Talking to Children About Maternal BRCA1/2 Genetic Test Results: A Qualitative Study of Parental Perceptions and Advice

Family communication is the primary, initial means of educating the next, at-risk generation about hereditary cancer risk. In this study, in-depth parent narratives provided self-report of motivations, planning, satisfactions and regrets associated with sharing or not sharing maternal BRCA1/2 test results with young children and advice for parents considering disclosure and for genetic counselors. Interviews were conducted with 32 mothers tested for BRCA1/2 with children ages 8–21 years and 24 of their co-parents; interview narratives were analyzed qualitatively. Parents were concerned with both protecting and educating children about hereditary cancer risk. They expressed confidence that parents can constructively convey genetic information to minor children. Telling relieved most parents and satisfied a sense of parental duty. Parents strongly advised child-specific, age-appropriate tailoring of genetic information and emphasized conveying the positive, preventive utility of genetic information to children. Immunizing effects of disclosure were viewed as providing forewarning about and preparation for possible later family cancer diagnoses. Parents choosing not to tell children were advised to consider future disclosure. Narratives about parental sharing of BRCA1/2 test results with minor children support the feasibility of parental discussion of maternal genetic test results to the next at-risk generation. Results suggest development of intervention tools for parents would support decision-making and family communication and potentially reduce parental worry and regret. Recommendations are made for more active involvement by genetic counselors with tested parents around the topic of delivery of genetic information to children.     

Ontology, Reference, and the Qua Problem: Amie Thomasson on Existence

I argue that Amie Thomasson’s recent theory of the methodology to be applied to find the truth-conditions for claims of existence faces serious objections. Her account is based on Devitt and Sterelny’s solution to the qua problem for theories of reference fixing; however, such a solution cannot be also applied to analyze existential claims.     

What makes us believe a conditional? The roles of covariation and causality

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the roles of covariation and of causality in people's readiness to believe a conditional. The experiments used a probabilistic truth-table task (Oberauer & Wilhelm, 2003 Oberauer, K. and Wilhelm, O. 2003. The meaning(s) of conditionals: Conditional probabilities, mental models, and personal utilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 29: 680–693. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in which people estimated the probability of a conditional given information about the frequency distribution of truth-table cases. For one group of people, belief in the conditional was determined by the conditional probability of the consequent, given the antecedent, whereas for another group it depended on the probability of the conjunction of antecedent and consequent. There was little evidence that covariation, expressed as the probabilistic contrast or as the pCI rule (White, 2003 White, P. A. 2003. Making causal judgements from the proportion of confirming instances: The pCI rule. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29: 710–727.  [Google Scholar]), influences belief in the conditional. The explicit presence of a causal link between antecedent and consequent in a context story had a weak positive effect on belief in a conditional when the frequency distribution of relevant cases was held constant.     

A grounded theory exploration of therapists’ experiences of somatic phenomena in the countertransference

Somatic phenomena in the countertransference have historically received minimal attention despite evidence of their occurrence in the therapeutic encounter. In the field of Counselling Psychology, there seems to be an apparent gap in the academic coverage and clinical utilisation of therapists’ somatic states. The purpose of this study was to explore therapists’ somatic experiences in the countertransference using a grounded theory methodology, based on a sample of 12 participants that was composed of psychotherapists, counselling and clinical psychologists. The results indicated that therapists made sense of their somatic experiences through a developmental process of ‘relating to the body’ that combined stages of defensive operations, intellectual reflections, attributions of somatic ownership and recognitions of various working patterns in the management of somatic experiences. This study addresses the factors that constituted therapists’ processing of the experience, and the findings suggest that therapeutic work may be affected when psychosomatic phenomena as such become undermined and ignored.     

