Associations amongst disease severity,religious coping and depression in a cohort of Jamaicans with sickle-cell disease

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between disease severity (sickle-cell type and hospital, emergency room and clinic emergency visits (CEU)), religious coping (positive and negative) and depression. This was accomplished through secondary analysis of a data set based on a Comprehensive Sickle Cell Standardized Questionnaire compiled by a multidisciplinary team of professionals from Duke University Medical Centre, and administered to persons with sickle-cell disease being treated at the Sickle Cell Unit on the University of the West Indies Campus between November 2008 and January 2009. Disease severity was not a good predictor of depression within the population. On the other hand, depression was found to correlate with positive and negative religious coping, such that increases in the former were associated with decreases in depression scores; while the reverse was noted for the latter (negative religious coping). The results shed light on issues that could possibly impact the treatment plan for such individuals.     

Automatic Behavior – Its Social Embedding and Individual Consequences

Automatic behavior, that is, the non‐conscious activation of perceiver behavior by social category priming, has undergone considerable development in the recent years. While initial effects pointed to often rather surprising effects that could be characterized as imitation of the behavior of the social category itself, current research unfolds a much more complex picture. Not only imitative behavior but, contrasting, also response behavior is getting activated. Response behavior is fundamentally different from imitation and contrast and denotes behavior that is directed toward the social category out of the action ecology of the perceiver. Furthermore, boundary conditions have been established and could reveal that motivation (goals) and social context modulate the selection of specific automatic responses. Most recent findings reveal that social category priming embedded in context also modulates visual attention patterns pertaining to means functional for the response behavior. Similar to the increased complexity of findings, the proposed underlying explanatory models have developed in comprehensiveness. Taken together, automatic behavior now has to be seen as a valid form of social influence, and its benefits and pitfalls are further to be investigated.     

国际多中心药物临床试验中伦理审查的问题与对策——以广州医学院第一附属医院为例

通过分析近三年来56例国际多中心药物临床试验伦理审查项目,总结分析常见的问题为试验版本与主办国家规定有出入;知情同意书经过翻译后存在较大的理解偏差;临床试验样本转移潜在风险;补偿标准较随意;不同单位间伦理审查意见不统一等,并有针对性地提出建议,实施严格、规范的伦理审查,进而在保证临床试验的科学性的同时最大限度地保障受试者的权益.     

小骨窗开颅治疗高血压脑出血的研究

研究显微镜下小骨畜开颅脑出血清除术治疗高血压脑出血的临床疗效.所有高血压脑出血患者均应用显微镜下小骨窗开颅血肿清除术.术后随访半年以上,统计患者血肿清除率及治疗有效率.结果显示,Ⅰ级31.1％,Ⅱ级37.8％,Ⅲ级8.9％,Ⅳ级13.3％,V级8.9％,临床有效率为80.0％.显微镜下小骨窗开颅血肿清除术具有视野直接清楚、血肿清除彻底、减压充分、创伤小等优点,是治疗高血压脑出血的一种理想措施.     

The recognized benefits of negative thinking/affect in depression and anxiety: Developing a scale

Negative thinking/affect (NTA) in depression and anxiety is an important target of clinical intervention. However, individuals recognize the benefit of NTA. There is a need to develop a scale for empirical studies of NTA. Two‐hundred and fifty‐nine Japanese university students were assigned to answer: (a) the state in the past week (positive affect (PA) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale), (b) the current state (PA and State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory‐State (STAI‐S)), and (c) the usual state (PA and STAI‐Trait), after completing the Recognized Benefit of NTA Scale (RBNTA). Another 291 students completed the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale and the Revised Life Orientation Test, after completing the RBNTA. Two weeks later, 76 participants completed the RBNTA. The RBNTA with nine subscales was developed after comparing the indices of fitness from 14 different factor solutions. The internal and test‐retest reliability and content validity were confirmed. Correlation analyses revealed that the recognition of trying to obtain benefits/avoid costs tends to associate with positive/negative affect and that most of such recognitions did not associate with self‐esteem and optimism.     

