Emergent Values and the Experience of Aging

This study examined the role of values or guiding principles emerging from the life histories and reflections of 111 older adults as predictors of the experience of aging. Participants completed a detailed life history interview in which they described themselves on 10 major life dimensions. They also completed standardized questionnaires of well-being, personality traits, and intolerance of uncertainty. Participants expressed a mix of prosocial and self-interest values in their interviews. Multiple regression analyses indicated that social support and intolerance of uncertainty positively predicted the extent of values articulated in the interviews. Better quality of aging was predicted positively by extent of emergent values and greater well-being and negatively by age. The results indicate that an examination of values provides a unique contribution to the understanding of the experience of aging.     

Decision-Making About Inherited Cancer Risk: Exploring Dimensions of Genetic Responsibility

Since genetic information has implications for family members, some choices about genetic risk may be influenced by perceptions of responsibility to relatives. Drawing upon 25 semi-structured interviews with test recipients in Canada, this study explored decisions about inherited breast-ovarian and colon cancer. Qualitative data analysis revealed the pervasive significance of genetic responsibility in test decisions. We highlight three dimensions of genetic responsibility: 1) to know about the self for self; 2) to know about the self for others; 3) to know about the self to oblige others to know. It is argued that these dimensions of genetic responsibility have implications for test decisions, family relationships and other family members’ desire to know (or not know) and to act (or not act) with respect to their own genetic risk. In particular, genetic responsibility may play out as a framing of a relative’s moral obligation to know their risk that could obviate any interest they might have in not knowing. We conclude that perceptions of responsibility to—and of−other family members be thoroughly explored in genetic counseling sessions.     

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT MEMORY FOR HAPTICALLY EXPERIENCED TWO-DIMENSIONAL PATTERNS

Abstract— Recent research with visual objects has delineated important representational differences between memory measures that tap identification (implicit tests) and measures that require episodic recognition (explicit tests). We investigated whether these differences reflect a fundamental architecture for the representation of object information in memory. In the present experiment, we contrasted identification and episodic recognition for haptically presented two-dimensional patterns. Haptic identification was not affected by elaborative processing at study, whereas haptic episodic recognition was enhanced by elaborative processing. This finding suggests important similarities in the organization of object information in the visual and haptic modalities.     

Complexities in Cancer Risk Counseling: Presentation of Three Cases

Complexities abound in the identification and management of families at increased risk for inherited forms of cancer. One of the ways to learn as a profession how best to provide cancer risk counseling (CRC) is to share counseling experiences. Such cases can provide insight into the issues raised by families and ways in which genetic counselors have handled complex situations. Here we describe three CRC cases initially presented at the 1995 American College of Medical Genetics meeting. The first case involves balancing the importance of informing a family of the presence of an inherited cancer syndrome with the family's right not to know. The second case illustrates the difficulties in assisting an individual to make medical management decisions in the face of uncertain risk information. The third case describes the complex interactions with a woman before and after her decision to have prophylactic surgery. (affiliated with Long Beach Memorial Breast Center at the time of counseling)     

Children's use ofGet passives

Children's use ofget in passivelike constructions was examined in this study. Fifty-eight children at three age levels were tested twice on imitation, comprehension, and production tasks. For the imitation and comprehension tasks, passive sentences withget were modeled in one instance and withbe in the other instance. On both tasks, children performed significantly better on theget items than on thebe items. For the production tasks, active sentences were used as the experimental stimuli. Among 928 production responses possible, children produced 423get passives and 6be passives. The frequency ofget passives increased with increasing age. Qualitative analyses were performed to determine agerelated changes in the pattern of linguistic strategies chosen. These data were consistent with predictions derived from a model of lexical directionality: Children used moreget thanbe passives and more truncated than full passives.     

Information processing analysis of the Chevreul pendulum illusion.

An information processing investigation was performed to quantify the Chevreul pendulum effect: the tendency of a small pendulum, when suspended from the hand and imaginatively concentrated on, to oscillate seemingly of its own accord. Using a time exposure photographic measurement technique, electronically automated visual and auditory imaginal prompts were presented to the subject during imaginal processing tasks. It was found that the pendulum effect was enhanced when vision of actual pendulum oscillations was permitted and visual or auditory spatially oscillating stimuli were present. Visual spatially oscillating stimuli were superior to their auditory counterparts. Results were discussed in terms of ideomotor and visual capture interpretations of signal and imaginal processing.     

Prismatically induced curvature and finger-tracking pressure changes in a visual capture phenomenon

A method was developed to help elucidate the manner in which vision exerts a dominant influence over other sources of sensory information. Subjects were required to track a horizontal straight edge with their forefingers while viewing the movements of their limbs through a curve-inducing lens. Finger tracking pressure changes along the edge were transduced and monitored as a function of induced curvature orientation (convex-down, convex-up). Findings showed that greater pressure occurred when the finger was located at the low point(s) of the apparent curvature. A trend analysis indicated that the obtained pressure profiles (passive proprioception) contained large quadratic components and were exactly opposite in orientation to the shape of the visual image and subjects’ reported felt curvature of the straight edge. Results were discussed in terms of central and peripheral interpretations of visual capture.     

Visual recognition memory for complex configurations

Previous studies of recognition memory for heterogeneous pictorial stimuli suggest an unusually large storage and retrieval capacity. In the first experiment, three series of homogeneous pictures (faces, ink blots, snow crystals) were presented to six independent groups of Ss, and recognition was tested immediately or 48 h later. Accuracy and sex were related to stimulus configuration; at both time intervals, accuracy was best for faces and poorest for snow crystals. Levels of accuracy were below those attained in studies using heterogeneous arrays. The results of two other experiments suggest the relative unimportance of verbal mediation in recognition of homogeneous pictorial stimuli.