Maturation of EEG power spectra in early adolescence: a longitudinal study

This study investigated the fine-grained development of the EEG power spectra in early adolescence, and the extent to which it is reflected in changes in peak frequency. It also sought to determine whether sex differences in the EEG power spectra reflect differential patterns of maturation. A group of 56 adolescents were tested at age 10 years and then at two further time-points approximately 18 months apart. The EEG was recorded during both eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions and Fourier transformed to provide estimates of absolute and relative spectral power at 0.5 Hz intervals from 0.5 to 40 Hz. The peak alpha frequency for each individual at each time-point was also determined for relative spectral power. Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis was used to determine the combination of electrodes and frequencies that showed developmental change, or differed between the sexes. As a function of age, absolute delta and theta frequencies power decreased, and relative alpha2 and beta frequencies increased, replicating the standard findings of a decrease in lower, and increase in higher, frequencies with age. A small but significant increase in peak alpha frequency with age was detected. Moreover PLS analysis performed with individual alpha frequencies aligned to 10 Hz suggested that the age-related increase seen in alpha2 relative power was driven by changes in the peak frequency. Although males demonstrated higher alpha power than females, there were no sex differences in peak frequency, suggesting that there may be more to sex differences in EEG power than simply different rates of maturation between the two sexes.     

Games in Clinical Genetic Counseling Supervision

Games are defined as ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions that are superficially plausible but have a concealed motivation to maximize pay-offs and minimize penalties for the initiator. While some games are harmless and part of socialization, others are destructive. Destructive game-playing in clinical supervision, in which game-playing (initiated by either supervisors or students) interferes with a student's realization of internship goals, has been documented in some allied healthcare professions but has not yet been studied in genetic counseling. Genetic counselors and clinical supervisors of genetic counseling students were anonymously surveyed regarding their experiences with destructive game-playing. Results show that such games do occur in genetic counseling clinical supervision. Some games are the same or similar to ones previously described in other health-care professions; others may be unique to genetic counseling. The purpose of this paper is to document these games as a first step to facilitating dialogue, understanding and awareness of them.     

Belief in a just world and social perception: evidence for automatic activation

The authors tested the hypothesis that beliefs in a just world are automatically activated and used in social perception. Under the guise of a perceptual vigilance task, the authors exposed 34 undergraduate women preconsciously to words that were either rape-related or neutral. Immediately after the exposure, participants read a date scenario that was ambiguous with respect to the man's aggressiveness and the extent to which the woman was responsible for the man's behavior. Afterwards, all participants evaluated the target man and woman on an impression task. The primary finding was that participants holding stronger beliefs in a just world perceived the target woman more negatively after experiencing the rape-related prime words than after experiencing the neutral words. This pattern is consistent with a research literature that shows that believers in a just world will often "blame the victim" in cases of rape. The present findings are important because they provide evidence that general, orienting beliefs are automatically activated in a manner similar to that shown by stereotype beliefs. The authors discussed implications for social perception.     

DNA-sequence patenting: National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) position paper

In November 2000, the Genetic Services Committee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) convened a working group to draft a position paper on patenting of DNA-sequences. The mandate of the group was to produce general position statements that support the perspective and needs of consumers of DNA-based genetic tests and therapies (our patients and their families) and participants in DNA-based genetic research. After review and discussion of the literature on DNA-sequence patenting issues, the working group drafted position statement points that support current United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) guidelines; broad licensing of DNA-sequence patents; nonenforcement of DNA-sequence patents in noncommercial research; reasonable royalty rates; an informed consent process for research participants that discloses whether they can share in any financial rewards relating to the project; the development of guidelines for licensing of DNA-sequence patents; and the establishment of oversight organizations to monitor licensing of DNA-sequence patents. These position statements were approved by the NSGC Board of Directors in the fall of 2001.     

Chronic low back pain and depression in a sample of veterans

The relationship between chronic low back pain and scores on depression was examined in a sample of 31 veterans who completed a depression inventory. Analysis indicated that those with chronic low back pain scored significantly higher on depression than those without.     

Goal orientations and the search for confirmatory affect

People differ with respect to their beliefs about the consequences of attaining goals. Some people (linkers) believe that attaining certain goals will make them happy, whereas others (nonlinkers) see their happiness as more contingent upon the inherent quality of their actions than upon the outcomes of those actions. Because of the importance linkers place on goal attainment, linkers should be likely to seek information indicative of their progress toward their goals. Because of the importance nonlinkers place on enjoyment, nonlinkers should be likely to seek information indicative of the pleasurableness of their current task. Because negative affect can signal a lack of goal progress, whereas positive affect can signal task enjoyment, linkers may place more weight on their negative than their positive affect, whereas nonlinkers may do the opposite. Consistent with these hypotheses, the results of this study showed that linkers reported more negative affect when exposed to sad videos than when exposed to happy videos but did not report different amounts of positive affect. Nonlinkers, on the other hand, reported more positive affect when exposed to happy videos than when exposed to sad videos but did not report different amounts of negative affect. The implications of this pattern for a number of theoretical perspectives on goals and affect are discussed.     

Extending the Knapsack: Using the White Privilege Analysis to Examine Conferred Advantage and Disadvantage

This article describes a self-awareness activity that utilizes a directed reading on privilege and a small-group discussion format to examine unearned disadvantage and unearned advantage in one’s life. This exercise can help clinicians to better understand systemic and individual sources of power and privilege in society. Beginning with my previous work on white privilege, students can extend this analysis to other domains of privilege, including, for example, gender, class, sexuality, age, nationality, and physical ability, to name a few. The primary goals of this reflective exercise are to help clinicians understand how clients’ lives are influenced by societal disadvantages and advantages, to encourage a new understanding of oneself, and to increase empathy towards clients.     

Endpoints and viewpoints on spatial neglect

In this issue of the Journal of Neuropsychology, Abe and Ishiai (2022) report an experiment designed to probe the subjective experience of line bisection in neglect. A re-analysis of their data can also offer insights into how best to characterise neglect performance for this and other tasks. We show that sensitive measures of neglect can be obtained by quantifying the difference in the influence (or ‘weighting’) that each endpoint has on the response. The right endpoint is dramatically more influential than the left in people with neglect performing line bisection and endpoint reproduction tasks. This supports the view that neglect may limit the ability to simultaneously represent two locations, so that the response is determined primarily with respect to the right endpoint. We also discuss Abe and Ishiai's conclusion that bisection responses in neglect are accompanied by the subjective experience of a complete line extending equally to either side of the chosen midpoint.     

Implicit influence of affective postures on the perception of others: you can't show me how I feel

This study examined how one's own posture influences the perception of another's posture in a task with implicit affective information. In 2 experiments, participants assumed or viewed a body posture and then compared that posture with a viewed posture. They were not told that postures varied in affective valence: positive, negative, neutral-abstract, or neutral-meaningful. Posture affect influenced both accuracy and response time measures of posture discrimination. Participants were slower and less accurate for targets that matched an assumed posture, but only for affective postures. This pattern did not hold for matching affectively neutral postures (meaningful or not), nonmatching postures, or for purely visual comparisons. These results are consistent with both cognitive embodiment theories postulating that personal body posture influences the perception of other's postures and emotional embodiment theories postulating sensorimotor and emotional simulation processes that create correspondences between one's own and another's emotional postures. Nonetheless, these findings differ from studies finding facilitation for explicit emotional judgments of affective congruence. People use different information depending on task requirements. The assumption of an affective posture may activate simulations of personal emotional experiences that may, in turn, serve to differentiate personal posture perception from ostensibly the same posture in another person.