Relationships between quality of life,spiritual well-being,and psychological adjustment styles for people living with leukaemia: An exploratory study

This paper reports on the relationships between quality of life, spiritual well-being, and psychological adjustment styles for people living with leukaemia. Participants were 40 adults (26 women and 14 men) aged between 22 and 80 years living with acute or chronic leukaemia in Western Australia. Participants completed three scales measuring spiritual well-being (FACIT-Sp-12-C Version 4; Cella, 1997 Cella, D. 1997. “Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT) Manual, Version 4”. In Chicago: Center on Outcomes Research and Education CORE, Evanston, Chicago: Northwestern Healthcare and Northwestern University.  [Google Scholar]), psychological adjustment styles (MAC; Watson, Greer, & Bliss, 1989 Watson, M, Greer, S and Bliss, JM. 1989. Mental Adjustment to Cancer (MAC) Scale: User's manual, London: CRC Psychological Medicine Research Group The Royal Marsden Hospital.  [Google Scholar]), and quality of life (FACIT-G; Cella, 1997 Cella, D. 1997. “Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT) Manual, Version 4”. In Chicago: Center on Outcomes Research and Education CORE, Evanston, Chicago: Northwestern Healthcare and Northwestern University.  [Google Scholar]). No differences were found between the men and women participants, with the exception of the anxious preoccupation adjustment style. Significant positive correlations were found between spiritual well-being and quality of life (r?=?0.72, p?=?<0.01), and between fighting spirit and both spiritual well-being (r?=?0.55, p?<?0.01) and quality of life (r?=?0.67, p?<?0.01). Spiritual well-being and quality of life were both significantly negatively correlated with hopelessness/helplessness, fatalism, and anxious preoccupation, suggesting that people who are able to find meaning in their illness are more likely to utilize functional psychological adjustment styles. A stepwise multiple regression revealed that spiritual well-being was most strongly associated with quality of life for people living with leukaemia, followed by a fighting spirit; together, these accounted for 61% of the variance in quality of life scores. Thus, having a reason for living, making life more productive, finding comfort in faith or spiritual beliefs, being determined to control the environment, and feeling a sense of meaning, peace, harmony, purpose, and comfortable in oneself are factors that contribute to a better quality of life among patients with leukaemia. Strengths, limitations, and implications of the findings are discussed.     

Fluency,Familiarity, Aging,and the Illusion of Truth

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that repeated statements are rated as more credible than new statements. However, little research has examined whether such “illusions of truth” can be produced by contextual (nonmnemonic) influences, or compared to the magnitude of these illusions in younger and older adults. In two experiments, we examined how manipulations of perceptual and conceptual fluency influenced truth and familiarity ratings made by young and older adults. Stimuli were claims about companies or products varying in normative familiarity. Results showed only small effects of perceptual fluency on rated truth or familiarity. In contrast, manipulating conceptual fluency via semantic/textual context had much larger effects on rated truth and familiarity, with the effects modulated by normative company familiarity such that fluency biases were larger for lesser-known companies. In both experiments, young and older adults were equally susceptible to fluency-based biases.     

Cognitive Performance in Adolescence: Links With Early Maternal Stimulation and Children’s Anxious Behaviors

Abstract

This study tested a developmental model of cognitive performance in adolescence and explored potential mechanisms explaining the relations of early maternal stimulation and children’s anxious behaviors with adolescents’ cognitive performance. We utilized the NICHD SECCYD dataset (n?=?1,112). Measures included questionnaires, coded observations, and self-report measures from infancy to adolescence. Results revealed that children who experienced greater early maternal stimulation and less anxious behaviors had better cognitive performance at age 15. Children’s English self-efficacy, the quality of child–teacher relationships, and children’s behavioral classroom engagement in middle childhood mediated the relation between early maternal stimulation and adolescent cognitive performance. Identifying pathways from earlier maternal and children’s characteristics to children’s later cognitive performance is an important step toward further understanding why early precursors have a long lasting impact on cognitive performance, and has implications for educational settings.     

Framing Childhood Obesity: How Individualizing the Problem Affects Public Support for Prevention

Political actors recognize the power of framing problems using personalized examples and causal stories to shape public opinion. Yet little is known about how these frames interact. This research presents the results of three studies designed to investigate the effect of “individualizing” the problem of childhood obesity, in combination with information about causes of obesity, on public support for obesity prevention policies (Studies 1 and 2) and to examine how frequently the news media rely on individual depictions of obese children to portray the problem in actual news coverage (Study 3). Results from two experiments consistently demonstrated that, regardless of how the cause of childhood obesity was framed, when a news report identified an individual obese child, participants were less likely to support prevention policies than when the report described the problem in more general terms. A content analysis indicated that news articles relatively infrequently frame the problem using individualized depictions of a specific child. When specific overweight or obese children were mentioned, news coverage emphasized internal (behavioral and genetic) causes rather than factors external to the child such as neighborhood, economic, or food‐industry factors. Findings underscore the importance of considering attitudes toward a policy's target population when assessing how individual depictions of a policy problem influence public sentiment.     

