Group interventions for patients with cancer and HIV disease: part IV. Clinical and policy recommendations

Group interventions have assumed a growing role in primary prevention and supportive care for cancer and HIV disease. Earlier sections of this Special Report examined empirical findings for these interventions and provided recommendations for future research. The current section offers brief recommendations for service providers, policymakers, and stakeholders. Group services now occupy an increasingly prominent place in primary prevention programs and medical settings. In previous sections of this Special Report (Sherman, Leszcz et al., 2004; Sherman, Mosier et al., 2004a, 2004b) we examined the efficacy of different group interventions at different phases of cancer or HIV disease, considered characteristics of the intervention and the participants that might influence outcomes, and discussed mechanisms of action. Methodological challenges and priorities for future research were highlighted. In this, the final section, we offer brief recommendations for service providers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. We consider some of the barriers that constrain use of empirically-based group interventions and note how these programs might be implemented more widely and effectively.     

Psychological entitlement: interpersonal consequences and validation of a self-report measure

Nine studies were conducted with the goal of developing a self-report measure of psychological entitlement and assessing its interpersonal consequences. The Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES) was found to be reliable and valid (Study 1, 2), not associated with social desirability (Study 2), stable across time (Study 3), and correlated negatively with two of the Big Five factors: agreeableness and emotional stability (Study 4). The validity of the PES was confirmed in studies that assessed willingness to take candy designated for children (Study 5) and reported deservingness of pay in a hypothetical employment setting (Study 6). Finally, the PES was linked to important interpersonal consequences including competitive choices in a commons dilemma (Study 7), selfish approaches to romantic relationships (Study 8), and aggression following ego threat (Study 9). Psychological entitlement has a pervasive and largely unconstructive impact on social behavior.     

Action verbal fluency normative data for the elderly

An emerging body of literature points to the prominent role of the frontal lobes in the retrieval of verbs, whereas production of common and proper nouns arguably is mediated primarily by posterior and anterior temporal regions, respectively. Although the majority of studies examining the neuroanatomic distinctions between verb and noun retrieval have relied on action naming tasks (naming depicted activities, e.g., running) as indicators of verb retrieval abilities, recent studies have utilized an action (verb) verbal fluency measure, the Action Fluency Test (AFT), to assess verb retrieval. Findings from these studies suggest that action fluency is sensitive to the integrity of fronto-subcortical neural circuitry and that it is a valid measure of executive and language functions. The AFT is an easily administered executive function measure, but no normative data for the AFT or other action fluency tasks has been published. This study was undertaken to provide initial AFT normative data for a sample of 145 healthy elderly subjects. As education is significantly correlated with AFT scores, the normative data are stratified by educational level.     

Responses of white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus) to naturalistic and experimentally presented food-associated calls

In the context of foraging, many animal species produce specific calls that attract others. Researchers hypothesize that these vocalizations function to inform others about food; however, few studies have investigated whether food-associated calls alone are sufficient to cause individuals to respond as if they have been informed about food. Playback experiments on white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus) investigated whether listeners could infer the presence of food merely by hearing food-associated calls. Recipients looked significantly longer toward the call source and approached the speaker more often after hearing food-associated calls, as compared with control calls. Because these responses are not indicative of feeding, it is unclear whether listeners associated the calls with food. Nonetheless, these responses, specific to food-associated calls, may increase individuals' chances of finding food.     

A test of the generality of perceptually based categories found in infants: attentional differences toward natural kinds by New World monkeys

A preference to novelty paradigm used to study human infants (Quinn, 2002) examined attention to novel animal pictures at subordinate, basic and superordinate levels in tamarins. First, pairs of pictures were presented in phases, starting with a monkey species (subordinate level) and ending with mammal and dinosaur sets (superordinate levels). After each phase, tests paired novel pictures from the familiarized set with a novel broader category. Look rates toward each picture were coded. Tamarins looked significantly longer at a novel species after being familiarized with a monkey species, a species-specific effect. Subjects attended equivalently to novel primate species after habituation to four monkey species, but looked significantly longer at pictures of mammals, marking a more global-level inclusion and exclusion. Superordinate testing revealed that more novel and diverse sets were differentiated attentionally. The evidence implies that natural categorical representation occurs at an attentional level in primates in ways similar to human infants, and is affected by recent exposure and category variability.     

