Familienplanung junger onkologischer Patienten

Cancer patients in young adulthood are affected by the cancer diagnosis in a period of life where future parenthood or fulfilling of a potential wish to have children plays an important role. To perform fertility preserving treatment, patients should be fully informed before any treatment is carried out. The following review broaches the issue of whether and how fertility concerns are discussed in the medical consultation. Therefore, relevant papers were identified by a database search between the years 2000 and 2010. A total of 21 studies were included which focussed on physician-patient communication from the point of view of the patients or healthcare professionals. Oncologists do not routinely speak to patients about fertility issues. Both oncologists and patients expressed communication difficulties. An improvement of the medical interview concerning family planning could be achieved by provision of guidelines, training for healthcare professionals, cooperation between oncologists and reproductive medicine and the provision of educational patient material.     

Linking ethical leadership to employee performance: The roles of leader–member exchange,self-efficacy,and organizational identification

This research investigated the link between ethical leadership and performance using data from the People’s Republic of China. Consistent with social exchange, social learning, and social identity theories, we examined leader–member exchange (LMX), self-efficacy, and organizational identification as mediators of the ethical leadership to performance relationship. Results from 72 supervisors and 201 immediate direct reports revealed that ethical leadership was positively and significantly related to employee performance as rated by their immediate supervisors and that this relationship was fully mediated by LMX, self-efficacy, and organizational identification, controlling for procedural fairness. We discuss implications of our findings for theory and practice.     

Attention Network Performance and Psychopathic Symptoms in Early Adolescence: An ERP Study

Reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) measures were used to examine the relationships between psychopathic symptoms and three major attention networks (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) among a community sample of youth. Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick and Hare 2001) total and subscale scores were negatively correlated with ERP measures of attentional alerting, indicating that youth with psychopathic symptoms had difficulty using warning cues to prepare for upcoming targets. APSD total scores were not related to performance on measures of orienting or executive attention, although weaker executive attention was found among youth with higher scores on the Impulsivity subscale. These findings support attention-based models of psychopathy and provide evidence of specific deficits in attentional alerting among youth with psychopathic traits. Deficiencies in attentional alerting may be related to noradrenergic functioning and may have cascading effects on higher order cognitive and affective processing.     

Psychopharmacology in fragile X syndrome--present and future

In addition to cognitive disability, fragile X syndrome (FXS) is associated with behavioral problems that are often functionally limiting. There are few controlled trials to guide treatment; however, available information does suggest that medications can be quite helpful for a number of categories of behavioral disturbance in FXS. Specifically, stimulants appear to be quite useful for management of distractibility, hyperactivity, and impulsive behavior; antidepressants help with anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and mood dysregulation; and antipsychotics can reduce aggression. These medications are supportive and help minimize dysfunctional behaviors and maximize functioning. As more is learned about the neural functions of FMRP, medications in the future will be expected to target specific synaptic mechanisms dysregulated in FXS brain and thus ameliorate the cognitive deficit with resultant behavioral improvements. This article summarizes knowledge about effectiveness and approaches to management of currently available psychopharmacology for behavior in FXS and discusses early leads to future treatments for cognition.     

Father absence, menarche and interest in infants among adolescent girls

In this study we examined the relationship between menarche and interest in infants among adolescent girls, and the effects of early environment, particularly of father absence from home, on both variables. Eighty-three girls ranging in age from between 11 and 14 years served as study participants. Interest in infants was assessed through their preferences for photos and silhouettes of animal and human faces of infants versus adults. Information on menarche and the early family environment was obtained with questionnaires and interviews. Variation in menarcheal status or timing of menarche was associated with some differences in interest in infants. There was little or no evidence, however, that suggested a direct causal relationship between these variables. Instead, both menarche and interest in infants were independently associated with early father absence from home such that father-absent girls exhibited earlier menarche and greater attraction to infant visual stimuli than father-present girls. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that father absence is associated with a developmental trajectory characterized by earlier readiness for reproduction and parenting.     

Job-decision inconsistencies involving social comparison information: the role of dominating alternatives

Previous research on joint versus separate preference reversals has demonstrated that individuals focus on social comparison information when they are evaluating a single option but focus on absolute salary when they are considering more than 1 option. Study 1 demonstrates that social comparison information is important in multiple option scenarios when an option favorable on social comparison dominates an inferior, 3rd alternative. Study 2 examines why dominating alternatives are so attractive by investigating the role that the value-shift, weight-change, and emergent-value models play in explaining the pattern of results obtained in Study 1. Results provide support for the value-shift and emergent-value models and further suggest that these 2 models may be interrelated, with justification (emergent-value model) mediating the relationship between the attractiveness of the attributes (value-shift model) and the attractiveness of the dominating alternative.