neurobehavioral effects of early-life abuse. Two early-life abuse models were used: a naturalistic paradigm, where rat pups were reared by an abusive mother; and a more controlled paradigm, where pups underwent peppermint odor-shock conditioning that produces an artificial maternal odor through engagement of the attachment circuit. Animals were tested for maternal odor preference in infancy, forced swim test (FST), social behavior, and sexual motivation in adulthood—in the presence or absence of maternal odors (natural or peppermint). Amygdala odor-evoked local field potentials (LFPs) via wireless electrodes were also examined in response to the maternal odors in adulthood. Both early-life abuse models induced preference for the maternal odors in infancy. In adulthood, these early-life abuse models produced FST deficits and decreased social behavior, but did not change sexual motivation. Presentation of the maternal odors rescued FST and social behavior deficits induced by early-life abuse and enhanced sexual motivation in all animals. In addition, amygdala LFPs from both abuse animal models showed unique activation within the gamma frequency (70–90 Hz) bands in response to the specific maternal odor present during early-life abuse. These results suggest that attachment-related cues learned during infancy have a profound ability to rescue neurobehavioral dysregulation caused by early-life abuse. Paradoxically, abuse-associated cues seem to acquire powerful and enduring antidepressive properties and alter amygdala modulation. PMID:25284320

Paradoxical neurobehavioral rescue by memories of early-life abuse: the safety signal value of odors learned during abusive attachment.

PubMed

Raineki, Charlis; Sarro, Emma; Rincón-Cortés, Millie; Perry, Rosemarie; Boggs, Joy; Holman, Colin J; Wilson, Donald A; Sullivan, Regina M

2015-03-01

Caregiver-associated cues, including those learned in abusive attachment, provide a sense of safety and security to the child. Here, we explore how cues associated with abusive attachment, such as maternal odor, can modify the enduring neurobehavioral effects of early-life abuse. Two early-life abuse models were used: a naturalistic paradigm, where rat pups were reared by an abusive mother; and a more controlled paradigm, where pups underwent peppermint odor-shock conditioning that produces an artificial maternal odor through engagement of the attachment circuit. Animals were tested for maternal odor preference in infancy, forced swim test (FST), social behavior, and sexual motivation in adulthood-in the presence or absence of maternal odors (natural or peppermint). Amygdala odor-evoked local field potentials (LFPs) via wireless electrodes were also examined in response to the maternal odors in adulthood. Both early-life abuse models induced preference for the maternal odors in infancy. In adulthood, these early-life abuse models produced FST deficits and decreased social behavior, but did not change sexual motivation. Presentation of the maternal odors rescued FST and social behavior deficits induced by early-life abuse and enhanced sexual motivation in all animals. In addition, amygdala LFPs from both abuse animal models showed unique activation within the gamma frequency (70-90 Hz) bands in response to the specific maternal odor present during early-life abuse. These results suggest that attachment-related cues learned during infancy have a profound ability to rescue neurobehavioral dysregulation caused by early-life abuse. Paradoxically, abuse-associated cues seem to acquire powerful and enduring antidepressive properties and alter amygdala modulation.

Predicting Later-Life Outcomes of Early-Life Exposures

EPA Science Inventory

Background: In utero exposure of the fetus to a stressor can lead to disease in later life. Epigenetic mechanisms are likely mediators of later-life expression of early-life events.Objectives: We examined the current state of understanding of later-life diseases resulting from ea...

Wealth, Poverty, and Happiness: Social Class Is Differentially Associated With Positive Emotions.

PubMed

Piff, Paul K; Moskowitz, Jake P

2017-12-18

Is higher social class associated with greater happiness? In a large nationally representative U.S. sample (N = 1,519), we examined the association between social class (household income) and self-reported tendencies to experience 7 distinct positive emotions that are core to happiness: amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, enthusiasm, love, and pride. Consistent with past research indicating that social class underlies differential patterns of attending to the self versus orienting to others, higher social class was associated with greater self-oriented feelings of contentment and pride, and with greater amusement. In contrast, lower social class was associated with more other-oriented feelings of compassion and love, and with greater awe. There were no class differences in enthusiasm. We discuss that individuals from different social class backgrounds may exhibit different patterns of emotional responding due to their distinct social concerns and priorities. Whereas self-oriented emotions may follow from, foster, and reinforce upper class individuals' desire for independence and self-sufficiency, greater other-oriented emotion may enable lower class individuals to form more interdependent bonds to cope with their more threatening environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Social class and survival on the S.S. Titanic.

PubMed

Hall, W

1986-01-01

Passengers' chances of surviving the sinking of the S.S. Titanic were related to their sex and their social class: females were more likely to survive than males, and the chances of survival declined with social class as measured by the class in which the passenger travelled. The probable reasons for these differences in rates of survival are discussed as are the reasons accepted by the Mersey Committee of Inquiry into the sinking.

Metabolic and metagenomic outcomes from early-life pulsed antibiotic treatment

PubMed Central

Nobel, Yael R.; Cox, Laura M.; Kirigin, Francis F.; Bokulich, Nicholas A.; Yamanishi, Shingo; Teitler, Isabel; Chung, Jennifer; Sohn, Jiho; Barber, Cecily M.; Goldfarb, David S.; Raju, Kartik; Abubucker, Sahar; Zhou, Yanjiao; Ruiz, Victoria E.; Li, Huilin; Mitreva, Makedonka; Alekseyenko, Alexander V.; Weinstock, George M.; Sodergren, Erica; Blaser, Martin J.

2015-01-01

Mammalian species have co-evolved with intestinal microbial communities that can shape development and adapt to environmental changes, including antibiotic perturbation or nutrient flux. In humans, especially children, microbiota disruption is common, yet the dynamic microbiome recovery from early-life antibiotics is still uncharacterized. Here we use a mouse model mimicking paediatric antibiotic use and find that therapeutic-dose pulsed antibiotic treatment (PAT) with a beta-lactam or macrolide alters both host and microbiota development. Early-life PAT accelerates total mass and bone growth, and causes progressive changes in gut microbiome diversity, population structure and metagenomic content, with microbiome effects dependent on the number of courses and class of antibiotic. Whereas control microbiota rapidly adapts to a change in diet, PAT slows the ecological progression, with delays lasting several months with previous macrolide exposure. This study identifies key markers of disturbance and recovery, which may help provide therapeutic targets for microbiota restoration following antibiotic treatment. PMID:26123276

Metabolic and metagenomic outcomes from early-life pulsed antibiotic treatment.

PubMed

Nobel, Yael R; Cox, Laura M; Kirigin, Francis F; Bokulich, Nicholas A; Yamanishi, Shingo; Teitler, Isabel; Chung, Jennifer; Sohn, Jiho; Barber, Cecily M; Goldfarb, David S; Raju, Kartik; Abubucker, Sahar; Zhou, Yanjiao; Ruiz, Victoria E; Li, Huilin; Mitreva, Makedonka; Alekseyenko, Alexander V; Weinstock, George M; Sodergren, Erica; Blaser, Martin J

2015-06-30

Mammalian species have co-evolved with intestinal microbial communities that can shape development and adapt to environmental changes, including antibiotic perturbation or nutrient flux. In humans, especially children, microbiota disruption is common, yet the dynamic microbiome recovery from early-life antibiotics is still uncharacterized. Here we use a mouse model mimicking paediatric antibiotic use and find that therapeutic-dose pulsed antibiotic treatment (PAT) with a beta-lactam or macrolide alters both host and microbiota development. Early-life PAT accelerates total mass and bone growth, and causes progressive changes in gut microbiome diversity, population structure and metagenomic content, with microbiome effects dependent on the number of courses and class of antibiotic. Whereas control microbiota rapidly adapts to a change in diet, PAT slows the ecological progression, with delays lasting several months with previous macrolide exposure. This study identifies key markers of disturbance and recovery, which may help provide therapeutic targets for microbiota restoration following antibiotic treatment.

[Influence of early childhood stress exposure and traumatic life events on pain perception].

PubMed

Tesarz, J; Gerhardt, A; Eich, W

2018-06-05

Adult pain perception is influenced substantially by interactions between mind, body, and social environment during early life. Early stress exposure and traumatic life events induce powerful psychophysical stress reactions that exert multiple neurofunctional processes. This has significant implications for pain perception and pain processing. As part of this review, the complex relationships between traumatic stress experiences and associated psychobiological mechanisms of chronic pain will be discussed. Based on selected studies, psychophysiological findings are presented and possible underlying mechanisms are discussed. The article concludes with a discussion of potential implications for treatment.

Barriers to oral health care amongst different social classes in India.

PubMed

Garcha, V; Shetiya, S H; Kakodkar, P

2010-09-01

To investigate and compare the influence of social and cultural factors as access barriers to oral health care amongst people from various social classes. A cross sectional survey in Pimpri, was conducted using a pilot tested 15 item-structured, close-ended and self-administered questionnaire. Two hundred and fifty people aged 35-45 years (50 participants each in five social classes as per British Registrar's General classification of occupation) were selected. The chi-square test was applied to check statistical differences between social classes at 5% level of significance. Overall, it was observed that irrespective of the social class difference 88% participants wished to seek only expert/professional advice for the dental treatment. Unavailability of services on Sunday (63%), going to dentist only when in pain (57%), trying self care or home remedy (54%), inadequate government policies (50%), budgetary constraints (40%) were among the major access barriers. Statistically significant difference in the access barriers among the social classes were found related to: Inadequate government policies, budgetary constraints, appointment schedules, far-off located clinics, myths and fear about dental treatment. Social and cultural factors act as access barriers to oral health care and social class differences have a significant influence on the access barriers.

Marie Rozette and her world: class, ethnicity, gender, and race in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mauritius.

PubMed

Allen, Richard B

2011-01-01

In 1790, Marie Rozette, a freedwoman of Indian origin on Mauritius, executed a series of notarial acts which revealed that she possessed a small fortune in cash assets as well as slaves and substantial landed property in one of the island’s rural districts. The life of this former slave between 1776, when she first appears in the archival record, and her death in 1804 provides a vantage point from which to gain a subaltern perspective on aspects of Mascarene social and economic history, as well as developments in the wider Indian Ocean world during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Marie Rozette’s life history challenges the notion that free persons of color in Mauritius were little more than an “unappropriated” people, and invites us to consider how supposedly marginalized individuals were able to cross various socio-economic and cultural boundaries. More specifically, her life affords an opportunity to consider the ways in which class, ethnicity, and gender, as well as race, interacted to create a distinctive Creole society in Mauritius, the nature and dynamics of which bear directly on our knowledge and understanding of the free colored experience elsewhere in the European colonial slave plantation world.

Utilization of Social Media in Marketing Classes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Allen, Charlotte

2013-01-01

The goal of this paper is to highlight how instructors may integrate the different social media into various marketing classes. The paper will address the major social networks, and then follow with discussions of microblogging, media sites, and social gaming. Given that there is a great deal of research highlighting the effectiveness of utilizing…

Early life stress confers lifelong stress susceptibility in mice via ventral tegmental area OTX2.

PubMed

Peña, Catherine J; Kronman, Hope G; Walker, Deena M; Cates, Hannah M; Bagot, Rosemary C; Purushothaman, Immanuel; Issler, Orna; Loh, Yong-Hwee Eddie; Leong, Tin; Kiraly, Drew D; Goodman, Emma; Neve, Rachael L; Shen, Li; Nestler, Eric J

2017-06-16

Early life stress increases risk for depression. Here we establish a "two-hit" stress model in mice wherein stress at a specific postnatal period increases susceptibility to adult social defeat stress and causes long-lasting transcriptional alterations that prime the ventral tegmental area (VTA)-a brain reward region-to be in a depression-like state. We identify a role for the developmental transcription factor orthodenticle homeobox 2 ( Otx2 ) as an upstream mediator of these enduring effects. Transient juvenile-but not adult-knockdown of Otx2 in VTA mimics early life stress by increasing stress susceptibility, whereas its overexpression reverses the effects of early life stress. This work establishes a mechanism by which early life stress encodes lifelong susceptibility to stress via long-lasting transcriptional programming in VTA mediated by Otx2 . Copyright © 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Early life stress and physical and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood.

PubMed

Alastalo, Hanna; von Bonsdorff, Mikaela B; Räikkönen, Katri; Pesonen, Anu-Katriina; Osmond, Clive; Barker, David J P; Heinonen, Kati; Kajantie, Eero; Eriksson, Johan G

2013-01-01

Severe stress experienced in early life may have long-term effects on adult physiological and psychological health and well-being. We studied physical and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood in subjects separated temporarily from their parents in childhood during World War II. The 1803 participants belong to the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, born 1934-44. Of them, 267 (14.8%) had been evacuated abroad in childhood during WWII and the remaining subjects served as controls. Physical and psychosocial functioning was assessed with the Short Form 36 scale (SF-36) between 2001 and 2004. A test for trends was based on linear regression. All analyses were adjusted for age at clinical examination, social class in childhood and adulthood, smoking, alcohol intake, physical activity, body mass index, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Physical functioning in late adulthood was lower among the separated men compared to non-separated men (b = -0.40, 95% confidence interval [95% CI]: -0.71 to -0.08). Those men separated in school age (>7 years) and who were separated for a duration over 2 years had the highest risk for lower physical functioning (b = -0.89, 95% CI: -1.58 to -0.20) and (b = -0.65, 95% CI: -1.25 to -0.05), respectively). Men separated for a duration over 2 years also had lower psychosocial functioning (b = -0.70, 95% CI: -1.35 to -0.06). These differences in physical and psychosocial functioning were not observed among women. Early life stress may increase the risk for impaired physical functioning in late adulthood among men. Timing and duration of the separation influenced the physical and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood.

Social class, Mexican culture, and fatalism: their effects on psychological distress.

PubMed

Ross, C E; Mirowsky, J; Cockerham, W C

1983-08-01

We examine the causes and consequences of fatalism in a cross-cultural setting, focusing on the ways in which a fatalistic world view may mediate the effects of social class and Mexican ethnic identity on psychological distress. We find that persons in the lower social classes and Mexicans tend to be more fatalistic than persons in the upper classes and Anglos, and that fatalism, in turn, increases psychological distress. We attempt to integrate research on the social and cultural determinants of cognitive orientations with studies of the effects of social class and Mexican culture on distress.

Influence of Social Class Perceptions on Attributions among Mental Health Practitioners

PubMed Central

Thomposon, Mindi; Diestelmann, Jacob; Cole, Odessa; Keller, Abiola; Minami, Takuya

2018-01-01

Objective A vignette-based study assessed the influence of social class attributions toward a hypothetical client’s difficulty. Method 188 licensed mental health professionals who were recruited through professional listservs completed an online survey after reviewing one of two versions of a vignette describing a hypothetical client that varied based on social class cues. Results As expected, this sample of licensed mental health practitioners detected social class differences based on the descriptors of the hypothetical client across the two vignettes. These perceived social class differences, however, did not impact participants’ attributions toward the client for causing or solving her problems, level of GAF score ascribed to the client, or willingness to work with the client. Conclusions There was no evidence that participants differentially ascribed attributions based on social class. Implications and directions for future research are provided. PMID:24499284

Social Investment or Private Profit? Diverging Notions of "Investment" in Early Childhood Education and Care

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adamson, Elizabeth; Brennan, Deborah

2014-01-01

In recent decades, many OECD countries have adopted the notion of "social investment" to reframe traditional approaches to social welfare. Social investment strategies and policies focus on employment rather than welfare and promote public expenditure on skills and education throughout the life course, starting with early childhood…

Social class and body weight among Chinese urban adults: the role of the middle classes in the nutrition transition.

PubMed

Bonnefond, Céline; Clément, Matthieu

2014-07-01

While a plethoric empirical literature addresses the relationship between socio-economic status and body weight, little is known about the influence of social class on nutritional outcomes, particularly in developing countries. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the analysis of the social determinants of adult body weight in urban China by taking into account the influence of social class. More specifically, we propose to analyse the position of the Chinese urban middle class in terms of being overweight or obese. The empirical investigations conducted as part of this research are based on a sample of 1320 households and 2841 adults from the China Health and Nutrition Survey for 2009. For the first step, we combine an economic approach and a sociological approach to identify social classes at household level. First, households with an annual per capita income between 10,000 Yuan and the 95th income percentile are considered as members of the middle class. Second, we strengthen the characterization of the middle class using information on education and employment. By applying clustering methods, we identify four groups: the elderly and inactive middle class, the old middle class, the lower middle class and the new middle class. For the second step, we implement an econometric analysis to assess the influence of social class on adult body mass index and on the probability of being overweight or obese. We use multinomial treatment regressions to deal with the endogeneity of the social class variable. Our results show that among the four subgroups of the urban middle class, the new middle class is the only one to be relatively well-protected against obesity. We suggest that this group plays a special role in adopting healthier food consumption habits and seems to be at a more advanced stage of the nutrition transition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Life course effects of early parental loss among very old African Americans.

PubMed

Johnson, Colleen L; Barer, Barbara M

2002-03-01

To analyze the life course effects of the early loss of one or both parents on very old Black Americans. Open-ended, semistructured interviews were used with a sample of 109 respondents aged 85 years and older. Correlations identified significant associations, and qualitative data illustrate life course trajectories of selected respondents. Those who lost a parent through death or desertion were less integrated into family and friendship groups in late life, and they had fewer social resources in general. Qualitative data describe three outcomes in the sample: those who grew up with both parents present, those who lost a parent but still reported a contented childhood, and those with disrupted families and negative effects. The respondents' open-ended commentary about their past lives and their current situation enhances understanding of connections between early life events and adaptation in old age.

Maternal and Early-Life Circadian Disruption Have Long-Lasting Negative Consequences on Offspring Development and Adult Behavior in Mice.

PubMed

Smarr, Benjamin L; Grant, Azure D; Perez, Luz; Zucker, Irving; Kriegsfeld, Lance J

2017-06-12

Modern life involves chronic circadian disruption through artificial light and these disruptions are associated with numerous mental and physical health maladies. Because the developing nervous system is particularly vulnerable to perturbation, we hypothesized that early-life circadian disruption would negatively impact offspring development and adult function. Pregnant mice were subjected to chronic circadian disruption from the time of uterine implantation through weaning. To dissociate in utero from postnatal effects, a subset of litters was cross-fostered at birth from disrupted dams to control dams and vice versa. Postnatal circadian disruption was associated with reduced adult body mass, social avoidance, and hyperactivity. In utero disruption resulted in more pronounced social avoidance and hyperactivity, phenotypes not abrogated by cross-fostering to control mothers. To examine whether circadian disruption affects development by acting as an early life stressor, we examined birthweight, litter size, maternal cannibalism, and epigenetic modifications. None of these variables differed between control and disrupted dams, or resembled patterns seen following early-life stress. Our findings indicate that developmental chronic circadian disruption permanently affects somatic and behavioral development in a stage-of-life-dependent manner, independent of early life stress mechanisms, underscoring the importance of temporal structure during development, both in utero and early postnatal life.

Tooth brushing among 11- to 15-year-olds in Denmark: combined effect of social class and migration status.

PubMed

Bast, L S; Nordahl, H; Christensen, L B; Holstein, B E

2015-03-01

Regular tooth brushing in adolescence predicts stable tooth brushing habits later in life. Differences in tooth brushing habits by ethnic background and socioeconomic position have been suggested. We investigated migration status and social class in relation to infrequent tooth brushing both separately and combined. The study population was 11-15 year-olds chosen from a clustered random sample of schools. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses estimated the separate and combined effects of migration status and social class on less than twice daily tooth brushing. 10,607 respondents: a response rate of 88.3%. Boys of lower social class had higher odds ratio (OR) of infrequent tooth brushing than girls: 1.98 (95% confidence interval 1.62-2.41) vs 1.80 (1.53-2.24). Immigrants and descendants had higher odds compared to adolescents of Danish origin: immigrant boys OR 1.39 (1.05-1.89), girls OR 1.92 (1.47-2.50); descendant boys OR 2.53 (1.97-3.27), girls OR 2.56 (2.02-3.35). Analyses of the combined effect of social class and migration status showed that the social gradient in tooth brushing habits observed among ethnic Danes cannot be found among groups of immigrants and descendants. The study shows that both non-Danish origin and low social class increases the risk of infrequent tooth brushing among school-aged children. The study calls for in depth analyses of the processes which influence young people's tooth brushing habits. Further, there is a need to strengthen the promotion of appropriate tooth brushing habits of minority and low social class youths.

Early talk about the past revisited: affect in working-class and middle-class children's co-narrations.