Engaging in cultural activities compensates for educational differences in cognitive abilities

ABSTRACT

The goal of the current project was to examine whether engagement in intellectual/cultural activities explains the long-term effects of education on cognitive abilities throughout adulthood, and whether it compensates for educational differences in cognitive abilities throughout adulthood. Participants between 18 and 96 years of age completed a comprehensive questionnaire about intellectual/cultural activities that they participated in and performed a wide variety of cognitive tests. There were no mediation effects of engagement in intellectual/cultural activities on the relationship between education and cognitive functioning. In contrast, engagement in intellectual/cultural activities was found to moderate the relations between education and the level of fluid ability, working memory, speed of processing, and episodic memory. Findings suggest that the risk of cognitive decline in people with less education can be reduced via engagement in intellectual and cultural activities throughout adulthood.     

Domestic dogs conceal auditory but not visual information from others

A number of studies have shown that dogs are sensitive to a human’s perspective, but it remains unclear whether they use an egocentric strategy to assess what humans perceive. We investigated whether dogs know what a human can see and hear, even when the dogs themselves are unable to see the human. Dogs faced a task in which forbidden food was placed in a tunnel that they could retrieve by using their paw. Whereas the dogs could not see the experimenter during their food retrieval attempts, the experimenter could potentially see the dog’s paw. In the first experiment, dogs could choose between an opaque and a transparent side of the tunnel, and in the second experiment, they could choose between a silent and a noisy approach to the tunnel. The results showed that dogs preferred a silent approach to forbidden food but they did not hide their approach when they could not see a human present. We conclude that dogs probably rely on what they themselves can perceive when they assess what the human can see and hear.     

Biopsychosocial correlates of weight status perception in Australian adolescents

This study examined the utility of the biopsychosocial model to predict accuracy of weight status perception among Australian adolescents. The factors included in this framework were: age, gender, and BMI-z (biological factors); satisfaction with body weight and shape (psychological factors); socioeconomic status, peer weight (social factors). Cross-sectional data, including measured height and weight, and self-reported weight status, was obtained from 2954 adolescents (mean age = 14.6, 56% male) who participated in the It's Your Move! study. Accuracy of weight status perception was associated with gender, BMI-z, SES, and weight and shape satisfaction. Gender differences in weight status perception were moderated by satisfaction with weight. In boys, weight satisfaction was associated with perceived healthy weight; in girls, it was associated with perceived healthy weight and underweight. Moderately overweight adolescents are most at risk of underestimating their weight status and could benefit from education about the boundaries of the healthy weight range.     

Validity and Interpretation

This paper claims that there is a plausible sense in which validity is a matter of truth preservation relative to interpretations of the sentences that occur in an argument, although it is not the sense one might have in mind. §1 outlines three independent problems: the first is the paradox of the sorites, the second concerns the fallacy of equivocation, and the third arises in connection with the standard treatment of indexicals. §2 elucidates the claim about validity, while §§3–5 show how the three problems outlined can be handled in accordance with it. §6 explains how the claim squares with the traditional idea that validity is related to formality, and in particular with a broadly accepted definition based on that idea, the model-theoretic definition of logical consequence. Unlike other works on the subject, this paper does not focus on necessity. It is not its intention to provide a characterization of necessity that conforms to some ideal of rigour or to some pre-theoretical understanding of validity. What follows can be taken as conditional on the assumption that such a characterization can be provided.     

Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats: Possible Animal Model of Sleep-Related Movement Disorders

Clinical experience suggests that restless legs syndrome (RLS), periodic leg movement (PLM), and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may co-occur in both children and adults. The purpose of the present study was to provide an electrocorticography and electromyography evaluation of the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) to investigate the potential of this rat strain as an animal model of RLS–PLM. Initial work focused on evaluating sleep patterns and limb movements during sleep in SHR, having normotensive Wistar rats (NWR) as control, followed by comparison of two treatments (pharmacological–dopaminergic agonist treatment and nonpharmacological–chronic physical exercise), known to be clinically beneficial for sleep-related movement disorders. The captured data strengthen the association between SHR and RLS–PLM, revealing a significant reduction on sleep efficiency and slow wave sleep and an increase on wakefulness and limb movements for the SHR group during the dark period, as compared to the NWR group, effects that have characteristics that are strikingly consistent with RLS–PLM. The pharmacological and nonpharmacological manipulations validated these results. The present findings suggest that the SHR may be a useful putative animal model to study sleep-related movement disorders mechanisms.