What Is It Like To Be in the Minority? Ethnic and Gender Diversity in the Genetic Counseling Profession

Increasingly, the genetic counseling profession is recognizing the need for greater ethnic and gender diversity. Recruitment and retention efforts may be enhanced by better understanding of the experience of individuals considered to be underrepresented in the profession. In this qualitative study, 8 genetic counseling students and 7 practicing genetic counselors who were ethnic minority and/or male participated in semi-structured telephone interviews regarding how they were introduced to the field, perceived career supports and barriers, their experiences within training programs and the field, and suggestions for increasing diversity. Introduction to the field tended to be late and accidental. There were several career supports (e.g., field combines science and helping others) and barriers (e.g., lack of information about the field). Participant experiences, although primarily positive, included instances of passive, unintentional discrimination; and there were internal and external pressures to be diversity experts and positive representatives of their group. Participants reported positively impacting colleagues’ cultural competency and offering a different presence within clinical settings. Suggestions for increasing diversity and research recommendations are given.     

Aging: a switch from automatic to controlled processing of sounds?

In this article, the authors show that aging differentially affects peoples' ability to automatically and voluntarily process auditory information. Young, middle-aged, and older adults matched behaviorally in an auditory discrimination task showed similar patterns of neural activity indexing the voluntary and conscious detection of deviant (i.e., target) stimuli. In contrast, a negative wave indexing automatic processing (the mismatch negativity) was elicited only in young adults for near-threshold stimuli. These results indicate that aging affects the ability to automatically register small changes in a stream of homogeneous stimuli. However, this age-related decline in automatic detection of small change in the auditor environment can be compensated for by top-down controlled processes.     

Substantive and operational issues of response bias across levels of analysis: an example of climate-satisfaction relationships

Two studies tested whether method variance is present at multiple levels of analysis and whether methodological procedures can minimize its impact. In Study 1, 8,052 employees from 71 hotels completed measures of climate, work environment characteristics, and satisfaction. A comparison of correlations at the individual level, cross-level, cross-level split, aggregate level, and aggregate-split level of analysis revealed that response bias was present across multiple levels. Results suggest that samples should be split in half when cross-level and aggregate correlations are computed to ameliorate response bias problems that arise from individual-level method variance. In Study 2, results indicated that the temporal spacing of measures of climate and satisfaction influenced response bias. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Repetition Priming Across the Adult Lifespan—The Long and Short of It

ABSTRACT

Previous reports suggest that repetition priming (i.e., enhanced processing of a stimulus after experience with that stimulus) is long lasting and impervious to the effects of age, in contrast to the pattern found with explicit memory. However, the nature of repetition priming in aged individuals remains unclear, as conflicting findings have also been reported. We used a longitudinal design to examine how repetition priming is affected by multiple stimulus repetitions (three presentations) and different delay intervals (no delay, 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month) in young adults, as well as in two groups of aging adults (young-elderly and old-elderly). Our findings extend previous reports that priming is long lasting, even when 1 month intervenes between the initial experience with an item and the subsequent priming test of that item (Cave, 1997 Cave, C. B. 1997. Very long-lasting priming in picture naming. Psychological Science, 8: 322–325. [CSA][CROSSREF][Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and is relatively impervious to the effects of age (Mitchell, et al., 1990 Mitchell, D. B., Brown, A. S. and Murphy, D. R. 1990. Dissociations between procedural and episodic memory: effects of time and aging. Psychology and Aging, 5: 264–276. [INFOTRIEVE][CSA][CROSSREF] [Google Scholar]). In addition, a more detailed characterization of priming and the effects of aging was revealed. Although priming is long lasting, remaining significant even at the month delay for all groups, it did decline over time and the rate of that decline differed with age. Both young-elderly and old-elderly groups showed a marked drop-off at 1 day, whereas young adults did not show a decline until 1 week. All groups benefited from multiple repetitions; however, this benefit disappeared at the month delay (in contrast to recognition memory, where the benefit remained significant). These findings support the assertion that repetition priming and explicit memory reflect the operation of distinct systems, and that these systems may undergo different rates of change in aging.     

