Responding to Disaster-Related Loss and Grief: Recovering From the 2013 Flood in Southern Alberta,Canada

Applying a loss and grief perspective, this article explores lived experiences and perceptions of social workers and human service professionals who provided psychosocial supports and services to children, youth, and families recovering from the 2013 flood in southern Alberta, Canada. Five interrelated themes emerged from the analysis: (a) challenges with providing services while experiencing personal loss; (b) lack of funding for long-term postdisaster psychosocial recovery; (c) parenting in the context of disaster-related loss; (d) children’s and youth’s experiences of disaster-related loss and grief; and (e) the impact of the flood on family socioeconomic status. Recommendations for research, education and practice are discussed.     

Growth modeling with nonignorable dropout: alternative analyses of the STAR*D antidepressant trial

This article uses a general latent variable framework to study a series of models for nonignorable missingness due to dropout. Nonignorable missing data modeling acknowledges that missingness may depend not only on covariates and observed outcomes at previous time points as with the standard missing at random assumption, but also on latent variables such as values that would have been observed (missing outcomes), developmental trends (growth factors), and qualitatively different types of development (latent trajectory classes). These alternative predictors of missing data can be explored in a general latent variable framework with the Mplus program. A flexible new model uses an extended pattern-mixture approach where missingness is a function of latent dropout classes in combination with growth mixture modeling. A new selection model not only allows an influence of the outcomes on missingness but allows this influence to vary across classes. Model selection is discussed. The missing data models are applied to longitudinal data from the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study, the largest antidepressant clinical trial in the United States to date. Despite the importance of this trial, STAR*D growth model analyses using nonignorable missing data techniques have not been explored until now. The STAR*D data are shown to feature distinct trajectory classes, including a low class corresponding to substantial improvement in depression, a minority class with a U-shaped curve corresponding to transient improvement, and a high class corresponding to no improvement. The analyses provide a new way to assess drug efficiency in the presence of dropout.     

When the social mirror breaks: deficits in automatic, but not voluntary, mimicry of emotional facial expressions in autism

Humans, infants and adults alike, automatically mimic a variety of behaviors. Such mimicry facilitates social functioning, including establishment of interpersonal rapport and understanding of other minds. This fundamental social process may thus be impaired in disorders such as autism characterized by socio-emotional and communicative deficits. We examined automatic and voluntary mimicry of emotional facial expression among adolescents and adults with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and a typical sample matched on age, gender and verbal intelligence. Participants viewed pictures of happy and angry expressions while the activity over their cheek and brow muscle region was monitored with electromyography (EMG). ASD participants did not automatically mimic facial expressions whereas the typically developing participants did. However, both groups showed evidence of successful voluntary mimicry. The data suggest that autism is associated with an impairment of a basic automatic social-emotion process. Results have implications for understanding typical and atypical social cognition.     

Credit cues and impression management: a preliminary attempt to explain the credit card effect

Prior research had suggested that individuals would estimate higher product values and even tip more in the presence of credit cues. In the absence of a clear theoretical interpretation of this credit card effect we propose that this tendency is an impression management strategy such that credit cue exposure influences perceptions of the self and focuses attention on individual wealth. Thus, in the presence of others, credit cues serve to enhance images of the self. Preliminary data in support of this alternative theoretical perspective are presented.     

An Assessment of Risk Understanding in Hispanic Genetic Counseling Patients

This study sought to identify if differences existed in risk comprehension and risk format understanding between genetic counseling patients of Hispanic and Caucasian ethnicity. A total of 107 questionnaires were collected, 56 from Hispanic patients, and 51 from Caucasian controls. Of the total population 41.1% (44/107) could not demonstrate sufficient risk understanding, which was 71.4% (40/56) of Hispanics and 7.8% (4/51) of Caucasians. Fractions were the best-understood format for all participants. However, both Hispanics and Caucasians had difficulties with the percentage risk format. Discrepancies were also noted in qualitative word format understanding. Awareness of differences in risk comprehension may affect the selection of counseling techniques and strategies utilized by genetic counselors when educating patients about risk related information.     

Is anti-intellectualism a personality trait?

In interpreting empirical findings from studies to validate an anti-intellectualism scale, Eigenberger and Sealander suggest that anti-intellectualism might be a heritable trait related to "openness to experience." This brief article offers a rejoinder, arguing that anti-intellectualism makes sense as a cultural perspective that varies by time and place.     

Ethicist as Designer: A Pragmatic Approach to Ethics in the Lab

Contemporary literature investigating the significant impact of technology on our lives leads many to conclude that ethics must be a part of the discussion at an earlier stage in the design process i.e., before a commercial product is developed and introduced. The problem, however, is the question regarding how ethics can be incorporated into an earlier stage of technological development and it is this question that we argue has not yet been answered adequately. There is no consensus amongst scholars as to the kind of ethics that should be practiced, nor the individual selected to perform this ethical analysis. One school of thought holds that ethics should have pragmatic value in research and design and that it should be implemented by the (computer) engineers and/or (computer) scientists themselves, while another school of thought holds that ethics need not be so pragmatic. For the latter, the ethical reflection can aim at a variety of goals, and be carried out by an ethicist. None of the approaches resulting from these lines of thinking have been adopted on a wide-scale basis. To that end, the approach presented here is intended to bridge the gap between these schools of thought. It is our contention that ethics ought to be pragmatic and to provide utility for the design process and we maintain that adequate ethical reflection, and all that it entails, ought to be conducted by an ethicist. Thus, we propose a novel role for the ethicist—the ethicist as designer—who subscribes to a pragmatic view of ethics in order to bring ethics into the research and design of artifacts—no matter the stage of development. In this paper we outline the series of steps that a pragmatic value analysis entails: uncovering relevant values, scrutinizing these values and, working towards the translation of values into technical content. In conclusion, we present a list of tasks for the ethicist in his/her role as designer on the interdisciplinary team.