Impact of End-of-Life Circumstances on the Adjustment of Bereaved Siblings of Children Who Died from Cancer

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of end-of-life (EoL) circumstances on grief and internalizing symptoms among bereaved siblings. Bereaved families (N?=?88) were recruited from three sites 3–12 months (M?=?11.57, SD?=?3.48) after their child’s death from cancer. One sibling per family aged 8–17 years (M?=?12.41, SD?=?2.64) was randomly selected to participate. Families completed measures of siblings’ grief and internalizing symptoms, as well as a structured interview about circumstances surrounding the death. Mother and sibling reports of EoL circumstances were generally concordant, except there was a discrepancy between mothers and children about whether or not children expected their sibling’s death (t(75)?=?1.52, p?=?.018). Mother reports of sibling internalizing symptoms were above the normative mean (t(83)?=?4.44, p?≤?.001 (M?=?56.01?±?12.48), with 39% (n?=?33) in the borderline/clinical range. Sibling opportunity to say goodbye was associated with greater grief-related growth (t(79)?=?? 1.95, p?=?.05). Presence at the death and wishing they had done something differently were both associated with greater grief (t(80)?=?? 2.08, p?=?.04 and t(80)?=?? 2.24, p?=?.028, respectively) and grief-related growth (t(80)?=?? 2.01, p?=?.048 and t(80)?=?? 2.31, p?=?.024, respectively). However, findings were primarily unique to sibling report, with few mother-reported effects. The adjustment of bereaved siblings may be affected by certain modifiable circumstances surrounding the death of their brother or sister. A proportion of bereaved siblings had elevated internalizing symptoms irrespective of circumstances at EoL. Further work is needed to understand predictors of adjustment among bereaved siblings to provide better support and optimize their outcomes.

     

How people make decisions about predictive genetic testing: An analogue study

Abstract

Persons scoring high on negative affectivity (NA) have more subjective health complaints. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that high NA persons are more likely to experience internal sensations as threatening signs of health problems. Low and high NA participants (N=44) were given four breathing trials: one room air trial followed by three trials containing 5.5% CO₂ which induced transient low intensity somatic sensations. Prior to each CO₂ trial, participants received either positive, negative or uncertain labelings of the sensations that might occur. Participants rated the (un)pleasantness of the experienced somatic sensations and the perceived intensity. Also respiratory responses were measured. During CO₂ trials, reliable main effects of information were found but no effects involving NA were observed, neither on pleasantness ratings nor on respiratory responses. However, during room air breathing, high NA participants reported more intense somatic sensations than low NA participants. Post-experimental data suggested that high NA participants had more negative meanings and worries about the consequences of the physical sensations. It is concluded that interpretational biases in high NA is situated at the level of attributional processes.     

Cognitive remediation in pediatric traumatic brain injury

Robinson's (1970) elaborative encoding technique (PQRST) was implemented as the active cognitive intervention strategy to address verbal memory deficits in 2 fourth-grade boys following mild or moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI). A metacognitive reading comprehension technique (Smith & Dauer, 1984) was also implemented for comparison purposes. Single-case methodology was employed using a counter-balanced crossover of the two intervention strategies controlling for the effects of attention. The performance of both boys was significantly better during strategy training with the PQRST technique and approached the performance level of the normal comparison subject. In contrast, the performance of both subjects with TBI remained at, or returned to, baseline levels during the metacognitive intervention. These findings suggest that Robinson's cognitive remediation intervention holds promise in addressing memory and reading comprehension deficits following pediatrie traumatic brain injury. Future research should focus on enhancing generalization and transfer of training to classroom assignments.     

Family of Origin Violence Predictors of IPV by Two Types of Male Offenders

The aim of this study was to determine the role of family of origin violence in predicting intimate partner violence (IPV). Male participants were divided into generally offending and family-only groups according to whether their violence occurred exclusively within intimate partner and family contexts or toward others outside the family as well. Results showed that exposure to family of origin violence affected IPV differently between the two groups of offenders. For generally offending offenders, exposure to family of origin violence significantly predicted IPV above and beyond demographic factors, alcohol and drug use, and bidirectional aggression. For family-only offenders, witnessing father-initiated violence toward the mother had a significant influence on their violent behavior toward their intimate partners. Clinical implications of these findings are addressed.     

