Ivana Hromatko

Subclinical Neurocognitive Dysfunction After Carotid Endarterectomy—The Impact of Shunting

Background Subclinical neurocognitive deficit after carotid endarterectomy (CEA) has been reported in 25% of patients. The influence of the type of anesthesia and shunting on early postoperative neurocognitive function remains unclear. Therefore, we analyzed the cognitive function after CEA using a battery of psychometric tests before surgery and on the first postoperative day. Methods Twenty nine patients under regional and 28 under general anesthesia were included in the study. Regional anesthesia was administered inducing a superficial cervical block, and the general anesthesia was induced using a standardized manner. Then cognitive function was tested using a battery of psychometric tests before and 24 hours after surgery. S 100 β was determined at the same time points. Results A statistical difference was found between the results of the testing before and after CEA: decline in digit symbol test (9%), perceptual speed (6%), and spatial working memory (44%) and improvement in verbal fluency (6%) and attention (5%). The only intraoperative factor that correlated with the cognitive dysfunction was shunt insertion; patients with a shunt had a lower perceptual speed (P=0.005) and worse spatial working memory (P=0.004). No correlation was found between the type of anesthesia or S 100 β level and any psychometric test, but these results might be influenced by the small sample size in our study. Conclusions Shunt insertion was the only parameter correlated with cognitive decline on the first day after CEA. Regional anesthesia might offer indirect benefit because of a reduced need of shunting in wakeful patients. Larger studies are required to clarify the role of shunting and type of anesthesia in early neurocognitive deficit after CEA and its impact on the quality of life.

Attractiveness of Leg Length: Report From 27 Nations

The leg-to-body ratio (LBR) is a morphological index that has been shown to influence a person’s attractiveness. In our research, 3,103 participants from 27 nations rated the physical attractiveness of seven male and seven female silhouettes varying in LBR. We found that male and female silhouettes with short and excessively long legs were perceived as less attractive across all nations. Hence, the LBR may significantly influence perceptions of physical attractiveness across nations.

Content-specific activational effects of estrogen on working memory performance.

The authors explored the influence of task content and the menstrual cycle phase on working memory (WM) performance. They addressed the content specificity of WM in the framework of evolutionary psychology, proposing a hormone-mediated adaptive design governing face perception. The authors tested 2 groups of healthy young women (n = 66 women with regular menstrual cycle, n = 27 oral contraceptive users) on a WM task with adult male or infant face photographs. Analyses of variance showed significant interaction between task content and estrogen level. Women were more efficient in solving the male faces task during high-estrogen phase of the cycle than during low-estrogen phase. No differences were found in the efficacy of solving the infant faces task between different phases of the cycle. Results suggest content-specific activational effects of estrogen on the WM performance and are consistent with the notion of a hormonal mechanism underlying adaptive shifts in cognition related to mating motivation.

Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.

The associations of dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction vary between and within nations: A 35-nation study

Objective: Theories about how couples help each other to cope with stress, such as the systemic transactional model of dyadic coping, suggest that the cultural context in which couples live influences how their coping behavior affects their relationship satisfaction. In contrast to the theoretical assumptions, a recent meta-analysis provides evidence that neither culture, nor gender, influences the association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction, at least based on their samples of couples living in North America and West Europe. Thus, it is an open questions whether the theoretical assumptions of cultural influences are false or whether cultural influences on couple behavior just occur in cultures outside of the Western world. Method: In order to examine the cultural influence, using a sample of married individuals (N = 7973) from 35 nations, we used multilevel modeling to test whether the positive association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction varies across nations and whether gender might moderate the association. Results: Results reveal that the association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction varies between nations. In addition, results show that in some nations the association is higher for men and in other nations it is higher for women. Conclusions: Cultural and gender differences across the globe influence how couples coping behavior affects relationship outcomes. This crucial finding indicates that couple relationship education programs and interventions need to be culturally adapted, as skill trainings such as dyadic coping lead to differential effects on relationship satisfaction based on the culture in which couples live.

