If We Build It … Will They Come? – Establishing a Cancer Genetics Services Clinic for an Underserved Predominantly Latina Cohort

Background: Cancer genetic counseling and testing is a standard of care option for appropriate families and can identify individuals at increased risk prior to diagnosis, when prevention or detection strategies are most effective. Despite documented efficacy of cancer risk reduction in high-risk individuals, underserved and minority individuals have a disproportionate cancer burden and limited access to genetic counseling. Methods: A needs assessment survey documented gaps in knowledge and interest in prevention. Satellite clinics were established at two indigent healthcare systems. Cancer genetics CME lectures were conducted and referral guidelines disseminated to clinicians who referred patients for counseling. Results: An increase in clinician knowledge was demonstrated post-CME and reflected by quality referrals. Eighty-eight percent of patients kept their appointments. In the predominantly Latina⁶ (n=77) clinic population, 71.4% were affected with cancer, and 17 mutation positive families were identified. Preliminary data shows a positive impact on patients' motivation and behavior. The majority has expressed satisfaction and reduction in anxiety. Conclusions: This study demonstrates feasibility and acceptability of cancer genetics services in this population, suggesting the potential to reduce cancer morbidity in underserved, high-risk families.“Latino” is the most common census term for individuals of Spanish, Mexican, Central and South American, Cuban, or Puerto Rican descent, referring to ethnicity, and is generally considered a more ethnically/culturally based term for individuals of the aforementioned groups. As this cohort is female the feminine noun “Latina” is used     

Language and the perception of emotion

Three studies assessed the relationship between language and the perception of emotion. The authors predicted and found that the accessibility of emotion words influenced participants' speed or accuracy in perceiving facial behaviors depicting emotion. Specifically, emotion words were either primed or temporarily made less accessible using a semantic satiation procedure. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were slower to categorize facial behaviors depicting emotion (i.e., a face depicting anger) after an emotion word (e.g., "anger") was satiated. In Study 3, participants were less accurate to categorize facial behaviors depicting emotion after an emotion word was satiated. The implications of these findings for a linguistically relative view of emotion perception are discussed.     

Social Work Education in Suicide Intervention and Prevention: An Unmet Need?

Research shows that social work graduate programs offer little education in suicide prevention and intervention, yet social workers' experiences and attitudes regarding suicide education are unknown. This Web-based survey of 598 social workers found that almost all respondents had worked with at least one suicidal client, but most received little, if any, training in suicide prevention or intervention while in graduate school. Respondents largely viewed their social work program's training in suicide prevention and intervention as inadequate. Implications for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Does longer job tenure help or hinder job performance?

There are two competing theoretical perspectives on how job tenure might affect job performance. Human capital theory suggests that as knowledge and skill increase with greater tenure, job performance will improve as well. In contrast, the literature on job design suggests that as job tenure increases, employees are likely to become more bored and less motivated at work. Consequently, the gains from human capital acquisition might be offset by losses of motivation. To examine these competing perspectives, we conducted meta-analyses on the relationships of job tenure with four types of job performance: core task performance, citizenship behavior, creativity and innovative behavior, and counterproductive work behavior. The results support the second perspective, as both the linear and curvilinear relationships of job tenure with the four types of job performance are weak. Further, the results do not change in strength across type of research design, job industry, age, or gender.     

Context and Prior Impression Effects on Attention, Judgment Standards, and Ratings: Contrast Effects Revisited

The present study extended research on contrast effects by (a) examining the effect of context performances on ratings of a target performance when a prior impression of the target performer already exists, and (b) clarifying the issue of whether contrast is caused by attention to context-discrepant behavior or shifts in judgment standards. The results demonstrated that the existence of a prior impression mitigates the influence of context performances on ratings. Judgment standards were found to be unstable and dependent on information provided to raters by the experimental manipulations. Regression analyses showed that both attention and standards of judgment mediate the relationship between context and ratings. Implications of these findings for contrast effects, performance ratings, and the importance of reliable judgment standards for real-world performance appraisals are discussed.     

Mediation in a sibling context: the relations of older siblings' mediating behaviour and younger siblings' task performance

We investigated the sibling relationship as a context for cognitive development. Forty preschoolers (ages 5–6) and their younger siblings (ages 2–3) were visited at home. Four games were presented to the older siblings and they were asked (a) to estimate how well their younger sibling will perform on each game and (b) to teach the younger sibling how to use the games. The older siblings' mediating behaviours during the teaching session and the younger siblings' performance on the four tasks were coded. The frequency of mediating behaviours—including attention focusing, amplifying affect and providing meaning, fostering a sense of competence, regulating of the learning process, de‐contextualization, and negative feedback in the form of mocking and laughing at errors, predicted the younger siblings' task performance. The older sibling's accurate perception of the younger child's competence was uniquely predictive of task performance. The highest amount of mediation was observed in older‐brother–younger‐brother pairs, in particular the behaviours of negative feedback and amplifying affect. Results contribute to the discussion on the role of siblings as moderators of cognitive development and are discussed in terms of Vygotsky's cultural–historical perspective on apprenticeship. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism

Fifty years after the publication of The Authoritarian Personality, the empirical literature on authoritarianism continues to grow even though there is no widely accepted theory to account for the phenomenon. The absence of a secure theoretical grounding severely limits our understanding of authoritarianism. This paper offers a new conceptualization in which authoritarian predispositions originate in the conflict between the values of social conformity and personal autonomy. Prejudice and intolerance should be observed among those who value social conformity and perceive a threat to social cohesion. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of undergraduate students; the questionnaire included new measures of the dimension of social conformity–autonomy as well as items from Altemeyer's RWA (right–wing authoritarianism) scale.