PubMed

Burger, L K; Miller, P J

1999-02-01

This study contributes to our understanding of sociocultural variation in children's early storytelling by comparing co-narrations produced by children and their families from two European-American communities, one working-class and one middle-class. Six children from each community were observed in their homes at 2;6 and 3;0 years of age, yielding a corpus of nearly 400 naturally-occurring co-narrations of past experience. Analyses of generic properties, content, and emotion talk revealed a complex configuration of similarities and differences. Working-class and middle-class families produced co-narrations that were similar in referential/evaluative functions and temporal structure, with a preponderance of positive content. Working-class families produced twice as many co-narrations as their middle-class counterparts, produced more negative emotion talk, and used more dramatic language for conveying negative emotional experience. These findings suggest that (1) differentiation between working-class and middle-class communities in the content of early narratives may occur primarily with respect to negative experience and (2) researchers need to go beyond emotion state terms in order to accurately represent sociocultural variation in personal storytelling.

Parent-child leisure activities and cultural capital in the United Kingdom: The gendered effects of education and social class.

PubMed

Gracia, Pablo

2015-07-01

This article uses data on couples from the 2000 UK Time Use Survey (N=610) to analyze how social position influences parents' leisure activities with children. The study is the first using representative data to investigate this fundamental question to understand social inequalities in family life and children's life chances. Results reveal that social position intersects with gender in influencing parent-child leisure activities with implications on children's cultural capital. Three are the main findings: (1) social position has significant positive effects on cultural activities with children and negative on parent-child television watching among mothers, but moderate differences are observed for fathers; (2) father-child leisure is strongly influenced by the spouse's social position, but not mother-child leisure; (3) education and social class show complex differences in affecting parent-child leisure, suggesting that future studies should include these two variables when analyzing parent-child time and family life. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Class transformation and work-life balance in urban Britain: the case of Manchester.

PubMed

Ward, Kevin; Fagan, Colette; McDowell, Linda; Perrons, Diane; Ray, Kathryn

2010-01-01

Recent years have seen an expansion in the work on the attitudes, beliefs and preferences of those middle-class groups that have accompanied the return of capital to many North American and western European city centres and their surrounding urban suburbs. Yet despite this, it is argued that there is little research linking gentrification to wider processes of social transformation, particularly debates over housing market decision-making, the balancing of work and life, and the gender division of labour within the household. It is to examining the interaction of these aspects of everyday life in a gentrifying area that this paper turns, using the example of Chorlton, a southern urban suburb of Manchester.

Social Usefulness: Theory and Evidence Concerning a Late Life Identity Construct.

PubMed

Gottlieb, Benjamin H; Sevigny, Andrée

2016-10-01

To clarify the construct of social usefulness by merging several influential theoretical perspectives on the findings of a qualitative investigation of late life prosociality. In-depth interviews with 20 older adults probed the meaning and psychological significance of the socially useful relationships they maintained with people and organizations. Based on identity theory, the thematic analysis yielded nine classes and more than 100 distinct properties of social usefulness. Self-determination theory was employed to organize and interpret the findings in relation to older adults' needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Also addressed are the study's implications for multidimensional measurement of social usefulness in future epidemiological and psychosocial studies. © The Author(s) 2016.

Poverty and Depression among Men: The Social Class Worldview Model and Counseling Implications.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, William M.

This paper outlines a theory for understanding social class in men's lives, and argues that poverty and depression are a function of social class and internalized classism. It begins by defining poverty, then explains the Social Class Worldview Model, which is a subjective social class model, and the Modern Classism Theory, which allows clinicians…

The effect of antibiotics on social aversion following early life inflammation.

PubMed

Kentner, Amanda C; Khan, Urma; MacRae, M; Dowd, Scot E; Yan, Siyang

2018-06-13

Epidemiological evidence suggests that exposure to infection during early development increases the risk for neurodevelopmental disorders associated with symptoms such as a decreased desire to engage in social interactions. In animals, disruptions in social behavior can be modelled by administering bacterial mimetics such as liposaccharide (LPS). However, when evaluating social interactions in the laboratory, attention is rarely directed on the reciprocal relationship as a whole, which is important as peers may drive social withdrawal. Previously, we have shown that male adolescent rats treated neonatally (n) with LPS receive less contact from their conspecifics in a social interaction test, and that this effect is mediated through olfactory communication. In the present study, we reconfirmed this effect using a more direct social test and evaluated the hypothesis that changes in the microbiome underlie the olfactory induced social aversion. Male and female Sprague-Dawley rats were administered nLPS (50 μg/kg, i.p) or nSaline on postnatal days (P)3 and 5. On P40, adolescent nLPS treated males received less contact in a social preference test compared to nSaline treated controls, an effect not observed in females. To confirm that nLPS led male rats to elicit a scent cue, resulting in social aversion, a subset of neurotypical conspecifics underwent an anosmia procedure that disrupted their olfactory processing via olfactory neuroepithelium degeneration. This normalized the contact that they directed towards nLPS and nSaline male rats. Although 16 s rRNA sequencing failed to detect significant differences in bacterial phyla across either sex or neonatal treatment, treating male nLPS rats with an antibiotic cocktail, which induced clear changes in microbial communities, diminished the social rejection effect. Therefore, manipulation of the microbiome appears to affect social communication where there exists an underlying deficit. Moreover, our data reaffirm that

The effect of early life stress on the cognitive phenotype of children with an extra X chromosome (47,XXY/47,XXX).

PubMed

van Rijn, Sophie; Barneveld, Petra; Descheemaeker, Mie-Jef; Giltay, Jacques; Swaab, Hanna

2018-02-01

Studies on gene-environment interactions suggest that some individuals may be more susceptible to life adversities than others due to their genetic profile. This study assesses whether or not children with an extra X chromosome are more vulnerable to the negative impact of early life stress on cognitive functioning than typically-developing children. A total of 50 children with an extra X chromosome and 103 non-clinical controls aged 9 to 18 years participated in the study. Cognitive functioning in domains of language, social cognition and executive functioning were assessed. Early life stress was measured with the Questionnaire of Life Events. High levels of early life stress were found to be associated with compromised executive functioning in the areas of mental flexibility and inhibitory control, irrespective of group membership. In contrast, the children with an extra X chromosome were found to be disproportionally vulnerable to deficits in social cognition on top of executive dysfunction, as compared to typically-developing children. Within the extra X group the number of negative life events is significantly correlated with more problems in inhibition, mental flexibility and social cognition. It is concluded that children with an extra X chromosome are vulnerable to adverse life events, with social cognition being particularly impacted in addition to the negative effects on executive functioning. The findings that developmental outcome is codependent on early environmental factors in genetically vulnerable children also underscores opportunities for training and support to positively influence the course of development.

Early-life family structure and microbially induced cancer risk.

PubMed

Blaser, Martin J; Nomura, Abraham; Lee, James; Stemmerman, Grant N; Perez-Perez, Guillermo I

2007-01-01

Cancer may follow exposure to an environmental agent after many decades. The bacterium Helicobacter pylori, known to be acquired early in life, increases risk for gastric adenocarcinoma, but other factors are also important. In this study, we considered whether early-life family structure affects the risk of later developing gastric cancer among H. pylori+ men. We examined a long-term cohort of Japanese-American men followed for 28 y, and performed a nested case-control study among those carrying H. pylori or the subset carrying the most virulent cagA+ H. pylori strains to address whether family structure predicted cancer development. We found that among the men who were H. pylori+ and/or cagA+ (it is possible to be cagA+ and H. pylori- if the H. pylori test is falsely negative), belonging to a large sibship or higher birth order was associated with a significantly increased risk of developing gastric adenocarcinoma late in life. For those with cagA+ strains, the risk of developing gastric cancer was more than twice as high (odds ratio 2.2; 95% confidence interval 1.2-4.0) among those in a sibship of seven or more individuals than in a sibship of between one and three persons. These results provide evidence that early-life social environment plays a significant role in risk of microbially induced malignancies expressing five to eight decades later, and these findings lead to new models to explain these interactions.

The effect of social class on the amount of salt intake in patients with hypertension.

PubMed

Mazloomy Mahmoodabad, Seyed Saeed; Tehrani, Hadi; Gholian-Aval, Mahdi; Gholami, Hasan; Nematy, Mohsen

2016-12-01

Reducing salt intake is a factor related to life style which can influence the prevention of blood pressure. This study was conducted to assess the impact of social class on the amount of salt intake in patients with hypertension in Iran. This was an observational on the intake of salt, as estimated by Kawasaki formula in a sample from Iranian population, stratified for social background characteristics. The finding in general was that the estimated salt intake was somewhat higher in subjects from a lower social background, while the opposite was true for lipid levels (LDL and HDL cholesterol). There was also a significant correlation between salt intake and the level of systolic blood pressure, but not the level of diastolic blood pressure. Considering high salt intake (almost double the standard amount in Iran), especially in patients with low-social class and the effects of salt on human health, it is suggested to design and perform suitable educational programs based on theories and models of health education in order to reduce salt intake.

Social Class Differentiation in Cognitive Development: A Longitudinal Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Golden, Mark; And Others

In an effort to isolate the emergence and causes of social class differences in intellectual performance, this longitudinal study was undertaken as a follow-up on a cross-sectional study that yielded no social class differences on the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale for 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old black children. In the present study, 89 children…

26 CFR 12.4 - Election of Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System (ADR).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 14 2011-04-01 2010-04-01 true Election of Class Life Asset Depreciation Range... Election of Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System (ADR). (a) Elections filed before February 1, 1972... election will be treated as an election under the Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System (ADR) as...

26 CFR 12.4 - Election of Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System (ADR).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 14 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Election of Class Life Asset Depreciation Range... Election of Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System (ADR). (a) Elections filed before February 1, 1972... election will be treated as an election under the Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System (ADR) as...

Social class, leaders and leadership: a critical review and suggestions for development.

PubMed

Martin, Sean R; Innis, Benjamin D; Ward, Ray G

2017-12-01

The consideration of social class in leadership research presents many exciting directions for research. In this review, we describe and summarize how social class research has been applied to the study of leaders and the leadership process, noting that while evidence suggests those from higher social classes are more likely to occupy formal leader roles in organizations, there is little evidence suggesting that they are more effective in these roles than those from lower social classes. We conclude with a discussion of important, unanswered theoretical questions about how social class relates to the process of leadership-most notably, whether those from different classes internalize different beliefs and expectations about how people in leader and follower roles should act, and how matches or mismatches in those beliefs and expectations shape leader-follower interactions and outcomes. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neighborhood Disadvantage, Stressful Life Events, and Adjustment among Mexican American Early Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roosa, Mark W.; Burrell, Ginger L.; Nair, Rajni L.; Coxe, Stefany; Tein, Jenn-Yun; Knight, George P.

2010-01-01

This study examined a stress process model in which stressful life events and association with delinquent peers mediated the relationship of neighborhood disadvantage to Mexican American early adolescents' mental health. The authors also proposed that child gender, child generation, and neighborhood informal social control would moderate the…

White Middle-Class Privilege: Social Class Bias and Implications for Training and Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, William Ming; Pickett, Theodore, Jr.; Ivey, Allen E.

2007-01-01

Social class, classism, and privilege and their relationship to counseling have been given insufficient attention. This article defines and explores White middle-class privilege; it proffers support for its integration in a multicultural competency, as well as its intersection with race and other dimensions of multiculturalism and privilege.…

Frequency of CPV infection in vaccinated puppies that attended puppy socialization classes.

PubMed

Stepita, Meredith E; Bain, Melissa J; Kass, Philip H

2013-01-01

Socialization is one method of preventing behavior problems in dogs; however, some oppose socialization before 16 wk of age due to the risk of contracting infectious diseases. The objectives of this study were to determine if puppies that attended puppy socialization classes and were vaccinated by a veterinarian at least once were at an increased risk of confirmed canine parvovirus (CPV) infection compared with puppies that did not attend classes and to determine the frequency of suspected CPV infection in puppies vaccinated at least once that attended classes with trainers. Twenty-one clinics in four cities in the United States provided information regarding demographics, vaccination, CPV diagnosis, and class attendance for puppies ≤ 16 wk of age. In addition, 24 trainers in those same cities collected similar information on puppies that attended their classes. In total, 279 puppies attended socialization classes and none were suspected of or diagnosed with CPV infection. Results indicated that vaccinated puppies attending socialization classes were at no greater risk of CPV infection than vaccinated puppies that did not attend those classes.

Early-life origins of life-cycle well-being: research and policy implications.

PubMed

Currie, Janet; Rossin-Slater, Maya

2015-01-01

Mounting evidence across different disciplines suggests that early-life conditions can have consequences on individual outcomes throughout the life cycle. Relative to other developed countries, the United States fares poorly on standard indicators of early-life health, and this disadvantage may have profound consequences not only for population well-being, but also for economic growth and competitiveness in a global economy. In this paper, we first discuss the research on the strength of the link between early-life health and adult outcomes, and then provide an evidence-based review of the effectiveness of existing U.S. policies targeting the early-life environment. We conclude that there is a robust and economically meaningful relationship between early-life conditions and well-being throughout the life cycle, as measured by adult health, educational attainment, labor market attachment, and other indicators of socioeconomic status. However, there is some variation in the degree to which current policies in the United States are effective in improving early-life conditions. Among existing programs, some of the most effective are the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), home visiting with nurse practitioners, and high-quality, center-based early-childhood care and education. In contrast, the evidence on other policies such as prenatal care and family leave is more mixed and limited.

Early-Life Social Isolation Stress Increases Kappa Opioid Receptor Responsiveness and Downregulates the Dopamine System

PubMed Central

Karkhanis, Anushree N; Rose, Jamie H; Weiner, Jeffrey L; Jones, Sara R

2016-01-01

Chronic early-life stress increases vulnerability to alcoholism and anxiety disorders during adulthood. Similarly, rats reared in social isolation (SI) during adolescence exhibit augmented ethanol intake and anxiety-like behaviors compared with group housed (GH) rats. Prior studies suggest that disruption of dopamine (DA) signaling contributes to SI-associated behaviors, although the mechanisms underlying these alterations are not fully understood. Kappa opioid receptors (KORs) have an important role in regulating mesolimbic DA signaling, and other kinds of stressors have been shown to augment KOR function. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that SI-induced increases in KOR function contribute to the dysregulation of NAc DA and the escalation in ethanol intake associated with SI. Our ex vivo voltammetry experiments showed that the inhibitory effects of the kappa agonist U50,488 on DA release were significantly enhanced in the NAc core and shell of SI rats. Dynorphin levels in NAc tissue were observed to be lower in SI rats. Microdialysis in freely moving rats revealed that SI was also associated with reduced baseline DA levels, and pretreatment with the KOR antagonist nor-binaltorphimine (nor-BNI) increased DA levels selectively in SI subjects. Acute ethanol elevated DA in SI and GH rats and nor-BNI pretreatment augmented this effect in SI subjects, while having no effect on ethanol-stimulated DA release in GH rats. Together, these data suggest that KORs may have increased responsiveness following SI, which could lead to hypodopaminergia and contribute to an increased drive to consume ethanol. Indeed, SI rats exhibited greater ethanol intake and preference and KOR blockade selectively attenuated ethanol intake in SI rats. Collectively, the findings that nor-BNI reversed SI-mediated hypodopaminergic state and escalated ethanol intake suggest that KOR antagonists may represent a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of alcohol use disorders, particularly

Incarceration and Living Arrangements: Findings from the National Health and Social Life Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

London, Andrew S.; Parker, Wendy M.

2009-01-01

The authors use data from the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey to examine the association between incarceration and living arrangements, net of a range of sociodemographic and early life characteristics. Relative to living with a spouse and child(ren), there is evidence that a history of incarceration is strongly associated with…

Early Years Learning, Play Pedagogy and Social Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stirrup, Julie; Evans, John; Davies, Brian

2017-01-01

Despite 50 years and more of "progressive education" in the United Kingdom, classed patterns of educational success and failure stubbornly prevail. So how, where and when does it all go wrong for the many children who continue to fail or underachieve? Drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein, this article centres processes within early…

Identity, Meaning, and Engagement with School: A Native American Student's Composition of a Life Map in a Senior English Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smagorinsky, Peter; Anglin, Joanna L.; O'Donnell-Allen, Cindy

2012-01-01

This case study of a Native American high school senior focuses on one of the final assignments he completed before dropping out of school early in the school year. The task was to draw a life map--a nonverbal text that identified 10 key life events on his journey to that point--as part of a larger unit on identity for his senior English class.…

Suffering of childless women in Bangladesh: the intersection of social identities of gender and class.

PubMed

Nahar, Papreen; Richters, Annemiek

2011-12-01

Research has documented that, around the world, women who are childless against their will suffer from an array of social, economic and emotional difficulties. The causes of this suffering are primarily related to their gender position in society and their gender identity. This paper addresses the impact of class differences on the gender-related suffering of childless women in the socially very hierarchically structured society of Bangladesh. The main method was gathering life histories of illiterate rural poor childless women and educated urban middle-class childless women. The rural childless women experience strong stigma in society, as their identity is devalued due to their inability to produce children. As a result, they suffer from feelings of guilt, role failure, loss of self-esteem, abandonment by the family, social isolation, and impoverishment. In contrast, because of their relatively high socio-economic status and good educational background, urban childless women have more opportunities to avail themselves of alternative social identities and thus avoid social isolation. Despite these differences, both groups of women lead frustrated lives, burdened with a deep sense of guilt for not being able to produce children.

Class relations and all-cause mortality: a test of Wright's social class scheme using the Barcelona 2000 Health Interview Survey.

PubMed

Muntaner, Carles; Borrell, Carme; Solà, Judit; Marí-Dell'Olmo, Marc; Chung, Haejoo; Rodríguez-Sanz, Maica; Benach, Joan; Rocha, Kátia B; Ng, Edwin

2011-01-01

The aim of this study is to test the effects of neo-Marxian social class and potential mediators such as labor market position, work organization, material deprivation, and health behaviors on all-cause mortality. The authors use longitudinal data from the Barcelona 2000 Health Interview Survey (N=7526), with follow-up interviews through the municipal census in 2008 (95.97% response rate). Using data on relations of property, organizational power, and education, the study groups social classes according to Wright's scheme: capitalists, petit bourgeoisie, managers, supervisors, and skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers. Findings indicate that social class, measured as relations of control over productive assets, is an important predictor of mortality among working-class men but not women. Workers (hazard ratio = 1.60; 95% confidence interval, 1.10-2.35) but also managers and small employers had a higher risk of death compared with capitalists. The extensive use of conventional gradient measures of social stratification has neglected sociological measures of social class conceptualized as relations of control over productive assets. This concept is capable of explaining how social inequalities are generated. To confirm the protective effect of the capitalist class position and the "contradictory class location hypothesis," additional efforts are needed to properly measure class among low-level supervisors, capitalists, managers, and small employers.

Body mass and social class: a comparison of Finland and Sweden in the 1990s.

PubMed

Rahkonen, O; Lundberg, O; Lahelma, E; Huuhka, M

1998-01-01

High physical weight affects public health as well as people's social relations. This study seeks to examine the distribution of physical weight across the social structure in Finland and Sweden in the early 1990s. We compare physical weight, classified by overweight and obesity, 1) between men and women, 2) between different age groups, and 3) between social classes in these two countries. Comparable interview surveys were conducted in Finland 1994 (N = 8,650, response rate 73%) and in Sweden 1991 (N = 5,306, response rate 79%). Physical weight, overweight and obesity of populations are described in terms of body mass index (BMI = weight (kg)/height (m2)). The average BMI is higher in Finnish men (25.6) and women (24.6) than in their Swedish counterparts (24.6 and 23.2, respectively). In both countries, the average BMI is higher in men than in women below the age of about 55-64 years. In both countries and in both genders the average BMI is higher, the higher the age. The level of overweight as well as obesity is lower in Sweden than in Finland. Social class differences can be found in both countries. The odds ratio for overweight is higher in Finnish male and female farmers (OR = 1.57 and 1.94, respectively) as compared to upper white collars (OR = 1.0). In Sweden, high odds ratio for overweight can be found among male entrepreneurs (OR = 1.80) and female unskilled manuals (OR = 2.65). Obesity varies by social class in Swedish men and women as well as in Finnish women, but not in Finnish men. The results show that Finnish men and women are more often overweight and obese than their Swedish counterparts, but social class differences in overweight and obesity are larger in Sweden than in Finland.

Longitudinal phenotypes for alcoholism: Heterogeneity of course, early identifiers, and life course correlates.

