Pharmacological and Behavioral Strategies for Smoking Cessation

After over two decades of intensive research, a variety of smoking cessation strategies, both behavioral and pharmacotherapeutic, have been developed and clinically validated. In this review, pharmacological products available for smoking cessation are profiled and examined for efficacy. Results of a recent comprehensive review and meta-analysis by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research on the effects of behavior therapy on smoking cessation are also discussed. Further, meta-analyses and studies exploring the important interaction between pharmacological and behavioral therapies are considered. Applications of the growing wealth of smoking cessation strategies are discussed with respect to the needs of some special subpopulations of smokers including highly nicotine-dependent smokers and smokers with comorbid psychiatric diagnoses.     

Interacting Constraints and the Emergence of Postural Behavior in ACL-Deficient Subjects

In this study, the authors examined how task, informational, and sensorimotor system constraints influence postural control. Postural behavior of subjects with (n = 15) and without (n = 15) a key sensorimotor system constraint, anterior cruciate ligaments (ACLs) in 1 knee, was examined during 1- and 2-legged stance with and without vision. Postural control was assessed on a commonly used postural sway meter and on a dynamic stabilometer. Data on postural sway characteristics were obtained for 30 s under 6 different conditions: standing, with eyes open and closed, on both legs, on the injured leg, and on the noninjured leg. The interaction of task, informational, and sensorimotor constraints was observed only on the dynamic stabilometer and not the postural sway meter. Vision was the most important informational constraint on postural control for subjects on the dynamic stabilometer, particularly for the ACL-deficient group standing on the injured leg. Under more static task constraints, ACL deficiency did not prove a significant disadvantage, because vision was confirmed as a significant source of exproprioceptive information. The results support the functionality of using dynamic tasks such as a stabilometer in assessing postural behavior of subjects with sensorimotor system constraints.     

Provider gender and moral reasoning: The politics of an “ethics of care”

Women constitute 35% of providers in genetics at the doctoral level. A survey of 682 geneticists in 19 nations showed that gender was the single most important determinant of ethical decision making. Women were less directive and more observant of patient autonomy than men. In the United States, women were twice as likely as men to accede to patient requests for prenatal diagnosis for sex selection. Women now constitute 30% of all medical students, about half of all obstetrical residents, and 94% of master's-level genetic counselors. Evidence that women providers respond differently to some ethical problems suggests that in the future, as more women enter the field, provider-patient relationships may become more egalitarian.     

Predictors of Sentencing Decisions: The Beliefs, Personality Variables, and Demographic Factors of Juvenile Justice

The role of beliefs, personality variables, and demographic factors in the sentencing of juvenile offenders was investigated. The subjects (1,030 members of the juvenile justice system) judged hypothetical juvenile perpetrators. Various personality, belief, and demographic variables were found to be related to sentencing severity; these relationships differed based on the type of crime judged. Further, relations among these variables and sentencing behavior indicated three coherent patterns or resonances. A liberal group of individuals, believing in rehabilitation, external causality of crime, a positive prognosis for the perpetrator, and nontraditional views of women, sentenced moderately. Two types of conservative individuals were defined. Both groups were punitive, and believed in internal causality of crime; however, they differed on attitudes toward women, needs for cognition, and beliefs about seriousness and harm. One group sentenced the most severely and the other the most leniently. Implications for the sentencing of juvenile offenders are discussed.     

Stone-Tool Use in Wild Monkeys: Implications for the Study of the Body-Plus-Tool System

Handheld tools transform the actor's body into a body-plus-tool system such that the fit of the actor's body, the tool, and the task demand channel movement in action. In this study, we performed a biomechanical analysis of percussive actions in wild bearded capuchin monkeys, Sapajus libidinosus at Fazenda Boa Vista, Brazil, as they cracked open tucum nuts with anvil-and-hammer tools from the frame of reference of the body-plus-tool system. The ratio of hammer mass to body mass—the “body-scaled hammer mass”—influenced the monkeys' actions with a hammer and their performance in cracking nuts. Both body mass and hammer mass did not independently influence the monkeys' actions with a hammer and their performance in cracking nuts. These findings support the hypothesis that the properties of the body-plus-tool system are not simply the sum of the properties of the body and the tool.     

