ABSTRACT

Women score higher than men on measures of social cognition such as empathy and reading non-verbal cues. How early does this gender difference emerge? Systematic review and meta-analyses were used to assess gender difference in social perception within 1 month of birth. A total of 31 studies (40 experiments) reported on gender effects in 1936 neonates (50% girls) between 1968 and 2021. No significant difference (Hedges’ g = 0.076, p = 0.321) was found across 20 experiments measuring visual fixation on human faces. Nine experiments on neonatal imitative crying also revealed no gender difference (g = 0.157, p = 0.118). Seven studies using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale found no gender difference in total orientation (g = 0.161, p = 0.154), but girls oriented more to both animate (g = 0.279, p = 0.011) and inanimate (g = 0.242, p = 0.003) stimuli in the studies that analyzed these separately. Existing evidence supports a possible maturational difference but not a specific social advantage for girls at birth. While more research and better reporting are needed, the present findings challenge the claim that girls are innately more socially perceptive than boys.

Background

Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) have emerged as a promising nonpharmacological intervention option for children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, recent systematic reviews have been primarily narrative. Additionally, the pooled effectiveness of AAIs was absent from these systematic reviews.

Methods

We conducted a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis, searching multiple databases, including Web of Science, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Scopus, PsycINFO, EMBASE and Cochrane, from inception of the databases to March 2024. We retrieved 17 randomised controlled trials or quasi-experimental studies and used Review Manager 5.4.1 software to perform a meta-analysis of the effects of AAIs in treating children with ADHD. We conducted a set of random-effects meta-analyses to estimate standardised mean differences (SMD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) using subgroup data by different outcome domains extracted from eight randomised controlled trials, in relation to changes in behavioural, mental and physical functioning in a total of 307 children with ADHD before and after the intervention.

Results

In comparison with non-AAI groups, AAIs significantly improved attention problems in children with ADHD (SMD = −0.42, 95% CI = −0.71 to −0.13), self-esteem (0.46, 0.14 to 0.78), learning and cognition problems (−0.69, −0.98 to −0.39) and motor proficiency (0.77, 0.11 to 1.42). The pooled effect of AAIs on the severity of ADHD symptoms in the experimental group was not significantly different from the effect of conventional treatments in the control group (0.10, −0.31 to 0.52). Similarly, AAIs had no significant positive effects on social interaction (−0.22, −0.51 to 0.06), social skills (−0.32, −0.87 to 0.24), problematic behaviours (−0.10, −0.54 to 0.35) or emotional problems, including depression and anxiety (−0.13, −0.51 to 0.24).

Conclusions

As an ADHD management strategy complementary to gold-standard approaches, such as medication or multimodal interventions, AAIs did not appear to be more effective in improving the majority of core ADHD outcomes in children. Future studies should incorporate rigorous study designs with large sample sizes and a standard protocol to achieve more valid and reliable conclusion.

ABSTRACT

This review proposes future directions for gender and negotiation research in light of two important labor market trends: workforces that are increasingly diverse and career advancement that is more often required to be self-directed. I argue that these two trends have implications for research, both in terms of places where the field seems to be moving and new areas that could be ripe for exploration. I begin by underscoring the importance of context when making claims about gender and negotiation. Then, using two broad banners, diversity and careers, I review discussions that are arising from novel intersections as well as the ways that the changing workplace is shaping future research directions.

ABSTRACT

During the 1990s and early 2000s, research in humans and in the nonhuman primate model of human amnesia revealed that tasks involving free viewing of images provided an exceptionally sensitive measure of recognition memory. Performance on these tasks was sensitive to damage restricted to the hippocampus as well as to damage that included medial temporal lobe cortices. Early work in my laboratory used free-viewing tasks to assess the neurophysiological correlates of recognition memory, and the use of naturalistic visual exploration opened rich avenues to assess other aspects of the impact of eye movements on neural activity in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Here, I summarize two main lines of this work and some of the stories of the trainees who made essential contributions to these discoveries.