PubMed

Jester, Jennifer M; Buu, Anne; Zucker, Robert A

2016-11-01

Alcoholism is a heterogeneous disorder; however, characterization of life-course variations in symptomatology is almost nonexistent, and developmentally early predictors of variations are very poorly characterized. In this study, the course of alcoholic symptomatology over 32 years is differentiated, and predictors and covariates of trajectory class membership are identified. A community sample of alcoholic and neighborhood matched control families, 332 men and 336 women, was recruited based on alcoholism in the men. Symptoms were assessed retrospectively at baseline (mean age = 32) back to age 15 and prospectively from baseline every 3 years for 15 years. Trajectory classes were established using growth mixture modeling. Men and women had very similarly shaped trajectory classes: developmentally limited (men: 29%, women: 42%), developmentally cumulative (men: 26%, women: 38%), young adult onset (men: 31%, women: 21%), and early onset severe (men: 13%). Three factors at age 15 predicted class membership: family history of alcoholism, age 15 symptoms, and level of childhood antisocial behavior. Numerous measures of drinking and other psychopathology were also associated with class membership. The findings suggest that clinical assessments can be crafted where the profile of current and historical information can predict not only severity of prognosis but also future moderation of symptoms and/or remission over intervals as long as decades.

Social Class on Campus: Theories and Manifestations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barratt, Will

2011-01-01

This is at once a playful text with a serious purpose: to provide the reader with the theoretical lenses to analyze the dynamics of social class. It will appeal to students, and indeed anyone interested in how class mediates relationships in higher education, both because of its engaging tone, and because it uses the college campus as a microcosm…

Comparing a Yoga Class with a Resistance Exercise Class: Effects on Body Satisfaction and Social Physique Anxiety in University Women.

PubMed

Gammage, Kimberley L; Drouin, Breanne; Lamarche, Larkin

2016-11-01

The current study compared a single yoga group exercise class and a resistance group exercise class for their effects on state body satisfaction and social physique anxiety in women. A pretest-posttest design was used. Participants (N = 46) completed both a resistance exercise class and yoga class in a counterbalanced order. Measures of body satisfaction and social physique anxiety were completed immediately before and after each class. A 2 (time) × 2 (class type) repeatedmeasures multiple analysis of variance showed a significant overall Time × Class Type interaction (F 2,44 = 5.69, P < .01, η p 2 = .21). There was a significant increase in body satisfaction after the yoga class. After both classes, there was a significant decrease in social physique anxiety, but the magnitude of the change was larger after the yoga class than after the resistance class. Both types of exercise class were associated with improvements in body image, but there were greater improvements after the yoga class. This study provided evidence of the positive effects of yoga for reducing state social physique anxiety and increasing state body satisfaction, adding to correlational evidence suggesting that yoga is particularly beneficial for improving body image-related outcomes in women.

Beat the Bourgeoisie: A Social Class Inequality and Mobility Simulation Game

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Norris, Dawn R.

2013-01-01

Simulation games can help overcome student resistance to thinking structurally about social class inequality, meritocracy, and mobility. Most inequality simulations focus solely on economic inequality and omit social and cultural capital, both of which contribute to social class reproduction. Using a pretest/posttest design, the current study…

Imagining class: A study into material social class position, subjective identification, and voting behavior across Europe.

PubMed

D'Hooge, Lorenzo; Achterberg, Peter; Reeskens, Tim

2018-02-01

The traditional approach to class voting has largely ignored the question whether material class positions coincide with subjective class identification. Following Sosnaud et al. (2013), this study evaluates party preferences when Europeans' material and subjective social class do not coincide. Seminal studies on voting behavior have suggested that members of lower classes are more likely to vote for the economic left and cultural right and that higher classes demonstrate the opposite pattern. Yet, these studies have on the one hand overlooked the possibility that there is a mismatch between the material class people can be classified in and the class they think they are part of, and on the other hand the consequences of this discordant class identification on voting behavior. Analyzing the 2009 wave of the European Elections Study, we find that the majority of the Europeans discordantly identify with the middle class, whereas only a minority of the lower and higher classes concordantly identify with their material social class. Further, material class only seems to predict economic voting behavior when it coincides with subjective class; for instance, individuals who have an inflated class identification are more likely to vote for the economic left, even when they materially can be classified as middle or high class. We conclude this paper with a discussion on scholarly debates concerning class and politics. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Social closure, micro-class immobility and the intergenerational reproduction of the upper class: a comparative study.

PubMed

Ruggera, Lucia; Barone, Carlo

2017-06-01

This article assesses how processes of social closure enhance intergenerational immobility in the regulated professions and thus promote persistence at the top of the occupational hierarchy. We compare four European countries (GB, Germany, Denmark and Sweden) that differ considerably in their degree of professional regulation and in their broader institutional arrangements. We run log-linear and logistic regression models on a cumulative dataset based on three large-scale surveys with detailed and highly comparable information at the level of unit occupations. Our analyses indicate that children of licensed professionals are far more likely to inherit the occupation of their parents and that this stronger micro-class immobility translates into higher chances of persistence in the upper class. These results support social closure theory and confirm the relevance of a micro-class approach for the explanation of social fluidity and of its cross-national variations. Moreover, we find that, when children of professionals do not reproduce the micro-class of their parents, they still display disproportionate chances of persistence in professional employment. Hence, on the one hand, processes of social closure erect barriers between professions and fuel micro-class immobility at the top. On the other hand, the cultural proximity of different professional groups drives intense intergenerational exchanges between them. Our analyses indicate that these micro- and meso-class rigidities work as complementary routes to immobility at the top. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

SOCIAL CLASS AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

BIRNS, BEVERLY; GOLDEN, MARK

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO FIND OUT WHETHER SOCIAL CLASS DIFFERENCES IN INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT ARE PRESENT IF (1) CHILDREN FROM SOCIALLY DISORGANIZED SLUM FAMILIES ARE COMPARED WITH CHILDREN FROM STABLE, LOW INCOME AND MIDDLE INCOME FAMILIES, (2) THE PIAGET OBJECT SCALE, A NEW MEASURE OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT BASED ON PIAGET'S SENSORIMOTOR…

Alterations in Sociability and Functional Brain Connectivity Caused by Early-Life Seizures is Reversed by Bumetanide

PubMed Central

Holmes, Gregory L.; Tian, Chengju; Hernan, Amanda E.; Flynn, Sean; Camp, Devon; Barry, Jeremy

2015-01-01

There is a well-described association between infantile epilepsy and pervasive cognitive and behavioral deficits, including a high incidence of autism spectrum disorders. Despite the robustness of the relationship between early-life seizures and the development of autism, the pathophysiological mechanism by which this occurs has not been explored. As a result of increasing evidence that autism is a disorder of brain connectivity we hypothesized that early-life seizures would interrupt normal brain connectivity during brain maturation and result in an autistic phenotype. Normal rat pups underwent recurrent flurothyl-induced seizures from postnatal (P) day 5-14 and then tested, along with controls, for developmental alterations of development brain oscillatory activity from P18-25. Specifically we wished to understand how normal changes in rhythmicity in and between brain regions change as a function of age and if this rhythmicity is altered or interrupted by early life seizures. In rat pups with early-life seizures, field recordings from dorsal and ventral hippocampus and prefrontal cortex demonstrated marked increase in coherence as well as a decrease in voltage correlation at all bandwidths compared to controls while there were minimal differences in total power and relative power spectral densities. Rats with early-life seizures had resulting impairment in the sociability and social novelty tests but demonstrated no evidence of increased activity or generalized anxiety as measured in the open field. In addition, rats with early-life seizures had lower seizure thresholds than controls, indicating long-standing alterations in the excitatory/inhibition balance. Bumetanide, a pharmacological agent that blocks the activity of NKCC1 and induces a significant shift of ECl toward more hyperpolarized values, administration at the time of the seizures precluded the subsequent abnormalities in coherence and voltage correlation and resulted in normal sociability and seizure

Early-life disruption of amphibian microbiota decreases later-life resistance to parasites.

PubMed

Knutie, Sarah A; Wilkinson, Christina L; Kohl, Kevin D; Rohr, Jason R

2017-07-20

Changes in the early-life microbiota of hosts might affect infectious disease risk throughout life, if such disruptions during formative times alter immune system development. Here, we test whether an early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota affects later-life resistance to infections by manipulating the microbiota of tadpoles and challenging them with parasitic gut worms as adults. We find that tadpole bacterial diversity is negatively correlated with parasite establishment in adult frogs: adult frogs that had reduced bacterial diversity as tadpoles have three times more worms than adults without their microbiota manipulated as tadpoles. In contrast, adult bacterial diversity during parasite exposure is not correlated with parasite establishment in adult frogs. Thus, in this experimental setup, an early-life disruption of the microbiota has lasting reductions on host resistance to infections, which is possibly mediated by its effects on immune system development. Our results support the idea that preventing early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota might confer protection against diseases later in life.Early-life microbiota alterations can affect infection susceptibility later in life, in animal models. Here, Knutie et al. show that manipulating the microbiota of tadpoles leads to increased susceptibility to parasitic infection in adult frogs, in the absence of substantial changes in the adults' microbiota.

Psychiatric disorder and work life: A longitudinal study of intra-generational social mobility.

PubMed

Tiikkaja, Sanna; Sandin, Sven; Hultman, Christina M; Modin, Bitte; Malki, Ninoa; Sparén, Pär

2016-03-01

Intra-generational social mobility, which describes the mobility within an individual's own working life, is seldom studied among employees with psychiatric disorders (EPD). There is need of knowledge of the intra-generational mobility patterns, in a broader perspective, among EPD. To investigate intra-generational social mobility in employed individuals diagnosed with affective disorder, personality disorder, schizophrenia and drug dependence in a national Swedish cohort. We identified a national sample of employed Swedish adults born in 1939-1949 (N = 876, 738), and among them individuals with a first-time hospital admission for affective psychosis, neurosis and personality disorder, alcoholism, drug dependence or schizophrenia in 1964-1980 (N = 18, 998). Employed individuals without hospital admission for such diagnoses were utilised as a comparison group (N = 866, 442). Intra-individual social class changes between 1980 and 1990 among EPD and the comparison group were described through summary statistics and graphs. EPD more often held Low manual occupations at baseline in 1980 than the comparison group (44% vs. 28%), although parental social class was similar. In 1990, 19% of EPD and 4% of the comparison group had lost contact with the labour market. Social stability was less common among EPD (49 %) than in the comparison group (67%). Mobility out of the labour force increased and social stability decreased by number of inpatient admissions. Employees diagnosed with affective psychosis or neurosis and personality disorder fared better in the labour market than employees with schizophrenia. Employees suffering from psychiatric disorder do not maintain their social class or remain in the labour force to the same extent as individuals without those problems, irrespective of their parental class. Our results support the social drift hypothesis that individuals with poor psychiatric health move downward in the social hierarchy. © The Author(s) 2015.

Is group singing special? Health, well-being and social bonds in community-based adult education classes

PubMed Central

Pearce, Eiluned; Launay, Jacques; Machin, Anna; Dunbar, Robin I.M.

2016-01-01

Evidence demonstrates that group singing improves health and well-being, but the precise mechanisms remain unknown. Given that cohesive social networks also positively influence health, we focus on the social aspects of singing, exploring whether improvements in health and well-being are mediated by stronger social bonds, both to the group as a whole (collective-bonding) and to individual classmates (relational-bonding). To do so, seven newly-formed community-based adult education classes (four singing, N=84, and three comparison classes studying creative writing or crafts, N=51) were followed over seven months. Self-report questionnaire data on mental and physical health, well-being, and social bonding were collected at Months 1, 3 and 7. We demonstrate that physical and mental health and satisfaction with life significantly improved over time in both conditions. Path analysis did not show any indirect effects via social bonding of Condition on health and well-being. However, higher collective-bonding at timepoint 3 significantly predicted increased flourishing, reduced anxiety and improved physical health independently of baseline levels. In contrast, relational-bonding showed no such effects, suggesting that it is feeling part of a group that particularly yields health and well-being benefits. Moreover, these results indicate that singing may not improve health and well-being more than other types of activities. Nonetheless, these findings encourage further work to refine our understanding of the social aspects of community-based adult education classes in promoting health, well-being and community cohesion. PMID:27867282

Is group singing special? Health, well-being and social bonds in community-based adult education classes.

PubMed

Pearce, Eiluned; Launay, Jacques; Machin, Anna; Dunbar, Robin I M

Evidence demonstrates that group singing improves health and well-being, but the precise mechanisms remain unknown. Given that cohesive social networks also positively influence health, we focus on the social aspects of singing, exploring whether improvements in health and well-being are mediated by stronger social bonds, both to the group as a whole (collective-bonding) and to individual classmates (relational-bonding). To do so, seven newly-formed community-based adult education classes (four singing, N =84, and three comparison classes studying creative writing or crafts, N =51) were followed over seven months. Self-report questionnaire data on mental and physical health, well-being, and social bonding were collected at Months 1, 3 and 7. We demonstrate that physical and mental health and satisfaction with life significantly improved over time in both conditions. Path analysis did not show any indirect effects via social bonding of Condition on health and well-being. However, higher collective-bonding at timepoint 3 significantly predicted increased flourishing, reduced anxiety and improved physical health independently of baseline levels. In contrast, relational-bonding showed no such effects, suggesting that it is feeling part of a group that particularly yields health and well-being benefits. Moreover, these results indicate that singing may not improve health and well-being more than other types of activities. Nonetheless, these findings encourage further work to refine our understanding of the social aspects of community-based adult education classes in promoting health, well-being and community cohesion.

Exogenous determinants of early-life conditions, and mortality later in life.

PubMed

van den Berg, Gerard J; Doblhammer, Gabriele; Christensen, Kaare

2009-05-01

We analyze causal effects of conditions early in life on the individual mortality rate later in life. Conditions early in life are captured by transitory features of the macro-environment around birth, notably the state of the business cycle around birth, but also food price deviations, weather indicators, and demographic indicators. We argue that these features can only affect high-age mortality by way of the individual early-life conditions. Moreover, they are exogenous from the individual point of view, which is a methodological advantage compared to the use of unique characteristics of the newborn individual or his or her family or household as early-life indicators. We collected national annual time-series data on the above-mentioned indicators, and we combine these to the individual data records from the Danish Twin Registry covering births in 1873-1906. The empirical analyses (mostly based on the estimation of duration models) indicate a significant negative causal effect of economic conditions early in life on individual mortality rates at higher ages. If the national economic performance in the year of birth exceeds its trend value (i.e., if the business cycle is favorable) then the mortality rate later in life is lower. The implied effect on the median lifetime of those who survive until age 35 is about 10 months. A systematic empirical exploration of all macro-indicators reveals that economic conditions in the first years after birth also affect mortality rates later in life.

Demography, life history, and the evolution of age-dependent social behaviour.

PubMed

Rodrigues, António M M

2018-06-14

Since the inception of modern social evolution theory, a vast majority of studies have sought to explain cooperation using relatedness-driven hypotheses. Natural populations, however, show a substantial amount of variation in social behaviour that is uncorrelated with relatedness. Age offers a major alternative explanation for variation in behaviour that remains unaccounted for. Most natural populations are structured into age-classes, with ageing being a nearly universal feature of most major taxa, including eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms. Despite this, the theoretical underpinnings of age-dependent social behaviour remain limited. Here, we investigate how group age-composition, demography, and life history shape trajectories of age-dependent behaviours that are expressed conditionally on an actor and recipient's age. We show that demography introduces novel age-dependent selective pressures acting on social phenotypes. Furthermore, we find that life history traits influence the costs and benefits of cooperation directly, but also indirectly. Life history has a strong impact not only on the genetic structure of the population but also on the distribution of group age-compositions, with both of these processes influencing the expression of age-dependent cooperation. Age of peak reproductive performance, in particular, is of chief importance for the evolution of cooperation, as this will largely determine the age and relatedness of social partners. Moreover, our results suggest that later-life reproductive senescence may occur because of demographic effects alone, which opens new vistas on the evolution of menopause and related phenomena. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Early Life Stages

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Childhood should be viewed as a sequence of lifestages, from birth through infancy and adolescence. When assessing early life risks, consideration is given to risks resulting from fetal exposure via the pregnant mother, as well as postnatal exposures.

A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior.

PubMed

Korndörfer, Martin; Egloff, Boris; Schmukle, Stefan C

2015-01-01

Does being from a higher social class lead a person to engage in more or less prosocial behavior? Psychological research has recently provided support for a negative effect of social class on prosocial behavior. However, research outside the field of psychology has mainly found evidence for positive or u-shaped relations. In the present research, we therefore thoroughly examined the effect of social class on prosocial behavior. Moreover, we analyzed whether this effect was moderated by the kind of observed prosocial behavior, the observed country, and the measure of social class. Across eight studies with large and representative international samples, we predominantly found positive effects of social class on prosociality: Higher class individuals were more likely to make a charitable donation and contribute a higher percentage of their family income to charity (32,090 ≥ N ≥ 3,957; Studies 1-3), were more likely to volunteer (37,136 ≥N ≥ 3,964; Studies 4-6), were more helpful (N = 3,902; Study 7), and were more trusting and trustworthy in an economic game when interacting with a stranger (N = 1,421; Study 8) than lower social class individuals. Although the effects of social class varied somewhat across the kinds of prosocial behavior, countries, and measures of social class, under no condition did we find the negative effect that would have been expected on the basis of previous results reported in the psychological literature. Possible explanations for this divergence and implications are discussed.

Relationship between Social Class and Racial Prejudice on Home Management Skills among Black Americans.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, Catherine Walker

The relationship of social class and racial prejudice to the home management skills of black Americans was the focus of this study. A questionnaire (a copy of which appears in an appendix) was used to interview a sample of 100 people divided into four subgroups: low social class blacks, low social class whites, middle social class blacks, and…

49 CFR Appendix C to Part 512 - Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... 49 Transportation 6 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations C Appendix C to Part 512 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to Transportation (Continued) NATIONAL.... 512, App. C Appendix C to Part 512—Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations (a) The Chief Counsel...

49 CFR Appendix C to Part 512 - Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... 49 Transportation 6 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations C Appendix C to Part 512 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to Transportation (Continued) NATIONAL.... 512, App. C Appendix C to Part 512—Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations (a) The Chief Counsel...

49 CFR Appendix C to Part 512 - Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 6 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations C Appendix C to Part 512 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to Transportation (Continued) NATIONAL.... 512, App. C Appendix C to Part 512—Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations (a) The Chief Counsel...

49 CFR Appendix C to Part 512 - Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 49 Transportation 6 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations C Appendix C to Part 512 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to Transportation (Continued) NATIONAL.... 512, App. C Appendix C to Part 512—Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations (a) The Chief Counsel...

49 CFR Appendix C to Part 512 - Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... 49 Transportation 6 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations C Appendix C to Part 512 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to Transportation (Continued) NATIONAL.... 512, App. C Appendix C to Part 512—Early Warning Reporting Class Determinations (a) The Chief Counsel...

The Role of Social Networking Sites in Early Adolescents' Social Lives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Antheunis, Marjolijn L.; Schouten, Alexander P.; Krahmer, Emiel

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to examine the role of social networking sites (SNSs) in early adolescents' social lives. First, we investigated the relation between SNS use and several aspects of early adolescents' social lives (i.e., friendship quality, bridging social capital, and bonding social capital). Second, we examined whether there are…

[Differences between proposals for implementation of the social class concept in epidemiological studies

PubMed

Solla

1996-07-01

This article compares different proposals for the implementation of the concept of social class and analyzes the alternatives used in each proposal, considering previous epidemiological studies on this issue and the potential of such a concept as a central category in studies on social determination in the health/disease process. Seven basic differences were identified, pertaining to the following aspects: class structure; research objective; the social class concept as a reference; the decision as to which individual has his/her occupational activity taken as defining the family's social class; the class status of the unemployed, housewives, and the retired; class status of students; and criteria for distinguishing between the "bourgeoisie", "petty bourgeoisie", "new petty bourgeoisie", and "proletariat" and whether there is a specific flow in certain population groups. Given the observed differences and underlying theoretical models, this study discusses problems related to the fact that the use of a specific concept of social class can have various implementation models.

Mother's social class and perinatal problems in a low-problem area.

PubMed

Hemminki, E; Malin, M; Rahkonen, O

1990-12-01

This study reports the variation in perinatal problems related to social class in one area in Finland. Data on length of gestation, birthweight, one-minute Apgar score, and need for special care in relation to social class were obtained from a large clinical trial (n = 2912) on iron prophylaxis during pregnancy. Social class was determined from the woman's own occupation and education. Occupation was obtained from the women themselves and classified as upper white collar, lower white collar I, lower white collar II, and workers; entrepreneurs, students and women with no information were excluded. Education was obtained by record linkage to the national education register, and all women were classified by the years normally required to attain a certain level: greater than or equal to 13, 12, 10-11, and less than or equal to 9 years of education. Adjusted for age and parity, a week U-shaped curve was found for gestation length and birthweight, best results being found for the women in the second highest social class. The lower the social class, the more infants with poor Apgar scores. As potential intervening variables we studied marital status, pre-pregnancy weight, smoking, and haematocrit in the 28th week of pregnancy. Their inclusion in multivariate analyses influenced only slightly the differences in perinatal problems between the groups. Our results suggest that in Finland there are still differences in perinatal problems between social classes, but that the relationship is not always linear.

