Depressive symptoms and use of perspective taking within a communicative context

Objective: The ability to take the perspective of one's conversational partner is essential for successful communication. We assessed whether individuals who report high levels of depressive symptoms have more difficulty with navigating this interpersonal task. Method: Undergraduate students participated in a computerised communication task that, on some trials, required perspective taking (N=125). Results: When participants were grouped according to their self-reported depressive symptoms, the “dysphoric group” (BDI ≥ 16, n=37) showed more errors than a “non-dysphoric group” (BDI ≤ 10, n=56) on trials requiring participants to use the perspective of the speaker, but not on control trials where perspective taking was not required. The dysphoric group demonstrated slower response times overall. Conclusions: Individuals with moderate to high levels of depressive symptoms are more challenged by using a speaker's perspective to interpret statements.     

Peer relationships and academic achievement as interacting predictors of depressive symptoms during middle childhood

This article reports a longitudinal investigation that examines academic and social difficulties as predictors of depressive symptoms during middle childhood. Participants were 199 elementary school children (M=9.1 years) who were followed for 2 consecutive school years. In both years of the project, children completed a questionnaire assessing depressive symptoms and a peer nomination inventory assessing friendships and social standing. Grade point averages (GPAs) were obtained from a review of school records. Low GPAs were predictive of depressive symptoms, but this effect did not hold for children who had numerous friends. Similarly, children who had relatively few friends tended to experience depressive symptoms. However, the effect was attenuated for children with high GPAs. Taken together, the findings suggest that competencies in 1 domain can moderate the risks associated with difficulties in the other domain.     

Impact of Panel Gene Testing for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer on Patients

Recent advances in next generation sequencing have enabled panel gene testing, or simultaneous testing for mutations in multiple genes for a clinical condition. With more extensive and widespread genetic testing, there will be increased detection of genes with moderate penetrance without established clinical guidelines and of variants of uncertain significance (VUS), or genetic variants unknown to either be disease-causing or benign. This study surveyed 232 patients who underwent genetic counseling for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer to examine the impact of panel gene testing on psychological outcomes, patient understanding, and utilization of genetic information. The survey used standardized instruments including the Impact of Event Scale (IES), Multidimensional Impact of Cancer Risk Assessment (MICRA), Satisfaction with Decision Instrument (SWD), Ambiguity Tolerance Scale (AT-20), genetics knowledge, and utilization of genetic test results. Study results suggested that unaffected individuals with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer who received positive results were most significantly impacted by intrusive thoughts, avoidance, and distress. However, scores were also modestly elevated among unaffected patients with a family history of breast and ovarian cancer who received VUS, highlighting the impact of ambiguous results that are frequent among patients undergoing genetic testing with large panels of genes. Potential risk factors for increased genetic testing-specific distress in this study included younger age, black or African American race, Hispanic origin, lower education level, and lower genetic knowledge and highlight the need for developing strategies to provide effective counseling and education to these communities, particularly when genetic testing utilizes gene panels that more commonly return VUS. More detailed pre-test education and counseling may help patients appreciate the probability of various types of test results and how results would be used clinically, and allow them to make more informed decisions about the type of genetic testing to select.     

The reference frame for encoding and retention of motion depends on stimulus set size

The goal of this study was to investigate the reference frames used in perceptual encoding and storage of visual motion information. In our experiments, observers viewed multiple moving objects and reported the direction of motion of a randomly selected item. Using a vector-decomposition technique, we computed performance during smooth pursuit with respect to a spatiotopic (nonretinotopic) and to a retinotopic component and compared them with performance during fixation, which served as the baseline. For the stimulus encoding stage, which precedes memory, we found that the reference frame depends on the stimulus set size. For a single moving target, the spatiotopic reference frame had the most significant contribution with some additional contribution from the retinotopic reference frame. When the number of items increased (Set Sizes 3 to 7), the spatiotopic reference frame was able to account for the performance. Finally, when the number of items became larger than 7, the distinction between reference frames vanished. We interpret this finding as a switch to a more abstract nonmetric encoding of motion direction. We found that the retinotopic reference frame was not used in memory. Taken together with other studies, our results suggest that, whereas a retinotopic reference frame may be employed for controlling eye movements, perception and memory use primarily nonretinotopic reference frames. Furthermore, the use of nonretinotopic reference frames appears to be capacity limited. In the case of complex stimuli, the visual system may use perceptual grouping in order to simplify the complexity of stimuli or resort to a nonmetric abstract coding of motion information.     

