Return of Genetic Results in the Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy Research Project

The goal of the Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy (FDC) Research Project, initiated in 1993, has been to identify and characterize FDC genetic cause. All participating individuals have been consented for the return of genetic results, an important but challenging undertaking. Since the inception of the Project we have enrolled 606 probands, and 269 of these had 1670 family members also enrolled. Each subject was evaluated for idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC) and pedigrees were categorized as familial or sporadic. The coding regions of 14 genes were resequenced in 311 to 324 probands in five studies. Ninety-two probands were found to carry nonsynonymous rare variants absent in controls, and with Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment of 1988 (CLIA) compliant protocols, relevant genetic results were returned to these probands and their consented relatives by study genetic counselors and physicians in 353 letters. In 10 of the 51 families that received results >1 year ago, at least 23 individuals underwent CLIA confirmation testing for their family’s rare variant. Return of genetic results has been successfully undertaken in the FDC Research Project. This report describes the methods utilized in the process of returning research results. We use this information as a springboard for providing guidance to other genetic research groups and proposing future directions in this arena.     

Spiritual Coping in American Buddhists: An Exploratory Study

Researchers in the United States have examined spiritual coping in Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, but rarely Buddhists. Using qualitative methodology, the present study represents an initial investigation into Buddhist forms of coping. Twenty-four Buddhists from across the United States were interviewed by phone, examining how their spirituality is used to cope with stress. Thematic analyses revealed six forms of Buddhist coping—right understanding, meditation, mindfulness, spiritual struggles, morality, and finding support in one's sangha. Implications of the study are discussed, including possibilities for future research on Buddhist coping.     

Therapists’ perspectives about working with meaning in life in psychotherapy: A survey

Of 212 practicing therapists who completed a survey about working with meaning in life (MIL) in psychotherapy, 129 (61%) had recently worked with MIL with at least one client and reported on their work with a client in this survey. Those therapists who had worked with a client on MIL as compared with those who had not were older, more experienced, more humanistic/existential/experiential in orientation; reported more MIL training; and felt more competent working with MIL. Clients reported on primarily had internalizing, interpersonal, and career issues. Only 12% of clients explicitly labeled MIL as an issue coming into therapy. The three most frequently used interventions involved offering support; helping clients examine thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to discover hopes and goals; and facilitating exploration of MIL cognitions and experiences. Therapists reported many positive consequences from working with MIL. Therapists reported minimal training in MIL and moderate competence in working with MIL. Implications for practice, training, and research are presented.     

Effects of aging on interference control in selective attention and working memory

Working memory decay in advanced age has been attributed to a concurrent decrease in the ability to control interference. The present study contrasted a form of interference control in selective attention that acts upon the perception of external stimuli (access) with another form that operates on internal representations in working memory (deletion), in order to determine both of their effects on working memory efficiency in younger and older adults. Additionally, we compared memory performance under these access and deletion functions to performance in their respective control conditions. The results indicated that memory accuracy improved in both age groups from the access functions, but that only young adults benefited from the deletion functions. In addition, intrusion effects in the deletion condition were larger in older than in younger adults. The ability to control the irrelevant perception- and memory-elicited interference did not decline in general with advancing age; rather, the control mechanisms that operate on internal memory representations declined specifically.     

Environmentalism,right‐wing extremism,and social justice beliefs among East German adolescents

This study uses a representative population (N = 3331) of East German mainstream adolescents to examine how the competing worldviews of environmentalism and right‐wing extremism differently structure social justice beliefs. Integrating three theoretical considerations (object of worry, scope of justice, and underlying values) it suggests that these two worldviews have implicit assumptions that associate them in subtler ways with some specific conceptions of justice. The environmentalist worldview was found to be associated with egalitarianism, which may be explained by environmentalism's concern with societal and global problems, its broad inclusionary scope of justice, and the self‐transcendent values it advocates. In contrast, right‐wing extremism was found to be associated with anti‐egalitarianism, which can be attributed to its concern with the welfare of the in‐group, its relative narrow exclusionary scope of justice, and its self‐interest values of competition and individualism. After controlling for the possible effects of gender and socioeconomic status, these claims were mostly supported by hierarchical regression empirical analyses. Moreover, findings showed that endorsement of the environmentalist stance is more common than endorsement of the right‐wing extremist stance. Finally, females tend to endorse the environmentalist stance and prefer egalitarianism, while males tend to endorse the right‐wing extremist stance and prefer the equity principle. Further internal and external validation of the constructs by means of the examination of their nomological network is recommended. Moreover, results of this study are discussed in light of globalization processes and recent developments regarding a “third position,” according to which pro‐environmental and right‐wing extremist views are intermingled, i.e., right‐wing extremist groups can advocate a pro‐environmental view just as pro‐environmental groups can adopt a right‐wing extremist position.     