Perception of the length of an object through dynamic touch is invariant across changes in the medium

Rotational inertia—a mechanical quantity that describes the differential resistance of an object to angular acceleration in different directions—has been shown to support perception of the properties of that object through dynamic touch (wielding). The goal of the present study was to examine if perception of the length of an object through dynamic touch depends on its rotational inertia, independent of the medium in which it is wielded. The participants (n = 14) wielded 12 different objects held in air or completely immersed in water and reported perceived lengths of those objects. Each object consisted of a rod of a particular density with a particular number of stacked steel rings attached at a particular location along its length. Perceived length was invariant across medium. In addition, a single-valued function of the major eigenvalue, I ₁, and the minor eigenvalue, I ₃, of the rotational inertia, I, of the 12 objects predicted the perceived lengths of those objects in both air and water, and the perceived lengths were invariant across the two media. These results support the hypothesis that the informational support for perception of the length of an object through dynamic touch is invariant across changes in the medium.     

Abiding by Sri Lanka Qadri Ismail's way

Qadri Ismail's book, Abiding by Sri Lanka: On Peace, Place, and Postcoloniality (2005) suggests that literary theory might help Sri Lankans re-imagine the colonial social categories and histories that underwrite their long-running conflict. Ismail also argues that the social sciences (particularly anthropology) and history fail Sri Lanka. They fail either because, like anthropology, their colonial origins render them epistemologically unable to ‘abide by’ Sri Lanka (or to see its politics as political); or because, like history, their embrace of an empiricist belief in an objectively real history betrays them into reconfirming nationalism. My article will argue that while the first part of Ismail's thesis is fascinating and useful (if a bit lacking in practical details), his claim that anthropology and history writing as such must be ‘de-authorized’ is too broad. It concludes by arguing for a cease-fire in Sri Lanka.     

Duration of auditory sensory memory in parents of children with SLI: a mismatch negativity study

In a previous behavioral study, we showed that parents of children with SLI had a subclinical deficit in phonological short-term memory. Here, we tested the hypothesis that they also have a deficit in nonverbal auditory sensory memory. We measured auditory sensory memory using a paradigm involving an electrophysiological component called the mismatch negativity (MMN). The MMN is a measure of the brain's ability to detect a difference between a frequent standard stimulus (1000 Hz tone) and a rare deviant one (1200 Hz tone). Memory effects were assessed by varying the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) between the standard and deviant. We predicted that parents of children with SLI would have a smaller MMN than parents of typically developing children at a long ISI (3000 ms), but not at a short one (800 ms). This was broadly confirmed. However, individual differences in MMN amplitude did not correlate with measures of phonological short-term memory. Attenuation of MMN amplitude at the longer ISI thus did not provide unambiguous support for the hypothesis of a reduced auditory sensory memory in parents of affected children. We conclude by reviewing possible explanations for the observed group effects.     

Facial expressions modulate the gaze orienting effect on sound localization judgement

Recent studies have shown that cueing eye gaze can affect the processing of visual information, and this phenomenon is called the gaze-orienting effect (visual-GOE). Emerging evidence has shown that the cueing eye gaze also affects the processing of auditory information (auditory-GOE). However, it is unclear whether the auditory-GOE is modulated by emotion. We conducted three behavioural experiments to investigate whether cueing eye gaze influenced the orientation judgement to a sound, and whether the effect was modulated by facial expressions. The current study set four facial expressions (angry, fearful, happy, and neutral), manipulated the display type of facial expressions, and changed the sequence of gaze and emotional expressions. Participants were required to judge the sound orientation after facial expressions and gaze cues. The results showed that the orientation judgement of sound was influenced by gaze direction in all three experiments, and the orientation judgement of sound was faster when the face was oriented to the target location (congruent trials) than when the face was oriented away from the target location (incongruent trials). The modulation of emotion on auditory-GOE was observed only when gaze shifted followed by facial expression (Exp3); the auditory-GOE was significantly greater for angry faces than for neutral faces. These findings indicate that auditory-GOE as a social phenomenon exists widely, and the effect was modulated by facial expression. Gaze shift before the presentation of emotion was the key influencing factor for the emotional modulation in an auditory target gaze-orienting task. Our findings suggest that the integration of facial expressions and eye gaze was context-dependent.