Do stigma and its psychosocial impact differ between Asian-born Chinese immigrants and Western-born Caucasians with head and neck cancer?

Stigma appears to influence emotional distress and well-being in cancer survivors, but cross-cultural differences have been ignored. Previous studies suggest that stigma may be especially relevant for survivors of Asian origin. However, their study designs (e.g. focused on female cancers, qualitative designs, and an absence of comparison groups) limit the strength of this conclusion. We hypothesized that (1) Asian-born Chinese immigrants (AI) would report more perceived cancer-related stigma than Western-born Caucasians (WBC); and (2) the impact of stigma on emotional distress and well-being would be greater in AI as compared to WBC. Head and neck cancer survivors (n = 118 AI and n = 404 WBC) completed measures of well-being, emotional distress, and a three-item indicator of stigma in structured interviews. The majority of respondents (59%) reported one or more indicators of stigma. Stigma correlated significantly with emotional distress (r = .13, p = .004) and well-being (r = ?.09, p = .032). Contrary to our hypotheses, WBCs and AIs did not differ in reported stigma nor did we detect differences in its psychosocial impact. Stigma exerts a deleterious psychosocial impact on head and neck cancer survivors. It did not differ significantly between AI and WBC survivors.     

Secret agents: inferences about hidden causes by 10- and 12-month-old infants

Considerable evidence indicates that preverbal infants expect that only physical contact can cause an inanimate object to move. However, very few studies have investigated infants' expectations about the source of causal power. In three experiments, we found that (a) 10- and 12-month-old infants expect a human hand, and not an inanimate object, to be the primary cause of an inanimate object's motion; (b) infants' expectations can lead them to infer a hidden causal agent without any direct perceptual evidence; and (c) infants do not infer a hidden causal agent if the moving object was previously shown to be capable of self-generated motion.     

EMA: A process model of appraisal dynamics

A computational model of emotion must explain both the rapid dynamics of some emotional reactions as well as the slower responses that follow deliberation. This is often addressed by positing multiple levels of appraisal processes such as fast pattern directed vs. slower deliberative appraisals. In our view, this confuses appraisal with inference. Rather, we argue for a single and automatic appraisal process that operates over a person’s interpretation of their relationship to the environment. Dynamics arise from perceptual and inferential processes operating on this interpretation (including deliberative and reactive processes). This article discusses current developments in a computational model of emotion processes and illustrates how a single-level model of appraisal obviates a multi-level approach within the context of modeling a naturalistic emotional situation.     

Bergmann’s dilemma: exit strategies for internalists

Michael Bergmann claims that all versions of epistemic internalism face an irresolvable dilemma. We show that there are many plausible versions of internalism that falsify this claim. First, we demonstrate that there are versions of “weak awareness internalism” that, contra Bergmann, do not succumb to the “Subject’s Perspective Objection” horn of the dilemma. Second, we show that there are versions of “strong awareness internalism” that do not fall prey to the dilemma’s “vicious regress” horn. We note along the way that these versions of internalism do not, in avoiding one horn of the dilemma, succumb to the dilemma’s other horn. The upshot is that internalists have many available strategies for avoiding dilemmatic defeat.     

Prevalence of DSM-III conduct and adjustment disorders for adolescent psychiatric inpatients

The prevalence of DSM-III conduct and adjustment disorders in two adolescent psychiatric facilities, both located near large U.S. cities, was investigated. Overall, 31.6% of the adolescent inpatients were conduct disordered while 12.5% were adjustment disordered. The conduct disorders were primarily "aggressive" subtypes suggesting that this characteristic may influence hospitalization and diagnostic decisions. Such data on prevalence assists future treatment planning, allowing anticipation of case loads.     

Selective word-learning deficits in aphasia

The purpose of this study was to determine whether patients with focal brain damage can learn anything about a new word, and if so, whether selected aspects of the new word are acquired depending on the nature of the patient's language processing deficit. In the context of drawing pictures with a number of felt pens identical in all respects except color, agrammatic Broca's aphasics and fluent aphasics were exposed to the new word "bice," an adjective referring to the dark green portion of the color spectrum. Our findings revealed that brain-damaged patients can engage in lexical acquisition, but Broca's aphasics and fluent aphasics apparently learn about different aspects of the new word. Specifically, on successive exposures to "bice," both Broca's aphasics and fluent aphasics exhibit progressively more accurate hypotheses for identifying a bice-colored object. During subsequent assessments, agrammatic aphasics reveal on a metalinguistic judgment task their significant difficulty appreciating the grammatical form class of "bice"; on an object classification task, fluent aphasics are significantly impaired in their classification of bice-colored objects as "bice." Taken together, these unique word-learning profiles reinforce earlier observation on the selective nature of language processing deficits after focal left-hemisphere insult, and support the claim that separate language processing devices may be selectively compromised in different groups of aphasics. The relationship between syntactic and lexical semantic processing is discussed.