Monthly Archives: March 2014

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By Ted Boscia
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, February 11, 2014

Vrangalova
Vrangalova

When college students have casual sex – “hooking up” – how it influences their mental and physical health depends in part on their intentions for doing it, finds a Cornell study.

Hooking up for the “wrong reasons” – peer pressure, to boost one’s self-esteem, hoping it will lead to a long-term relationship or coercion by intoxication or other means, according to examples given in the study – decreased students’ well-being compared to peers who refrained from casual sex. On the other hand, casual sex motivated by the “right reasons” – such as a self-directed desire for pleasure, intimacy or excitement – did not heighten these negative health effects.

“Why you engage in casual sex is more consequential for your physical and mental health than whether you do it,” said author Zhana Vrangalova, Ph.D. ’13 in the field of human development. Her paper, “Does Casual Sex Harm College Students’ Wellbeing? A Longitudinal Investigation of the Role of Motivation,” was published online Feb. 5 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

“There are a number of situational, personal, interpersonal and social factors that determine whether one’s casual sex experiences are good or bad for them,” Vrangalova said. “This study is one of the first to examine, and find evidence of, one such factor: motivation.”

At the start and end of an academic year, Vrangalova surveyed 528 Cornell undergraduates, recording their mental and physical well-being, number of casual sex partners, their motivations for hooking up and various demographic factors. Applying self-determination theory, a psychological measure of people’s intentions, she determined whether students hooked up for autonomous reasons – those that are self-directed and reflect one’s values – or non-autonomous factors, outside influences such as coercion or social pressure.

After controlling for demographics, personality traits, prior casual and romantic sex, and initial levels of well-being, hookups motivated by external forces were linked to lower self-esteem, higher depression and anxiety, and poorer physical health. Autonomous hookups were not linked to negative outcomes. (The study defined hookups as any form of genital contact between partners who were not in a long-term romantic relationship.)

“Most studies on the link between casual sex and health have only looked at the simple comparison between those who have hooked up as a single group and those who haven’t, and findings have often been inconsistent across different studies,” said Vrangalova, who did the work as part of her doctoral dissertation. “This study shows the importance of internal processes, such as motivation, as moderators for health outcomes.”

The results could help guide teachers, counselors and doctors advising young adults about sex by “shifting education, policy and clinical work away from uniform, one-size-fits-all strategies and messages regarding casual sex and its health consequences, and toward more individually tailored, and, thus, more useful, approaches,” the paper reports.

The study was funded by student grants from the Foundation for Scientific Study of Sexuality, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and Cornell’s Human Ecology Alumni Association.

Ted Boscia is director of communications and media for the College of Human Ecology.

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By Linda B. Glaser
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, March 6, 2014

President Obama’s “Brain Initiative” aims to revolutionize brain research across the globe; two graduate students have launched an initiative to transform neuroscience research at Cornell. Their “cross-departmental neuroscience analysis group” held its first “Neurodinner” Feb. 13 in Corson-Mudd Hall, featuring make-your-own sandwiches, antipasto and conversation about neuroscience.

“There haven’t been avenues for people who do neuroscience across campus to get to know each other,” explained Joe DiPietro, a graduate student in neurobiology and behavior professor Joseph Fetcho’s lab. “This is a way for people to learn about the resources available to neuroscientists on campus and to create a better environment for collaboration – and for us all to become friends.” DiPietro organized the evening with Matt Lewis, also a graduate student in the field of neurobiology and behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences.

At the Neurodinner, graduate students, post-doctoral students, and faculty members from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Human Ecology gave brief summaries of their research, illustrating how neuroscience research at Cornell occurs at every level, from micro to macro. Research projects ranged from studies of the nervous system at the level of individual neurons and proteins, to neural circuits and behavior, to the interaction of brain regions in insects, birds and mammals – as well as humans. A graduate student in the field of applied physics described his work developing better imaging tools, while engineers talked about applying neuroscience principles to machines and implementing properties of biological metabolism in robotic ecologies.

“An important goal of Neurodinner is to provide an avenue where people can bridge these different levels of analysis in neuroscience research,” said DiPietro. “The future of neuroscience is bridging the gaps between all these different areas.”