The Promotional Role of School and Community Contexts for Military Students

This article examines how supportive public school environments can serve as a promotional context for the development of children and adolescents from military families. The authors integrate theory and research from multiple research strands (e.g., human development, studies of at-risk youth, educational reform, goodness of fit theory, and school climate) to outline how public schools can support the development of all children and adolescents. This article provides further support for the supposition that school climates and the social-ecological contexts surrounding a school (e.g., universities, communities, school districts) have the potential to protect at-risk children and adolescents from an array of negative social, emotional, and psychological outcomes. The authors draw linkages between these research domains and the development of military children and adolescents. Promotional civilian school environments embedded within supportive and inclusive contexts can create a social infrastructure that supports the development of military children and adolescents. The authors argue that this conceptual approach can create a foundation for interventions and research that focuses on schools as normative supportive developmental settings for military children and youth during challenging times of war (e.g., deployments and multiple school transitions). This article concludes with a discussion of future directions in research on the development of military children and adolescents. Based on a heuristic conceptual model that outlines areas needing further research, the authors call for a deeper theoretical and empirical integration of school climate and external contextual factors surrounding the school. Investigating the social and organizational dynamics within these contexts can result in a more comprehensive picture of the development of military children and adolescents.     

Promoting Healthy Behavior from the Pulpit: Clergy Share Their Perspectives on Effective Health Communication in the African American Church

African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from health disparities when compared to other ethnicities (ACS 2010; CDC 2007). Research indicates that the church and the pastor in the African American community could be enlisted to increase effectiveness of health programs (Campbell et al. in Health Edu Behav 34(6):864–880, 2007; DeHaven et al. in Am J Public Health 94(6):1030–1036, 2004). The objective of this study was to investigate African American pastors’ perceptions about health promotion in the church and how these perceptions could serve as a guide for improving health communication targeting African Americans. Semi-structured interviews with African American clergy revealed that pastors feel strongly about the intersection of health, religion and spirituality; they also believe that discussing health screening and other health issues more frequently from the pulpit and their own personal experiences will ultimately impact health behavior among congregants. This study suggests that African American clergy see themselves as health promoters in the church and believe this communication (i.e., pastor-endorsed health information materials) will impact health behavior among underserved and minority populations.     

Structure-Making

Friends of states of affairs and structural universals appeal to a relation, structure-making, that is allegedly a kind of composition relation: structure-making ‘builds’ facts out of particulars and universals, and ‘builds’ structural universals out of unstructured universals. D. M. Armstrong, an eminent champion of structures, endorses two interesting theses concerning composition. First, that structure-making is a composition relation. Second, that it is not the only (fundamental) composition relation: Armstrong also believes in a mode of composition that he calls mereological, and which he takes to be the only kind of composition recognized by his philosophical adversaries, such as David Lewis. Armstrong, accordingly, is a kind of pluralist about compositional relations: there is more than one way to make wholes from parts. In this paper, I critically evaluate Armstrong's compositional pluralism.     

Pain and Play: Building Coalitions toward Decolonizing Philosophy

In what follows I offer three theoretical frameworks out of which we might think through coalition building for the sake of decolonization. My claim is that, through these three frameworks, we can be attentive to the ways we, ourselves are shaped by coloniality as we collectively work to resist it. The first framework is Maria Lugones's account of playful world‐travel. The second concerns the practice of unsuturing, developed George Yancy. And the third is Édouard Glissant's notion of opacity (as that conception pertains to his account of errantry). In bringing these together, I foreground opacity as the cornerstone of an encounter between self and Other, as that encounter figures both in Lugones's account of world traveling, and in Glissant's account of errantry. I use George Yancy's conception of unsuturing to show that it is more productive to think of world‐travel's play as coupled with unsuturing's pain, rather than to think of these comportments as either mutually exclusive or diametrically opposed. Lugones, Glissant, and Yancy show that, out of this pain‐play comportment, our collective commitments to decolonization might result in more effective coalitions against the workings of colonial power, so as to gesture toward the possibility of alternative (decolonial) worlds.     

Dynamic, state-dependent thresholds for the perception of single-element apparent motion: Bistability from local cooperativity

Previous studies have indicated that the formation of coherent patterns for multielement motion displays depends onglobal cooperative interactions among large ensembles of spatially distributed motion detectors. These interactions enhance certain motion directions and suppress others. It is reported here that perceiving one element moving between two nearby locations likewise is subject to cooperative influences (possibly facilitating and inhibiting interactions within alocal ensemble of overlapping detectors). Thresholds depending on luminance contrast were measured for a generalized singleelement apparent-motion stimulus, and evidence for spontaneous switching and hysteresis effects indicated that motion perception near the 50% threshold was bistable. That is, for conditions in which motion and nonmotion were perceived half the time, the two percepts were distinct; when one was perceived, it clearly was discriminable from the other. These results indicated that (1) single-element apparent-motion thresholds depended on the immediately preceding state of the ensemble of motion detectors responding to the stimulus, and (2) the stimulus activation of individual motion detectors always might be influenced by recurrent, cooperative interactions resulting from the detectors’ being embedded within interconnected ensembles.