Counterfactual and Factual Reflection: The Influence of Past Misdeeds on Future Immoral Behavior

Though the decision to behave immorally is situated within the context of prior immoral behavior, research has provided contradictory insights into this process. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that the effects of prior immoral behavior depend on how individuals think about, or reflect on, their immoral behavior. In Experiment 1, participants who reflected counterfactually on their prior moral lapses morally disengaged (i.e., rationalized) less than participants who reflected factually. In Experiment 2, participants who reflected counterfactually on their prior moral lapses experienced more guilt than those who reflected factually. Finally, in Experiments 3 and 4, participants who reflected counterfactually lied less on unrelated tasks with real monetary stakes than those who reflected factually. Our studies provide important insights into moral rationalization and moral compensation processes and demonstrate the profound influence of reflection in everyday moral life.     

Embodied Information in Cognitive Tasks: Haptic Weight Sensations Affect Task Performance and Processing Style

Research in the field of embodied cognition showed that incidental weight sensations influence peoples’ judgments about a variety of issues and objects. Most studies found that heaviness compared to lightness increases the perception of importance, seriousness, and potency. In two experiments, we broadened this scope by investigating the impact of weight sensations on cognitive performance. In Experiment 1, we found that the performance in an anagram task was reduced when participants held a heavy versus a light clipboard in their hands. Reduced performance was accompanied by an increase in the perceived effort. In Experiment 2, a heavy clipboard elicited a specific response heuristic in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Participants showed a significant right side bias when holding a heavy clipboard in their hands. After the task, participants in the heavy clipboard condition reported to be more frustrated than participants in the light clipboard condition. In both experiments, we did not find evidence for mediated effects that had been proposed by previous literature. Overall, the results indicate that weight effects go beyond judgment formation and highlight new avenues for future research.     

Chemical and Biological Weapons in the ‘New Wars’

The strategic use of disease and poison in warfare has been subject to a longstanding and cross-cultural taboo that condemns the hostile exploitation of poisons and disease as the act of a pariah. In short, biological and chemical weapons are simply not fair game. The normative opprobrium is, however, not fixed, but context dependent and, as a social phenomenon, remains subject to erosion by social (or more specifically, antisocial) actors. The cross cultural understanding that fighting with poisons and disease is reprehensible, that they are taboo, is codified through a web of interconnected measures, principal amongst these are the 1925 Geneva Protocol; the Biological Weapons Convention; and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Whilst these treaties have weathered the storm of international events reasonably well, their continued health is premised on their being ‘tended to’ in the face of contextual changes, particularly facing changes in science and technology, as well as the changed nature and character of conflict. This article looks at the potential for normative erosion of the norm against chemical and biological weapons in the face of these contextual changes and the creeping legitimization of chemical and biological weapons.     

“Making it explicit” makes a difference: Evidence for a dissociation of spontaneous and intentional level 1 perspective taking in high-functioning autism

The ability of perspective taking is a fundamental aspect of social cognition. The ability to decide, what another person can or cannot see is referred to as “level 1 perspective taking.” This is thought to be a process that we can make use of intentionally, but which also takes place spontaneously. Autism is characterized by impairments of social interaction, which are thought to be related to deficits in implicit rather than explicit perspective taking. In order to assess both levels of processing with regard to perspective taking, we employed an established task in patients and controls. Our results demonstrate that both groups engage in spontaneous level 1 perspective taking. In contrast to controls, however, patients reacted more slowly if they had to verify the other’s as compared to their own perspective, which shows that participants with high-functioning autism have selective difficulties in explicit, but not implicit, level 1 perspective taking. These findings demonstrate that while spontaneous level 1 perspective taking appears to be intact in autism, this ability is impaired in patients when used explicitly.