After introductions, attendees offered suggestions for future events that would include intellectual exchange and opportunities for socializing, as well as the chance to discuss research problems and hear perspectives from researchers in other fields.

While many Neurodinner participants described using similar techniques in their research – despite their widely divergent fields – others used novel equipment or approaches. Future Neurodinners will include presentations of laboratory techniques and equipment such as optogenetics (the use of light-sensitive proteins to control and monitor neurons), behavioral pharmacology (which studies the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs) and Cornell’s new MRI machine.

Neurodinners will be held on the third Thursday of the month in Corson-Mudd Hall. The March 20 event will feature new faculty introducing themselves and their research and will include time for conversation.

Christiane Linster, professor of neurobiology and behavior and director of Cornell’s Program in Neuroscience, is also planning a symposium May 15 for Neurodinner participants and others to showcase their research.

Linda B. Glaser is staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Neuroscientist Nathan Spreng, assistant professor of human development, co-authored an opinion piece in the Huffington Post, January 29th, highlighting the urgency for dementia research and treatments due to America's rapidly aging population.

Right now, approximately 4 million people have dementia in the United States. By 2030, this number will double, costing an estimated $400 billion in care. All of this money is used not for treatment, but to provide comfort and care during a slow and ugly period of decline. Spreng and his coauthor argue that the battle against dimentia is underfunded. Read more.

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Karl Pillemer, Hazel E. Reed Professor in the Department of Human Development, shared notable financial advice from his surveys of more than 10,000 older adults in this story in USA Today, January 14th. Read more.

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In U.S. counties where personal incomes cluster on opposite sides of the rich and poor spectrum, children appear to endure more neglect and abuse, according to new research by John Eckenrode and colleagues reported in Reuters, February 11th. Using statistical methods to gauge income inequality, the team found a steep rise in the rate of child maltreatment with rising inequality. The relationship held after researchers adjusted for poverty itself, and other factors such as the racial and ethnic makeup of regions, education levels and the number of people receiving public assistance income. Read more.

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Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, found that intelligence agents were more likely to be biased by the wording or framing of risky choice problems than college students or other adults. Her research is quoted in this story in Psychology Today on January 28th.

Experts tend to rely on gist-based representations of situations rather than instead of verbatim ones, in other words, experts are more likely to think of things in a summarized form rather than think about the exact numbers in a step by step fashion. This helps them to make decisions more quickly and to sort relevant from irrelevant information when making decisions. The downside is that they may be more prone to decision-making biases. Read more.

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By Ted Boscia
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, March 20, 2014

Why do we become saucer-eyed when afraid and taper our eyelids to slits when disgusted?


These near-opposite facial expressions are rooted in emotional responses that exploit how our eyes gather and focus light to detect an unknown threat, found a study by a Cornell neuroscientist. In fear, our eyes widen, boosting sensitivity and expanding our field of vision to locate surrounding danger. When repulsed, our eyes narrow, blocking light to sharpen focus and pinpoint the source of our disgust.

The findings by Adam Anderson, associate professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, suggest that human facial expressions arose from universal, adaptive reactions to environmental stimuli and not originally as social communication signals, lending support to Charles Darwin’s 19th-century theories on the evolution of emotion.

“These opposing functions of eye widening and narrowing, which mirror that of pupil dilation and constriction, might be the primitive origins for the expressive capacity of the face,” Anderson said. “And these actions are not likely restricted to disgust and fear, as we know that these movements play a large part in how, perhaps, all expressions differ, including surprise, anger and even happiness.”

These are modeled expressions for fear, disgust and average (average of all expressions, so it's not technically "neutral"). - provided
These are modeled expressions for fear, disgust and average (average of all expressions, so it's not technically "neutral"). - provided

Anderson and co-authors described these ideas in the paper, “Optical Origins of Opposing Facial Expression Actions,” published in the March issue of Psychological Science.

For the experiment, Anderson, with collaborators at the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo, used standard optometric measures to gauge how light reached the retina as study participants made fearful, disgusted and neutral expressions. Looks of disgust resulted in the greatest visual acuity – less light and better focus; fearful expressions induced maximum sensitivity – more light and a broader visual field.

