A behavioral study of maternal-infant interaction with focus on infant attachment and infant cognition

This study examined the interactions between 15 maternal-infant dyads using an operant learning format with special emphasis on the relationship of infant attachment to maternal behaviors, specifically the securityinsecurity dimension of infant attachment. Observations of maternal-infant interactions were made each month from infant ages 9 months to 12 months. Maternal and infant behaviors were coded and each category was scored for frequency and duration of behavior with an Esterline-Angus Event Recorder. Maternal ratios of responding and latency in responding to infant behaviors were calculated from the Esterline-Angus charts. Infants were administered several cognition tests and an attachment test, while mothers were given several attitude measures. Intercorrelations of infant behavior suggested three systems of organized behaviors distress contact with mother, positive or affillative contact with mother, and exploratory behaviors. Infant behavior was unstable across months, and evidence was found that infant behaviors change with development, in that certain behaviors take on new meanings and different patterns of organization in the interaction between mother and child. Few relationships were found between infant behavior and the attachment test results, except that insecurely attached infants tended to emit more verbal distress and touching behavior. Important factors found in a factor analysis of infant behavior weres Lack of physical contact with mother, distress contact with mother, and non-verbal distal contact. Intercorrelations of maternal behaviors indicated more stability across months than for infant behaviors, with the most stable behaviors being distal contact and stimulation behaviors, whereas the most stable infant behaviors were proximity seeking behaviors. From a factor analysis of maternal behaviors, two important factors emerged: An acceptance and. child-oriented factor and a verbal factor. The maternal responsiveness and latency data did not cluster into one or two factors, rather these measures loaded on several factors. No relationship was found between maternal ratio of responding and frequency of infant behaviors, latency measures were related to infant behaviors, but contrary to the operant position, longer latencies to infant proximity seeking behaviors increased the frequency and duration of these behaviors, whereas shorter latencies to infant social affiliative behaviors did increase these behaviors, thus some infant behaviors demonstrated agreement with the operant position. There were few significant relationships between infant cognition measures and maternal behaviors, or between infant cognition and mater nal responsiveness ratios and latency measures. The findings support a modified ethological position to infant socialization rather than an operant position. An ethological or control and communication theory assumes infants have goals and a repetoire of behaviors to achieve these goals. Infants can alternate behaviors to achieve goals. If a selected behavior does not result in goal satisfaction, other behaviors are available for use Some determinants of this repetoire of behaviors include: developmental changes in specific response capabilities due to maturation, developmental re-organization of infant behaviors into more discrete and efficient behavioral system, and the reactions of the caretaker to infant behavioral overtures leading to inf suit goal satisfaction. The major goals for infants are proximity contact with attachment object, social stimulation from the caretaker, and exploration of the environment. No strong relationships between maternal variables and infant security of attachment were found, although infants of more responsive mothers evidenced more proximity seeking behavior as shown by more following and touching behavior

Belowground DNA-based techniques: untangling the network of plant root interactions

Contains fulltext : 91591.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)7 p

Effects of zebra mussel attachment on the foraging behaviour of a larval dragonfly, Macromia illinoiensis

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88127/1/j.1365-2311.2011.01329.x.pd

Fly Gals (1998)

https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/productions_1997-1998/1010/thumbnail.jp

16th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM05)

The Internet needs protocols and mechanisms to provide guaranteed quality of service. The existing Internet is surprisingly close to providing good quality for a very wide range of services, probably because the TCP protocols aim to achieve, and come to close to achieving, fair queueing, or processor sharing, whenever several flows compete for limited resources. The DiffServ architecture aims to do better than this by providing different performance standards for different classes of service. The obvious way to apply DiffServ is to allocate classes in accordance with the urgency or priority of the requests. However, another approach is to use DiffServ to allocate service classes according to the 'size' of the requests - smaller requests receiving generally better service and longer requests worse. A Pareto distribution with small shape parameter has been used in a great deal of research, and in this paper, to model the widely accepted heavy-tailed nature of flow lengths. We assume that the starting times of these flows forms a Poisson process. It was shown in (McNickle and Addie(2005)) by means of a queueing model with this traffic that serving flows in order of job size (in bytes, shorter flows served first) leads to significantly lower mean and standard deviation for response times, for flows of all lengths. This paper also provided evidence that it is unlikely that DiffServ can achieve a significantly better result. This poses the challenge of how to arrange for flows to be served in the shortest-job-first (SJF) order, or as close as possible to it. We define a simple approach to achieving this which can be implemented locally - in just two routers in the simplest case. Simulations have been used to demonstrate that some of the benefits of the SJF discipline can, indeed, be obtained. In this paper we propose a protocol for achieving an approximation to the shortest job first order of service at times of congestion. The proposed mechanism is scalable and local in the sense that the actions taken are confined to a small number of routers near the site of the congestion. This concept of a local protocol modification can be viewed as a generalization of Active Queue Management. Whereas AQM's are generally formed by modifying the queueing discipline and ensuing behavior at the congested node, in our proposal, which we shall term local QM (LQM), some nearby nodes also assist in managing the congestion, with the objective of approaching as close as possible to SJF. SJF is sometimes not achievable to acceptable accuracy for reasons which have nothing to do with the treatment of packets by the nodes near where congestion is occurring. In such situations we cannot expect our mechanism to do the impossible. For example, if the sending host is unable to deliver a flow at the maximum rate of the bottleneck link, it will not be possible to serve this flow ahead of all others, and so SJF will not be achievable. Two similar LQM strategies have been tested and compared in the context of a local premises network connected to the Internet via a congested link. In one of these strategies, packets are marked at the edge router are dropped or remarked at the gateway to the premises depending on the traffic conditions there. In the other strategy some packets are remarked and others have their ECN bits left in place. Simulation results have been able to demonstrate that the strategy is able to produce better response times than AQM's of comparable complexity located at the edge router

Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities

Adaptive behaviour of plants, including rapid changes in physiology, gene regulation and defence response, can be altered when linked to neighbouring plants by a mycorrhizal network (MN). Mechanisms underlying the behavioural changes include mycorrhizal fungal colonization by the MN or interplant communication via transfer of nutrients, defence signals or allelochemicals. We focus this review on our new findings in ectomycorrhizal ecosystems, and also review recent advances in arbuscular mycorrhizal systems. We have found that the behavioural changes in ectomycorrhizal plants depend on environmental cues, the identity of the plant neighbour and the characteristics of the MN. The hierarchical integration of this phenomenon with other biological networks at broader scales in forest ecosystems, and the consequences we have observed when it is interrupted, indicate that underground ‘tree talk’ is a foundational process in the complex adaptive nature of forest ecosystems

Letter from Buffalo, New York to Leonard Blake in Gambier, Ohio

https://digital.kenyon.edu/blakeletters/1233/thumbnail.jp