Teachers’ perceptions of middle schoolers’ social concerns: strategies and barriers to supporting students’ social success

Social Psychology of Education - Teachers are often at the forefront of efforts to help students struggling socially at school and their support may be particularly critical during the early...     

Cigarette graphic warning labels increase both risk perceptions and smoking myth endorsement

Objective: Cigarette graphic warning labels elicit negative emotion, which increases risk perceptions through multiple processes. We examined whether this emotion simultaneously affects motivated cognitions like smoking myth endorsement (e.g. ‘exercise can undo the negative effects of smoking’) and perceptions of cigarette danger versus other products.

Design: 736 adult and 469 teen smokers/vulnerable smokers viewed one of three warning label types (text-only, low emotion graphic or high emotion graphic) four times over two weeks.

Main outcome measures: Emotional reactions to the warnings were reported during the first and fourth exposures. Participants reported how often they considered the warnings, smoking myth endorsement, risk perceptions and perceptions of cigarette danger relative to smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes.

Results: In structural equation models, emotional reactions influenced risk perceptions and smoking myth endorsement through two processes. Emotion acted as information about risk, directly increasing smoking risk perceptions and decreasing smoking myth endorsement. Emotion also acted as a spotlight, motivating consideration of the warning information. Warning consideration increased risk perceptions, but also increased smoking myth endorsement. Emotional reactions to warnings decreased perceptions of cigarette danger relative to other products.

Conclusions: Emotional reactions to cigarette warnings increase smoking risk perceptions, but also smoking myth endorsement and misperceptions that cigarettes are less dangerous than potentially harm-reducing tobacco products.     

Development and Evaluation of a Telephone Communication Protocol for the Delivery of Personalized Melanoma Genomic Risk to the General Population

Communicating personalized genomic risk results for common diseases to the general population as a form of tailored prevention is novel and may require alternative genetic counseling service delivery models. We describe the development and evaluation of a communication protocol for disclosing melanoma genomic risk information to the asymptomatic general population and assess participants’ satisfaction and acceptability. Participants (n?=?117) were aged 22–69 years, living in New South Wales, Australia and unselected for family history. They provided a saliva sample and had genomic testing for melanoma for low to moderate penetrant melanoma susceptibility variants in 21 genes. Participants could choose to receive their results from a genetic counselor via telephone, followed by a mailed booklet or to receive their risk result via mailed booklet only with a follow-up call for those at high risk. A follow-up questionnaire was completed by 85% of participants 3-months later. Most participants (80%) elected to receive their result via telephone. Participants were highly satisfied with the delivery of results (mean 3.4 out of 4, standard deviation 0.5), and this did not differ by delivery mode, risk category, age or sex. On follow-up, 75% accurately recalled their risk category, 6% indicated a preference for a different delivery mode, either electronic or face-to-face. The process of disclosing genomic risk results to the general population over the telephone with accompanying written material was feasible and acceptable, and may be useful for communicating polygenic risk for common diseases in the context of increasing demands for genomic testing.     

Managing Variant Interpretation Discrepancies in Hereditary Cancer: Clinical Practice,Concerns, and Desired Resources

Variant interpretation is a complex process, and classification may vary between sources. This study aimed to determine the practice of cancer genetic counselors regarding discrepancies in variant interpretation and to identify concerns when counseling these discrepancies. An electronic survey was sent to genetic counselors in the NSGC Cancer Special Interest Group. The vast majority of counselors (93%) had seen a variant interpretation discrepancy in practice. A large majority (96%) of respondents indicated that they conducted their own research on reported variants. Most respondents cited variant databases as the most common resource utilized in researching variants. Approximately 33% of counselors spent 45 min or more of extra time researching a discrepancy compared to researching a variant with a single classification. When asked how they approached counseling sessions involving variant interpretation discrepancies, the free responses emphasized that counselors considered family history, clinical information, and psychosocial concerns, showing that genetic counselors tailored the session to each individual. Discrepancies in variant interpretation are an ongoing concern for clinical cancer genetic counselors, as demonstrated by the fact that counselors desired further resources to aid in addressing these discrepancies, including a centralized database (89%), guidelines from a major organization (88%), continuing education about the issue (74%), and functional studies (58%). Additionally, most respondents reported that the ideal database would be owned by a non-profit organization (59%) and obtain information directly from laboratories (91%). This investigation was the first to address these discrepancies from a clinical point of view. The study demonstrates that discrepancies in variant interpretation are a concern for clinical cancer genetic counselors and outlines the need for additional support.     

Clinical Cardiovascular Genetic Counselors Take a Leading Role in Team-based Variant Classification

We sought to delineate the genetic test review and interpretation practices of clinical cardiovascular genetic counselors. A one-time anonymous online survey was taken by 46 clinical cardiovascular genetic counselors recruited through the National Society of Genetic Counselors Cardiovascular Special Interest Group. Nearly all (95.7%) gather additional information on variants reported on clinical genetic test reports and most (81.4%) assess the classification of such variants. Clinical cardiovascular genetic counselors typically (81.0%) classify variants in collaboration with cardiologist and/or geneticist colleagues, with the genetic counselor as the team member who is primarily responsible. Variant classification is a relatively recent (mean 3.2 years) addition to practice. Most genetic counselors learned classification skills on the job from clinical and laboratory colleagues. Recent graduates were more likely to have learned this in graduate school (p?<?0.001). Genetic counselors are motivated to take responsibility for the classification of variants because of prior experiences with variant reclassification, inconsistencies between laboratories, and incomplete laboratory reports. They are also driven by a sense of professional duty and their proximity to the clinical context. This practice represents a broadening of the skill set of clinical cardiovascular genetic counselors and a unique expertise that they contribute to the interdisciplinary teams in which they work.     

