According to psychobiological model of personality proposed by Cloninger, personality traits characterizing enhanced tendency to novel stimuli, impulsivity and sociability are influenced by dopaminergic system functioning. The present study considered both the main effect of two polymorphic loci ( VNTR and 2319G>A ) in dopamine transporter gene ( DAT1 ) and the role of distinct DAT1 gene haplot...

Williams Syndrome (WS) is a neurogenetic developmental disorder characterized by peaks and valleys of cognitive abilities. One peak that has been understudied is the affinity that many individuals with WS have toward music. It remains unknown whether their high levels of musical interest, skill and expressivity are related to their sociable personality or their verbal intelligence. We examined ...

Introduction: Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurogenetic disorder associated with a mild to moderate cognitive impairment and a hypersocial personality, most notably an unusually high tendency to approach and interact with strangers (Järvinen-Pasley et al., 2008). Within the WS phenotype, increased sociability is accompanied by an interesting profile of music processing. Reports of increased emot...

INTRODUCTION Loneliness is a subjective, negative feeling related to the person's own experience of deficient social relations. The determinants of loneliness are most often defined on the basis of 2 causal models. The first model examines the external factors, which are absent in the social network, as the root of the loneliness; while the second explanatory model refers to the internal factor...

Although intuitive and predicted by the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, previous research has not seriously tested the idea that positive moods can cause sociability. The authors developed a new measure to assess preferences for social (vs. nonsocial) situations, carefully controlling for the fact that social situations are, on average, also more pleasant. Across two additional e...

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic condition often paired with abnormal social functioning and behavior. In particular, those with WS are characterized as being relatively hypersocial, overly emotional/empathic, and socially uninhibited or fearless. In addition, WS is associated with abnormal amygdala structure and function. Very little is known however about the relationship between specific ...

PURPOSE To determine if lower global self-esteem, shyness, and low sociability are outcomes associated with SLI in adolescence. Possible concurrent predictive relationships and gender differences were also examined. METHOD Fifty-four adolescents with SLI, aged between 16 and 17 years, were compared with a group of 54 adolescents with typical language abilities on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem sca...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders that share deficits in sociability, communication, and restrictive and repetitive interests. ASD is likely polygenic in origin in most cases, but we presently lack an understanding of the relationships between ASD susceptibility genes and the neurobiological and behavioral phenotypes of ASD. Two genes that h...

Autism spectrum disorders share three core symptoms: impaired sociability, repetitive behaviors and communication deficits. Incidence is rising, and current treatments are inadequate. Seizures are a common comorbidity, and since the 1920's a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet has been used to treat epilepsy. Evidence suggests the ketogenic diet and analogous metabolic approaches may bene...

To examine individual differences in adults' sensitivity to facial expressions, we used a novel method that has proved revealing in studies of developmental change. Using static faces morphed to show different intensities of facial expressions, we calculated two measures: (1) the threshold to detect that a low intensity facial expression is different from neutral, and (2) accuracy in recognizin...