“These emotions trigger facial expressions that are very far apart structurally, one with eyes wide open and the other with eyes pinched,” said Anderson, the paper’s senior author. “The reason for that is to allow the eye to harness the properties of light that are most useful in these situations.”

What’s more, the paper notes, emotions filter our reality, shaping what we see before light ever reaches the inner eye.

“We tend to think of perception as something that happens after an image is received by the brain,” Anderson said. “But, in fact, emotions influence vision at the very earliest moments of visual encoding.”

Essentially, our eyes are miniature cameras, constructed millennia before humans understood optics, said lead author Daniel Lee, Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, where Anderson previously taught.

“As automatic actions accompanying our emotions, it means that Mother Nature had solved and programmed within us this fundamental optical principle,” Lee added.

Anderson’s Affect and Cognition Laboratory is now studying how these contrasting eye movements may account for how facial expressions have developed to support nonverbal communication across cultures.

“We are seeking to understand how these expressions have come to communicate emotions to others,” he said. “We know that the eyes can be a powerful basis for reading what people are thinking and feeling, and we might have a partial answer to why that is.”

Ted Boscia is director of communications and media for the College of Human Ecology.

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By Susan S. Lang
Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, March 3, 2014

Mendle
Mendle

The age at which people become sexually active is genetically influenced – but not when they grow up in stressful, low-income household environments, reports a new study.

“Our study shows that environmental influences – rather than genetic propensities – are more important in predicting age at first sex (AFS) for adolescents from stressful backgrounds, who have few societal and economic resources,” says Jane Mendle, assistant professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, pointing out that genes determine when teens begin puberty, which is a strong predictor of AFS.

“In fact, genes contribute only negligibly to AFS for these teens. It can almost be thought of as the environment ‘taking over’ the natural developmental trajectory that might occur in a less stressful background,” she adds.

For teens from financially advantaged backgrounds, on the other hand, the environment is much less influential and genes play a more important role in predicting AFS, Mendle notes.

The study, co-authored with University of Texas at Austin researchers, was published online in January in the journal Developmental Psychology.

While many studies have examined either genetic influences or environmental influences on AFS, “ours was one of the very first to consider gene-environment interactions in AFS, or how genetic expression may vary according to environmental circumstances,” Mendle says.

Using a sample of 1,244 pairs of identical twins (who share 100 percent of their genes) and non-twin full siblings (who share 50 percent of their genes) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the researchers found that genetic influences on AFS were suppressed among low-socioeconomic-status and ethnic-minority teens compared with higher socioeconomic status and ethnic-majority youth. Father absence did not uniquely moderate genetic influences on AFS.

“And because we looked at identical twins and siblings, we could account for the importance of big family differences – and that enabled us to focus solely on understanding the environmental influences in AFS,” she says.

In addition to genetic influences, the use of twins and siblings in the study design accounted for shared environmental influences, such as religion or certain aspects of parenting, for siblings in the same family and for environmental influences that were unique to each youth.

Their findings “are broadly consistent with previous findings that genetic influences are minimized among individuals whose environments are characterized by elevated risk,” the researchers wrote.

“There has been a lot of dialogue and controversy in America on how to handle adolescent sexuality, and what programs may be most effective in reducing some of the outcomes associated with high-risk sexual behavior in teens,” Mendle says. “Many factors predict whether a teen is sexually active and when he or she transitions to sexual maturity. Our results help us understand in what contexts these factors will be malleable.”

The study, “Early Adverse Environments and Genetic Influences on Age at First Sex: Evidence for Gene x Environment Interaction,” co-authored by Texas researchers Marie D. Carlson and K. Paige Harden, received no outside funding.

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By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, February 19, 2014

Pillemer
Pillemer

A low-cost, six-week program that teaches people how to manage pain and stay active has proven to reduce arthritis pain and disability, yet few of the nation’s 50 million adult arthritis sufferers have used it. By enhancing the program’s content and delivery with the help of community partners, Cornell researchers report that attendance improved dramatically, and participants were significantly more likely to stay in the modified program compared to the original, while experiencing the same physical and mental health improvements.

“Effective health programs may not reach people who need them due to factors such as culture, language, age or income, but changing programs to meet the needs of new target populations can make a dramatic difference,” said study co-author Karl Pillemer, professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology.

