Primary Care Provider Familiarity with Binge Eating Disorder and Implications for Obesity Management: A Preliminary Survey

Current guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of obesity recommend referring individuals with binge eating disorder (BED) to a mental health professional. However, it is unclear how familiar primary care providers are with BED. The purpose of this study was to assess providers' familiarity with BED diagnosis and treatment. Providers in two primary care clinics completed a questionnaire, which assessed perceived familiarity with BED and demonstrated familiarity with BED diagnosis and treatment. Results indicated that 61% of respondents demonstrated familiarity with the essential symptoms of BED, and 80% reported familiarity with the diagnosis of BED. However, 35% of respondents who perceived themselves as familiar with BED did not demonstrate familiarity with the most basic symptoms. These results demonstrate that while many providers in primary care are familiar with BED, steps to improve provider familiarity with the disorder and provide appropriate mechanisms to address BED are warranted.     

Gender Representation in the NCAA News: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

The purpose of this study was to provide a reexamination of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) News and the extent to which the publication provides equitable coverage to women and women's teams. To do so, 5,745 paragraphs and 1,086 photographs from 24 issues (12 issues in 1999, 12 issues in 2001) were coded for (a) gender, (b) size, (c) location, and (d) content. Results were then compared to a standard (i.e., the proportion of female athletes competing in NCAA intercollegiate athletics). Results indicate that coverage in the NCAA News was more representative, with respect to the amount of text and number of photographs, than it was in 1988 and 1991.     

Perfectionism as an Explanatory Construct in Comorbidity of Axis I Disorders

Understanding comorbidity is an important challenge for psychopathology researchers and diagnostic systems given the repeated finding of very high comorbidity rates among Axis I disorders in psychiatric samples. This paper proposes that perfectionism may be a critical factor for understanding levels of comorbidity, and a conceptual argument for the importance of perfectionism as an explanatory construct for comorbidity is advanced. The link between perfectionism and comorbidity in a large sample of patients (N = 345) who attended an anxiety disorders clinic is examined using a variety of methods. Diagnoses were established using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-IV), and perfectionism was assessed using both the Hewitt and Flett and Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scales. Overall, scores on both the Hewitt and Flett and Frost perfectionism scales were correlated with the number of diagnoses, and a logistic regression analysis, controlling for current symptoms, showed that maladaptive evaluative concerns perfectionism in particular predicted higher levels of comorbidity.     

关注焦点:女性主义伦理学、发展理论与人权

从两个方面探讨--强调全球性的关注和女性主义伦理学的交叉:人权及发展理论.首先,对以权利为基础的理论进行批评.其次,在人权运动中,努力考虑全球的健康问题.尔后,采纳可选择的范例是,寻求结合发展和人权理论形成一个全球伦理.最后,对于全球女性主义伦理学提出一个可选择的框架,对于实践有更充分的应答,以加强所有人享受健康及生育的能力.     

The enigma of altruistic lying: Perspective differences in what motivates and justifies lie telling within romantic relationships

Lie tellers in intimate relationships often claim their lies were told to protect their partner. However, based on several converging theories (e.g., motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance), we expected lie receivers to interpret lie tellers' motives less altruistically. We also made predictions regarding other variables on which we expected lie tellers' and lie receivers' perceptions to differ (e.g., justifications for the lie and responses to the lie, lie tellers' guilt, the temporal and situational context of the lies, perceptions of causality and blame). Participants wrote 2 autobiographical narratives, one from the perspective of lie teller and the other from the perspective of lie receiver. Participants also completed questionnaire items that mirrored the coding dimensions used in our content analyses of the narratives. As predicted, results indicated that the same participants, when occupying the role of lie teller as opposed to lie receiver, viewed their lies as more altruistically motivated, guilt inducing, spontaneous, justified by features of the situation, and provoked by the lie receiver. We discuss potential explanations for perspective differences in lying, the value of multiple perspectives when studying and evaluating lies, and the potential for an understanding of perspective differences to aid in conflict resolution.     

Appetitive instrumental learning is impaired by inhibition of cAMP-dependent protein kinase within the nucleus accumbens.

The medium spiny neurons of the nucleus accumbens receive a unique convergence of dopaminergic and glutamatergic inputs from regions associated with motivational, cognitive, and sensory processes. Long-term forms of plasticity in the nucleus accumbens associated with such processes as appetitive learning and drug addiction may require coactivation of both dopamine D1 and glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. This notion implies that an intracellular mechanism is likely to be involved in these long-term neuroadaptive processes. The present series of experiments examined the effects of intra-accumbens microinfusion of protein kinase inhibitors on acquisition of an instrumental task, lever-pressing for food. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were bilaterally implanted with chronic indwelling cannulae aimed at the nucleus accumbens core. Following recovery, animals were food-restricted and subsequently trained for operant responding. The broad-based serine/threonine kinase inhibitor H-7 (5 or 27 nmol per side) dose-dependently impaired learning when infused immediately after testing on days 1-4. Rp-cAMPS, a cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) inhibitor, also impaired learning regardless of whether it was infused immediately before (5 or 20 nmol) or immediately after (10 nmol) testing on days 1-4. Rp-cAMPS (10 nmol) also inhibited learning when infused 1 h after testing, though to a lesser extent than when administered before or immediately after testing. The PKA stimulator Sp-cAMPS (5 or 20 nmol) also impaired learning when infused before testing, suggesting that there is an optimal level of PKA activity required for learning. None of the drugs used produced nonspecific motor or feeding effects. These results provide evidence supporting the involvement of nucleus accumbens PKA in appetitive learning and suggest that this kinase may be involved in long-term changes associated with this and other motivationally based neuroadaptive processes.     

Implications of document-level literacy skills for Web site design

The proliferation of World Wide Web (Web) sites and the low cost of publishing information on the Web have placed a tremendous amount of information at the fingertips of millions of people. Although most of this information is at least intended to be accurate, there is much that is rumor, innuendo, urban legend, and outright falsehood. This raises problems especially for students (of all ages) trying to do research or learn about some topic. Finding accurate, credible information requires document-level literacy skills, such as integration, sourcing, corroboration, and search. This paper discusses these skills and offers a list of simple ways that designers of educational Web sites can help their visitors utilize these skills.     

Tactile “capture” of audition

Previous research has demonstrated that the localization of auditory or tactile stimuli can be biased by the simultaneous presentation of a visual stimulus from a different spatial position. We investigated whether auditory localization judgments could also be affected by the presentation of spatially displaced tactile stimuli, using a procedure designed to reveal perceptual interactions across modalities. Participants made left—right discrimination responses regarding the perceived location of sounds, which were presented either in isolation or together with tactile stimulation to the fingertips. The results demonstrate that the apparent location of a sound can be biased toward tactile stimulation when it is synchronous, but not when it is asynchronous, with the auditory event. Directing attention to the tactile modality did not increase the bias of sound localization toward synchronous tactile stimulation. These results provide the first demonstration of the tactilecapture of audition.