Characteristics of patients in routine psycho-oncological care,and changes in outcome variables during and after their treatment

Objective: The primary aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of clients and interventions in routine psycho-oncological care. The secondary aim was to determine the course of symptomatology during and after the psychological interventions.

Design: During a period of nine months, all clients who sought help in one of the seven psycho-oncological care institutes in the Netherlands were approached to participate in the present study (N = 483). Information was gathered with respect to demographic and medical characteristics, and type and duration of the interventions. In addition, depression, anxiety, well-being, quality of life, fatigue and daily function were determined before interventions and three and nine months later.

Results and conclusions: Compared to the Dutch cancer population, patients in psycho-oncological care were more often young and female. Compared to the general Dutch population, they were highly educated and were more likely to have a partner. Clinical levels of depression, anxiety and/or fatigue were found among 83% of the patients. After three months, only 23% had completed their intervention; this figure was 62% after nine months. Symptoms decreased significantly for all outcome variables. An importance difference with randomised controlled trials is the low session frequency and the long intervention time of patients in clinical care.     

The Metaverse: A new digital frontier for consumer behavior

This work offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the Metaverse, focusing on its potential implications for consumer behavior. We begin by proposing a conceptualization of the Metaverse as being uniquely defined by the convergence of five key elements—it is digitally mediated, spatial, immersive, shared, and operates in real-time. We then discuss how these components might collectively alter our understanding of consumer behavior in three domains: consumer identity, social influence, and ownership. We conclude by outlining an agenda for future research to help broaden our understanding of the Metaversal marketplace and its impact on consumer behavior. This work serves as a starting point to characterize a shift that is unfolding in the marketplace and to consider, through a consumer behavior lens, the numerous changes it may bring.     

Becoming a high‐fidelity – super – imitator: what are the contributions of social and individual learning?

In contrast to other primates, human children's imitation performance goes from low to high fidelity soon after infancy. Are such changes associated with the development of other forms of learning? We addressed this question by testing 215 children (26–59 months) on two social conditions (imitation, emulation) – involving a demonstration – and two asocial conditions (trial‐and‐error, recall) – involving individual learning – using two touchscreen tasks. The tasks required responding to either three different pictures in a specific picture order (Cognitive: Airplane→Ball→Cow) or three identical pictures in a specific spatial order (Motor‐Spatial: Up→Down→Right). There were age‐related improvements across all conditions and imitation, emulation and recall performance were significantly better than trial‐and‐error learning. Generalized linear models demonstrated that motor‐spatial imitation fidelity was associated with age and motor‐spatial emulation performance, but cognitive imitation fidelity was only associated with age. While this study provides evidence for multiple imitation mechanisms, the development of one of those mechanisms – motor‐spatial imitation – may be bootstrapped by the development of another social learning skill – motor‐spatial emulation. Together, these findings provide important clues about the development of imitation, which is arguably a distinctive feature of the human species.     

Orthographic vs. phonologic syllables in handwriting production

French children program the words they write syllable by syllable. We examined whether the syllable the children use to segment words is determined phonologically (i.e., is derived from speech production processes) or orthographically. Third, 4th and 5th graders wrote on a digitiser words that were mono-syllables phonologically (e.g. barque = [baRk]) but bi-syllables orthographically (e.g. barque = bar.que). These words were matched to words that were bi-syllables both phonologically and orthographically (e.g. balcon = [bal.kõ] and bal.con). The results on letter stroke duration and fluency yielded significant peaks at the syllable boundary for both types of words, indicating that the children use orthographic rather than phonological syllables as processing units to program the words they write.     

An aphasia database on the internet: a model for computer-assisted analysis in aphasiology

A web-based software model was developed as an example for data mining in aphasiology. It is used for educating medical and engineering students. It is based upon a database of 254 aphasic patients which contains the diagnosis of the aphasia type, profiles of an aphasia test battery (Aachen Aphasia Test), and some further clinical information. In addition, the cerebral lesion profiles of 147 of these cases were standardized by transferring the coordinates of the lesions to a 3D reference brain based upon the ACPC coordinate system. Two artificial neural networks were used to perform a classification of the aphasia type. First, a coarse classification was achieved by using an assessment of spontaneous speech of the patient which produced correct results in 87% of the test cases. Data analysis tools were used to select four features of the 30 available test features to yield a more accurate diagnosis. This classifier produced correct results in 92% of the test cases. The neural network approach is similar to grouping performed in group studies, while the nearest-neighbor method shows a design more similar to case studies. It finds the neurolinguistic and the lesion data of patients whose AAT profiles are most similar to the user's input. This way lesion profiles can be compared to each other interindividually. The Aphasia Diagnoser is available on the Web address http://fuzzy.iau.dtu.dk/aphasia.nsf and thus should facilitate a discussion about the reliability and possibilities of data-mining techniques in aphasiology.     

A Cross‐National Comparison of Suicide Attempts,Drug Use,and Depressed Mood Among Dominican Youth

We compared suicide attempts, depressed mood, and drug use of 1,710 Dominican public high school students in New York City (NYC) and 9,573 in the Dominican Republic (DR) in 2009. Compared to DR Dominicans, NYC Dominicans were more likely to have reported lifetime marijuana use (27.6% vs. 1.5%), lifetime inhalant use (11.0% vs. 7.6%), lifetime other drug use (9.9% vs. 3.0%), depressed mood (31.3% vs. 27.2%), and suicide attempt (13.8% vs. 8.8%). The results of this study supported the hypothesis that substantial increases in illicit drug use, especially cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and methamphetamines, among NYC Dominican youth account for their increased risk for suicide attempts compared to their DR Dominican counterparts. It also identified suicide attempts as a public health problem among NYC Dominicans, the largest NYC Latino immigrant population.