Mental Health Problems in Early Childhood Can Impair Learning and Behavior for Life. Working Paper #6

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2008

2008-01-01

Significant mental health problems can and do occur in young children. In some cases, these problems can have serious consequences for early learning, social competence, and lifelong health. Furthermore, the foundations of many mental health problems that endure through adulthood are established early in life through the interaction of genetic…

Physical maturation, life-history classes and age estimates of free-ranging western gorillas--insights from Mbeli Bai, Republic of Congo.

PubMed

Breuer, Thomas; Hockemba, Mireille Breuer-Ndoundou; Olejniczak, Claudia; Parnell, Richard J; Stokes, Emma J

2009-02-01

Physical maturation and life-history parameters are seen as evolutionary adaptations to different ecological and social conditions. Comparison of life-history patterns of closely related species living in diverse environments helps to evaluate the validity of these assumptions but empirical data are lacking. The two gorilla species exhibit substantial differences in their environment, which allows investigation into the role of increased frugivory in shaping western gorilla life histories. We present behavioral and morphological data on western gorilla physical maturation and life-history parameters from a 12.5-year study at Mbeli Bai, a forest clearing in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in northern Congo. We assign photographs of known individuals to different life-history classes and propose new age boundaries for life-history classes in western gorillas, which can be used and tested at other western gorilla research sites. Our results show that western gorillas are weaned at a later age compared with mountain gorillas and indicate slower physical maturation of immatures. These findings support the risk-aversion hypothesis for more frugivorous species. However, our methods need to be applied and tested with other gorilla populations. The slow life histories of western gorillas could have major consequences for social structure, mortality patterns and population growth rates that will affect recovery from population crashes of this critically endangered species. We emphasize that long-term studies can provide crucial demographic and life-history data that improve our understanding of life-history evolution and adaptation and help to refine conservation strategies. (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Emotional non-acceptance links early life stress and blunted cortisol reactivity to social threat.

PubMed

Cărnuţă, Mihai; Crişan, Liviu G; Vulturar, Romana; Opre, Adrian; Miu, Andrei C

2015-01-01

Early life stress (ELS) has been recently associated with blunted cortisol reactivity and emotion dysregulation, but no study until now examined whether these characteristics are related. The main goal of this study was to examine the potential mediator role of emotion dysregulation in the relation between ELS and cortisol reactivity to social threat. Only women who were free of psychiatric and endocrine disorders, had regular menstrual cycle and did not use oral contraceptives were selected for this study (N=62). After filling in ELS and multidimensional emotion dysregulation measures, participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test during which cortisol and autonomic responses were assessed. Most participants (85.5%) reported one or more major stressful events (i.e., physical abuse, sexual abuse, major parental conflicts, death of a family or close friend, severe illness) experienced before age 17. ELS was negatively associated with cortisol reactivity and positively associated with skin conductance level (SCL) reactivity, but it did not influence heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. In addition, ELS was positively related to emotional non-acceptance (i.e., a tendency to develop secondary emotional responses to one's negative emotions), and the latter was negatively related to cortisol responses and positively related to SCL responses. Bootstrapping analyses indicated that emotional non-acceptance was a significant mediator in the relationships between ELS and both cortisol and SCL responses. Emotional non-acceptance is thus one of the psychological mechanisms underlying blunted cortisol and increased sympathetic reactivity in young healthy volunteers with a history of ELS. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior

PubMed Central

Korndörfer, Martin; Egloff, Boris; Schmukle, Stefan C.

2015-01-01

Does being from a higher social class lead a person to engage in more or less prosocial behavior? Psychological research has recently provided support for a negative effect of social class on prosocial behavior. However, research outside the field of psychology has mainly found evidence for positive or u-shaped relations. In the present research, we therefore thoroughly examined the effect of social class on prosocial behavior. Moreover, we analyzed whether this effect was moderated by the kind of observed prosocial behavior, the observed country, and the measure of social class. Across eight studies with large and representative international samples, we predominantly found positive effects of social class on prosociality: Higher class individuals were more likely to make a charitable donation and contribute a higher percentage of their family income to charity (32,090 ≥ N ≥ 3,957; Studies 1–3), were more likely to volunteer (37,136 ≥N ≥ 3,964; Studies 4–6), were more helpful (N = 3,902; Study 7), and were more trusting and trustworthy in an economic game when interacting with a stranger (N = 1,421; Study 8) than lower social class individuals. Although the effects of social class varied somewhat across the kinds of prosocial behavior, countries, and measures of social class, under no condition did we find the negative effect that would have been expected on the basis of previous results reported in the psychological literature. Possible explanations for this divergence and implications are discussed. PMID:26193099

Experiential or Material Purchases? Social Class Determines Purchase Happiness.

PubMed

Lee, Jacob C; Hall, Deborah L; Wood, Wendy

2018-05-01

Which should people buy to make themselves happy: experiences or material goods? The answer depends in part on the level of resources already available in their lives. Across multiple studies using a range of methodologies, we found that individuals of higher social class, whose abundant resources make it possible to focus on self-development and self-expression, were made happier by experiential over material purchases. No such experiential advantage emerged for individuals of lower social class, whose lesser resources engender concern with resource management and wise use of limited finances. Instead, lower-class individuals were made happier from material purchases or were equally happy from experiential and material purchases.

African ancestry, early life exposures, and respiratory morbidity in early childhood.

PubMed

Kumar, R; Tsai, H-J; Hong, X; Gignoux, C; Pearson, C; Ortiz, K; Fu, M; Pongracic, J A; Burchard, E G; Bauchner, H; Wang, X

2012-02-01

Racial disparities persist in early childhood wheezing and cannot be completely explained by known risk factors. To evaluate the associations of genetic ancestry and self-identified race with early childhood recurrent wheezing, accounting for socio-economic status (SES) and early life exposures. We studied 1034 children in an urban, multi-racial, prospective birth cohort. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate the association of genetic ancestry as opposed to self-identified race with recurrent wheezing (>3 episodes). Sequential models accounted for demographic, socio-economic factors and early life risk factors. Genetic ancestry, estimated using 150 ancestry informative markers, was expressed in deciles. Approximately 6.1% of subjects (mean age 3.1 years) experienced recurrent wheezing. After accounting for SES and demographic factors, African ancestry (OR: 1.16, 95% CI: 1.02-1.31) was significantly associated with recurrent wheezing. By self-reported race, hispanic subjects had a borderline decrease in risk of wheeze compared with African Americans (OR: 0.44, 95% CI: 0.19-1.00), whereas white subjects (OR: 0.46, 95% CI: 0.14-1.57) did not have. After further adjustment for known confounders and early life exposures, both African (OR: 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05-1.34) and European ancestry (OR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.74-0.94) retained a significant association with recurrent wheezing, as compared with self-identified race (OR(whites) : 0.31, 95% CI: 0.09-1.14; OR(hispanic) : 0.47, 95% CI: 0.20-1.08). There were no significant interactions between ancestry and early life factors on recurrent wheezing. In contrast to self-identified race, African ancestry remained a significant, independent predictor of early childhood wheezing after accounting for early life and other known risk factors associated with lung function changes and asthma. Genetic ancestry may be a powerful way to evaluate wheezing disparities and a proxy for differentially distributed genetic and

African ancestry, early life exposures, and respiratory morbidity in early childhood

PubMed Central

Kumar, R.; Tsai, H.-J.; Hong, X.; Gignoux, C.; Pearson, C.; Ortiz, K.; Fu, M.; Pongracic, J. A.; Burchard, E. G.; Bauchner, H.; Wang, X.

2012-01-01

Summary Background Racial disparities persist in early childhood wheezing and cannot be completely explained by known risk factors. Objective To evaluate the associations of genetic ancestry and self-identified race with early childhood recurrent wheezing, accounting for socio-economic status (SES) and early life exposures. Methods We studied 1034 children in an urban, multi-racial, prospective birth cohort. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate the association of genetic ancestry as opposed to self-identified race with recurrent wheezing (>3 episodes). Sequential models accounted for demographic, socio-economic factors and early life risk factors. Genetic ancestry, estimated using 150 ancestry informative markers, was expressed in deciles. Results Approximately 6.1% of subjects (mean age 3.1 years) experienced recurrent wheezing. After accounting for SES and demographic factors, African ancestry (OR: 1.16, 95% CI: 1.02–1.31) was significantly associated with recurrent wheezing. By self-reported race, hispanic subjects had a borderline decrease in risk of wheeze compared with African Americans (OR: 0.44, 95% CI: 0.19–1.00), whereas white subjects (OR: 0.46, 95% CI: 0.14–1.57) did not have. After further adjustment for known confounders and early life exposures, both African (OR: 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05–1.34) and European ancestry (OR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.74–0.94) retained a significant association with recurrent wheezing, as compared with self-identified race (ORwhites: 0.31, 95% CI: 0.09–1.14; ORhispanic: 0.47, 95% CI: 0.20–1.08). There were no significant interactions between ancestry and early life factors on recurrent wheezing. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance In contrast to self-identified race, African ancestry remained a significant, independent predictor of early childhood wheezing after accounting for early life and other known risk factors associated with lung function changes and asthma. Genetic ancestry may be a powerful way to

Early-life nutritional effects on the female reproductive system.

PubMed

Chan, K A; Tsoulis, M W; Sloboda, D M

2015-02-01

There is now considerable epidemiological and experimental evidence indicating that early-life environmental conditions, including nutrition, affect subsequent development in later life. These conditions induce highly integrated responses in endocrine-related homeostasis, resulting in persistent changes in the developmental trajectory producing an altered adult phenotype. Early-life events trigger processes that prepare the individual for particular circumstances that are anticipated in the postnatal environment. However, where the intrauterine and postnatal environments differ markedly, such modifications to the developmental trajectory may prove maladaptive in later life. Reproductive maturation and function are similarly influenced by early-life events. This should not be surprising, because the primordial follicle pool is established early in life and is thus vulnerable to early-life events. Results of clinical and experimental studies have indicated that early-life adversity is associated with a decline in ovarian follicular reserve, changes in ovulation rates, and altered age at onset of puberty. However, the underlying mechanisms regulating the relationship between the early-life developmental environment and postnatal reproductive development and function are unclear. This review examines the evidence linking early-life nutrition and effects on the female reproductive system, bringing together clinical observations in humans and experimental data from targeted animal models. © 2015 Society for Endocrinology.

Resilience and quality of life among Wenchuan earthquake survivors: the mediating role of social support.

PubMed

Xu, J; Ou, L

2014-05-01

To examine the extent social support mediates resilience and quality of life in Wenchuan earthquake survivors. Originals. Self-report psychological questionnaires, the standard Chinese 12-item Short Form (SF-12v2), the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA), and the Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS) were used to interview a total of 2080 survivors from 19 counties in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake area. A regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the mediating effect of social support on quality of life. Males and individuals with a higher level of education were found to have a better quality of life. The association between resilience and quality of life improved after social support was included, suggesting that at least a part of this association was mediated by the level of social support provided. This analysis highlighted that the level of resilience and quality of life after an earthquake was associated with the level of social support. This result has clear policy implications, and indicates that more focus needs to be placed on policies that aim for the provision of early mental health intervention and social support to improve the quality of life of earthquake survivors. Copyright © 2014 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social class difference in catch up growth in a national British cohort

PubMed Central

Teranishi, H; Nakagawa, H; Marmot, M

2001-01-01

AIM—To examine the influence of socioeconomic status on growth pattern in height from age 7 to 23years.
METHODS—Prospective cohort study. A total of 10 200 white singleton born children from the 1958 British birth cohort (National Child Development Study) were analysed.
RESULTS—Differences in height by birth weight persisted throughout the follow up period. However, the mean differences in height between low birth weight infants (<2500 g) and adequate birth weight infants (⩾2500 g) were less notable in social classes I and II than in the lower social classes. The catching up of growth in height of low birth weight infants was also more pronounced in social classes I and II than in other social classes. That is, the mean height deficits of low birth weight infants were decreased from 2.9 cm at age 7, to 1.6 cm at age 16, and 2.5 cm at age 23; the significant difference disappeared after age 16 in social classes I and II. Although such improving tendency was more pronounced among the preterm born infants, a similar growth pattern was observed among the term infants. Such improvement was not observed in the other social classes.
CONCLUSION—The growth retardation in height by birth weight can be overcome by improved social conditions and proper health care from childhood to adulthood.

 PMID:11207167

Early-Life Origins of Life-Cycle Well-Being: Research and Policy Implications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Currie, Janet; Rossin-Slater, Maya

2015-01-01

Mounting evidence across different disciplines suggests that early-life conditions can have consequences on individual outcomes throughout the life cycle. Relative to other developed countries, the United States fares poorly on standard indicators of early-life health, and this disadvantage may have profound consequences not only for population…

Social Class, Family Formation, and Delinquency in Early Adulthood

PubMed Central

Kuhl, Danielle C.; Chavez, Jorge M.; Swisher, Raymond R.; Wilczak, Andrew

2015-01-01

Recent research suggests increasing heterogeneity in the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. This study considers how this heterogeneity may influence delinquency between these two developmental periods. We focus on the role of family transitions, educational attainment, and employment in predicting risk of nonviolent delinquency and substance use, as well as disparities in transitions across socioeconomic status subgroups. Data are from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We find that family and neighborhood advantage are negatively associated with transitions into marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood, yet positively associated with educational attainment. In addition, adolescent family and neighborhood advantage are associated with a continuation of delinquent behavior and substance use during early adulthood. In multivariate analyses, accounting for family transitions in early adulthood largely attenuates the relationship between neighborhood advantage in adolescence and delinquency in early adulthood. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for developmental criminology. PMID:27418713

Early life adversity and adult biological risk profiles.

PubMed

Friedman, Esther M; Karlamangla, Arun S; Gruenewald, Tara L; Koretz, Brandon; Seeman, Teresa E

2015-01-01

To determine whether there is a relationship between early life adversity (ELA) and biological parameters known to predict health risks and to examine the extent to which circumstances in midlife mediate this relationship. We analyzed data on 1180 respondents from the biomarker subsample of the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. ELA assessments were based on childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (i.e., on welfare, perceived low income, and less educated parents) and other stressors (e.g., parental death, parental divorce, and parental physical abuse). The outcome variable was cumulative allostatic load (AL), a marker of biological risk. We also incorporate information on adult circumstances, including than following: education, social relationships, and health behaviors. Childhood socioeconomic adversity and physical abuse were associated with increased AL (B = 0.094, standard error = 0.041, and B = 0.263, standard error = 0.091 respectively), with nonsignificant associations for parental divorce and death with AL. Adult education mediated the relationship between socioeconomic ELA and cumulative AL to the point of nonsignificance, with this factor alone explaining nearly 40% of the relationship. The association between childhood physical abuse and AL remained even after adjusting for adult educational attainments, social relationships, and health behaviors. These associations were most pronounced for secondary stress systems, including inflammation, cardiovascular function, and lipid metabolism. The physiological consequences of early life socioeconomic adversity are attenuated by achieving high levels of schooling later on. The adverse consequences of childhood physical abuse, on the other hand, persist in multivariable-adjusted analysis.

The sources of political orientations in post-industrial society: social class and education revisited.

PubMed

Van de Werfhorst, Herman G; de Graaf, Nan Dirk

2004-06-01

This paper studies the impact of social class and education on political orientation. We distinguish the 'old' middle class from a new class of social/cultural specialists. However, the difference in their political orientation may especially be related to the level and field of education; the new middle class is more highly educated and often in fields of study that extensively address social competencies, characteristics independently affecting political outcomes. Analyses on Dutch data showed that education is more important in the prediction of 'cultural' liberal issues than social class. Economically-oriented issues are more strongly affected by social class. This means that interests of the new middle class are served by liberal standpoints relating to a strong government and income redistribution policies, but not relating to cultural issues.

Eight-Year Latent Class Trajectories of Academic and Social Functioning in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

PubMed

DuPaul, George J; Morgan, Paul L; Farkas, George; Hillemeier, Marianne M; Maczuga, Steve

2017-09-15

We examined trajectories of academic and social functioning in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to identify those who might be at risk for especially severe levels of academic and social impairment over time. We estimated a series of growth mixture models using data from two subsamples of children participating in the NIMH Collaborative Multisite Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) including those with at least baseline and 96-month data for reading and mathematics achievement (n = 392; 77.3% male; M age = 7.7; SD = 0.8) or social skills ratings from teachers (n = 259; 74.9% male; M age = 7.6; SD = 0.8). We compared latent trajectories for children with ADHD to mean observed trajectories obtained from a local normative (i.e., non-ADHD) comparison group (n = 289; 80.6% male; M age = 9.9; SD = 1.1). Results indicated six latent trajectory classes for reading and mathematics and four classes for teacher social skills ratings. There was not only a relationship between trajectories of inattention symptoms and academic impairment, but also a similarly strong association between trajectory classes of hyperactive-impulsive symptoms and achievement. Trajectory class membership correlated with socio-demographic and diagnostic characteristics, inattention and hyperactive-impulsive symptom trajectories, externalizing behavior in school, and treatment receipt and dosage. Although children with ADHD display substantial heterogeneity in their reading, math, and social skills growth trajectories, those with behavioral and socio-demographic disadvantages are especially likely to display severe levels of academic and social impairment over time. Evidence-based early screening and intervention that directly address academic and social impairments in elementary school-aged children with ADHD are warranted. The ClinicalTrials.gov identifier is NCT00000388.

A developmental perspective on early-life exposure to neurotoxicants.

PubMed

Bellinger, David C; Matthews-Bellinger, Julia A; Kordas, Katarzyna

2016-09-01

Studies of early-life neurotoxicant exposure have not been designed, analyzed, or interpreted in the context of a fully developmental perspective. The goal of this paper is to describe the key principles of a developmental perspective and to use examples from the literature to illustrate the relevance of these principles to early-life neurotoxicant exposures. Four principles are discussed: 1) the effects of early-life neurotoxicant exposure depend on a child's developmental context; 2) deficits caused by early-life exposure initiate developmental cascades that can lead to pathologies that differ from those observed initially; 3) early-life neurotoxicant exposure has intra-familial and intergenerational impacts; 4) the impacts of early-life neurotoxicant exposure influence a child's ability to respond to future insults. The first principle is supported by considerable evidence, but the other three have received much less attention. Incorporating a developmental perspective in studies of early-life neurotoxicant exposures requires prospective collection of data on a larger array of covariates than usually considered, using analytical approaches that acknowledge the transactional processes between a child and the environment and the phenomenon of developmental cascades. Consideration of early-life neurotoxicant exposure within a developmental perspective reveals that many issues remain to be explicated if we are to achieve a deep understanding of the societal health burden associated with early-life neurotoxicant exposures. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The social context of active distress in patients with early myocardial infarction.

PubMed

Siegrist, J; Dittmann, K; Rittner, K; Weber, I

1982-01-01

Data of a retrospective case control study on 380 male patients with clinically documented first myocardial infarction (MI) (age 30-55) as well as findings of a follow-up over 18 months of 70% of this sample are presented. Results show first, that specific work stressors, lack of social support, and acute life changes are each significantly more prevalent among subjects with MI than among healthy controls; second, that significantly greater parts of MI subjects can be classified as simultaneously exposed to several chronic and acute social risks; third, that social stressors are related to the recurrence of cardiac symptoms in a follow-up after rehabilitation. These findings are discussed with regard to possible methodological bias such as the role of denial and neuroticism in patients under study, influences caused by interviewers, and limited validity of subjective stress rating. After controlling for these biases, findings basically remain stable. It is argued that a certain class of critical socio-emotional experiences, labeled 'active distress' may be harmful to neurohormonal imbalance, and, consequently, to several precursors of cardiovascular diseases. This class of experiences is reinforced and sustained by social contexts as the ones investigated in this study.

[Perinatal health: low birth weight and social class].