The Dual Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Relationships to Research Productivity and Career Outcomes in Academe

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been shown to be important for organizational effectiveness, yet less is known about the relationship between OCB and objective outcomes for individuals. We investigate the relationship between OCB and both short-term and longer term outcomes within the context of an outcome-based reward system. We also investigate a type of OCB specific to professional occupations, namely, professional service OCB. Using resource allocation and social exchange theories, we hypothesize that OCB directed internally to the employing organization may have a negative impact on individuals’ productivity and career outcomes while engaging in professional service OCB would be positively related to these outcomes. Results from a survey of 622 faculty members in research universities provide support for these hypotheses. Future research directions are discussed.     

Father Knows Best: Paternal Presence and Sexual Debut in African‐American Adolescents Living in Poverty

Adolescents found within single‐parent families without a residential father have reported higher levels of sexual debut and higher levels of reported pregnancy. Using data from the Mobile Youth Survey, the purpose of this study is to determine the impact of the presence of a father figure on the sexual debut of African‐American adolescents living in poverty and to determine if gender moderates the relationship between the presence of a father figure and sexual debut. Additionally, this study will examine the family processes in which the presence of a father figure can affect the sexual debut of African‐American adolescents who live within economically and socially disadvantaged communities. The results revealed that African‐American adolescents reporting a father figure had lower rates of sexual debut than those youth reporting no father figure. Gender was not found to be a significant moderator in the relationship between father figure presence and sexual debut. However, existing curfews and family rules did account for some of the effects of presence of a father figure and sexual debut. The results suggest that when adolescents have a father figure in their lives, it may reduce the possibility of early sexual debut.     

Relationships among client and counselor agreement about the working alliance, session evaluations, and change in client symptoms using response surface analysis

Two studies explored how counselor and client agreement on the therapy alliance, at the beginning of treatment, influenced early session evaluations and symptom change. Unlike prior studies that operationalized alliance convergence as either a profile similarity correlation or a difference score, the present study used polynomial regression and response surface analysis to examine agreement. Study 1 explored the impact of working alliance congruence on session depth and smoothness at the 3rd session of treatment with 36 client-counselor dyads. Results revealed that session smoothness was greater when clients' and therapists' perceptions of the working alliance were in agreement and high compared with when they were in agreement and low. In addition, clients rated sessions less smooth when their ratings of the alliance were lower than their therapists' ratings of the alliance, and they rated sessions as more smooth when their ratings of the alliance were higher than their therapists' ratings of the alliance. The authors did not find a significant relationship with session depth. In Study 2, the authors explored the impact of working alliance congruence, at the 3rd session of therapy, on symptom change for 63 client-counselor dyads. Results revealed that as the therapist and client have more positive agreement on the perceived alliance at the beginning of the treatment, there is greater symptom change. The authors also found that the consequences of alliance disagreement are the same regardless of who rated the alliance higher than the other. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Testing the effects of social anxiety disorder on friendship quality across gender and ethnicity

Previous research suggests that social anxiety disorder (SAD) has a specific relationship with impairment in friendship quality; however, potential moderators of this relationship have not been tested. The current study examines whether the specific effect of SAD on friendship quality is stable or varies across gender and ethnicity in a large epidemiological dataset. Results indicate that the underlying construct of friendship quality differed slightly but significantly between men and women; as a result, effects of SAD were tested in men and women separately. After partially constraining friendship quality across ethnic groups, our results indicated that the relationship between SAD and friendship quality remained robust in all groups. In addition to replicating the finding that SAD specifically relates to perceived friendship quality, the current study highlights the need to test whether underlying constructs such as friendship quality are consistent across the groups that make up heterogeneous samples.     

Partner unsupportive responses, avoidant coping, and distress among women with early stage breast cancer: patient and partner perspectives.

This 18-month longitudinal study examined the associations among partner unsupportive behavior, avoidant coping, and distress experienced by 219 women with early stage breast cancer. The role of patient and partner ratings of unsupportive behavior were evaluated. Results indicated that patient and partner ratings of unsupportive behavior were highly correlated. Growth curve modeling suggested that unsupportive behavior, from both patient and partner perspectives, predicted more avoidant coping and distress. When partner and patient perceptions were placed in the same model, patient perceptions mediated the association between partners' ratings of their unsupportive behavior and patient distress. Avoidance also mediated the association between unsupportive behavior and distress, extending prior cross-sectional findings. Results highlight the long-term detrimental effects of partners' unsupportive behavior on the quality of life of women with early stage breast cancer.