Investigating the Effects of Discrimination Experiences on Everyday Metamemory Accuracy.

Objectives: Lifetime and daily experiences of discrimination contribute to impaired performance on cognitive assessments. However, the underlying mechanism by which discrimination negatively affects cognition is unclear. Recent research investigating stress-induced impairment of metamemory may address the relationship between discrimination experiences and cognitive impairment.

Early adversity and cardiovascular stress response: Stress reactivity or sensitivity to context.

Objective: The stress reactivity hypothesis (SRH) posits that stressful early environments contribute to exaggerated stress responses, which increase risk for later cardiovascular (CV) disease. However, recent studies have revealed conflicting associations. The current study examined whether the biological sensitivity to context theory (BSCT) or SRH is a more accurate description of associations between early stress and CV reactivity and recovery, and determine which framework best explains sleep outcomes.

Applying minimally invasive biomarkers of chronic stress across complex ecological contexts.

Chronic stress is both theoretically and methodologically challenging to operationalize through biomarkers. Yet minimally invasive, field-friendly biomarkers of chronic stress are valuable in research linking biology and culture, seeking to understand differential patterns of human development across ecological contexts, and exploring the evolution of human sociality. For human biologists, a central question in measurement and interpretation of biomarkers is how stress-responsive physiological systems are regulated across diverse human ecologies.

Momentary Associations of Osteoarthritis Pain and Affect: Depression as Moderator.

Objectives: This research examined main and moderating effects of global depressive symptoms upon in-the-moment associations of pain and affect among individuals with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Effects of depression on short-term change in pain and affect were also examined.

Method: Older adults with physician-confirmed OA (N = 325) completed a baseline interview tapping global depressive symptoms, followed by an experience sampling protocol that captured momentary pain and affect 4 times daily for 7 days.

Momentary Reports of Fatigue Predict Physical Activity Level: Wrist, Waist, and Combined Accelerometry.

Fatigue is commonly reported by persons with osteoarthritis (OA) and predicts worse functioning and decreased activity. The current research used a combination of wrist and waist accelerometry along with experience sampling methodology to examine the relationship between reports of fatigue and subsequent physical activity among older adults with knee OA. Two hundred one participants completed an interview followed by a 1-week period during which their activity was monitored and they reported symptoms of pain and fatigue.

Global Versus Momentary Osteoarthritis Pain and Emotional Distress: Emotional Intelligence as Moderator.

Background: Pain and emotional well-being are complexly associated both globally and in the moment. Emotional regulation strategies may contribute to that complexity by shaping the pain-well-being association.

Purpose: Using emotional intelligence (EI) as an integrative conceptual framework, this study probed the role of emotional regulation in the associations of osteoarthritis pain with emotional well-being in varying time frames.

Body Image Models among Low-income African American Mothers and Daughters in the Southeast United States.

Obesity among low-income African American women has been studied using the concepts of both satisfaction and acceptance. The satisfaction frame suggests greater satisfaction with their bodies than their white counterparts, irrespective of size. The acceptance frame suggests that alternative aesthetics serve as resistance against intersectional marginalization.

Racial/ethnic differences in sleep quality among older adults with osteoarthritis.

Objective: To examine racial/ethnic differences in sleep quality and the pain-sleep association among older adults with osteoarthritis of the knee.

Design: Baseline interview followed by a 7-day microlongitudinal study using accelerometry and self-reports.

Setting: Participants were community residents in western Alabama and Long Island, NY.

Guadalupan Devotion as a Moderator of Psychosocial Stress among Mexican Immigrants in the Rural Southern United States.

This study considers how shared devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe among Mexican immigrants in rural Mississippi buffers the effects of immigration stress. Rural destinations lacking social services can quickly compound the already stressful experience of immigration. Guadalupe devotion provides a way of coping with the daily life stressors of immigration.

Tattooing to "Toughen up": Tattoo experience and secretory immunoglobulin A.

Objectives: A costly signaling model suggests tattooing inoculates the immune system to heightened vigilance against stressors associated with soft tissue damage. We sought to investigate this "inoculation hypothesis" of tattooing as a costly honest signal of fitness. We hypothesized that the immune system habituates to the tattooing stressor in repeatedly tattooed individuals and that immune response to the stress of the tattooing process would correlate with lifetime tattoo experience.

Beyond catecholamines: Measuring autonomic responses to psychosocial context.

Despite longstanding interest among human biologists in autonomic responses to socioecological context or culture change, the adoption of autonomic measures has been limited by methodological challenges. Catecholamine secretion is the most direct measure, but not all study designs are amenable to urinary sampling, and blood pressure lacks specificity to the parasympathetic or sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. This article reviews three alternative approaches for measuring autonomic responses: salivary α-amylase as a nonspecific autonomic marker, respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a specific parasympathetic marker, and the pre-ejection period as a specific sympathetic marker.