Clocks,Creation and Clarity: Insights on Ethics and Economics from a Feminist Perspective

This essay discusses the origins, biases, and effects on contemporary discussions of economics and ethics of the unexamined use of the metaphor an economy is a machine. Both neoliberal economics and many critiques of capitalist systems take this metaphor as their starting point. The belief that economies run according to universal laws of motion, however, is shown to be based on a variety of rationalist thinking that – while widely held – is inadequate for explaining lived human experience. Feminist scholarship in the philosophy of science and economics has brought to light some of the biases that have supported the mechanistic worldview. Possible alternatives to the an economy is a machine include an economy is a creative process and an economy is an organism. Such metaphors are intellectually defensible as guides to scientific inquiry and provide a richer ground for moral imagination.     

Effects of September 11 on patients with obsessive compulsive disorder

Effects of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA were investigated in 25 patients with obsessive compulsive disorder and 27 normal controls 4-6 months after the attacks. Participants completed a 15-item questionnaire to retrospectively assess changes in mood, cognition, behavior and somatic complaints since September 11, 2001. Overall, both patients with obsessive compulsive disorder and normal controls reported minor changes in mood, behavior and somatic complaints. However, normal controls reported severe to extreme initial impact, slightly more cognitive symptoms (uncertainty about the future, intrusive recollections and greater desire to be with loved ones) and a slightly greater degree of overall impact on emotion and behavior at 1, 2 and 3 months after September 11 than did patients with obsessive compulsive disorder. Results support previous research that has found a relatively minor lasting impact of September 11 on both clinical and normal populations. Differences in cognition and coping mechanisms between normal controls and patients with obsessive compulsive disorder are proposed.     

The effects of varying levels of treatment integrity on child compliance during treatment with a three-step prompting procedure

The effects of three levels of treatment integrity (100%, 50%, and 0%) on child compliance were evaluated in the context of the implementation of a three-step prompting procedure. Two typically developing preschool children participated in the study. After baseline data on compliance to one of three common demands were collected, a therapist implemented the three-step prompting procedure at three different integrity levels. One integrity level was associated with each demand. The effects of the integrity levels were examined using multielement designs. The results indicate that compliance varied according to the level of treatment integrity that was in place.     

Hot or not: do professors perceived as physically attractive receive higher student evaluations?

Previous research investigating the influence of perceived physical attractiveness on student evaluations of college professors has been limited to a handful of studies. In this study, the authors used naturally occurring data obtained from the publicly available Web site www.ratemyprofessors.com. The data suggested that professors perceived as attractive received higher student evaluations when compared with those of a nonattractive control group (matched for department and gender). Results were consistent across 4 separate universities. Professors perceived as attractive received student evaluations about 0.8 of a point higher on a 5-point scale. Exploratory analyses indicated benefits of perceived attractiveness for both male and female professors. Although this study has all the limitations of naturalistic research, it adds a study with ecological validity to the limited literature.     

Resistance to extinction following variable-interval reinforcement: reinforcer rate and amount

Rats obtained food-pellet reinforcers by nose poking a lighted key. Experiment 1 examined resistance to extinction following single-schedule training with different variable-interval schedules, ranging from a mean interval of 16 min to 0.25 min. That is, for each schedule, the rats received 20 consecutive daily baseline sessions and then a session of extinction (i.e., no reinforcers). Resistance to extinction (decline in response rate relative to baseline) was negatively related to the rate of reinforcers obtained during baseline, a relation analogous to the partial-reinforcement-extinction effect. A positive relation between these variables emerged, however, when the unit of extinction was taken as the mean interreinforcer interval that had been in effect during training (i.e., as an omitted reinforcer during extinction). In a second experiment, rats received blocks of training sessions, all with the same variable-interval schedule but with a reinforcer of four pellets for some blocks and one pellet for others. Resistance to extinction was greater following training with the larger (four pellets) than with the smaller (one pellet) reinforcer. Taken together, these results support the principle that greater reinforcement during training (e.g., higher rate or larger amount) engenders greater resistance to extinction even when the different conditions of reinforcement are varied between blocks of sessions.