The study, which was published in February in the Musculoskeletal Journal of the Hospital for Special Surgery (Vol. 10:1), focuses on the Arthritis Self-Management Program, also known as the Arthritis Self-Help Course.

Reed
Reed

“To our knowledge, this is the first controlled study to directly compare the effects of an adapted chronic disease self-management program with the original,” said co-author Dr. M. Carrington Reid, associate professor in geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. He added that rigorously evaluating modified programs such as this one to ensure they still deliver the expected benefits is rare, but critical.

To modify the underutilized program, Reid, Pillemer and his colleagues collaborated with a team of staff from local agencies and senior centers, older adults and program instructors. The team incorporated nearly 40 enhancements suggested by program participants and instructors, such as adding in-class exercise practice and individual action plans to make use of local health programs, expanding information on healthy eating and weight management, and simplifying reading materials.

The adapted and original versions were tested with 201 older adults, with baseline data collected at the beginning, at program completion and 18 weeks later. While both groups experienced equivalent relief in pain, stiffness and perceived disability, attendance in the adapted program improved by 46 percent, and participants were 26 percent more likely to stay in the modified program than in the original.

That means that the modified program could have significantly more reach and impact, the authors say. Their findings not only underscore the value of involving local stakeholders in tailoring interventions to specific populations, but also the importance of conducting controlled experiments to quantify the results, they say. Furthermore, they add, their findings highlight the potential of relatively simple programs to help build self-efficacy for arthritis management and improve quality of life.

The study, “Measuring the Value of Program Adaptation: A Comparative Effectiveness Study of the Standard and a Culturally Adapted Version of the Arthritis Self-Help Program,” was also co-authored by graduate student Emily Chen and senior research associate Charles Henderson of Cornell, and Samantha Parker of Tulane University School of Medicine. It was supported in part by the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Institute on Aging.

Karene Booker is an extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

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By H. Roger Segelken
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, February 11, 2014

Eckenrode
Eckenrode

In the aftermath of the Great Recession and the increased attention to the widening income gap, concern over the impact of inequality on children and families has risen. According to a nationwide study by Cornell researchers, the list of bad outcomes associated with income inequality now includes child abuse and neglect.

The income inequality-child maltreatment study, covering all 3,142 U.S. counties from 2005 to 2009, is said to be the most comprehensive of its kind and the first to link higher risk of child maltreatment to localities where the gap between rich and poor is greatest.

“More equal societies, states and communities have fewer health and social problems than less equal ones – that much was known. Our study extends the list of unfavorable child outcomes associated with income inequality to include child abuse and neglect,” said John Eckenrode, professor of human development and director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research in the College of Human Ecology.

Results of the nationwide study were published in the Feb. 10 online edition of the journal Pediatrics as “Income Inequality and Child Maltreatment in the United States.” In addition to Eckenrode, who directs the National Data Archive of Child Abuse and Neglect, other report authors include Elliott Smith, Margaret McCarthy and Michael Dineen, researchers in Cornell’s Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

Nearly 3 million children younger than 18 years of age are abused physically, sexually or emotionally or are physically neglected each year in the United States, the Cornell researchers noted. That is about 4 percent of the youth population.

“We have known for some time that poverty is one of the strongest precursors of child abuse and neglect,” Eckenrode said. “In this paper we were also interested in areas with wide variations in income – think of counties encompassing affluent suburbs and impoverished inner cities – and in the U.S. there is quite a lot of variation in inequality from county to county and state to state.”

The damage inflicted on children by maltreatment doesn’t stop when kids graduate – if they do – from school, the Cornell researchers observed. “Child maltreatment is a toxic stressor in the lives of children that may result in childhood mortality and morbidities and have lifelong effects on leading causes of death in adults,” they wrote. “This is in addition to long-term effects on mental health, substance use, risky sexual behavior and criminal behavior ... increased rates of unemployment, poverty and Medicaid use in adulthood.” Eckenrode noted that “reducing poverty and inequality would be the single most effective way to prevent maltreatment of children, but in addition there are proven programs that work to support parents and children and help to reduce the chances of abuse and neglect – clearly a multifaceted strategy is needed.”

Support for the study came from the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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