Household-level predictors of maternal mental health and systemic inflammation among infants in Mwanza, Tanzania.

Objectives: Household conditions and culturally/socially variable childcare practices influence priming of the inflammatory response during infancy. Maternal mental health may partially mediate that effect. Among mother-infant dyads in Mwanza, Tanzania, we hypothesized that poorer maternal mental health would be associated with adverse household ecology, lower social capital, and greater inflammation among infants under the age of one; and that mental health would mediate any effects of household ecology/social capital on inflammation.

Does moderate iron deficiency protect against childhood illness? A test of the optimal iron hypothesis in Tanzania.

Objectives: To test the hypothesis that moderate iron deficiency among children is associated with lower likelihood of infection.

Materials And Methods: We use data from a population representative cross sectional study of 1164 Tanzanian children aged 6-59 months from the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey. Respondents' iron levels were assessed through serum transferrin receptor (sTfR) and anemia was assessed using hemoglobin.

The signs of stress: embodiments of biosocial stress among type 2 diabetic women in New Delhi, India.

Biocultural models of health and illness are increasingly used to trace how social pathways shape biological outcomes. Yet, data on the interactions between social and biological aspects of health are lacking in low- and middle-income regions, where two-thirds of all type 2 diabetes cases occur. This study explored health, social roles, and biological correlates among a group of 280 type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic women (n = 184 diabetic) in New Delhi, India, between 2009 and 2011.

Testing hypothesized predictors of immune activation in Tanzanian infants and children: community, household, caretaker, and child effects.

Objectives: There is increasing interest in the epidemiology of immune activation among young children because of the links with mortality and growth. We hypothesized that infant and child inflammation, as measured by elevated C-reactive protein (CRP), would be associated with household assets, household size, measures of sanitation, and food insecurity. We also hypothesized that children in the poorest households and with elevated CRP would show evidence of growth faltering.

Explanatory models of female pubertal timing: discordances between cultural models of maturation and the recollection and interpretation of personal developmental experiences.

Given the ambiguity surrounding the source of the continuing trend toward earlier menarche observed in Westernized nations, several competing explanatory models have emerged regarding variation in pubertal timing. While a biomedical model proposes that predominantly constitutional characteristics shape the maturation timetable, an alternative framework derived from Life History Theory (LHT) evolutionary principles emphasizes the influence of psychosocial factors on development. Working with a sample of women 19-25 years of age (N = 103) drawn from two Southeastern U.

Sex differences in child nutritional and immunological status 5-9 years post contact in fringe highland Papua New Guinea.

Objectives: This study examines sex differences in vulnerability among children experiencing rapid culture change that may reflect distinct microecologies driven by differential parental investment and/or sex-specific life history strategies. Apparent female growth canalization may be a life history strategy favoring growth over maintenance but also may reflect sex-differentiated selection for resilience based on unequal treatment during early life.

Methods: Stature, weight, and serum measures of C-reactive protein (CRP, an inflammation marker) and Epstein-Barr Virus antibodies (EBV, a humoral immune response marker) were collected longitudinally among children/adolescents ages 5-20 years (N = 65), 5-9 years after sustained contact in a fringe highland hunter-horticulturalist group from the Schrader Range in Papua New Guinea exhibiting male preference and sex-biased survival.

Methodological considerations in the use of salivary alpha-amylase as a stress marker in field research.

Salivary alpha-amylase recently has been identified as a stress-related biomarker for autonomic nervous system activity. This study addresses sample collection and handling considerations for field researchers. Saliva was collected by unstimulated passive drool from 14 adults and pooled.

Culture and the socialization of child cardiovascular regulation at school entry in the US.

The measurement of cardiovascular functioning targets an important bridge between social conditions and differential well-being. Nevertheless, the biocultural, psychosocial processes that link human ecology to cardiovascular function in children remain inadequately characterized. Childrearing practices shaped by parents' cultural beliefs should moderate children's affective responses to daily experience, and hence their psychophysiology.

Return to school accompanied by changing associations between family ecology and cortisol.

This study examines everyday family life as a social regulator of child adrenocortical activity during the normative challenge of return to school. If positive family function facilitates child adaptation, we expected that mother-child relationships following school entry would predict individual differences in evening cortisol, a context-sensitive marker for the response to concurrent demands. Among 28 children followed longitudinally, late in pre-kindergarten those living with single and/or employed mothers had higher evening cortisol.