Spheres of Justice within Schools: Reflections and Evidence on the Distribution of Educational Goods

This article argues that there are distinct spheres of justice within education and examines a range of justice norms and distribution rules that characterize the daily life of schools and classrooms. Moving from the macro to micro level, we identify the following five areas: the right to education, the allocation of (or selection into) learning places, teaching–learning practices, teachers’ treatment of students, and student evaluations of grade distribution. We discuss the literature on the beliefs by students and teachers about the just distribution of educational goods in these five domains, and on the practices used in the actual allocation of these goods. In line with normative ‘spheres of justice’ arguments in social theory, we conclude that the ideals of social justice within schools vary strongly according to the particular resource to be distributed. Moreover, these ideals often do not correspond with the practices that actually guide resource distribution in education, which may go some way toward explaining explicit or latent conflicts in this sphere. Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way – Michael Walzer (1983, p. 5)     

Cognitive rigidity in patients with depression and fibromyalgia

Background/ObjectiveThe comorbidity of depression and fibromyalgia chronic syndrome has been well documented in the literature; however, the cognitive structure of these patients has not been assessed. Previous results reported variability in cognitive rigidity in depressive patients, the key for this might be the presence of chronic physical pain such as fibromyalgia. The present study explores and compares the cognitive rigidity and differentiation, between patients with depression with and without fibromyalgia syndrome.MethodThirty one patients with depression and fibromyalgia were matched, considering age, sex and number of depressive episodes, with 31 patients with depression but without fibromyalgia diagnosis. Cognitive rigidity and differentiation were measured with the repertory grid technique.ResultsThe results indicated that depressed patients with fibromyalgia presented higher levels of depressive symptoms, greater cognitive rigidity and lower cognitive differentiation than those without fibromyalgia.ConclusionsThe results might inform future treatments to address the cognitive structure of these patients.     

Evaluating warning sound urgency with reaction times

It is well-established that subjective judgments of perceived urgency of alarm sounds can be affected by acoustic parameters. In this study, the authors investigated an objective measurement, the reaction time (RT), to test the effectiveness of temporal parameters of sounds in the context of warning sounds. Three experiments were performed using a RT paradigm, with two different concurrent visuomotor tracking tasks simulating driving conditions. Experiments 1 and 2 show that RT decreases as interonset interval (IOI) decreases, where IOI is defined as the time elapsed from the onset of one sound pulse to the onset of the next. Experiment 3 shows that temporal irregularity between pulses can capture a listener's attention. These findings lead to concrete recommendations: IOI can be used to modulate warning sound urgency; and temporal irregularity can provoke an arousal effect in listeners. The authors also argue that the RT paradigm provides a useful tool for clarifying some of the factors involved in alarm processing.     

The motion aftereffect reloaded

The motion aftereffect is a robust illusion of visual motion resulting from exposure to a moving pattern. There is a widely accepted explanation of it in terms of changes in the response of cortical direction-selective neurons. Research has distinguished several variants of the effect. Converging recent evidence from different experimental techniques (psychophysics, single-unit recording, brain imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, visual evoked potentials and magnetoencephalography) reveals that adaptation is not confined to one or even two cortical areas, but occurs at multiple levels of processing involved in visual motion analysis. A tentative motion-processing framework is described, based on motion aftereffect research. Recent ideas on the function of adaptation see it as a form of gain control that maximises the efficiency of information transmission at multiple levels of the visual pathway.     

Social mobbing calls in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus): effects of experience and associated cortisol levels

We compared the mobbing response to model snakes of two groups of captive-born common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) differing in genetic relatedness, age and past experience. Mobbing vocalisations (tsik calls), other mobbing behaviour and attention to the stimulus were recorded for 2 min. intervals pre-exposure, during exposure to various stimuli and post-exposure. Marmosets in one group were vocally reactive to all stimuli, although more so to one particular stimulus resembling rearing snakes and modified images of it, whereas the marmosets in a younger and genetically unrelated group attended to the stimuli but made very few mobbing calls. The parent stock of the first group had suffered stress in early life and had developed a phobic response to a specific stimulus, which they had transmitted to their offspring. A third group, matching the older group in age range but genetically unrelated, was also found to be unresponsive to the stimulus that elicited the strongest response in the first group. Cortisol levels in samples of hair were assayed and a significant negative correlation was found between the number of tsik calls made during presentation of the stimuli and the cortisol level, showing that mobbing behaviour/behavioural reactivity is associated with low levels of physiological stress.