Randomised trial of expressive writing for distressed metastatic breast cancer patients

Women with metastatic breast cancer and significant psychological distress (N?=?87) were assigned randomly to engage in four home-based sessions of expressive writing or neutral writing. Women in the expressive writing group wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their cancer, whereas women in the neutral writing group wrote about their daily activities in a factual manner. No statistically significant group differences in existential and psychological well-being, fatigue and sleep quality were found at 8-weeks post-writing. However, the expressive writing group reported significantly greater use of mental health services during the study than the neutral writing group (55% vs. 26%, respectively; p?<?0.05). Findings suggest that expressive writing may improve the uptake of mental health services among distressed cancer patients, but is not broadly effective as a psychotherapeutic intervention.     

COMPREHENSION MONITORING IN GOOD AND POOR READERS: EVIDENCE FROM VERBAL AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES

The present study examined the ability of second grade good and poor readers to monitor their comprehension of inconsistent texts. Comprehension monitoring was assessed by both a performance measure (underlining inconsistencies) as well as verbal measures (ratings of passage comprehensibility and liking). Because poor readers equate adequate comprehension with accurate decoding, while good reader equate adequate comprehension with accurately deriving the meaning of a text, it was expected that performance and verbal measures of comprehension monitoring would be related for good but not for poor readers. As predicted, self‐reports of comprehension and liking were highly related to the performance measure of error detection for good readers but not for poor readers. The implications of these results for assessing comprehension monitoring ability are discussed.     

The Gender Pay Gap: Challenging the Rationalizations. Perceived Equity, Discrimination, and the Limits of Human Capital Models

A gender gap in earnings has proven both persistent and universal. This paper relies mainly on U.S. data, but a gap between women’s and men’s earnings exists in every country. There is a continuing debate as to the extent to which the gap reflects merely the inevitable and reasonably fair result of differing work patterns and behaviors by women and men or the impact of employment discrimination against women. The human capital approach, in which various explanatory variables are used to shrink the perceived size of the gap, is often used to argue that much of the gap is due, not to discrimination, but to differing investments in employment by women and men. However, neither “investments” nor “outcomes” can be assessed in gender-neutral ways and the model’s underlying notion of rational choices made against the backdrop of a gender-neutral playing field is flawed. Discrimination appears to be entwined with gendered work patterns and behaviors; many of the human capital “explanatory” variables themselves require explanation. Understanding the gap requires recognition of the limitations of human capital models, and a willingness both to take a more sophisticated approach to such models, and to think beyond this approach.     

The Waiting Room: Ontological Homelessness, Sexual Synecdoche, and Queer Becoming

An autobiographical reflection on the experience of being diagnosed as intersex, this essay considers the waiting room an apt metaphor for lives shaped by medical understandings of queer corporealities. Drawing upon the work of Gayle Salamon, Malatino develops the concept of sexual synecdoche as a useful analytic tool for considering the operations of medical pathologization in the realm of non-normative gender. She concludes with a discussion of queer becoming as an alternative ontology of gendered being that offers a resistant, coalitional way beyond contemporary, problematic institutionalized understandings of intersex subjectivities.     

In the Name of Psychoanalysis: Persistent Controversies and Evolution in Psychoanalysis: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

In his book Impossible Training, Emanuel Berman stresses the historical roots of current standards of psychoanalytic training and demonstrates the persistence of controversies that have been present in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training from their inception. This perspective, of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education as evolving, encourages candidates and practitioners to be participants and creative voices in an evolving field rather than rote followers learning a trade. The author proposes ways that the transference of educators to the younger generation of psychoanalysts can facilitate or interfere with the training of candidates. Berman is applauded for shedding light on current controversies in psychoanalytic education by showing their roots in historical controversies. However, the author points out Berman's tendency to overvalue his side of the controversy rather than embrace controversy itself as in the best interest of the evolution and development of the field.     

Examining the Relationship of Substance Use and Sexual Orientation

In this article we examine the effects of self-reported sexual orientation on substance abuse. Using data on a random sample of 6,713 individuals in Washington State, this study examines causes and correlates of substance use by sexual minorities, an at-risk and treatment underserved population. Logistic regression results indicate homosexual orientation is a significant positive predictor of past year marijuana use, past year hard drug use, past year binge drinking, and lifetime alcohol addiction. Bisexual orientation is a significant predictor of past year marijuana use, past year hard drug use, and past year binge drinking. Potential causal mechanisms for these elevated patterns of substance use are discussed.     

How central are judgment and agency to epistemology?

Ernest Sosa’s Judgment and Agency marks an important change from his earlier work in epistemology. While belief was at the center of his earlier approach to epistemological issues, a far more sophisticated mental state, judgment, plays the central role here. This paper examines the significance of this change in focus, and argues that there is reason to favor the earlier belief-centered approach over this new judgment-centered account.     

Effects of outcome and trial frequency on the inverse base-rate effect

The inverse base-rate effect is a bias in contingency learning in which participants tend to predict a rare outcome for a conflicting set of perfectly predictive cues. Although the effect is often explained by attention biases during learning, inferential strategies at test may also contribute substantially to the effect. In three experiments, we manipulated the frequencies of outcomes and trial types to determine the critical conditions for the effect, thereby providing novel tests of the reasoning processes that could contribute to it. The rare bias was substantially reduced when the outcomes were experienced at equal rates in the presence of predictive-cue frequency differences (Exp. 2), and when the predictive cues were experienced at equal rates in the presence of outcome frequency differences (Exp. 3). We also found a consistent common-outcome bias for novel cue compounds. The results indicate the importance of both cue and outcome frequencies to the inverse base-rate effect, and reveal a combination of necessary conditions that are not well captured by appealing to inferential strategies at test. Although both attention-based and inferential theories explain some aspects of these data, no existing theory fully accounts for these effects of relative novelty.     

Using Participatory System Dynamics Modeling to Examine the Local HIV Test and Treatment Care Continuum in Order to Reduce Community Viral Load

Achieving community‐level goals to eliminate the HIV epidemic requires coordinated efforts through community consortia with a common purpose to examine and critique their own HIV testing and treatment (T&T) care system and build effective tools to guide their efforts to improve it. Participatory system dynamics (SD) modeling offers conceptual, methodological, and analytical tools to engage diverse stakeholders in systems conceptualization and visual mapping of dynamics that undermine community‐level health outcomes and identify those that can be leveraged for systems improvement. We recruited and engaged a 25‐member multi‐stakeholder Task Force, whose members provide or utilize HIV‐related services, to participate in SD modeling to examine and address problems of their local HIV T&T service system. Findings from the iterative model building sessions indicated Task Force members’ increasingly complex understanding of the local HIV care system and demonstrated their improved capacity to visualize and critique multiple models of the HIV T&T service system and identify areas of potential leverage. Findings also showed members’ enhanced communication and consensus in seeking deeper systems understanding and options for solutions. We discuss implications of using these visual SD models for subsequent simulation modeling of the T&T system and for other community applications to improve system effectiveness.     

Applying signal-detection theory to the study of observer accuracy and bias in behavioral assessment

We evaluated the feasibility and utility of a laboratory model for examining observer accuracy within the framework of signal-detection theory (SDT). Sixty-one individuals collected data on aggression while viewing videotaped segments of simulated teacher-child interactions. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to determine if brief feedback and contingencies for scoring accurately would bias responding reliably. Experiment 2 focused on one variable (specificity of the operational definition) that we hypothesized might decrease the likelihood of bias. The effects of social consequences and information about expected behavior change were examined in Experiment 3. Results indicated that feedback and contingencies reliably biased responding and that the clarity of the definition only moderately affected this outcome.