Cross-modal transitivity in a California sea lion (Zalophus californianus)

The ability of an experimentally experienced female California sea lion to form transitive relations across sensory modalities was tested using a matching-to-sample procedure. The subject was trained by trial-and-error, using differential reinforcement, to relate an acoustic sample stimulus to one member from each of two previously established visual classes. Once the two auditory–visual relations were formed, she was tested to determine whether untrained transitive relations would emerge between each of the acoustic stimuli and the remaining stimuli of each 10-member visual class. During testing, the sea lion demonstrated immediate transfer by responding correctly on 89 % of the 18 novel transfer trials compared to 88 % on familiar baseline trials. We then repeated this training and transfer procedure twice more with new auditory–visual pairings with similar positive results. Finally, the six explicitly trained auditory–visual relations and the 56 derived auditory–visual relations were intermixed in a single session, and the subject’s performance remained stable at high levels. This sea lion’s transfer performance indicates that a nonhuman animal is capable of forming new associations through cross-modal transitivity.     

Motivational interviewing in health promotion: it sounds like something is changing.

Motivational interviewing (MI), initially developed for addiction counseling, has increasingly been applied in public health, medical, and health promotion settings. This article provides an overview of MI, outlining its philosophic orientation and essential strategies. Major outcome studies are reviewed, nuances associated with the use of MI in health promotion and chronic disease prevention are described, and future directions are offered.     

An Assessment of Genetic Counseling Services for Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects up to 1/500 Canadians. The University of British Columbia MS Clinic (UBC Clinic) is the only MS clinic in Canada (and likely internationally) that routinely offers genetic counseling to patients and their families. A typical session includes the collection of family history and demographic data, discussion of the inheritance of MS, interpretation of family-specific recurrence risks and psychosocial counseling. The aims of this study were to explore patients’: 1) expectations of the genetic counseling session; 2) understanding of the etiology of MS (both pre and post-session); and 3) post-session perceptions of genetic counseling. A two-part questionnaire to assess genetic counseling services was distributed before and after sessions to all consenting patients seen during the period October 1, 2008 to February 28, 2009 inclusive. Sixty-two completed questionnaires were analysed. Genetic counseling was found to significantly increase the number of individuals who were able to correctly identify the etiology of MS (p?<?0.001). Patient satisfaction with genetic counseling was high, with an average satisfaction score of 32.4/35 (92.6 %). Of those who provided comments (n?=?42/60) regarding the usefulness of the genetic counseling session, 95.2 % reported it useful (n?=?40/42). Findings suggest that genetic counseling is effective in increasing patients’ knowledge of the etiology of MS and is viewed by patients as a useful service. Based on the high level of positive feedback regarding genetic counseling by the study sample, this study suggests that the services provided by genetic counselors may be beneficial for patients with MS seen in other centers.     

Emergent Research in Social Vision: An Integrated Approach to the Determinants and Consequences of Social Categorization

Social categorization research has historically focused either on understanding how observers utilize visual cues in the face and body to make judgments of others or on understanding the downstream consequences that occur following social categorizations, but rarely both. Recently, however, research has evidenced a marked shift toward an integrated approach. Here, we provide a snapshot of social vision's contributions to the study of social categorization with a goal of illuminating the new and exciting directions afforded by an integrative approach. From this perspective, social categorizations are characterized not only as being informed by visual cues but also as being malleable, probabilistic, and contextualized. Moreover, the process of categorization itself can affect evaluative outcomes directly, independent of categorization. By exploring empirical evidence for this integrated approach to the determinants and consequences of social categorization, we show how the emerging field of social vision has revealed new insights into the nature of social categorization and by extension its implications for evaluations.     

Both Gender and Cohort Affect Perceptions of Forenames,but Are 25-Year-Old Standards Still Valid?

Forenames signify considerable information, not only about a person’s gender, but also about that person’s age, social class, and ethnicity, as well as characteristics such as attractiveness and intellectual competence. Kasof (1993) found that research (almost all done in the U.S.) often used gender-typed forenames to identify individuals’ sex or gender in studies of potential gender bias. However, because these forenames signified other traits unrelated to gender, results were confounded in ways often favoring male stimulus persons. To remedy this situation, Kasof identified pairs of female and male forenames that were matched on key variables such as perceived age, attractiveness, and intellectual competence. We found that since 1995, approximately one-third of researchers who manipulated the sex or gender of hypothetical women and men used Kasof’s matched female and male forenames to control for extraneous variables. However, our research with college students revealed that Kasof’s matched forename pairs are now outdated. College students rated Kasof’s forenames (which are characteristic of popular forenames of their parents’ cohort) as less attractive than their own cohort’s popular forenames. Consistent with Kasof’s results, however, popular male forenames continued to be rated as connoting greater intellectual competence than popular female forenames. Implications of these findings are discussed.