When the Topic is You: Genetic Counselor Responses to Prenatal Patients’ Requests for Self-Disclosure

A limited amount of research indicates patient requests play a major role in genetic counselors’ self-disclosure decisions and that disclosure and non-disclosure responses to patient requests may differentially affect genetic counseling processes. Studies further suggest patient requests may be more common in prenatal settings, particularly when counselors are pregnant. Empirical evidence is limited however, concerning the nature of patient requests. This study explored genetic counselors’ experiences of prenatal patients’ requests for self-disclosure. Four major research questions were: (1) What types of questions do prenatal patients ask that invite self-disclosure?; (2) Do pregnant genetic counselors have unique experiences with prenatal patient disclosure requests?; (3) How do genetic counselors typically respond to disclosure requests?; and (4) What strategies are effective and ineffective in responding to disclosure requests? One hundred seventy-six genetic counselors completed an online survey and 40 also participated in telephone interviews. Inductive analysis of 21 interviews revealed patient questions vary, although questions about counselor demographics are most common, and patients are more likely to ask pregnant counselors questions about their personal pregnancy decisions. Participants reported greater discomfort with self-disclosure requests during pregnancy, yet also disclosing more frequently during pregnancy. Counselor responses included personal self-disclosure, professional self-disclosure, redirection, and declining to disclose. Factors perceived as influencing disclosure included: topic, patient motivations, timing of request, quality of counseling relationship, patient characteristics, and ethical/legal responsibilities. Disclosure practices changed over time for most counselors. Additional findings, practice implications, and research recommendations are discussed.     

The Use of Personal Construct Theory and the Repertory Grid in the Development of Case Reports of Children's Science Learning

This article presents the assumptions and methodology used in a study of children learning science in a fifth-grade classroom. Case report results are presented that illustrate both the approach and findings of the research. The implications of a constructivist view of learning are discussed. A practical teaching aid that employs this view and enables teachers to effectively summarize and integrate student ideas in the teaching/learning dialogue is suggested.     

Internalized Homophobia and Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adult Women’s Same-Sex Relationships

This study examined the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV), internalized homophobia, and psychological maladjustment in a convenience sample of young adult women. Rates of psychological and physical abuse in women’s same-sex relationships were shown to be commensurate to previously reported rates of violence in the IPV literature; rates of sexual coercion were also ascertained. A relationship was found between Moral and Religious Attitudes Toward Lesbianism (MRATL), a dimension of internalized homophobia, and the perpetration of sexual coercion. As expected, internalized homophobia was connected to psychological maladjustment. In addition, both the perpetration of psychological aggression and physical violence were associated with emotional instability. The study findings are discussed within the current body of literature on IPV.     

Perceptual expertise and the plasticity of other-race face recognition

In this paper, we argue that our ability to recognize own-race faces can be treated as a form of perceptual expertise. Similar to object experts (e.g., birdwatchers), people differentiate own-race faces at the subordinate level of categorization. In contrast, like novices, we tend to classify other-race faces at the basic level of race. We demonstrate that, as a form of perceptual expertise, other-race face recognition can be systematically taught in the lab through subordinate-level training. When participants learn to quickly and accurately differentiate other-race faces at the subordinate level of the individual, the individuating training transfers to improved recognition of untrained other-race faces, produces changes in event-related brain components, and reduces implicit racial bias. Subsequent work has shown that other-race learning can be optimized by directing participants to the diagnostic features of a racial group. The benefits of other-race training are fairly long-lived and are evident even 2 weeks after training. Collectively, the training studies demonstrate the plasticity of other-race face recognition. Rather than a process that is fixed by early developmental events, other-race face recognition is malleable and dynamic, continually being reshaped by the perceptual experiences of the observer.     

The Effects of Initial Habit Strength Differences Upon Performance in a Coaction Situation

The present investigation examined the effects of initial habit strength differences upon performance in a coaction situation. During a training session, a habit-strength hierarchy was developed in each of three groups through the establishment of a differential response expectancy for each of four alternative responses. In a subsequent test session, both performance and consistency of performance were affected by the pretraining on the correct habit. However, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis that coaction would interact with the habit-strength condition resulting in an improvement in the coaction/habit-correct group and a decrement in the coaction/habit-incorrect group. Similarly, no differences were found between the coaction and alone conditions.     

Complainant’s physical attractiveness and juristic judgments of blame and punishment in physical,domestic, and sexual assault scenarios

ABSTRACT

Extralegal factors, including physical attractiveness, may bias juristic opinions. The present study provided 450 university students with hypothetical scenarios of physical, domestic, and sexual assault in which complainant’s attractiveness and other legal and extralegal characteristics were independently varied. Results indicate complainant’s attractiveness mattered in sexual assault scenarios only for guilt of the defendant, but not for physical or domestic assault. Complainant’s attractiveness was not related to perceptions of blameworthiness of complainant or punishment of defendant. Overall, legal factors of injury level, prior offending, and intoxication mattered more than attractiveness or race of the victim. Implications are discussed.     

Augustine's On the Good of Marriage and Infused Virtue in the Twelfth Century

In the history of ethics, it remains remains unclear how Christians of the Middle Ages came to see God‐given virtues as dispositions (habitus) created in the human soul. Patristic works could surely support other conceptions of the virtues given by grace. For example, one might argue that all such virtues are forms of charity, so that they must be affections of the soul, or that they consist in what the soul does, not anything the soul has. Scholars usually assume that the explanation lies in the impact of Aristotle's philosophy on medieval theology. This essay argues that the dispositional account of God‐given virtues was already entrenched by the end of the twelfth century and probably owes more to the influence of Augustine's treatise On the Good of Marriage.     

Microstructural integrity of the corpus callosum linked with neuropsychological performance in adolescents

Background: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has revealed microstructural aspects of adolescent brain development, the cognitive correlates of which remain relatively uncharacterized. Methods: DTI was used to assess white matter microstructure in 18 typically developing adolescents (ages 16–18). Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusion (MD) were evaluated within the splenium and body of the corpus callosum in relation to cognitive performance. Results: Visuospatial construction abilities were associated with white matter integrity in both the splenium and body of the corpus callosum, while only splenium integrity was associated with language and psychomotor function. Conclusion: Results suggest that, for typically developing adolescents, white matter coherence positively relates to visuospatial, psychomotor, and language skills. These findings may have implications for the cognitive functioning of clinical populations in which typical white matter development is altered.