PubMed

da Silva, A A; Barbieri, M A; Bettiol, H; Dal Bó, C M; Mucillo, G; Gomes, U A

1991-04-01

A survey was carried out in Ribeirão Preto, S. Paulo State, Brazil, between June 1978 and May 1979 with a view to studying the prevalence of low birth weight and its occurrence among different social classes. Data were collected from 8,878 singleton live births in eight maternity hospitals, accounting for 98% of all births in the area. Social classes were determinated by the use of a model proposed by Singer and modified for epidemiological purposes by Barros. Out of the 8,878 births, 660 (7.5%) were of low birth weight. The prevalence of deficient weight at birth (between 2,500 and 2,999 grams) was of 21.1%. Analysis indicated that 50.6% of children with low birth weight were at term and the majority of them suffered form intrauterine growth retardation. The prevalence of low birth weight according to social class was seen to be lower in the bourgeoisie classes (ranging from 2.8% to 3.9%) and higher in working classes (from 7% up to 9.5%). Low birth weight (defined as less than or equal to 2,500 grams) was used for purposes of comparison with other previous surveys. The percentage was lower in this study (8.3%) than that found in the Interamerican Investigation of Mortality in Childhood (8.7%), carried out in 1968-70. No statistically significant differences in the percentage of low birth weight were found in the case of Ribeirão Preto when these two surveys were compared.

Social class-related gradient in the association of skeletal growth with blood pressure among adolescent boys in India.

PubMed

Rao, Shobha; Apte, Priti

2009-12-01

In view of the fact that height differences between socio-economic groups are apparent early in childhood, it is of interest to examine whether skeletal growth is reflective of the social class gradient in CVD risk. The present study examined blood pressure levels, adiposity and growth of adolescent boys from high and low social classes. In a cross-sectional study, skeletal growth (height and sitting height), adiposity (weight, BMI and body fat) and blood pressure levels of the adolescents were measured. Pune, India. Adolescent schoolboys (9-16 years) from high socio-economic (HSE; n 1146) and low socio-economic (LSE; n 932) class. LSE boys were thin, short and undernourished (mean BMI: 15.5 kg/m2 v. 19.3 kg/m2 in HSE boys, P = 0.00). Social gradient was revealed in differing health risks. The prevalence of high systolic blood pressure (HSBP) was high in HSE class (10.5 % v. 2.7 % in LSE class, P = 0.00) and was associated with adiposity, while the prevalence of high diastolic blood pressure (HDBP) was high in LSE class (9.8 % v. 7.0 % in HSE class, P = 0.00) and had only a weak association with adiposity. Despite this, lower ratio of leg length to height was associated with significantly higher respective health risks, i.e. for HDBP in LSE class (OR = 1.99, 95 % CI 1.14, 3.47) and for HSBP in HSE class (OR = 1.69, 95 % CI 1.02, 2.77). As stunting in childhood is a major problem in India and Asia, the leg length to height indicator needs to be validated in different populations to understand CVD risks.

What Happens outside of the College Class(ed)room? Examining College Students' Social Class and Social Integration in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soria, Krista M.

2013-01-01

This study examined the relationships between undergraduate students' social class background and variables theorized to affect students' social integration in higher education, including students' perception of campus climate, frequency of faculty interactions, frequency of involvement in campus activities, and sense of belonging.…

Life Course Stage and Social Support Mobilization for End-of-Life Caregivers.

PubMed

LaValley, Susan A; Gage-Bouchard, Elizabeth A

2018-04-01

Caregivers of terminally ill patients are at risk for anxiety, depression, and social isolation. Social support from friends, family members, neighbors, and health care professionals can potentially prevent or mitigate caregiver strain. While previous research documents the importance of social support in helping end-of-life caregivers cope with caregiving demands, little is known about differences in social support experiences among caregivers at different life course stages. Using life course theory, this study analyzes data from in-depth interviews with 50 caregivers of patients enrolled in hospice services to compare barriers to mobilizing social support among caregivers at two life course stages: midlife caregivers caring for parents and older adult caregivers caring for spouses/partners. Older adult caregivers reported different barriers to mobilizing social support compared with midlife caregivers. Findings enhance the understanding of how caregivers' life course stage affects their barriers to mobilization of social support resources.

The Impact of Social Class and Social Cognitive Domain on Northeastern Brazilian Mothers' and Daughters' Conceptions of Parental Control

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lins-Dyer, Maria Tereza; Nucci, Larry

2007-01-01

The impact of social class was explored on Brazilian mothers' and daughters' conceptions of who should, and who actually would control decisions regarding the daughters' actions. Participants were 126 middle class and 126 lower class girls aged 11-16 years, and their mothers. No social class differences were found in daughters' judgments about who…

Aerospace-Related Life Science Concepts for Use in Life Science Classes Grades 7-12.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Mary H.; Rademacher, Jean

The purpose of this guide is to provide the teacher of secondary school life science classes with resource materials for activities to familiarize students with recent discoveries in bioastronautics. Each section introduces a life science concept and a related aerospace concept, gives background information, suggested activities, and an annotated…

Good daily habits during the early stages of life determine success throughout life.

PubMed

Kohyama, Jun

2016-01-01

This paper assesses hypothesis that sufficient sleep duration and proper circadian rhythms during the early stages of life are indispensable to a successful life. Successful life was defined according to the famous cohort studies of Mischel's and Dunedin. To assess the hypothesis, neuronal elements presumably affecting early daily habits and successful life are reviewed. The effect of sufficient sleep duration and proper circadian rhythms during early stages of life on the development of the prefrontal cortex has been found to be the key issue to verify the hypothesis. Socioeconomic status is found to be another issue to be studied.

Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lareau, Annette

Social class influences parent involvement in schooling. This book uses the case study method to compare family-school relationships in a working-class elementary school with those in an upper middle-class school, focusing on one first grade class in each school, and within the two schools, on 12 families, over the course of their children's first…

Novel Mahalanobis-based feature selection improves one-class classification of early hepatocellular carcinoma.

PubMed

Thomaz, Ricardo de Lima; Carneiro, Pedro Cunha; Bonin, João Eliton; Macedo, Túlio Augusto Alves; Patrocinio, Ana Claudia; Soares, Alcimar Barbosa

2018-05-01

Detection of early hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is responsible for increasing survival rates in up to 40%. One-class classifiers can be used for modeling early HCC in multidetector computed tomography (MDCT), but demand the specific knowledge pertaining to the set of features that best describes the target class. Although the literature outlines several features for characterizing liver lesions, it is unclear which is most relevant for describing early HCC. In this paper, we introduce an unconstrained GA feature selection algorithm based on a multi-objective Mahalanobis fitness function to improve the classification performance for early HCC. We compared our approach to a constrained Mahalanobis function and two other unconstrained functions using Welch's t-test and Gaussian Data Descriptors. The performance of each fitness function was evaluated by cross-validating a one-class SVM. The results show that the proposed multi-objective Mahalanobis fitness function is capable of significantly reducing data dimensionality (96.4%) and improving one-class classification of early HCC (0.84 AUC). Furthermore, the results provide strong evidence that intensity features extracted at the arterial to portal and arterial to equilibrium phases are important for classifying early HCC.

The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour.

PubMed

Manstead, Antony S R

2018-04-01

Drawing on recent research on the psychology of social class, I argue that the material conditions in which people grow up and live have a lasting impact on their personal and social identities and that this influences both the way they think and feel about their social environment and key aspects of their social behaviour. Relative to middle-class counterparts, lower/working-class individuals are less likely to define themselves in terms of their socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self-concepts; they are also more inclined to explain social events in situational terms, as a result of having a lower sense of personal control. Working-class people score higher on measures of empathy and are more likely to help others in distress. The widely held view that working-class individuals are more prejudiced towards immigrants and ethnic minorities is shown to be a function of economic threat, in that highly educated people also express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly educated and therefore pose an economic threat. The fact that middle-class norms of independence prevail in universities and prestigious workplaces makes working-class people less likely to apply for positions in such institutions, less likely to be selected and less likely to stay if selected. In other words, social class differences in identity, cognition, feelings, and behaviour make it less likely that working-class individuals can benefit from educational and occupational opportunities to improve their material circumstances. This means that redistributive policies are needed to break the cycle of deprivation that limits opportunities and threatens social cohesion. © 2018 The Author. British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.

Early orthodontic treatment for Class III malocclusion: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

PubMed

Woon, See Choong; Thiruvenkatachari, Badri

2017-01-01

Class III malocclusion affects between 5% and 15% of our population. The 2 most common dilemmas surrounding Class III treatment are the timing of treatment and the type of appliance. A number of appliances have been used to correct a Class III skeletal discrepancy, but there is little evidence available on their effectiveness in the long term. Similarly, early treatment of Class III malocclusion has been practiced with increasing interest. However, there has been no solid evidence on the benefits in the long term. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness of orthodontic/orthopedic methods used in the early treatment of Class III malocclusion in the short and long terms. Several sources were used to identify all relevant studies independently of language. The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Embase (Ovid), and MEDLINE (Ovid) were searched to June 2016. The selection criteria included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and prospective controlled clinical trials (CCTs) of children between the ages of 7 and 12 years on early treatment with any type of orthodontic/orthopedic appliance compared with another appliance to correct Class III malocclusion or with an untreated control group. The primary outcome measure was correction of reverse overjet, and the secondary outcomes included skeletal changes, soft tissue changes, quality of life, patient compliance, adverse effect, Peer Assessment Rating score, and treatment time. The search results were screened for inclusion, and the data extracted by 2 independent authors. The data were analyzed using software (version 5.1, Review Manager; The Nordic Cochrane Centre, The Cochrane Collaboration; Copenhagen, Denmark). The mean differences with 95% confidence intervals were expressed for the continuous data. Random effects were carried out with high levels of clinical or statistical heterogeneity and fixed affects when the heterogeneity was low

Occupation, Class, and Social Networks in Urban China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bian, Yanjie; Breiger, Ronald; Davis, Deborah; Galaskiewicz, Joseph

2005-01-01

China's class structure is changing dramatically in the wake of post-1978 market-oriented economic reforms. The creation of a mixed "market-socialist" economy has eroded the institutional bases of a cadre-dominated social hierarchy and created conditions for a new pattern of social stratification. Although conditions remain dynamic,…

The Early Years: "Life" Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ashbrook, Peggy

2013-01-01

Talking about death as part of a life cycle is often ignored or spoken about in hushed tones in early childhood. Books with "life cycle" in the title often do not include the death of the living organism in the information about the cycle. The concept of a complete life cycle does not appear in "A Framework for K-12 Science…

Why epilepsy challenges social life.

PubMed

Steiger, Bettina K; Jokeit, Hennric

2017-01-01

Social bonds are at the center of our daily living and are an essential determinant of our quality of life. In people with epilepsy, numerous factors can impede cognitive and affective functions necessary for smooth social interactions. Psychological and psychiatric complications are common in epilepsy and may hinder the processing of social information. In addition, neuropsychological deficits such as slowed processing speed, memory loss or attentional difficulties may interfere with enjoyable reciprocity of social interactions. We consider societal, psychological, and neuropsychological aspects of social life with particular emphasis on socio-cognitive functions in temporal lobe epilepsy. Deficits in emotion recognition and theory of mind, two main aspects of social cognition, are frequently observed in individuals with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Results from behavioural studies targeting these functions will be presented with a focus on their relevance for patients' daily life. Furthermore, we will broach the issue of pitfalls in current diagnostic tools and potential directions for future research. By giving a broad overview of individual and interpersonal determinants of social functioning in epilepsy, we hope to provide a basis for future research to establish social cognition as a key component in the comprehensive assessment and care of those with epilepsy. Copyright © 2016 British Epilepsy Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Class categories and the subjective dimension of class: the case of Denmark.

PubMed

Harrits, Gitte Sommer; Pedersen, Helene Helboe

2018-03-01

Class relations have been proven to affect various aspects of social life, even in modern individualized societies. However, following claims on individualization and the so-called 'death of class' thesis, studying the subjective dimension of class - that is, the way individuals perceive of class relations and their own position within them - has gone out of style. We argue that even in equalized societies, subjective class perceptions may still influence attitudes and behaviour as they evolve to fit modern class relations. To explore the existence as well as structure and content of perceived social classes, this article investigates how people describe society and social groups in focus group discussions. We find that groups in different positions in terms of education and economy all tend to apply hierarchical class categories to describe Danish society, which is normally seen as one of the most equal societies and political systems in the world. In addition, we find that economic resources serve as a baseline for the hierarchical ordering, often supplemented with notions of education, lifestyle and/or occupational profile. Even though people are somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of class, their descriptions of Danish society and classes are surprisingly similar within and across groups. We conclude that not only do class relations matter; people are also highly aware of the existing classes and able to position themselves and others according to their notion of classes. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

Student Attitudes: A Study of Social Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hardy, Clifford A.

1976-01-01

Student attitudes toward current controversial problems (bussing for racial integration, legalization of abortion, and legalization of marijuana) were studied with regard to social class. The 1960 revision of the Purdue Master Attitude Scale was used. (LBH)

Globalization and Life History Research: Fragments of a Life Foretold

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tierney, William G.

2010-01-01

The goal of this paper is to understand, by way of a life history of one low-income working-class youth, how globalization impacts the working class in a developing nation. The concept of globalization and the method of life history seem diametrically opposed. Globalization is an idea about large social forces that impact the economic and material…

Race, Social Class and the Motive to Avoid Success in Women

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weston, Peter J.; Mednick, Martha T.

1970-01-01

Based on senior author's M.A thesis in Psychology at Howard University. Examines race and social class differences in the expression of fear of success (termed M-s) in college women. Hypothesis that black women would show less M-s than white women was supported. Social class differences not found. (RJ)

Elementary School Children's Reasoning about Social Class: A Mixed-Methods Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mistry, Rashmita S.; Brown, Christia S.; White, Elizabeth S.; Chow, Kirby A.; Gillen-O'Neel, Cari

2015-01-01

The current study examined children's identification and reasoning about their subjective social status (SSS), their beliefs about social class groups (i.e., the poor, middle class, and rich), and the associations between the two. Study participants were 117 10- to 12-year-old children of diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds…

Economic performance and public concerns about social class in twentieth-century books.

PubMed

Chen, Yunsong; Yan, Fei

2016-09-01

What is the association between macroeconomic conditions and public perceptions of social class? Applying a novel approach based on the Google Books N-gram corpus, this study addresses the relationship between public concerns about social class and economic conditions throughout the twentieth century. The usage of class-related words/phrases, or "literary references to class," in American English-language books is related to US economic performance and income inequality. The findings of this study demonstrate that economic conditions play a significant role in literary references to class throughout the century, whereas income inequality does not. Similar results are obtained from further analyses using alternative measures of class concerns as well as different corpora of English Fiction and the New York Times. We add to the social class literature by showing that the long-term temporal dynamics of an economy can be exhibited by aggregate class concerns. The application of massive culture-wide content analysis using data of unprecedented size also represents a contribution to the literature. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Late to Class: Social Class and Schooling in the New Economy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Galen, Jane

2007-01-01

This essay outlines several ways in which educators might better prepare young people of all backgrounds to understand, enter, and eventually act upon the changing economic landscape. The contributors to this article, which presents perspectives on social class and education in the United States, suggest that one might learn some lessons from the…

Social Class, Identity and the "Good" Student: Negotiating University Culture

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pearce, Jane; Down, Barry; Moore, Elizabeth

2008-01-01

Through the use of narrative portraits this paper discusses social class and identity, as working-class university students perceive them. With government policy encouraging wider participation rates from under-represented groups of people within the university sector, working-class students have found themselves to be the objects of much…

Self-rated health in different social classes of Slovenian adult population: nationwide cross-sectional study.

PubMed

Farkas, Jerneja; Pahor, Majda; Zaletel-Kragelj, Lijana

2011-02-01

Self-rated health can be influenced by several characteristics of the social environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between self-rated health and self-assessed social class in Slovenian adult population. The study was based on the Countrywide Integrated Non-communicable Diseases Intervention Health Monitor database. During 2004, 8,741/15,297 (57.1%) participants aged 25-64 years returned posted self-administered questionnaire. Logistic regression was used to determine unadjusted and adjusted estimates of association between poor self-rated health and self-assessed social class. Poor self-rated health was reported by 9.6% of participants with a decrease from lower to upper-middle/upper self-assessed social class (35.9 vs. 3.7%). Logistic regression showed significant association between self-rated health and all self-assessed social classes. In an adjusted model, poor self-rated health remained associated with self-assessed social class (odds ratio for lower vs. upper-middle/upper self-assessed social class 4.23, 95% confidence interval 2.46-7.25; P < 0.001). Our study confirmed differences in the prevalence of poor self-rated health across self-assessed social classes. Participants from lower self-assessed social class reported poor self-rated health most often and should comprise the focus of multisectoral interventions.

Implementing Team-Based Learning in Middle School Social Studies Classes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wanzek, Jeanne; Kent, Shawn C.; Vaughn, Sharon; Swanson, Elizabeth A.; Roberts, Greg; Haynes, Martha

2015-01-01

The authors examined the effects of team-based learning (TBL) implemented in Grade 8 social studies classes on student content acquisition. Twenty-four classes were randomly assigned to treatment or comparison blocking on teacher. In the treatment classes teachers integrated TBL practices in the content instruction. The authors examined teacher…

Perceived class climate and school-aged children's life satisfaction: The role of the learning environment in classrooms.

PubMed

Rathmann, Katharina; Herke, Max G; Hurrelmann, Klaus; Richter, Matthias

2018-01-01

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of class-level class climate on school-aged children's life satisfaction. Data was derived from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) using sixth grade school-aged children (n = 4,764, 483 classes). Class climate includes indicators of teachers' care and monitoring, demands, interaction, autonomy, as well as school-aged children's attitudes towards schoolwork at the class- and individual-level. Results showed that individual perceived class climate in terms of teachers' care and monitoring and autonomy was positively related to life satisfaction, whereas school-related demands were related to lower life satisfaction. Besides teachers' care and monitoring at class-level, indicators of class climate were not associated with school-aged children's life satisfaction, while the individual perceived class climate is more important for life satisfaction.

Gender inequalities in health: exploring the contribution of living conditions in the intersection of social class.

PubMed

Malmusi, Davide; Vives, Alejandra; Benach, Joan; Borrell, Carme

2014-01-01

Women experience poorer health than men despite their longer life expectancy, due to a higher prevalence of non-fatal chronic illnesses. This paper aims to explore whether the unequal gender distribution of roles and resources can account for inequalities in general self-rated health (SRH) by gender, across social classes, in a Southern European population. Cross-sectional study of residents in Catalonia aged 25-64, using data from the 2006 population living conditions survey (n=5,817). Poisson regression models were used to calculate the fair/poor SRH prevalence ratio (PR) by gender and to estimate the contribution of variables assessing several dimensions of living conditions as the reduction in the PR after their inclusion in the model. Analyses were stratified by social class (non-manual and manual). SRH was poorer for women among both non-manual (PR 1.39, 95% CI 1.09-1.76) and manual social classes (PR 1.36, 95% CI 1.20-1.56). Adjustment for individual income alone eliminated the association between sex and SRH, especially among manual classes (PR 1.01, 95% CI 0.85-1.19; among non-manual 1.19, 0.92-1.54). The association was also reduced when adjusting by employment conditions among manual classes, and household material and economic situation, time in household chores and residential environment among non-manual classes. Gender inequalities in individual income appear to contribute largely to women's poorer health. Individual income may indicate the availability of economic resources, but also the history of access to the labour market and potentially the degree of independence and power within the household. Policies to facilitate women's labour market participation, to close the gender pay gap, or to raise non-contributory pensions may be helpful to improve women's health.

Gender inequalities in health: exploring the contribution of living conditions in the intersection of social class

PubMed Central

Malmusi, Davide; Vives, Alejandra; Benach, Joan; Borrell, Carme

2014-01-01

Background Women experience poorer health than men despite their longer life expectancy, due to a higher prevalence of non-fatal chronic illnesses. This paper aims to explore whether the unequal gender distribution of roles and resources can account for inequalities in general self-rated health (SRH) by gender, across social classes, in a Southern European population. Methods Cross-sectional study of residents in Catalonia aged 25–64, using data from the 2006 population living conditions survey (n=5,817). Poisson regression models were used to calculate the fair/poor SRH prevalence ratio (PR) by gender and to estimate the contribution of variables assessing several dimensions of living conditions as the reduction in the PR after their inclusion in the model. Analyses were stratified by social class (non-manual and manual). Results SRH was poorer for women among both non-manual (PR 1.39, 95% CI 1.09–1.76) and manual social classes (PR 1.36, 95% CI 1.20–1.56). Adjustment for individual income alone eliminated the association between sex and SRH, especially among manual classes (PR 1.01, 95% CI 0.85–1.19; among non-manual 1.19, 0.92–1.54). The association was also reduced when adjusting by employment conditions among manual classes, and household material and economic situation, time in household chores and residential environment among non-manual classes. Discussion Gender inequalities in individual income appear to contribute largely to women's poorer health. Individual income may indicate the availability of economic resources, but also the history of access to the labour market and potentially the degree of independence and power within the household. Policies to facilitate women's labour market participation, to close the gender pay gap, or to raise non-contributory pensions may be helpful to improve women's health. PMID:24560257

Early life environment and social determinants of cardiac health in children with congenital heart disease.