Performance on a measure of category fluency in cognitively impaired elderly

Measures of verbal fluency are widely used in the assessment of cognitive functioning of the elderly. However, limited research has evaluated patterns (across specific timed intervals) of performance on tasks of language fluency in different forms of dementia. The current study investigated semantic fluency in 488 elderly individuals (249 with Alzheimer's dementia, 97 Vascular dementia, 97 Mild Cognitive Impairment and 45 cognitively intact) across 15-second intervals in an animal naming task using retrospective chart review. Normal controls produced significantly more exemplars and AD patients produced fewer animal names than the other groups. After the first 15- second time interval, the demented groups produced significantly fewer exemplars than the non-demented. At the end of 30 seconds it was possible to differentiate normal aging from MCI who no longer differed from the VaD group. Overall, it appears that the greatest and most clinically meaningful differences between the diagnostic groups were detected in the first three 15-second intervals. The present findings support the use of time intervals and total scores on tasks of verbal fluency in clinical settings and for research purposes.     

Why Seemingly Trivial Events Sometimes Evoke Strong Emotional Reactions: The Role of Social Exchange Rule Violations

People sometimes display strong emotional reactions to events that appear disproportionate to the tangible magnitude of the event. Although previous work has addressed the role that perceived disrespect and unfairness have on such reactions, this study examined the role of perceived social exchange rule violations more broadly. Participants (N = 179) rated the effects of another person’s behavior on important personal outcomes, the degree to which the other person had violated fundamental rules of social exchange, and their reactions to the event. Results showed that perceptions of social exchange rule violations accounted for more variance in participants’ reactions than the tangible consequences of the event. The findings support the hypothesis that responses that appear disproportionate to the seriousness of the eliciting event are often fueled by perceived rule violations that may not be obvious to others.     

Effectiveness of Coloring Mandala Designs to Reduce Anxiety in Graduate Counseling Students

An exploration of the role that creativity can play in anxiety reduction was conducted using a quantitative study design. Participants completed the State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) before and after completing a coloring activity and results were compared. The experimental group colored a mandala design and the control group colored a blank piece of paper. This study hypothesized that partaking in the mandala coloring activity would produce a greater reduction in anxiety than coloring a blank piece of paper. Results revealed that coloring a blank piece of paper and coloring a mandala were equally effective techniques for reducing anxiety in master’s-level counseling students. Implications for the findings are discussed.     

Wenn ja,wie lange? – Dauer antiandrogener Behandlung von Sexualstraftätern mit paraphilen Störungen

Background

Since 2010 a total of 15 individually justified, therapeutically accompanied treatment-free intervals from antiandrogenic treatment (ADT) have been carried out in the Forensic Therapeutic Outpatient (FTA) department in Berlin.

Material and methods

This article describes the conditions under which a responsible and legally justifiable cessation of ADT can be carried out.

Results

In all 15 of the investigated stable, forensically rehabilitated patients who had been on long-term psychotherapeutic treatment, no criminally prognostic or clinically relevant destabilization has so far occurred, which would have necessitated cessation of the treatment-free interval with resumption of the antiandrogenic depot medication.

Conclusion

The short-term experiences from the clinical aftercare practice have so far shown that in a strictly structered aftercare setting with continuous clinical monitoring, it is possible to withdraw even long-standing antiandrogenic medication. This is important not least to attest the argumentation for a removal of supervision of conduct in case destabilization does occur. Further long-term longitudinal investigations will be the subject of later publications.

     

A Value-Added Health Systems Science Intervention Based on My Life,My Story for Patients Living with HIV and Medical Students: Translating Narrative Medicine from Classroom to Clinic

Journal of Medical Humanities - In 2018-2019, at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (KSOM), we developed and piloted a narrative-based health systems science...