ELSEVIER FLASH ALERT TO NEW SCIENCE & HEALTH RESEARCH STORIES
January 9th, 2009
EMBARGOED FOR PUBLICATION OR BROADCAST UNTIL 00:01 GMT ON 14th January
Issue 86
January 2008
Welcome to the 86th edition of Flash, our bi-weekly alert for science, health and medical journalists. Flash is a courtesy service with access to ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s online platform, providing full text access to some 2,000 scientific, technical and medical journals.
If you report a story, we would ask that you credit Elsevier’s journal as the source.
Please use your Flash login and password to access each article’s full text on ScienceDirect. For a new password, forgotten passwords or if you have any feedback, please contact Anna Hogrebe at newsroom@elsevier.com or at +31 20 485 3269.
ARTICLES
1. ENHANCING SALTINESS IN LOW-SALT CONTENT SOLUTIONS - THE ANSWER MAY BE IN THE NOSE
Pretzels, chips, popcorn … all snack foods we love to embrace to satisfy those salt cravings. Still, in recent years, health concerns related to salt have led to extensive research on low-salt foods. But … can there be a way to reduce sodium intake and get that salty fix?
In Elsevier’s latest Food Quality and Preference, researchers conduct a study investigating odour-saltiness interactions in aqueous solutions. In other words, is there a way to use aromas to compensate for salt reduction in foods? Food flavour is of course an important cue in daily life since it constitutes a main driver of food appreciation, acceptance and choice. And since flavour is considered an integration of simultaneous sensory perceptions, including taste and odours, the researchers in this study assessed the interaction between taste and odour with regards to saltiness.
In the first experiment participants indicated expected taste attributes for 86 labels of flavour related to common food items. Panellists were able to rate expected saltiness of food flavour evoked by food written items. In the second experiment, odour-induced saltiness was assessed by investigating odours evoked by water aroma solutions. Participants rated odour and taste intensity orthonasally (sensing an odour through the nose) and retronasally (sensing an odour through the mouth) with results revealing the higher the odour intensity, the higher the saltiness.
Based on these early findings, well-selected odours could be used to compensate for sodium chloride reduction in food. However, more research is needed since this study focused on water solutions. Texture is also an important factor in food selection, so all sensory aspects of food products reduced in salt, sugar or fat should be addressed and tested to get at consumer acceptance.
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2. WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU TELL A BAD JOKE … READ ON TO LEARN THE PUNCH LINE
Ever told a bad joke? What reaction did you get? How did your audience respond? In television shows and movies, a failed attempt at humour is often conveyed with the audience providing a few groans or fake laughter, but does this really happen in everyday life?
To learn more about responses to failed humour, author and researcher Nancy Bell details her findings in Elsevier’s latest Journal of Pragmatics, assessing 186 responses to a joke found to be lacking in humour for most participants. Response data was collected at two U.S. universities between March and October 2007. Additionally the participant’s sex, relationship to the investigator, and approximate age were noted.
In general, the findings reveal that laughter, metalinguistic comments and interjections were the most common responses. While there were no major differences noted based on the age and sex variables, the nature of the social relationship with the investigator did play a significant role. Responses to failed humour among intimates tended to be more direct and negative, but neutral responses were used more often by strangers and basic acquaintances.
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3. SELF-LABELING AND ITS EFFECTS AMONG ADOLESCENTS DIAGNOSED WITH MENTAL DISORDERS
While youths are increasingly diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders, little is known about how they conceptualise their own problems and if mental illness labels could impact their overall psychological well-being. Since potential stigmas could result in youth avoiding treatments and potentially lead to greater levels of depression, researchers in Elsevier’s latest Social Science & Medicine take a closer look at this sensitive topic with interviews of 54 U.S. adolescents receiving integrated mental health services.
During the approximate 75- to 90-minute interviews, adolescents were asked questions such as:
· How do you think about the problems/issues you’ve had?
· What do you call the problems that you’re dealing with?