PubMed

Wong, Peter; Denburg, Avram; Dave, Malini; Levin, Leo; Morinis, Julia Orkin; Suleman, Shazeen; Wong, Jonathan; Ford-Jones, Elizabeth; Moore, Aideen M

2018-04-01

Congenital heart disease is a significant cause of infant mortality. Epidemiology and social context play a crucial role in conditioning disease burden and modulating outcomes, while diagnosis and treatment remain resource intensive. This review will address the role of social demographics, environmental exposure, epigenetics and nutrition in the aetiology of congenital heart disease. We then discuss the determinant effect of social factors on the provision and outcomes of care for congenital heart disease and implications for practice. It is our hope that enhanced knowledge of the intersection of social determinants of health and congenital heart disease will facilitate effective preventative strategies at the individual and population levels to optimize heart health outcomes across the life course.

Instrumental learning and cognitive flexibility processes are impaired in children exposed to early life stress.

PubMed

Harms, Madeline B; Shannon Bowen, Katherine E; Hanson, Jamie L; Pollak, Seth D

2017-10-19

Children who experience severe early life stress show persistent deficits in many aspects of cognitive and social adaptation. Early stress might be associated with these broad changes in functioning because it impairs general learning mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we examined whether individuals who experienced abusive caregiving in childhood had difficulties with instrumental learning and/or cognitive flexibility as adolescents. Fifty-three 14-17-year-old adolescents (31 exposed to high levels of childhood stress, 22 control) completed an fMRI task that required them to first learn associations in the environment and then update those pairings. Adolescents with histories of early life stress eventually learned to pair stimuli with both positive and negative outcomes, but did so more slowly than their peers. Furthermore, these stress-exposed adolescents showed markedly impaired cognitive flexibility; they were less able than their peers to update those pairings when the contingencies changed. These learning problems were reflected in abnormal activity in learning- and attention-related brain circuitry. Both altered patterns of learning and neural activation were associated with the severity of lifetime stress that the adolescents had experienced. Taken together, the results of this experiment suggest that basic learning processes are impaired in adolescents exposed to early life stress. These general learning mechanisms may help explain the emergence of social problems observed in these individuals. © 2017 The Authors. Developmental Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Association of early-life exposure to household gas appliances and indoor nitrogen dioxide with cognition and attention behavior in preschoolers.

PubMed

Morales, Eva; Julvez, Jordi; Torrent, Maties; de Cid, Rafael; Guxens, Mònica; Bustamante, Mariona; Künzli, Nino; Sunyer, Jordi

2009-06-01

The authors investigated the association of early-life exposure to indoor air pollution with neuropsychological development in preschoolers and assessed whether this association differs by glutathione-S-transferase gene (GSTP1) polymorphisms. A prospective, population-based birth cohort was set up in Menorca, Spain, in 1997-1999 (n = 482). Children were assessed for cognitive functioning (McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities) and attention-hyperactivity behaviors (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition) at age 4 years. During the first 3 months of life, information about gas appliances at home and indoor nitrogen dioxide concentration was collected at each participant's home (n = 398, 83%). Genotyping was conducted for the GSTP1 coding variant Ile105Val. Use of gas appliances was inversely associated with cognitive outcomes (beta coefficient for general cognition = -5.10, 95% confidence interval (CI): -9.92, -0.28; odds ratio for inattention symptoms = 3.59, 95% CI: 1.14, 11.33), independent of social class and other confounders. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations were associated with cognitive function (a decrease of 0.27 point per 1 ppb, 95% CI: -0.48, -0.07) and inattention symptoms (odds ratio = 1.06, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.12). The deleterious effect of indoor pollution from gas appliances on neuropsychological outcomes was stronger in children with the GSTP1 Val-105 allele. Early-life exposure to air pollution from indoor gas appliances may be negatively associated with neuropsychological development through the first 4 years of life, particularly among genetically susceptible children.

The influence of living conditions in early life on life satisfaction in old age.

PubMed

Deindl, Christian

2013-03-01

This article examines the influence of living conditions in early life on life satisfaction in old age in eleven Western European countries. It combines the influence of individual conditions, for example housing and family background, with country characteristics in the decade of birth. Using pooled data from the second and third wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, multilevel models show that early life living conditions have an influence on life satisfaction in old age. Furthermore, interaction effects between current and past living conditions show that adverse living conditions strengthen the effect of early life on life satisfaction in later life and therefore are an indication of cumulative inequality over the life course. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Perceived class climate and school-aged children's life satisfaction: The role of the learning environment in classrooms

PubMed Central

Herke, Max G.; Hurrelmann, Klaus; Richter, Matthias

2018-01-01

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of class-level class climate on school-aged children’s life satisfaction. Data was derived from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) using sixth grade school-aged children (n = 4,764, 483 classes). Class climate includes indicators of teachers' care and monitoring, demands, interaction, autonomy, as well as school-aged children's attitudes towards schoolwork at the class- and individual-level. Results showed that individual perceived class climate in terms of teachers' care and monitoring and autonomy was positively related to life satisfaction, whereas school-related demands were related to lower life satisfaction. Besides teachers' care and monitoring at class-level, indicators of class climate were not associated with school-aged children’s life satisfaction, while the individual perceived class climate is more important for life satisfaction. PMID:29420540

Mexican American Birthweight and Child Overweight: Unraveling a Possible Early Life Course Health Transition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamilton, Erin R.; Teitler, Julien O.; Reichman, Nancy E.

2011-01-01

Mexican American children have a weight distribution that categorizes them as relatively healthy at birth but relatively unhealthy by age 3. This early life course transition in health based on weight raises the question of whether Mexican American children "outgrow" the epidemiologic paradox of favorable birth outcomes despite social disadvantage…

Processes Linking Social Class and Racial Socialization in African American Dual-Earner Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crouter, Ann C.; Baril, Megan E.; Davis, Kelly D.; McHale, Susan M.

2008-01-01

We examined the links between social class, occupational self-direction, self-efficacy, and racial socialization in a sample of 128 two-parent African American couples raising adolescents. A series of multivariate, multilevel models revealed that mothers' SES was connected to self-efficacy via its association with occupational self-direction; in…

Early Life Stress, Mood, and Anxiety Disorders.

PubMed

Syed, Shariful A; Nemeroff, Charles B

2017-02-01

Early life stress has been shown to exert profound short- and long-term effects on human physiology both in the central nervous system and peripherally. Early life stress has demonstrated clear association with many psychiatric disorders including major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and bipolar disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistics Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnostic categorical system has served as a necessary framework for clinical service, delivery, and research, however has not been completely matching the neurobiological research perspective. Early life stress presents a complex dynamic featuring a wide spectrum of physiologic alterations: from epigenetic alterations, inflammatory changes, to dysregulation of the hypothalamic pituitary axis and has further added to the challenge of identifying biomarkers associated with psychiatric disorders. The National Institute of Mental Health's proposed Research Domain Criteria initiative incorporates a dimensional approach to assess discrete domains and constructs of behavioral function that are subserved by identifiable neural circuits. The current neurobiology of early life stress is reviewed in accordance with dimensional organization of Research Domain Criteria matrix and how the findings as a whole fit within the Research Domain Criteria frameworks.

Social Class as Flow and Mutability: The Barbados Case

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greenhalgh-Spencer, Heather; Castro, Michelle; Bulut, Ergin; Goel, Koeli; Lin, Chunfeng; McCarthy, Cameron

2015-01-01

This article draws on ethnographic research that examines the contemporary articulation of class identity in the postcolonial elite school setting of Old College high school in Barbados. From the qualitative data derived from this study, we argue that social class is better conceived as a series of flows, mutations, performances and performatives.…

Documenting Reproduction and Inequality: Revisiting Jean Anyon's "Social Class and School Knowledge"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luke, Allan

2010-01-01

Jean Anyon's (1981) "Social Class and School Knowledge" was a landmark work in North American educational research. It provided a richly detailed qualitative description of differential, social class-based constructions of knowledge and epistemological stance. This essay situates Anyon's work in two parallel traditions of critical educational…

Social Class, Solipsism, and Contextualism: How the Rich Are Different from the Poor

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kraus, Michael W.; Piff, Paul K.; Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo; Rheinschmidt, Michelle L.; Keltner, Dacher

2012-01-01

Social class is shaped by an individual's material resources as well as perceptions of rank vis-a-vis others in society, and in this article, we examine how class influences behavior. Diminished resources and lower rank create contexts that constrain social outcomes for lower-class individuals and enhance contextualist tendencies--that is, a focus…

Persistent behavioral effects following early life exposure to retinoic acid or valproic acid in zebrafish

PubMed Central

Bailey, Jordan M.; Oliveri, Anthony N.; Karbhari, Nishika; Brooks, Roy A.J.; De La Rocha, Amberlene J.; Janardhan, Sheila; Levin, Edward D.

2015-01-01

BACKGROUND Moderate to severe dysregulation in retinoid signaling during early development is associated with a constellation of physical malformations and/or neural tube defects, including spina bifida. It is thought that more subtle dysregulation of this system, which might be achievable via dietary (i.e. hypervitaminosis A) or pharmacological (i.e. valproic acid) exposure in humans, will manifest on behavioral domains including sociability, without overt physical abnormalities. METHODS During early life, zebrafish were exposed to low doses of two chemicals that disrupt retinoid signaling. From 0-5 dpf, larvae were reared in aqueous solutions containing retinoic acid (0, 0.02, 0.2 or 2 nM) or valproic acid (0, 0.5, 5.0 or 50 uM). One cohort of zebrafish was assessed using a locomotor activity screen at 6-dpf; another was reared to adulthood and assessed using a neurobehavioral test battery (startle habituation, novel tank exploration, shoaling, and predator escape/avoidance). RESULTS There was no significant increase in the incidence of physical malformation among exposed fish compared to controls. Both retinoic acid and valproic acid exposures during development disrupted larval activity with persisting behavioral alterations later in life, primarily manifesting as decreased social affiliation. CONCLUSIONS Social behavior and some aspects of motor function were altered in exposed fish; the importance of examining emotional or psychological consequences of early life exposure to retinoid acting chemicals is discussed. PMID:26439099

Social class culture cycles: how three gateway contexts shape selves and fuel inequality.

PubMed

Stephens, Nicole M; Markus, Hazel Rose; Phillips, L Taylor

2014-01-01

America's unprecedented levels of inequality have far-reaching negative consequences for society as a whole. Although differential access to resources contributes to inequality, the current review illuminates how ongoing participation in different social class contexts also gives rise to culture-specific selves and patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. We integrate a growing body of interdisciplinary research to reveal how social class culture cycles operate over the course of the lifespan and through critical gateway contexts, including homes, schools, and workplaces. We first document how each of these contexts socializes social class cultural differences. Then, we demonstrate how these gateway institutions, which could provide access to upward social mobility, are structured according to middle-class ways of being a self and thus can fuel and perpetuate inequality. We conclude with a discussion of intervention opportunities that can reduce inequality by taking into account the contextual responsiveness of the self.

Psychosocially influenced cancer: diverse early-life stress experiences and links to breast cancer.

PubMed

Schuler, Linda A; Auger, Anthony P

2010-11-01

This perspective on Boyd et al. (beginning on page 1398 in this issue of the journal) discusses recent published research examining the interplay between social stress and breast cancer. Cross-disciplinary studies using genetically defined mouse models and established neonatal and peripubertal paradigms of social stress are illuminating biological programming by diverse early-life experiences for the risk of breast cancer. Understanding the mechanisms underlying this programming can lead to the identification of risk factors and sensitive developmental windows, enabling improved prevention and treatment strategies for this devastating disease. ©2010 AACR.

Osteoporosis in survivors of early life starvation.

PubMed

Weisz, George M; Albury, William R

2013-01-01

The objective of this study was to provide evidence for the association of early life nutritional deprivation and adult osteoporosis, in order to suggest that a history of such deprivation may be an indicator of increased risk of osteoporosis in later life. The 'fetal programming' of a range of metabolic and cardiovascular disorders in adults was first proposed in the 1990s and more recently extended to disorders of bone metabolism. Localised famines during World War II left populations in whom the long-term effects of maternal, fetal and infantile nutritional deprivation were studied. These studies supported the original concept of 'fetal programming' but did not consider bone metabolism. The present paper offers clinical data from another cohort of World War II famine survivors - those from the Holocaust. The data presented here, specifically addressing the issue of osteoporosis, report on 11 Holocaust survivors in Australia (five females, six males) who were exposed to starvation in early life. The cases show, in addition to other metabolic disorders associated with early life starvation, various levels of osteoporosis, often with premature onset. The cohort studied is too small to support firm conclusions, but the evidence suggests that the risk of adult osteoporosis in both males and females is increased by severe starvation early in life - not just in the period from gestation to infancy but also in childhood and young adulthood. It is recommended that epidemiological research on this issue be undertaken, to assist planning for the future health needs of immigrants to Australia coming from famine affected backgrounds. Pending such research, it would be prudent for primary care health workers to be alert to the prima facie association between early life starvation and adult osteoporosis, and to take this factor into account along with other indicators when assessing a patient's risk of osteoporosis in later life.

Social stress in early adolescents' daily lives: Associations with affect and loneliness.

PubMed

van Roekel, Eeske; Ha, Thao; Verhagen, Maaike; Kuntsche, Emmanuel; Scholte, Ron H J; Engels, Rutger C M E

2015-12-01

Adolescence is characterized by increased social stress due to changes in interpersonal relationships, but little is known about daily experiences of social stress. The aim of the present study was to examine daily life predictors of increases in social stress, how these increases affected adolescents' mood, and whether loneliness moderated these relations. The Experience Sampling Method was used to measure positive and negative affect and increases in social stress in 278 early adolescents from the Netherlands. Results showed that adolescents were most likely to experience increases in social stress when they were with classmates, during week days, and in the morning. Lonely adolescents showed higher increases in social stress and responded more negatively to increases in social stress, compared to non-lonely adolescents. Copyright © 2015 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language, Social Class and Education: Listening to Adolescents' Perceptions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spencer, Sarah; Clegg, Judy; Stackhouse, Joy

2013-01-01

Young people's perceptions may offer an insight into the complex associations between language, education and social class. However, little research has asked young people what they think of their own talking. Forty-two British adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years were interviewed: 21 attended a school in a working class area; 21 attended…

Early Adversity and Developmental Outcomes: Interaction Between Genetics, Epigenetics, and Social Experiences Across the Life Span.

PubMed

Champagne, Frances A

2010-09-01

Longitudinal studies in humans demonstrate the association between prenatal and postnatal experiences of adversity and long-term changes in neurodevelopment. These studies raise the question of how experiences become incorporated at a biological level to induce persistent changes in functioning. Laboratory studies using animal models and recent analyses in human cohorts implicate epigenetic mechanisms as a possible route through which these environmental effects are achieved. In particular, there is evidence that changes in DNA methylation are associated with early life experiences with consequences for gene expression and behavior. Despite the potential stability of DNA methylation, it is apparent that this epigenetic mark can be dynamically modified through pharmacological targeting and behavioral experiences. Developmental plasticity may also be achieved through modification of the juvenile environment. Although these juvenile experiences may lead to common endpoints, there is evidence suggesting that the effects of early and later life experiences may be achieved by different molecular pathways. This review discusses evidence for the role of epigenetic mechanisms in shaping developmental trajectories in response to early life experience as well as the potential plasticity that can occur beyond the perinatal period. These studies have implications for approaches to intervention and suggest the importance of considering individual differences in genetic and epigenetic vulnerability in developing treatment strategies. © The Author(s) 2010.

Changes in the social class gradient of cirrhosis mortality in England and Wales across the 20th century.

PubMed

Crombie, Iain K; Precious, Elaine

2011-01-01

To explore the nature of the social class gradient of cirrhosis mortality in England and Wales across the 20th century. Data on male cirrhosis mortality by social class were obtained from the Registrar General's Decennial Supplements for the years 1921-1991. Data for 1941 were not collected because of the second World War. In 1921, cirrhosis mortality was substantially higher among the professional and managerial classes (I and II) than among the other social classes (III-V). This marked social class difference persisted until 1961 when the differences between the social classes were inconsistent. By 1991, the gradient had reversed and the lower social classes (IV and V) had the higher mortality. The excess mortality was greatest for social class V. The change in the mortality gradient is stark: in 1921social classes I and II had a cirrhosis mortality at least twice that of social classes IV and V, but by 1991 this ratio had reversed. The reversal in the social class gradient of cirrhosis mortality indicates a major change in risk factor distribution across social classes. Differential changes in alcohol consumption are a possible explanation for this change, although the 1991 social class gradient in cirrhosis is inconsistent with alcohol consumption data from national surveys. Further research is required to clarify the explanation for the observed gradient, so that appropriate preventive measures can be put into place.

Early Adolescent Affect Predicts Later Life Outcomes.

PubMed

Kansky, Jessica; Allen, Joseph P; Diener, Ed

2016-07-01

Subjective well-being as a predictor for later behavior and health has highlighted its relationship to health, work performance, and social relationships. However, the majority of such studies neglect the developmental nature of well-being in contributing to important changes across the transition to adulthood. To examine the potential role of subjective well-being as a long-term predictor of critical life outcomes, we examined indicators of positive and negative affect at age 14 as predictors of relationship, adjustment, self-worth, and career outcomes a decade later at ages 23 to 25, controlling for family income and gender. We utilised multi-informant methods including reports from the target participant, close friends, and romantic partners in a demographically diverse community sample of 184 participants. Early adolescent positive affect predicted fewer relationship problems (less self-reported and partner-reported conflict, and greater friendship attachment as rated by close peers) and healthy adjustment to adulthood (lower levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness). It also predicted positive work functioning (higher levels of career satisfaction and job competence) and increased self-worth. Negative affect did not significantly predict any of these important life outcomes. In addition to predicting desirable mean levels of later outcomes, early positive affect predicted beneficial changes across time in many outcomes. The findings extend early research on the beneficial outcomes of subjective well-being by having an earlier assessment of well-being, including informant reports in measuring a large variety of outcome variables, and by extending the findings to a lower socioeconomic group of a diverse and younger sample. The results highlight the importance of considering positive affect as an important component of subjective well-being distinct from negative affect. © 2016 The International Association of Applied Psychology.

Early Adolescent Affect Predicts Later Life Outcomes

PubMed Central

Kansky, Jessica; Allen, Joseph P.; Diener, Ed

2016-01-01

Background Subjective well-being as a predictor for later behavior and health has highlighted its relationship to health, work performance, and social relationships. However, the majority of such studies neglect the developmental nature of well-being in contributing to important changes across the transition to adulthood. Methods To examine the potential role of subjective well-being as a long-term predictor of critical life outcomes, we examined indicators of positive and negative affect at age 14 as a predictor of relationship, adjustment, self worth, and career outcomes a decade later at ages 23 to 25, controlling for family income and gender. We utilized multi-informant methods including reports from the target participant, close friends, and romantic partners in a demographically diverse community sample of 184 participants. Results Early adolescent positive affect predicted less relationship problems (less self-reported and partner-reported conflict, greater friendship attachment as rated by close peers), healthy adjustment to adulthood (lower levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness). It also predicted positive work functioning (higher levels of career satisfaction and job competence) and increased self-worth. Negative affect did not significantly predict any of these important life outcomes. In addition to predicting desirable mean levels of later outcomes, early positive affect predicted beneficial changes across time in many outcomes. Conclusions The findings extend early research on the beneficial outcomes of subjective well-being by having an earlier assessment of well-being, including informant reports in measuring a large variety of outcome variables, and by extending the findings to a lower socioeconomic group of a diverse and younger sample. The results highlight the importance of considering positive affect as an important component of subjective well-being distinct from negative affect. PMID:27075545

Social Class Indicators and the Relationship Between Learning Disabilities and Juvenile Delinquency.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swartz, Stanley L.; Wall, Sherrill A.

Sixty-two adolescents, including 28 learning disabled (LD) and 34 nonLD Ss, participated in an examination of the relationship between social class indicators and delinquency. A review of the literature relating social class variables to school achievement, learning disabilities, and juvenile delinquency resulted in the selection of 14 social…

The Construction of Social Class in Social Work Education: A Study of Introductory Textbooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strier, Roni; Feldman, Guy; Shdaimah, Corey

2012-01-01

Social work introductory textbooks reflect myriad practical interests, pedagogical concerns, and theoretical considerations. However, they also present students with accepted views, dominant perspectives, and main discourses of knowledge. In light of this centrality, the present article examines the representation of the concept of "social class"…

Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention.

