Psychological support needs of patients with head and neck cancer and their caregivers: A qualitative study

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the psychological support needs of patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) and their caregivers. The appropriate timing, length, format and content of sessions were also investigated.

Design: Eighty-three patients with HNC and 73 of their caregivers completed questionnaires at diagnosis. Follow-up questionnaires were mailed to patients six months later.

Main outcome measures: Free text-comments to open-ended questions in the questionnaires were analysed using an inductive thematic approach with coding and theme development directed by the content of responses. This was used to determine psychological support needs both at diagnosis and at six month follow-up.

Results: Patients described ‘just being there’, empathy, maintaining normality and practical support as helpful from family/friends. They desired information, honesty, positivity and empathy from clinical staff. Formal psychological support was desired by approximately 40% of patients and caregivers, particularly early after diagnosis and during treatment. Most participants desired face to face sessions, providing individualised information and coping strategies.

Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that psychological interventions for patients with HNC and their caregivers should be delivered early after diagnosis in face to face sessions, presenting honest and factual information about the disease and coping strategies.     

Revised reinforcement sensitivity theory: The impact of FFFS and stress on driving

This study investigated the effect of a fear-based personality trait, as conceptualized in Gray’s revised reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) by the strength of the Fight/Flight/Freeze system (FFFS), on young people’s driving simulator performance under induced psychosocial stress. Seventy-one young drivers completed the Jackson-5 questionnaire of RST traits, followed by a psychosocial stress or relaxation induction procedure (random allocation to groups) and then a city driving simulator task. Some support was found for the hypothesis that higher FFFS sensitivity would result in poorer driving performance under stress, in terms of significantly poorer hazard responses, possibly due to an increased attentional focus on the aversive cues inherent in the stress induction leaving reduced attentional capacity for the driving task. These results suggest that stress may lead to riskier driving behaviour in individuals with fearful RST personality styles.     

Testing the effects of an expectancy-based intervention among adolescents: Can placebos be used to enhance physical health?

It has been suggested that the well-known health benefits associated with exercise can be explained by a placebo effect, and that greater effort should be given to convince people that their current behaviors have desirable health consequences. The overall purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of this "mind-set matters" hypothesis through the use of an expectancy-based intervention with adolescents. The study involved a four week randomized controlled trial with 348 Grade 9 adolescents (M (age)?=?14.07 yrs, SD?=?0.30), from four high schools, taking part in either a placebo-intervention condition (n?=?188) or a control condition (n?=?160). Participants in the placebo-intervention condition were informed that what they are already doing in school physical education lessons fulfills current recommendations for an active lifestyle. Participants in the control condition were not given this information. Four weeks after the intervention, adolescents in the placebo-intervention condition did not demonstrate significant changes in physiological health-related measures (diet, weight, body mass index, percentage body fat, heart rate, mean arterial pressure). The findings question the external validity of the "mind-set matters" hypothesis with adolescents, and suggest that simply encouraging adolescents to believe that they are healthy may not enable them to respond with improved indicators of physical health.     

When Do Replies to the Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism Beg the Question?

Some proponents of the evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism believe that replies that assume substantive moral claims beg the question. In this paper, I give a new account of what's wrong with such replies. On this account, many realists beg the question when they rely on substantive moral claims in their replies to the argument, but naturalists do not. While this account generalizes to some other domains, it allows perceptual and inductive realism to remain undebunked.     

Priming Effects in Explicit and Implicit Memory for Textual Advertisements

Les effets d’une amorce sur les mémoires implicite et explicite à propos d’un produit placé dans un texte ont été mis à l’épreuve sous deux conditions, l’une où l’attention était orientée vers (encodage intentionnel) ou détournée du produit (encodage incident). Dans la première expérience, les caractéristiques positives d’un produit avaient plus de chances que les négatives d’être restituées, ce qui a conduit à un effet d’assimilation dans une condition témoin. Par contre, lorsque les particularités du produit étaient en amorec, le rappel explicite des caractéristiques négatives augmentait, débouchant sur un effet de contraste. L’impact de l’amorce était limitéà la condition d’encodage intentionnel, ce qui signifiait un effacement de l’information incompatible avec l’amorce. Dans la deuxième expérience, les épreuves de mémoires implicites perceptuelle et sémantique ont montré des effets d’amorce équivalents suite à l’encodage du produit, qu’il soit intentionnel ou incident. Par suite et contrairement à la mémoire explicite, la mémoire implicite du produit n’était pas conditionnée par l’attention. L’identification de ces limites de l’amorçage est utile aux gens de marketing qui envisagent ce consevoir une publicité exploitant les mémoires explicite et implicite d’un produit. The effects of priming on explicit and implicit memory about a product placed within a narrative were tested under conditions in which attention was drawn to (intentional encoding) or away from (incidental encoding) the product. In Experiment 1, positive features of a product were more likely to be recalled than negative features leading to an assimilation effect in a baseline condition. When the product characteristic was primed, however, explicit recall of the negative features increased resulting in a contrast effect. The impact of priming was restricted to the intentional encoding condition reflecting resolution of information incongruent with the prime. In Experiment 2, perceptual and semantic implicit memory tests revealed equivalent priming effects following both intentional and incidental encoding of the product. Thus, unlike explicit memory, implicit memory for the product was not limited by attention. Recognition of these boundary conditions of priming informs marketers intending to design advertising that taps explicit and implicit memory for a product.