· Do you think of yourself as having a mental health problem?
Results revealed over a third of participants did not view themselves as emotionally or mentally disordered. The adolescents often described behavioural problems – like getting into fights, running away from home or getting frustrated easily – but denied having a mental disorder. Self-labelling tended to occur more with participants who began receiving treatment at a younger age. Additionally, youth from families of lower socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnic/racial minorities were less likely to self-label.
It is important to note that adolescents who self-labelled did report higher ratings of self-stigma and depression. Therefore, awareness of adolescents who are more likely to self-label can help clinicians communicate more effectively with young clients, ensuring they address any potential stigmas early so they can get the help they need.
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4. VIDEO GAME PLAYING – GOOD OR BAD FOR ATTENTION, MEMORY AND EXECUTIVE CONTROL SKILLS?
Recent research suggests video game experience appears to improve performance on a number of tasks that measure visual and attentional abilities. Expanding upon these findings, researchers in Elsevier’s latest Acta Psychologica examine both expert and non-gamer differences, and the effects of video game playing on tasks tapping a wider range of cognitive abilities.
Eleven expert video game players (play seven or more hours of video games a week) and ten non-video game players (play one hour or less of video games a week) were recruited to participate. Additionally, a longitudinal study was conducted with 82 college students to assess whether or not video game practice had an impact on improving attention, memory and executive control skills.
In general, expert gamers and non-gamers differed on a number of basic cognitive skills: experts could track objects moving at greater speeds, they better detected changes to objects stored in visual short-term memory, they switched more quickly from one task to another and they mentally rotated objects more efficiently. Still, extensive video game practice did not substantially enhance the performance for the non-gamers on most of the tasks. The one exception was the improvements made in mental rotation.
These results suggest that the differences between experts and non-gamers either come from far more video game experience or from pre-existing group differences in abilities that result in a self-selection effect. The authors conclude it might be premature to go out and purchase some of these video games for the sole purpose of improving one’s cognitive abilities. More research is needed to see if these gains in the video game world translate to gains in complex, real-world tasks.
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5. ALCOHOL AND SEXUAL ASSAULT – DOES LEVEL OF INTOXICATION MATTER?
Sadly, sexual assault occurs at alarmingly high rates, and in approximately 50 percent of those cases, the perpetrators have consumed alcohol. While it is useful to recognise that alcohol is often involved, little research has considered how the quantity of alcohol consumed impacts the nature of this crime. Could one or two drinks spell disaster, or do things get even uglier when large quantities of alcohol are consumed?
To assess this gap in research, Elsevier’s latest Addictive Behaviors reveals findings from 107 men who had reported perpetrating some type of sexual assault since the age of 14. Perpetrators’ self-reported alcohol consumption was assessed in the 12 hours leading up to the interaction, during the initial stage of the interaction and during the unwanted sex stage of the interaction. Responses to the three questions were categorised into no alcohol use, light alcohol use (one to four drinks) and heavy alcohol use (five or more drinks).
Results showed 40 percent of the participants were classified as heavy drinkers, meaning they had consumed five or more drinks throughout the interaction. Twenty-two percent were labelled as light drinkers and the remaining 38 percent were non-drinkers. Compared with the other perpetrators, those who drank heavily during the interaction misperceived the woman’s sexual intentions for a longer period of time, employed more isolating and controlling behaviours during the interaction, were more physically forceful and perpetrated assaults that were more severe. Additionally, these perpetrators who drank heavily also viewed what had happened as more serious, were more likely to label it as a sexual offence and attributed more responsibility to themselves for what had happened. These differences were found even after controlling for men’s usual heavy drinking habits.
The researchers state these heavy drinking men may be so focused on their own sexual arousal and feelings of entitlement that they may miss or ignore messages intended to convey the woman’s lack of interest. The authors recommend that sexual assault prevention programmes should therefore focus on the cognitive distortions that alcohol produces.
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1. doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2008.10.004
2. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.10.010
3. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.11.003