Sensation Seeking and Spatial Ability in Athletes: an Evolutionary Account

Sensation Seeking and Spatial Ability in Athletes: an Evolutionary Account The aim of this study was threefold: (a) to examine sex differences in sensation seeking and spatial abilities in a sample of athlete students, (b) to explore whether measures of sensation seeking and spatial ability can be used to distinguish between athletes engaging in sports of different levels of risk, and (c) to explore the relationship between sensation seeking and spatial abilities in a sample of athlete students. A total of 201 students athletes engaged in sports of different levels of risk completed the Spatial relations test, Mental rotation test, and Zuckermans Sensation Seeking Scale-V. Men scored higher than women in both measures of spatial abilities and on DIS, while women scored higher than men on ES. High-risk group had higher SSS and TAS scores than low- and medium- risk groups, and low-risk group had lower DIS scores than medium- and high-risk group, but there were no differences in spatial ability among athletes engaged in sports of different levels of risk. Spatial ability correlated with sensation seeking measures in men only. The results are discussed in terms of possible common biological background of these two sex-dimorphic traits.

Determinants of Relationship Quality: A Cross-Cultural Study

It has been suggested that the cross-cultural universality of pair-bonding reflects its adaptive function. Along with this line of reasoning, we hypothesised that partners’ perceptions of the relationship quality should also be determined by a cross-culturally universal mechanism of cost-benefit analysis. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the predictors of relationship quality in two different cultures and explore whose features of a relationship might be considered as universal predictors of its quality. Ninety nine Iranian married and 99 Croatian married or cohabiting couples were included in a dyadic assessment. The highest between-culture similarities were nfound for the “frequency of positive interactions” and the “profit in mate value” (difference in own and partner’s perceived mate value). Sexual satisfaction proved to be a significant predictor only in the Croatian sample, while the number of children predicted the relationship quality in Iranian couples only. Other variables, such as difference in partners’ age, income and education showed a more complex culture- and gender-dependent pattern. The results are in accordance with the notion that while the cost-benefit analysis itself is a universal process, the perception of certain costs and benefits is culturally specific.

Marital Satisfaction, Sex, Age, Marriage Duration, Religion, Number of Children, Economic Status, Education, and Collectivistic Values: Data from 33 Countries

Forms of committed relationships, including formal marriage arrangements between men and women, exist in almost every culture (Bell, 1997). Yet, similarly to many other psychological constructs (Henrich et al., 2010), marital satisfaction and its correlates have been investigated almost exclusively in Western countries (e.g., Bradbury et al., 2000). Meanwhile, marital relationships are heavily guided by culturally determined norms, customs, and expectations (for review see Berscheid, 1995; Fiske et al., 1998). While we acknowledge the differences existing both between- and within-cultures, we measured marital satisfaction and several factors that might potentially correlate with it based on self-report data from individuals across 33 countries. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the raw data available for anybody interested in further examining any relations between them and other country-level scores obtained elsewhere. Below, we review the central variables that are likely to be related to marital satisfaction. n nGender nGender has long been identified in the literature as a predictor of marital satisfaction (Bernard, 1972). Specifically, early works suggested that men report being more satisfied with their marriages compared to women in both Western (e.g., Schumm et al., 1998) and non-Western (e.g., Rostami et al., 2014) cultures. However, sex differences in marital satisfaction may differ across cultures due to traditional sex roles (Pardo et al., 2012) and larger-scale cultural variables, such as sex egalitarianism (Taniguchi and Kaufman, 2013).

Global Study of Social Odor Awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.

Corrigendum: Marital satisfaction, sex, age, marriage duration, religion, number of children, economic status, education, and collectivistic values: Data from 33 countries [Front. Psychol., 8, (2017) (1199)] DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01199

[This corrects the article on p. 1199 in vol. 8, PMID: 28785230.].