PubMed

Dietze, Pia; Knowles, Eric D

2016-11-01

We theorize that people's social class affects their appraisals of others' motivational relevance-the degree to which others are seen as potentially rewarding, threatening, or otherwise worth attending to. Supporting this account, three studies indicate that social classes differ in the amount of attention their members direct toward other human beings. In Study 1, wearable technology was used to film the visual fields of pedestrians on city streets; higher-class participants looked less at other people than did lower-class participants. In Studies 2a and 2b, participants' eye movements were tracked while they viewed street scenes; higher class was associated with reduced attention to people in the images. In Study 3, a change-detection procedure assessed the degree to which human faces spontaneously attract visual attention; faces proved less effective at drawing the attention of high-class than low-class participants, which implies that class affects spontaneous relevance appraisals. The measurement and conceptualization of social class are discussed. © The Author(s) 2016.

Testing the cumulative stress and mismatch hypotheses of psychopathology in a rat model of early-life adversity.

PubMed

Daskalakis, Nikolaos P; Oitzl, Melly S; Schächinger, Hartmut; Champagne, Danielle L; de Kloet, E Ronald

2012-07-16

In the present study, we tested both the cumulative stress and the mismatch hypothesis of psychopathology. For this purpose the combined effects of early-life adversity and later-life stress exposure on behavioral markers of psychosis susceptibility were studied in male Wistar rats. Experiment I: rat pups divided on the basis of the levels of their maternal care experience in low, medium or high maternal care groups, were reared post-weaning in groups (Exp. IA) or in social isolation (Exp. IB) and tested at adulthood under basal conditions or after an acute corticosterone (CORT) administration. Maternal care levels were assessed by measuring the dam's licking and grooming (LG) the first postnatal week of life. Experiment II: rat pups exposed as neonates to daily sessions of 8h of maternal separation (MS) on postnatal days 3, 4 and 5 either altogether in their home cage (HOME SEP) or alone in a novel environment (NOVEL SEP), were reared post-weaning in groups and tested at adulthood under basal conditions. Adult testing included behaviors marking psychosis susceptibility: apomorphine-induced gnawing (APO-gnawing), acoustic startle response and its modulation by a prepulse stimulus (PPI). The behavior of the Medium LG offspring was used as baseline reference for all the three experiments. Experiment I: Low maternal LG history alone had limited effects on the behavior of Wistar offspring, although increased acoustic startle and increased PPI, at high prepulse intensity levels, were observed. When low maternal LG history was combined with post-weaning social isolation, basal APO-gnawing was decreased and PPI increased, compared to High LG and Med LG offspring. This reflects attenuated psychosis susceptibility. High LG offspring reared in isolation displayed, however, the highest APO-gnawing and the lowest PPI levels among rats reared in social isolation, which is indicative for increased psychosis susceptibility. These findings support the mismatch hypothesis. For

Cognitive functioning in healthy aging: the role of reserve and lifestyle factors early in life.

PubMed

Fritsch, Thomas; McClendon, McKee J; Smyth, Kathleen A; Lerner, Alan J; Friedland, Robert P; Larsen, Janet D

2007-06-01

According to the reserve perspective on cognitive aging, individuals are born with or can develop resources that help them resist normal and disease-related cognitive changes that occur in aging. The reserve perspective is becoming more sophisticated, but gaps in knowledge persist. In the present research, we considered three understudied questions about reserve: Is reserve primarily static (unchangeable) throughout the life course or dynamic (changeable, in terms of increases or decreases)? Can reserve be increased at any point in life, or are there optimal time periods--such as early life, midlife, or late life--to increase it? Does participation in different types of leisure and occupational activities in early life and midlife have different effects depending on specific domains of late-life cognitive functioning? Here we link early cognitive and activity data--gathered from archival sources--with cognitive data from older adults to examine these issues. 349 participants, all mid-1940s graduates of the same high school, underwent telephone cognitive screening. All participants provided access to adolescent IQ scores; we determined activity levels from yearbooks. We used path analysis to evaluate the complex relationships between early life, midlife, and late-life variables. Adolescent IQ had strong direct effects on global cognitive functioning, episodic memory, verbal fluency, and processing speed. Participants' high school mental activities had direct effects on verbal fluency, but physical and social activities did not predict any cognitive measure. Education had direct effects on global cognitive functioning, episodic memory, and, most strongly, processing speed, but other midlife factors (notably, occupational demands) were not significant predictors of late-life cognition. There were weak indirect effects of adolescent IQ on global cognitive functioning, episodic memory, and processing speed, working through high school mental activities and education

Perceived social image and life satisfaction across cultures.

PubMed

Rodriguez Mosquera, Patricia M; Imada, Toshie

2013-01-01

We studied the relationship between perceived social image and life satisfaction in four different cultural groups. One-hundred nine Indian (63 females, 46 males), 67 Pakistani/Bangladeshi (36 females, 31 males), 76 White British (43 females, 33 males), and 94 European Americans (43 females, 48 males) completed measures on the cultural importance of social image, positive and negative emotions, academic achievement, and perceived social image. Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi participants valued social image more than White British and European-American participants. Consistent with this value difference, a positive perceived social image predicted life satisfaction among Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi participants only. For these participants, perceived social image predicted life satisfaction above and beyond the effects of emotions and academic achievement. Academic achievement only predicted life satisfaction among White British and European Americans. Emotions were significant predictors of life satisfaction for all participants.

Early-Life Socioeconomic Status and Adult Physiological Functioning: A Life Course Examination of Biosocial Mechanisms.

PubMed

Yang, Yang Claire; Gerken, Karen; Schorpp, Kristen; Boen, Courtney; Harris, Kathleen Mullan

2017-01-01

A growing literature has demonstrated a link between early-life socioeconomic conditions and adult health at a singular point in life. No research exists, however, that specifies the life course patterns of socioeconomic status (SES) in relation to the underlying biological processes that determine health. Using an innovative life course research design consisting of four nationally representative longitudinal datasets that collectively cover the human life span from early adolescence to old age (Add Health, MIDUS, NSHAP, and HRS), we address this scientific gap and assess how SES pathways from childhood into adulthood are associated with biophysiological outcomes in different adult life stages. For each dataset, we constructed standardized composite measures of early-life SES and adult SES and harmonized biophysiological measurements of immune and metabolic functioning. We found that the relative importance of early-life SES and adult SES varied across young, mid, and late adulthood, such that early-life SES sets a life course trajectory of socioeconomic well-being and operates through adult SES to influence health as adults age. We also documented evidence of the detrimental health effects of downward mobility and persistent socioeconomic disadvantage. These findings are the first to specify the life course patterns of SES that matter for underlying biophysiological functioning in different stages of adulthood. The study thus contributes new knowledge critical for improving population health by identifying the particular points in the life course at which interventions might be most effective in preventing disease and premature mortality.

Childhood abuse and late-life depression: Mediating effects of psychosocial factors for early- and late-onset depression.

PubMed

Wielaard, Ilse; Hoyer, Mathijs; Rhebergen, Didi; Stek, Max L; Comijs, Hannie C

2018-03-01

Childhood abuse makes people vulnerable to developing depression, even in late life. Psychosocial factors that are common in late life, such as loneliness or lack of a partner, may explain this association. Our aim was to investigate whether the association between childhood abuse and depression in older adults can be explained by psychosocial factors. Cross-sectional data were derived from the Netherlands Study of Depression in Older Persons (aged 60-93), including 132 without lifetime depression, 242 persons with an early-onset depression (<60 years), and 125 with a late-onset (≥60 years) depression. Childhood abuse (yes/no) and a frequency-based childhood abuse index were included. Multinomial regression and multivariable mediation analyses were used to examine the association between childhood abuse and the onset of depression, and the influence of loneliness, social network, and partner status. Multinomial regression analyses showed a significant association between childhood abuse and the childhood abuse index with early- and late-onset depression. Multivariable mediation analyses showed that the association between childhood abuse and early-onset depression was partly mediated by social network size and loneliness. This was particularly present for emotional neglect and psychological abuse, but not for physical and sexual abuse. No psychosocial mediators were found for the association between childhood abuse and late-onset depression. A smaller social network and feelings of loneliness mediate the association between childhood abuse and early-onset depression in older adults. Our findings show the importance of detecting childhood abuse as well as the age at depression onset and mapping of relevant psychosocial factors in the treatment of late-life depression. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fostering Social Expertise in Early Childhood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Porath, Marion

2009-01-01

Social competence is an essential capability to bring to school because of its relationship to academic success. Development and consolidation of social understanding in early childhood ensures that young children have a solid foundation of social expertise when they begin formal schooling. Social expertise, conceptualized within the framework of…

Trajectories of Social Withdrawal from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence

PubMed Central

Oh, Wonjung; Bowker, Julie C.; Booth-LaForce, Cathryn; Rose-Krasnor, Linda; Laursen, Brett

2013-01-01

Heterogeneity and individual differences in the developmental course of social withdrawal were examined longitudinally in a community sample (N=392). General Growth Mixture Modeling (GGMM) was used to identify distinct pathways of social withdrawal, differentiate valid subgroup trajectories, and examine factors that predicted change in trajectories within subgroups. Assessments of individual (social withdrawal), interactive (prosocial behavior), relationship (friendship involvement, stability and quality, best friend’s withdrawal and exclusion/victimization) and group- (exclusion/victimization) level characteristics were used to define growth trajectories from the final year of elementary school, across the transition to middle school, and then to the final year of middle school (fifth-to-eighth grades). Three distinct trajectory classes were identified: low stable, increasing, and decreasing. Peer exclusion, prosocial behavior, and mutual friendship involvement differentiated class membership. Friendlessness, friendship instability, and exclusion were significant predictors of social withdrawal for the increasing class, whereas lower levels of peer exclusion predicted a decrease in social withdrawal for the decreasing class. PMID:18193479

Trajectories of social withdrawal from middle childhood to early adolescence.

PubMed

Oh, Wonjung; Rubin, Kenneth H; Bowker, Julie C; Booth-LaForce, Cathryn; Rose-Krasnor, Linda; Laursen, Brett

2008-05-01

Heterogeneity and individual differences in the developmental course of social withdrawal were examined longitudinally in a community sample (N = 392). General Growth Mixture Modeling (GGMM) was used to identify distinct pathways of social withdrawal, differentiate valid subgroup trajectories, and examine factors that predicted change in trajectories within subgroups. Assessments of individual (social withdrawal), interactive (prosocial behavior), relationship (friendship involvement, stability and quality, best friend's withdrawal and exclusion/victimization) and group- (exclusion/victimization) level characteristics were used to define growth trajectories from the final year of elementary school, across the transition to middle school, and then to the final year of middle school (fifth-to-eighth grades). Three distinct trajectory classes were identified: low stable, increasing, and decreasing. Peer exclusion, prosocial behavior, and mutual friendship involvement differentiated class membership. Friendlessness, friendship instability, and exclusion were significant predictors of social withdrawal for the increasing class, whereas lower levels of peer exclusion predicted a decrease in social withdrawal for the decreasing class.

Social Capital in the Classroom: A Study of In-Class Social Capital and School Adjustment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Rossem, Ronan; Vermande, Marjolijn; Völker, Beate; Baerveldt, Chris

2015-01-01

Social capital is generally considered beneficial for students' school adjustment. This paper argues that social relationships among pupils generate social capital at both the individual and the class levels, and that each has its unique effect on pupils' performance and well-being. The sample in this study consists of 1036 children in 60…

Use of Second Life in Social Work Education: Virtual World Experiences and Their Effect on Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reinsmith-Jones, Kelley; Kibbe, Sharon; Crayton, Traci; Campbell, Elana

2015-01-01

During the past 10 years, there has been a growing use of distance education, including the practice of holding classes in virtual world educational formats such as Second Life. Both the psychiatric and medical fields have caught on quickly to the functionality of virtual world teaching, yet social service educators have not ventured likewise.…

Social-cognitive functioning and social skills in patients with early treated phenylketonuria: a PKU-COBESO study.

PubMed

Jahja, Rianne; van Spronsen, Francjan J; de Sonneville, Leo M J; van der Meere, Jaap J; Bosch, Annet M; Hollak, Carla E M; Rubio-Gozalbo, M Estela; Brouwers, Martijn C G J; Hofstede, Floris C; de Vries, Maaike C; Janssen, Mirian C H; van der Ploeg, Ans T; Langendonk, Janneke G; Huijbregts, Stephan C J

2016-05-01

Early treatment of phenylketonuria (ET-PKU) prevents mental retardation, but many patients still show cognitive and mood problems. In this study, it was investigated whether ET-PKU-patients have specific phenylalanine (Phe-)related problems with respect to social-cognitive functioning and social skills. Ninety five PKU-patients (mean age 21.6 ± 10.2 years) and 95 healthy controls (mean age 19.6 ± 8.7 years) were compared on performance of computerized and paper-and-pencil tasks measuring social-cognitive abilities and on parent- and self-reported social skills, using multivariate analyses of variance, and controlling for general cognitive ability (IQ-estimate). Further comparisons were made between patients using tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4, N = 30) and patients not using BH4. Associations with Phe-levels on the day of testing, during childhood, during adolescence and throughout life were examined. PKU-patients showed poorer social-cognitive functioning and reportedly had poorer social skills than controls (regardless of general cognitive abilities). Quality of social-cognitive functioning was negatively related to recent Phe-levels and Phe-levels between 8 and 12 years for adolescents with PKU. Quality of social skills was negatively related to lifetime phenylalanine levels in adult patients, and specifically to Phe-levels between 0 and 7, and between 8 and 12 years. There were no differences with respect to social outcome measures between the BH4 and non-BH4 groups. PKU-patients have Phe-related difficulties with social-cognitive functioning and social skills. Problems seem to be more evident among adolescents and adults with PKU. High Phe-levels during childhood and early adolescence seem to be of greater influence than current and recent Phe-levels for these patients.

Divergence of developmental trajectories is triggered interactively by early social and ecological experience in a cooperative breeder

PubMed Central

Bohn, Lena; Oberhummer, Evelyne

2017-01-01

Cooperative breeders feature the highest level of social complexity among vertebrates. Environmental constraints foster the evolution of this form of social organization, selecting for both well-developed social and ecological competences. Cooperative breeders pursue one of two alternative social trajectories: delaying reproduction to care for the offspring of dominant breeders or dispersing early to breed independently. It is yet unclear which ecological and social triggers determine the choice between these alternatives and whether diverging developmental trajectories exist in cooperative vertebrates predisposing them to dispersal or philopatry. Here we experimentally reared juveniles of cooperatively breeding cichlid fish by varying the social environment and simulated predation threat in a two-by-two factorial long-term experiment. First, we show that individuals develop specialized behavioral competences, originating already in the early postnatal phase. Second, these specializations predisposed individuals to pursue different developmental trajectories and either to disperse early or to extend philopatry in adulthood. Thus, our results contrast with the proposition that social specializations in early ontogeny should be restricted to eusocial species. Importantly, social and ecological triggers were both required for the generation of divergent life histories. Our results thus confirm recent predictions from theoretical models that organisms should combine relevant information from different environmental cues to develop integrated phenotypes. PMID:29078289

Korean Survivors of the Japanese "Comfort Women" System: Understanding the Lifelong Consequences of Early Life Trauma.

PubMed

Park, Jee Hoon; Lee, KyongWeon; Hand, Michelle D; Anderson, Keith A; Schleitwiler, Tess E

2016-01-01

Prior to and during World War II, thousands of girls and young women were abducted from Korea and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government. Termed comfort women, these girls and young women suffered extreme sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and trauma. Research on this group is not well-developed and people know little of the impact of this early life trauma on the lives of these women who are now in later life. Using snowball sampling, 16 older adult survivors of the comfort women system participated in semistructured qualitative interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted to gain an understanding of the trauma that these women suffered and how it impacted their lives. Results revealed the depths of the abuse these women suffered, including repeated rapes, physical beatings, humiliation, forced surgery and sterilization, and social exclusion. These early traumatic experiences appeared to reverberate throughout their lives in their family relations, their inability to marry and to conceive children, and their emotional and physical well-being throughout the life course and into later life. The experiences of these survivors illustrate the lasting impact of early-life trauma and can guide interventions with current survivors of sexual abuse or trafficking.

El Sistema as a Bourgeois Social Project: Class, Gender, and Victorian Values

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bull, Anna

2016-01-01

This article asks why classical music in the UK, which is consumed and practiced by the middle and upper classes, is being used as a social action program for working-class children in British music education schemes inspired by El Sistema. Through exploring the discourse of the social benefits of classical music in the late nineteenth century, a…

Social Software for Life-Long Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klamma, Ralf; Chatti, Mohamed Amine; Duval, Erik; Hummel, Hans; Hvannberg, Ebba Thora; Kravcik, Milos; Law, Effie; Naeve, Ambjorn; Scott, Peter

2007-01-01

Life-long learning is a key issue for our knowledge society. With social software systems new heterogeneous kinds of technology enhanced informal learning are now available to the life-long learner. Learners outside of learning institutions now have access to powerful social communities of experts and peers who are together forging a new web 2.0.…

Dilemmas of participation in everyday life in early rheumatoid arthritis: a qualitative interview study (The Swedish TIRA Project).

PubMed

Sverker, Annette; Östlund, Gunnel; Thyberg, Mikael; Thyberg, Ingrid; Valtersson, Eva; Björk, Mathilda

2015-01-01

To explore the experiences of today's patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with respect to dilemmas of everyday life, especially regarding patterns of participation restrictions in valued life activities. A total of 48 patients, aged 20-63, three years post-RA diagnosis were interviewed using the Critical Incident Technique. Transcribed interviews were condensed into meaningful units describing actions/situations. These descriptions were linked to ICF participation codes according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) linking rules. Dilemmas in everyday life were experienced in domestic life, interpersonal interactions and relationships, community, social and civic life. Most dilemmas were experienced in domestic life, including participation restrictions in, e.g. gardening, repairing houses, shovelling snow, watering pot plants, sewing or walking the dog. Also many dilemmas were experienced related to recreation and leisure within the domain community, social and civic life. The different dilemmas were often related to each other. For instance, dilemmas related to community life were combined with dilemmas within mobility, such as lifting and carrying objects. Participation restrictions in today's RA patients are complex. Our results underline that the health care needs to be aware of the patients' own preferences and goals to support the early multi-professional interventions in clinical practice. Implications of Rehabilitation Today's rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients experience participation restrictions in activities not included in International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) core set for RA or in traditionally questionnaires with predefined activities. The health care need to be aware of the patients' own preferences and goals to meet the individual needs and optimize the rehabilitation in early RA in clinical practice.

Advancing paternal age at birth is associated with poorer social functioning earlier and later in life of schizophrenia patients in a founder population.

PubMed

Liebenberg, Rudolf; van Heerden, Brigitte; Ehlers, René; Du Plessis, Anna M E; Roos, J Louw

2016-09-30

Consistent associations have been found between advanced paternal age and an increased risk of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, in their offspring. This increase appears to be linear as paternal age increases. The present study investigates the relationship between early deviant behaviour in the first 10 years of life of patients as well as longer term functional outcome and paternal age in sporadic Afrikaner founder population cases of schizophrenia. This might improve our understanding of Paternal Age-Related Schizophrenia (PARS). Follow-up psychiatric diagnoses were confirmed by the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies (DIGS). An early deviant childhood behaviour semi-structured questionnaire and the Specific Level of Functioning Assessment (SLOF) were completed. From the logistic regression models fitted, a significant negative relationship was found between paternal age at birth and social dysfunction as early deviant behaviour. Additionally, regression analysis revealed a significant negative relationship between paternal age at birth and the SLOF for interpersonal relationships later in life. Early social dysfunction may represent a phenotypic trait for PARS. Further research is required to understand the relationship between early social dysfunction and deficits in interpersonal relationships later in life. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Beyond 'Doing Gender': Incorporating Race, Class, Place, and Life Transitions into Feminist Drug Research.

PubMed

Miller, Jody; Carbone-Lopez, Kristin

2015-05-01

This essay draws from our research with US rural women methamphetamine users in 2009 to offer strategies for "revisioning" the drug use(r) field to better understand the impact of gender on drug use and drug market participation. We highlight the insights and limitations of a popular strategy in feminist research that conceptualizes gender as performance- commonly referred to as "doing gender"-using illustrations from our research. We encourage scholars to move beyond a primarily normative orientation in studying gender, and investigate gendered organizational features of social life including their intersections with other aspects of social inequality such as those of race, class, and place. In addition, we suggest that feminist scholars can integrate gender in a rigorous way into theoretical perspectives that are typically inattentive to its import, as a means of challenging, enriching, and refining research on drug use, drug users, and drug market participation.

Social class and policy preferences: implications for economic inequality and interclass relations.

