The role of attitudes towards the targets of behaviour in predicting and informing prenatal testing choices

Research considering the role of attitudes in prenatal testing choices has commonly focused on the relationship between the attitude towards undergoing testing and actual testing behaviour. In contrast, this study focused on the relationship between testing behaviour and attitudes towards the targets of the behaviour (in this case people with Down syndrome (DS) and having a baby with DS). A cross-sectional, prospective survey of 197 pregnant women measured attitudes towards the targets of prenatal testing along with intentions to use screening and diagnostic testing, and the termination of an affected pregnancy. Screening uptake was established via patient records. Although attitudes towards DS and having a baby with DS were significantly associated with screening uptake and testing and termination intentions, unfavourable attitudes were better than favourable ones at predicting these outcomes. For example, in the quartile of women with the ‘most favourable’ attitude towards people with DS 67% used screening although only 8% said they would terminate an affected pregnancy. Qualitative data suggested that not all women considered personal attitudes towards DS to be relevant to their screening decisions. This finding has implications for the way in which informed choice is currently understood and measured in the prenatal testing context.     

A psychobiographical analysis of Dambudzo Marechera's personal development through his writings

This study applied psychobiography to explore the personal development of Zimbabwean novelist Dambudzo Marechera – and particularly focus on psychological disintegration. For the evidence, we examined primary and secondary works on his life history with special attention to his literary works. Findings indicate that his early writings were autobiographical in nature, chronicling lived poverty, war and violence experiences. Later writings were somehow surrealistic and unstructured, marking a culmination of significant personal disintegration that started in early childhood. Other ancillary biographical evidence suggests self-perceptions as a cult-like figure, and what appears to be a limited social interest.     

Uncertainty in ethical consumer choice: a conceptual model

The market place has seen significant growth in the demand for ‘ethical’ products and services. Yet, consumers often experience knowledge, evaluation and choice uncertainties in decision‐making processes, particularly in relation to products such as ethical clothing. The authors explore this pertinent form of consumer uncertainty through three qualitative studies of ethical consumers that examine their approaches to clothing consumption. In‐depth interviews and focus groups confirm uncertainty arises; the results also identify the causes and consequences of consumer uncertainty in this context. The causes of uncertainty pertain to issues surrounding complexity, ambiguity, conflict and credibility that give rise to uncertainties that result in delaying purchase decisions, compromising beliefs and negative emotions. This study contributes to literature by offering a holistic understanding of the challenges facing consumers when making ethical choices. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Perceived Realism Really Matter in Media Effects?

Memory, perceived realism, and emotional responses to documentary and fictional film excerpts were investigated experimentally using adult participants. Documentary stimuli were perceived as more factual than their fiction counterparts at both semantic and syntactic levels. However, contrary to expectations, memory for visual and verbal information and the intensity of emotional reactions were greater overall for fiction films. Films whose content corresponded to well-known social themes and film genres also had a greater influence on memory and emotions. In general, it appears that perceived factuality does not have as compelling an influence on adults as it does on younger viewers. Results are interpreted in terms of the differences between cinematic attributes of documentary and fiction films and between the cognitive processes activated by these two film genres and by different themes.     

Modality exclusivity norms for 400 nouns: The relationship between perceptual experience and surface word form

We present modality exclusivity norms for 400 randomly selected noun concepts, for which participants provided perceptual strength ratings across five sensory modalities (i.e., hearing, taste, touch, smell, and vision). A comparison with previous norms showed that noun concepts are more multimodal than adjective concepts, as nouns tend to subsume multiple adjectival property concepts (e.g., perceptual experience of the concept baby involves auditory, haptic, olfactory, and visual properties, and hence leads to multimodal perceptual strength). To show the value of these norms, we then used them to test a prediction of the sound symbolism hypothesis: Analysis revealed a systematic relationship between strength of perceptual experience in the referent concept and surface word form, such that distinctive perceptual experience tends to attract distinctive lexical labels. In other words, modality-specific norms of perceptual strength are useful for exploring not just the nature of grounded concepts, but also the nature of form–meaning relationships. These norms will be of benefit to those interested in the representational nature of concepts, the roles of perceptual information in word processing and in grounded cognition more generally, and the relationship between form and meaning in language development and evolution.     

Flexible and fast: Linguistic shortcut affects both shallow and deep conceptual processing

Previous research has shown that people use linguistic distributional information during conceptual processing, and that it is especially useful for shallow tasks and rapid responding. Using two conceptual combination tasks, we showed that this linguistic shortcut extends to the processing of novel stimuli, is used in both successful and unsuccessful conceptual processing, and is evident in both shallow and deep conceptual tasks. Specifically, as predicted by the ECCo theory of conceptual combination, people use the linguistic shortcut as a “quick-and-dirty” guide to whether the concepts are likely to combine into a coherent conceptual representation, in both shallow sensibility judgment and deep interpretation generation tasks. Linguistic distributional frequency predicts both the likelihood and the time course of rejecting a novel word compound as nonsensical or uninterpretable. However, it predicts the time course of successful processing only in shallow sensibility judgment, because the deeper conceptual process of interpretation generation does not allow the linguistic shortcut to suffice. Furthermore, the effects of linguistic distributional frequency are independent of any effects of conventional word frequency. We discuss the utility of the linguistic shortcut as a cognitive triage mechanism that can optimize processing in a limited-resource conceptual system.     

Risk and Protective Factors for Comorbid Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Homeless Individuals in Treatment for Substance-Related Problems

Homeless individuals undergoing treatment for substance use disorders (SUD) can pose clinical challenges. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms have been observed in the most difficult clients. The study sample consisted of 51 homeless individuals, 9 women and 42 men, undergoing consultation for SUD in Montreal. The mean age was 46 years (SD = 7.19). Of the sample, 49% had a potential PTSD diagnosis. Most participants had the following characteristics: an alcoholic parent, a history of an early trauma, and little social support. The participants with a potential PTSD diagnosis were significantly more likely to have had an alcoholic parent, to have experienced an early trauma, and to use more maladaptive coping strategies. The study results and limits are discussed.     

Effects of number-of-letters on eye movements during reading are independent from effects of spatial word length

Word length is an important determinant of eye movement behaviour in reading. The current study is the first attempt to disconfound a word's number of letters from its spatial extent. In a sentence-reading experiment using closely matched stimuli, clear differences were observed between target words that subtended the same visual angle but differed in number of letters: the more letters in the word, the more fixations made on the word, and the longer the duration of these fixations. Analyses of the full set of sentence words confirmed these results for a wider range of word lengths, and are consistent with a role for number-of-letters distinct from spatial extent. The most plausible explanation for these findings is that long words are subject to a reater degree of visual crowding, which is costly for both temporal and spatial eye movement systems.     

Action-centred negative priming: Evidence for reactive inhibition

Experiments are described in which the spatial relationship between a stimulus and respondent is held constant in terms of visual and body-centred coordinates, while the complexity of the response is manipulated. It is demonstrated that the degree of complexity of an action directed to the same spatial location determines the level of negative priming observed. This result supports the notions that (1) inhibitory selection mechanisms act on action-centred representations, and (2) the level of inhibition is reactive to the relative potency of the evoked action. The results are also discussed in terms of alternative explanations of negative priming. It is concluded that the results are inconsistent with theories that do not involve inhibitory selection mechanisms.