Sex differences in early experience and the development of aggression in wild chimpanzees

Sex differences in physical aggression occur across human cultures and are thought to be influenced by active sex role reinforcement. However, sex differences in aggression also exist in our close evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, who do not engage in active teaching, but do exhibit long juvenile periods and complex social systems that allow differential experience to shape behavior. Here we ask whether early life exposure to aggression is sexually dimorphic in wild chimpanzees and, if so, whether other aspects of early sociality contribute to this difference. Using 13 y of all-occurrence aggression data collected from the Kanyawara community of chimpanzees (2005 to 2017), we determined that young male chimpanzees were victims of aggression more often than females by between 4 and 5 (i.e., early in juvenility). Combining long-term aggression data with data from a targeted study of social development (2015 to 2017), we found that two potential risk factors for aggression—time spent near adult males and time spent away from mothers—did not differ between young males and females. Instead, the major risk factor for receiving aggression was the amount of aggression that young chimpanzees displayed, which was higher for males than females throughout the juvenile period. In multivariate models, sex did not mediate this relationship, suggesting that other chimpanzees did not target young males specifically, but instead responded to individual behavior that differed by sex. Thus, social experience differed by sex even in the absence of explicit gender socialization, but experiential differences were shaped by early-emerging sex differences in behavior.

SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in England following the first peak of the pandemic

England has experienced a large outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, disproportionately affecting people from disadvantaged and ethnic minority communities. It is unclear how much of this excess is due to differences in exposure associated with structural inequalities. Here, we report from the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-2 (REACT-2) national study of over 100,000 people. After adjusting for test characteristics and re-weighting to the population, overall antibody prevalence is 6.0% (95% CI: 5.8-6.1). An estimated 3.4 million people had developed antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 by mid-July 2020. Prevalence is two- to three-fold higher among health and care workers compared with non-essential workers, and in people of Black or South Asian than white ethnicity, while age- and sex-specific infection fatality ratios are similar across ethnicities. Our results indicate that higher hospitalisation and mortality from COVID-19 in minority ethnic groups may reflect higher rates of infection rather than differential experience of disease or care.

Gauging Class and Caste differences in Mortality: The Indian Experience

This study is an exposition of class-caste based differences in mortality experience based on an indicator called household prevalence of death. It involves 75,432 death cases collected in National Family Health Survey-4, analysed using Relative Deprivation Index (RDI). We found, the prevalence of death found to be 11.8% in India, which varies across states and social and economic groups. The RDI values depict that the poorer households along with social group identities like schedule tribe and schedule caste households displayed a uniform disadvantage as regarding mortality across many states. The analysis offers evidence on differential experience of mortality across socio-economic identities. The evidence suggests poorer states having a marked disadvantage along with social and economic classes.

Face Processing in Infancy and Beyond: The Case of Social Categories

Prior reviews of infant face processing have emphasized how infants respond to faces in general. This review highlights how infants come to respond differentially to social categories of faces based on differential experience, with a focus on race and gender. We examine six different behaviors: preference, recognition, scanning, category formation, association with emotion, and selective learning. Although some aspects of infant responding to face race and gender may be accounted for by traditional models of perceptual development, other aspects suggest the need for a broader model that links perceptual development with social and emotional development. We also consider how responding to face race and gender in infancy may presage responding to these categories beyond infancy and discuss how social biases favoring own-race and female faces are formed.

Differential Experience of Peer Victimisation Among Children With Learning Disabilities in Hong Kong

Children with learning disabilities (LDs) are often targets of peer bullying. Studies have confirmed the distress associated with victimisation impairs academic performance. Research has also shown that boys experience victimisation differently than girls. This study examined whether students with LDs were more likely to be victimised, whether there was a gender difference in victimisation, and how students were victimised. Hong Kong children participated (162 with and 162 without LDs). Results indicated that students with LDs experienced increased levels of victimisation, and boys compared to girls with LDs sustained more physical victimisation. Academic performance did not significantly mediate the relationship between LDs and victimisation. Prevention and intervention strategies are discussed for this population.

Of Kith and Kin: Perceptual Enrichment, Expectancy, and Reciprocity in Face Perception

Race powerfully affects perceivers’ responses to faces, promoting biases in attention, classification, and memory. To account for these diverse effects, we propose a model that integrates social cognitive work with two prominent accounts of visual processing: perceptual learning and predictive coding. Our argument is that differential experience with a racial ingroup promotes both (a) perceptual enrichment, including richer, more well-integrated visual representations of ingroup relative to outgroup faces, and (b) expectancies that ingroup faces are normative, which influence subsequent visual processing. By allowing for “top-down” expectancy-based processes, this model accounts for both experience- and non-experience-based influences, such as motivation, context, and task instructions. Fundamentally, we suggest that we treat race as an important psychological dimension because it structures our social environment, which in turn structures mental representation.

Bladder Neck Contracture Following Radical Retropubic versus Robotic-Assisted Laparoscopic Prostatectomy

Introduction: Radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) and robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) are co-standard surgical therapies for localized prostatic adenocarcinoma. These surgical modalities offer similar outcomes; however, lower rate of bladder neck contracture (BNC) is amongst the touted benefits of RALP. The differences between approaches are largely elucidated through multiple-surgeon comparisons, which can be biased by differential experience and practice patterns. We aimed to eliminate inter-surgeon bias through this single-surgeon comparison of BNC rates following RRP and RALP. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed all RRPs and RALPs performed by one surgeon over 4 years. We compared clinical characteristics, intraoperative and postoperative outcomes. Results: RRP patients had more advanced cancer and a higher biochemical recurrence rate. No significant differences were noted between groups in rates of anastomotic leakage, BNC, or 12-month postoperative pad-free continence. Conclusion: RRP offers similar outcomes to RALP with regard to postoperative urinary extravasation, urinary continence, and BNC.