PubMed

Bullock, Heather E

2017-12-01

Record-setting levels of income and wealth inequality are deepening social class divisions. The adoption of strong progressive redistributive policies is crucial to reducing class inequities, yet many barriers to doing so exist. This review examines class-based policy preferences, focusing on the effects of economic self-interest, system justification, and classist, racist, and sexist stereotypes on policy support. The impact of broader economic conditions is also considered. Collectively, this body of research makes clear that building stronger cross-class support for redistributive policies and programs will prove difficult without addressing both class-based power differences and beliefs that justify inequality. Reducing stereotypes and developing a shared sense of societal responsibility that cuts across class lines can help advance these goals. Social psychological research is vital to informing these efforts. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Stigmatised Choices: Social Class, Social Exclusion and Secondary School Markets in the Inner City

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reay, Diane; Lucey, Helen

2004-01-01

The transition to secondary school is rarely conceptualised as an important influence in maintaining and contributing to wider processes of social exclusion in the inner city. This article argues that the seeds of social exclusion are sown in under-resourced, struggling inner-city schooling, and their germination is found in class practices,…

Chemical defense of early life stages of benthic marine invertebrates.

PubMed

Lindquist, Niels

2002-10-01

Accurate knowledge of factors affecting the survival of early life stages of marine invertebrates is critically important for understanding their population dynamics and the evolution of their diverse reproductive and life-history characteristics. Chemical defense is an important determinant of survival for adult stages of many sessile benthic invertebrates, yet relatively little consideration has been given to chemical defenses at the early life stages. This review examines the taxonomic breadth of early life-stage chemical defense in relation to various life-history and reproductive characteristics, as well as possible constraints on the expression of chemical defense at certain life stages. Data on the localization of defensive secondary metabolites in larvae and the fitness-related consequences of consuming even a small amount of toxic secondary metabolites underpin proposals regarding the potential for Müllerian and Batesian mimicry to occur among marine larvae. The involvement of microbial symbionts in the chemical defense of early life stages illustrates its complexity for some species. As our knowledge of chemical defenses in early life stages grows, we will be able to more rigorously examine connections among phylogeny, chemical defenses, and the evolution of reproductive and life-history characteristics among marine invertebrates.

The wider social environment and changes in self-reported quality of life in the transition from late childhood to early adolescence: a cohort study

PubMed Central

Drukker, Marjan; Kaplan, Charles; Schneiders, Josien; Feron, Frans JM; van Os, Jim

2006-01-01

Background Neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage and social capital have been associated with adolescent well-being, but the majority of studies were cross-sectional, and the time window over which the neighbourhood may impact on development is unknown. Therefore, the contribution of the neighbourhood environment to adolescents' quality of life and the course of these effects during the period of transition from childhood to early adolescence was examined. Methods A cohort of adolescents living in Maastricht (The Netherlands), with a mean age of 11.2 years at baseline and of 13.5 years at follow-up was followed. Adolescents who responded both at baseline and at follow-up were included in the analysis (n = 475). Multilevel regression analyses estimated neighbourhood effects while controlling for individual-level effects. Neighbourhood-level socioeconomic and social capital variables, individual-level confounders, and baseline values of the outcome measures were included in the models. Results None of the neighbourhood factors was associated with changes in general health or mental health over the two-year period. However, two-year exposure to greater disparity between individual level socioeconomic status on the one hand and neighbourhood level of socioeconomic status on the other (e.g. high socioeconomic status adolescents living in deprived neighbourhoods and vice versa) negatively impacted on self-esteem and satisfaction. Conclusion The neighbourhood environment per se does not contribute to change in quality of life during the transition to early adolescence. However, adolescents living in families whose socioeconomic status deviates from the mean level of neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation may be negatively affected. PMID:16707015

Effects of early life factors on the health and quality of life of older adults.

PubMed

Yilmaz, Fikriye; N Tekin, Rukiye

2018-01-01

Few studies on the effects of early life factors on the health and quality of life of adults have been conducted in Turkey. We aimed to investigate the effects of early life factors on the health and quality of life of older adults. We administered a questionnaire to 350 adults, aged 50-89 years, living in Cankaya, Ankara. The questionnaire covered sociodemographic characteristics, early life characteristics, health status, and the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Ageing scale. Data were analyzed using χ 2 tests, independent samples t-tests, one-way anova, and binary logistic regression analysis. The analyses showed that the most important risk factors for chronic disease were being ≥65 years (odds ratio (OR) = 2.34), having a chronic health problem before 18 years of age (OR = 2.48), experiencing prolonged hospitalization or bed rest before 18 years of age (OR = 2.65), and experiencing parental unconcern during early life (OR = 2.13) (P < 0.05). In addition, having a high school education or less includes people who have primary or secondary or high school diploma (OR = 1.65), having lived in a village (OR = 1.65), having a low family economic status (OR = 2.40), and having experienced one negative event (OR = 1.41) or two or more negative events (OR = 1.39) during their early lives were identified as important risk factors for low quality of life (P < 0.05). Early life factors are among the important determinants of the health and quality of life of older adults in Turkey. © 2017 Japanese Psychogeriatric Society.

Early childhood social disadvantage is associated with poor health behaviours in adulthood

PubMed Central

Non, Amy L.; Román, Jorge Carlos; Gross, Christopher L.; Gilman, Stephen E.; Loucks, Eric B.; Buka, Stephen L.; Kubzansky, Laura D.

2016-01-01

Background Individual health behaviours are considered important risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. These behaviours may be socially patterned by early exposure to social disadvantage, but few studies have prospectively tested this hypothesis empirically. Aim We investigated whether childhood social disadvantage was associated with likelihood of engaging in less healthy behaviours 40 years later. Subjects and Methods Prospective data were analysed from the New England Family Study, a 2005–2007 adult follow-up of a cohort initiated in 1959–1966 (n=565). Childhood social environment (birth-age 7) was assessed using a cumulative index of socioeconomic and family stability factors. Logistic regression models evaluated associations between social disadvantage and each health-related behaviour and obesity in adulthood. Results Relative to low disadvantage, higher disadvantage was associated with 3.6-fold greater odds of smoking (95% CI: 1.9, 7.0), 4.8-fold greater odds (in women only) of excess alcohol consumption (95% CI: 1.6, 14.2), and 2.7-fold greater odds of obesity (95% CI: 1.3, 5.5), but was not associated with unhealthy diet or physical inactivity. Conclusion These findings suggest childhood social disadvantage may contribute to adult cardiometabolic disease by predisposing children to adopt certain unhealthy behaviours. If replicated, such findings may support intervention strategies that target social environmental factors and behavioural pathways that are established early in life. PMID:26727037

Meeting the Educational and Social Needs of the Students in Senior Family Life Class through Cooperative Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nisivoccia, Joseph D.

A cooperative learning model was used in Florida to change the state-mandated grade 12 course called Family Life and Sex Education, which had been found deficient in meeting students' educational and social needs. Pretest data before the change in model indicated a lack of knowledge that had a detrimental effect on thinking and problem-solving…

Representations of everyday life: a proposal for capturing social values from the Marxist perspective of knowledge production.

PubMed

Soares, Cássia Baldini; Santos, Vilmar Ezequiel Dos; Campos, Célia Maria Sivalli; Lachtim, Sheila Aparecida Ferreira; Campos, Fernanda Cristina

2011-12-01

We propose from the Marxist perspective of the construction of knowledge, a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding social values by capturing everyday representations. We assume that scientific research brings together different dimensions: epistemological, theoretical and methodological that consistently to the other instances, proposes a set of operating procedures and techniques for capturing and analyzing the reality under study in order to expose the investigated object. The study of values reveals the essentiality of the formation of judgments and choices, there are values that reflect the dominant ideology, spanning all social classes, but there are values that reflect class interests, these are not universal, they are formed in relationships and social activities. Basing on the Marxist theory of consciousness, representations are discursive formulations of everyday life - opinion or conviction - issued by subjects about their reality, being a coherent way of understanding and exposure social values: focus groups show is suitable for grasping opinions while interviews show potential to expose convictions.

Elevated Social Anxiety among Early Maturing Girls

PubMed Central

Blumenthal, Heidemarie; Leen-Feldner, Ellen W.; Babson, Kimberly A.; Gahr, Jessica L.; Trainor, Casey D.; Frala, Jamie L.

2012-01-01

Adolescence is a key period in terms of the development of anxiety psychopathology. An emerging literature suggests that early pubertal maturation is associated with enhanced vulnerability for anxiety symptomatology, although few studies have examined this association with regard to social anxiety. Accordingly, the current study was designed to further elucidate the relation between pubertal timing and social anxiety, with a focus on clarifying the role of gender. Participants were 138 adolescents (ages 12-17 years) recruited from the general community. Level of social anxiety was examined as a function of gender and within-sample pubertal timing. As expected, early-maturing girls evidenced significantly higher social anxiety as compared to on-time girls and early-maturing boys, and no other differences were found as a function of gender or developmental timing. Findings and future directions are discussed in terms of forwarding developmentally-sensitive models of social anxiety etiology and prevention. PMID:21604866

Social influence on associative learning: double dissociation in high-functioning autism, early-stage behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Kéri, Szabolcs

2014-05-01

Most of our learning activity takes place in a social context. I examined how social interactions influence associative learning in neurodegenerative diseases and atypical neurodevelopmental conditions primarily characterised by social cognitive and memory dysfunctions. Participants were individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA, n = 18), early-stage behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD, n = 16) and Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 20). The leading symptoms in HFA and bvFTD were social and behavioural dysfunctions, whereas AD was characterised by memory deficits. Participants received three versions of a paired associates learning task. In the game with boxes test, objects were hidden in six candy boxes placed in different locations on the computer screen. In the game with faces, each box was labelled by a photo of a person. In the real-life version of the game, participants played with real persons. Individuals with HFA and bvFTD performed well in the computer games, but failed on the task including real persons. In contrast, in patients with early-stage AD, social interactions boosted paired associates learning up to the level of healthy control volunteers. Worse performance in the real life game was associated with less successful recognition of complex emotions and mental states in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. Spatial span did not affect the results. When social cognition is impaired, but memory systems are less compromised (HFA and bvFTD), real-life interactions disrupt associative learning; when disease process impairs memory systems but social cognition is relatively intact (early-stage AD), social interactions have a beneficial effect on learning and memory. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Antenatal depressive symptoms associated with specific life events and sources of social support among Italian women.

PubMed

Agostini, Francesca; Neri, Erica; Salvatori, Paola; Dellabartola, Sara; Bozicevic, Laura; Monti, Fiorella

2015-05-01

This study aimed to identify different kinds of stressful life events and social support associated with antenatal depressive symptoms in a sample of pregnant Italian women. We conducted the study at a primary health-care centre in an urban area (northeast Italy). Mainly recruited at antenatal classes, 404 eligible pregnant women completed a socio-demographic questionnaire that included questions about the present pregnancy, the Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS) to estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and List of Threatening Experiences Questionnaire to investigate the quality and nature of social support and recent negative life events. Of the 404 women, 60 (14.9 %) scored 13 or higher on the EDS. This group reported significantly lower social support from various sources-family, friends, and significant others; only in primiparous women were depressive symptoms significantly related to lower support from friends. Women with EDS scores equal or higher than 13 also reported a higher occurrence of recent stressful life events-specifically, death or a serious problem with a close friend or relative, unemployment, financial problems, and moving or housing difficulties. Regression analyses showed that women with high levels of social support or with a positive experience of pregnancy were less likely to experience antenatal depressive symptoms. Our results underscore the associations among antenatal depression, specific life stressors, and low social support from various sources. Clinical attention to these psychosocial correlates is recommended toward detecting vulnerability to antenatal depressive symptoms.

Sex-role patterns, paternal rearing attitudes and child development in different social classes.

PubMed

Nettelbladt, P; Uddenberg, N; Englesson, I

1981-07-01

Sex-role patterns, the father's rearing attitude and the child's intellectual and emotional development in different social classes were studied in a randomly selected sample of 58 Swedish unbroken families of a small child. Working class men and women married younger and the women were more often house-wives. Working class men had more often been reared in an "authoritarian" way and more often reared their children in the same way. Upper middle class men had taken a more active part in the care of the child. Working class children scored lower on the intelligence tests, especially the verbal ones and were more often estimated as socially immature.

Cognitive function, social functioning and quality of life in first-episode psychosis: A 1-year longitudinal study.

PubMed

Popolo, Raffaele; Vinci, Giancarlo; Balbi, Andrea

2010-03-01

Abstract Objective. The majority of patients with schizophrenia have cognitive deficits early in the disease. We evaluated the relationship between cognitive function, social functioning and quality of life in patients with first-episode psychosis. Methods. This was a longitudinal study in 15 patients aged 18-30 years who had recently experienced a first psychotic episode and were treated with the atypical antipsychotic aripiprazole, cognitive-behavioural therapy, psycho-educational sessions, family supportive sessions and social interventions. Patients were evaluated at baseline and after 1 year. Cognitive assessment included attention, memory, language skills and problem solving. Social functioning, quality of life, and psychopathological evaluation were performed with validated tools. Results. At baseline, patients had a severe impairment of social functioning and a low quality of life, while a specific pattern of cognitive functions was not identified. After 1-year, we observed a significant improvement in social functioning and quality of life, without a significant decrease in cognitive function. Conclusion. Contrary to previous findings, we found that social functioning and quality of life are related, but independent of cognitive impairment. The use of antipsychotic agents that do not interefere with cognitive function plus psychological assistance is a valuable treatment approach in patients with first-episode schizophrenia.

The Role of Hopelessness in the Health of Low-Class Rural Chinese Residents.

PubMed

Zhang, Huiping; Wu, Lei; Cheng, Mingming

2018-03-12

It is well known that health inequality has been happening between rural and urban Chinese populations, however, the health differences among rural Chinese residents remain unclear. This study aims to assess the physical and mental health of rural Chinese residents in different social classes, and then to examine the mediating role of hopelessness between social class and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). A stratified multi-stage sampling was used to recruit 2003 rural residents responding to the 12-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12). The results showed that lower-class rural Chinese residents reported lower physical and mental health as well as a higher level of hopelessness. Furthermore, hopelessness could fully mediate the association between social class and physical and mental health. These findings will generate significant implications for identifying those at particular risk for lower quality of life and designing social work intervention programs in rural China's context.

"I Am Working-Class": Subjective Self-Definition as a Missing Measure of Social Class and Socioeconomic Status in Higher Education Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rubin, Mark; Denson, Nida; Kilpatrick, Sue; Matthews, Kelly E.; Stehlik, Tom; Zyngier, David

2014-01-01

This review provides a critical appraisal of the measurement of students' social class and socioeconomic status (SES) in the context of widening higher education participation. Most assessments of social class and SES in higher education have focused on objective measurements based on the income, occupation, and education of students'…

How does the social environment during life course embody in and influence the development of cancer?

PubMed

Chen, Ming; Zhu, Huiyun; Du, Yiqi; Yang, Geliang

2018-06-11

This review assessed the complex longitudinal processes involved in cancer etiology during life course to understand how the social inequality may be embodied in and influence cancer risk. A narrative literature review was performed with a keyword search conducted using PubMed, Scientific Electronic Library Online and Google. Three aspects of literatures were mainly included: social environmental mechanisms of cancer, life course of cancer development and social inequality of cancer risk. This review was complemented with manual searches of relevant journals and reference lists of primary articles. Social inequality is mostly embodied in genetic susceptibility and early childhood development, the duration and intensity of exposures and the access to medical resources, which influence the timing and accumulation of cancer risk during life course. The individuals with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have higher cancer risk because of more frequency of timing and quantity of accumulation of adverse exposures and greater impact on epigenetic mechanisms. Primary prevention is the best prevention strategy to reduce cancer risk.

Ways that Social Change Predicts Personal Quality of Life

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Chau-Kiu; Leung, Kwok

2010-01-01

A notable way that social change affects personal quality of life would rely on the person's experience with social change. This experience may influence societal quality of life and quality of work life, which may in turn affect personal quality of life. Additionally, the experience of social change is possibly less detrimental to personal…

Early Life Stress: Effects on the Regulation of Anxiety Expression in Children and Adolescents.

PubMed

Burkholder, Amanda R; Koss, Kalsea J; Hostinar, Camelia E; Johnson, Anna E; Gunnar, Megan R

2016-11-01

This study examined children's ( N = 79; 9-10 years) and adolescents' ( N = 82; 15-16 years) ability to regulate their emotion expressions of anxiety as they completed a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C). Approximately half in each age group were internationally adopted from institutional care ( N = 79) and half were non-adopted, age-matched peers ( N = 82). Institutional care was viewed as a form of early life stress. Coders who were reliable and blind to group status watched videos of the session to assess anxiety expressions using the Child and Adolescent Stress and Emotion Scale developed for this study. Children exhibited more expressions of anxiety than adolescents, and youth adopted from institutions showed more expressions of anxiety than their non-adopted counterparts. The role of early life stress on observed anxiety expressions remained significant after controlling for differences in age, physiological stress responses measured through salivary cortisol reactivity, and self-reports of stress during the TSST-C. This suggests possible deficits in the regulation of expressive behavior for youth with early life stress histories, which cannot be explained by experiencing the task as more stressful.

Early Life Stress: Effects on the Regulation of Anxiety Expression in Children and Adolescents

PubMed Central

Burkholder, Amanda R; Koss, Kalsea J.; Hostinar, Camelia E; Johnson, Anna E.; Gunnar, Megan R

2017-01-01

This study examined children’s (N = 79; 9–10 years) and adolescents’ (N = 82; 15–16 years) ability to regulate their emotion expressions of anxiety as they completed a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C). Approximately half in each age group were internationally adopted from institutional care (N = 79) and half were non-adopted, age-matched peers (N = 82). Institutional care was viewed as a form of early life stress. Coders who were reliable and blind to group status watched videos of the session to assess anxiety expressions using the Child and Adolescent Stress and Emotion Scale developed for this study. Children exhibited more expressions of anxiety than adolescents, and youth adopted from institutions showed more expressions of anxiety than their non-adopted counterparts. The role of early life stress on observed anxiety expressions remained significant after controlling for differences in age, physiological stress responses measured through salivary cortisol reactivity, and self-reports of stress during the TSST-C. This suggests possible deficits in the regulation of expressive behavior for youth with early life stress histories, which cannot be explained by experiencing the task as more stressful. PMID:28584408

Early Adolescents' Social Goals and School Adjustment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dawes, Molly

2017-01-01

What are the common types of social goals endorsed by early adolescents and how are they related to their school adjustment? This article discusses the importance of assessing students' social goals during the early adolescent developmental period when peers become increasingly important and youth experience tremendous changes to the school…

Long term effects of early adversity on cognitive function.

PubMed

Richards, M; Wadsworth, M E J

2004-10-01

To investigate long term effects of early adverse circumstances on cognitive function. Associations between early material home circumstances, parental divorce, maternal management and understanding, and cognitive function in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood were analysed using multiple linear regression, controlling for sex, parental SES, and birth order in 1339 males and females from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development. Early adverse circumstances were strongly associated with lower cognitive ability in childhood and adolescence, and were detectable on measures of verbal ability, memory, and speed and concentration in midlife. However, these long term effects were mostly explained by the effects of adversity on childhood or adolescent cognitive ability or by differences in educational attainment and adult social class. An exception was the effect of poor material home conditions on visual search speed at 53 years, which was maintained after controlling for adolescent ability, as well as further control for educational attainment, adult social class, physical growth, cigarette smoking, and affective state. There was no evidence of more rapid decline in memory and psychomotor function across middle age in those exposed to early adversity. The effect of early adversity on cognitive function tracks across the life course at least as far as middle age, although there was little evidence from this study of effect amplification over this interval. Nevertheless, in view of the persistence of child poverty in the industrialised world, these findings give cause for concern.

Increasing Class Participation in Social Phobic Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miranda, Michael V.

2008-01-01

The "Find Your Classroom Voice Program" has been offered at Kingsborough Community College for the past three years. Its purpose is to enable students who are consistently inactive in class discussions (and who might be called "classroom-specific social phobic") to develop the ability to take a more active role in the classroom. With its success,…

Microaggressions and Social Class Identity in Higher Education and Student Affairs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Locke, Leslie Ann; Trolian, Teniell L.

2018-01-01

In this chapter, we discuss microaggressions, or the everyday (and often unintended) incidents of discrimination that individuals from marginalized or underserved groups experience on college campuses as they relate to students' social class identities--or simply, class-based prejudices.

Social Mix, Schooling and Intersectionality: Identity and Risk for Black Middle Class Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ball, Stephen J.; Rollock, Nicola; Vincent, Carol; Gillborn, David

2013-01-01

This paper addresses some particular aspects of the complex intersections between race and social class. It is based upon data collected as part of a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project exploring the "Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes" (BMC). ("The Educational Strategies of the Black…