Cancer-related fatigue: a systematic and meta-analytic review of non-pharmacological therapies for cancer patients

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a significant clinical problem for more than 10 million adults diagnosed with cancer each year worldwide. No "gold standard" treatment presently exists for CRF. To provide a guide for future research to improve the treatment of CRF, the authors conducted the most comprehensive combined systematic and meta-analytic review of the literature to date on non-pharmacological (psychosocial and exercise) interventions to ameliorate CRF and associated symptoms (vigor/vitality) in adults with cancer, based on 119 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-RCT studies. Meta-analyses conducted on 57 RCTs indicated that exercise and psychological interventions provided reductions in CRF, with no significant differences between these 2 major types of interventions considered as a whole. Specifically, multimodal exercise and walking programs, restorative approaches, supportive-expressive, and cognitive-behavioral psychosocial interventions show promising potential for ameliorating CRF. The results also suggest that vigor and vitality are distinct phenomena from CRF with regard to responsiveness to intervention. With improved methodological approaches, further research in this area may soon provide clinicians with effective strategies for reducing CRF and enhancing the lives of millions of cancer patients and survivors.     

Evaluating the Evaluators: Perceptions of Interviewers by Rejected Job Applicants as a Function of Interviewer and Applicant Sex1

Students who had recently had an unsuccessful job interview rated the competence of their interviewer and completed the Women As Managers Scale (WAMS; Terborg, Peters, Ilgen, & Smith, 1977 ). The results showed an impact of the sex of interviewer on judgments of interviewer competence and WAMS scores, but only for male participants. Male participants gave lower ratings of interviewer competence to female than to male interviewers, and ratings for the female interviewers were also lower than those given by female participants. Scores on the WAMS were lower for male participants who were interviewed by a female interviewer than those interviewed by a male interviewer, and were lower for male than for female participants with a female interviewer.     

Seminary Students and Physical Health: Beliefs,Behaviors, and Barriers

Journal of Religion and Health - As an occupational group, clergy exhibit numerous physical health problems. Given the physical health problems faced by clergy, understanding where physical health...     

Parsing the relations between SES and stress reactivity: examining individual differences in neonatal stress response

In an effort to further delineate the reported relations between socioeconomic status (SES) and stress reactivity in children, associations between three domains of perinatal risk: socio-demographic, obstetrical complications, and maternal psychological factors during the perinatal period, and cortisol and behavioral reactivity were examined in 100 healthy African American neonates whose families resided in low-income environments. Behavioral and cortisol response to a heel stick and the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) was measured within the first 2 days of life. Significant associations were found between socio-demographic risk, obstetrical complications, and maternal psychological factors and neonatal behavior and cortisol in the context of the NBAS; few significant associations were found in the context of the heel stick. Greater magnitude of perinatal risk was associated with both higher and lower than average neonatal stress reactivity. The results provide preliminary data on the types of perinatal experiences that may have significant effects on stress reactivity in humans, especially in the context of families living in poverty. Application of these data to the hypothesis that prenatal stress results in programming of the fetal/neonatal stress response system is discussed.     

The hollow-face illusion: object-specific knowledge, general assumptions or properties of the stimulus?

The hollow-face illusion, in which a mask appears as a convex face, is a powerful example of binocular depth inversion occurring with a real object under a wide range of viewing conditions. Explanations of the illusion are reviewed and six experiments reported. In experiment 1 the detrimental effect of figural inversion, evidence for the importance of familiarity, was found for other oriented objects. The inversion effect held for masks lit from the side (experiment 2). The illusion was stronger for a mask rotated by 90 degrees lit from its forehead than from its chin, suggesting that familiar patterns of shading enhance the illusion (experiment 2). There were no effects of light source visibility or any left/right asymmetry (experiment 3). In experiments 4-6 we used a 'virtual' hollow face, with illusion strength quantified by the proportion of noise texture needed to eliminate the illusion. Adding characteristic surface colour enhanced the illusion, consistent with the familiar face pigmentation outweighing additional bottom-up cues (experiment 4). There was no difference between perspective and orthographic projection. Photographic negation reduced, but did not eliminate, the illusion, suggesting shading is important but not essential (experiment 5). Absolute depth was not critical, although a shallower mask was given less extreme convexity ratings (experiment 6). We argue that the illusion arises owing to a convexity preference when the raw data have ambiguous interpretations. However, using a familiar object with typical orientation, shading, and pigmentation greatly enhances the effect.     

Exploring the mental number line: evidence from a dual-task paradigm

In a parity-judgment task smaller numbers are responded to faster with the left-hand key and vice versa for larger numbers (SNARC effect; Dehaene et al., in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 371-396, 1993). We used the psychological refractory period paradigm involving a parity-judgment task and tone-discrimination task to address the question at which stage this effect arises. When the parity-judgment task is performed second, then we found equal SNARC effects for the short and the long SOA. According to the central bottleneck model, this indicates that the effect arises during the response-selection or execution stage. In Experiment 2 the parity-judgment task was performed first. The pattern of results indicates that the SNARC effect originates during the perceptual encoding or response-selection. Together, our results suggest that the SNARC effect originates while the response is selected.     

Is Personality Related to Assessment Center Performance? That Depends on How Old You Are

Despite compelling arguments that performance in the assessment center (AC) should be related to personality, past research has failed to demonstrate a consistent link between personality and AC performance. This study investigated whether managerial candidates’ age could be moderating, and thus obscuring, specific personality–AC performance relations. A large sample of managers (N = 371) participated in an AC and also completed the leadership relevant personality scales of achievement, dominance, and exhibition from the Personality Research Form-E (PRF-E; Jackson, D. N. (1984). Manual for the personality research form. Port Huron, MI: Research Psychologists Press). Consistent with hypotheses, age moderated the relations of dominance and exhibition with AC performance (p < .05), such that dominance and exhibition were more strongly related to AC performance for older as opposed to younger managers. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for the criterion-related and construct validity of ACs.

Age of acquisition affects object recognition: evidence from visual duration thresholds

The impact of age of acquisition (AoA) on object recognition was explored in three experiments measuring visual duration threshold (VDT) for the identification of pictures labelled with early and late acquired names. Participants viewed briefly displayed images preceded and followed by a pattern mask. The minimum display duration required for correct identification was shorter for pictures labelled with early names than for those labelled with late names. In Experiments 2 and 3 we explored the effects of two forms of visual degradation on VDT for pictures with early and late acquired names. Both degradation by superimposed visual elements, and degradation by contrast reduction extended VDT, but only the former interacted with AoA. We conclude that both AoA and degradation by superimposed visual elements affect the efficiency of visual object recognition, but only degradation by contrast and not AoA affects the efficiency of earlier pre-recognition processes.     

Cumulative risk, maternal responsiveness, and allostatic load among young adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of cumulative risk exposure in concert with maternal responsiveness on physiological indicators of chronic stress in children and youth. Middle-school children exposed to greater accumulated psychosocial (e.g., family turmoil, poverty) and physical (e.g., crowding, substandard housing) risk factors manifested higher levels of allostatic load, a physiological marker of cumulative wear and tear on the body caused by the mobilization of multiple, physiological response systems. This effect was longitudinal, residualizing allostatic load 3-4 years earlier when the youth were in elementary school. This effect, however, occurred only among adolescents with mothers low in responsiveness. Cumulative risk was also associated with dynamic cardiovascular processes in response to an acute stressor (mental arithmetic). Higher risk was associated with muted reactivity and slower, less efficient recovery in blood pressure. These dynamic cardiovascular effects occurred irrespective of maternal responsiveness.