Aggression,Psychopathology, and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration: Does Gender Matter?

The majority of intimate partner violence (IPV) research explores partner violence without considering the influence of contextual and psychosocial factors, such as trait aggression, psychopathology, gender, and provocation. Disparities in the general aggression literature further underscore the need to develop a better understanding of contextual and psychosocial factors. The present study sampled 720 (male = 365, female = 355) college students who completed measures of IPV perpetration and victimization, trait aggression, and psychopathology. Participants then completed a learning task, during which half were randomly selected to be provoked. The interactive effects of condition, gender, and perpetrator status on mood and aggressive responding were explored. Results indicated that perpetrators of both genders had similar emotional responses to provocation, but behavioral responses to provocation varied. Results were discussed in terms of their implication for future research and batterer intervention.     

An Emotion Regulation Treatment for Young People With Complex Substance Use and Mental Health Issues: A Case-Series Analysis

Individuals accessing treatment within the youth alcohol and other drug (AoD) sector represent a highly vulnerable population who present with complex patterns of substance use and mental health comorbidity. Current treatments often fail to address this complexity. Emotion regulation (ER) has been identified as a promising transdiagnostic treatment target for this population of young people. The current study aimed to investigate the acceptability and feasibility of an adjunct ER intervention, ERIC (Emotion Regulation and Impulse Control) in young people receiving AoD treatment at a residential rehabilitation service. A mixed methods case series design was utilized. Ten participants aged between 16–20 years old completed 4–6 sessions of ERIC as an adjunct to their existing residential treatment. Participants undertook a post intervention feedback session and completed a number of self-report measures of ER, depression and anxiety at baseline and 2 weeks after receiving ERIC. Qualitative feedback from young people following the delivery of ERIC was positive, and suggested that ERIC was a viable and useful intervention. Participants reported that the components of ERIC, which involved metaphors and experiential exercises, were particularly beneficial and memorable. Pre-post measures indicated that 60% of the young people had both reliable and clinically significant reductions in overall emotion dysregulation, while reliable and clinically significant reductions in depression and anxiety were observed in 50% and 60% of participants respectively. Results support the acceptability of ERIC for this cohort of young people with complex substance use and mental health needs. Furthermore, these findings support the viability of delivering flexible and adjunctive ER treatments to young people seeking AoD treatment.     

Re‐examination of Oostenbroek et al. (2016): evidence for neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion

The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have implications for theories of social‐cognitive development. Here we identify 11 flaws in Oostenbroek et al.'s experimental design that biased the results toward null effects. We requested and obtained the authors’ raw data. Contrary to the authors’ conclusions, new analyses reveal significant tongue‐protrusion imitation at all four ages tested (1, 3, 6, and 9 weeks old). We explain how the authors missed this pattern and offer five recommendations for designing future experiments. Infant imitation raises fundamental issues about action representation, social learning, and brain–behavior relations. The debate about the origins and development of imitation reflects its importance to theories of developmental science.     

Conversation level syntax similarity metric

The syntax and semantics of human language can illuminate many individual psychological differences and important dimensions of social interaction. Accordingly, psychological and psycholinguistic research has begun incorporating sophisticated representations of semantic content to better understand the connection between word choice and psychological processes. In this work we introduce ConversAtion level Syntax SImilarity Metric (CASSIM), a novel method for calculating conversation-level syntax similarity. CASSIM estimates the syntax similarity between conversations by automatically generating syntactical representations of the sentences in conversation, estimating the structural differences between them, and calculating an optimized estimate of the conversation-level syntax similarity. After introducing and explaining this method, we report results from two method validation experiments (Study 1) and conduct a series of analyses with CASSIM to investigate syntax accommodation in social media discourse (Study 2). We run the same experiments using two well-known existing syntactic metrics, LSM and Coh-Metrix, and compare their results to CASSIM. Overall, our results indicate that CASSIM is able to reliably measure syntax similarity and to provide robust evidence of syntax accommodation within social media discourse.     

Assessment of the Readability of Genetic Counseling Patient Letters

Patient letters are a powerful tool that genetic counselors use to communicate with their patients. Patient letters are often sent to provide information on a new diagnosis, reiterate test results, and to serve as a permanent record of the visit. Patient letters, however, are only helpful if the patients can understand them. More than 50 % of the US population reads below a 9th grade reading level and over one-third of the population has low health literacy skills. In this study we evaluate the readability of genetic counseling patient letters by assessing reading level, image use, and terminology use. One hundred forty-nine genetic counselors participated in the survey and of these, 79 submitted a sample patient letter. Analyses of the letters revealed a mean reading level of 10.93. On average, 6 genetic terms were included in each letter, and only 25 % of these terms were defined. Analyses of survey responses revealed over 75 % of the genetic counselors did not include images in their patient letters. These results indicate there is room for improvement in order to make genetic counseling patient letters more accessible to the general population.