Parental Narratives About Genetic Testing for Hearing Loss: A One Year Follow Up Study

Few studies examine whether and how parental attitudes towards genetic testing change over time. In this study we interviewed parents of 14 children with newly identified hearing loss at two time points: after referral to genetics and 1 year later. Qualitative analyses of parental narratives indicate that parental attitudes did not change significantly over this time. Parents who perceived genetic testing to be useful continued to value it after testing, while parents who did not perceive it as being useful for their child’s future held the same view a year later. The only parents who changed their views regarding the usefulness of genetic testing for hearing loss were those who reported that their children underwent significant changes in their hearing loss or were faced with other life threatening conditions. Parents were also often unaware of the role of the genetic counselor and how genetic counseling could help address many of their lingering questions and concerns. These emergent themes indicate the need for geneticists and genetic counselors to be aware of and sensitized to the questions and attitudes that bring parents to a genetic evaluation, as well as the reasons why parents may not follow up with genetic testing for hearing loss when recommended.     

Effect of Adrenalectomy on Food,Water, and Saltwater Consumption in the Rat: A Methodological Study

The theory has been proposed that given sustained maternal control and rejection, the son may develop one of two primary styles of adapting to social evaluation; a closed style combines defensive tactics of social withdrawal and perceptual blocking, whereas an open style involves manipulative social approach and perceptual vigilance. The schizophreniform character of these two styles has been noted, drawing upon their parallels with process and reactive distinctions in schizophrenia, thereby presenting a hypothetical linkage between mother-child dynamics and the learning of schizophrenic behaviors. The present study tested the prediction that closed-style late-adolescents would show a deficit in recognizing evaluative words spoken near threshold in a female (“mother-figure”) voice. This prediction was generated by both the adaptive-style theory and empirical demonstration of this deficit in process schizophrenics. Results confirmed the prediction. Closed-style subjects recognized fewer female-spoken (relative to male-spoken) words than their control subjects, and open-style subjects did not. The closed-style deficit was especially obvious for those words on the list not having unfavorable connotations.     

Does Four-dimensionalism explain coincidence?∗

For those who think the statue and the piece of copper that compose it are distinct objects that coincide, there is a burden of explanation. After all, common sense says that different ordinary objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. A common argument in favour of four-dimensionalism (or ‘perdurantism’ or ‘temporal parts theory’) is that it provides the resources for a superior explanation of this coincidence. This, however, is mistaken. Any explanatory work done by the four-dimensionalist notion of absolute parthood rests ultimately on notions equally available to the three-dimensionalist. Thus, a neutral explanation of coincidence is at least as good while avoiding commitment to temporal parts.     

Causal Attributions Predict Willingness to Support the Allocation of Funding to Lung Cancer Treatment Programs

Lung cancer patients may experience stigmatization as a result of the link between their disease and smoking, such as lack of public support for funding lung cancer treatment programs. This study examines whether causal attributions for the contraction of lung cancer predict the stigmatization of individuals with the disease by investigating willingness to support the allocation of funds to hypothetical lung cancer treatment programs. Participants were 766 undergraduate students. The findings indicate that participants who made causal attributions preferred to support the allocation of funding to programs that value the lives of breast cancer patients, rather than lung cancer patients. These findings have implications for understanding the influence of causal attributions on the stigmatization of lung cancer.     

Male-female differences and the influence of neonatal and adult testosterone on intraspecies aggression in rats.

Male and female albino rats were tested for intraspecies aggression without the use of shock. In the first experiment, male pairs showed more biting attacks, offensive sideways movements, and self-grooming than did female pairs; male pairs also showed more stereotyped defensive/submissive behaviors and were wounded more frequently. The second experiment examined the effects of neonatal castration and testosterone propionate (TP) administration on fighting. Males castrated at birth attacked other males less frequently than did controls when tested with TP treatment as adults. The TP given at birth to neonatally castrated males restored attacks to control levels. Females given TP as neonates did not differ from either male or female controls. Other aggressive/defensive behaviors, however, did not show this pattern. The results suggest that while the presence of testosterone during a brief postnatal period and during adulthood is necessary for attack behavior to occur, other related behaviors may not be affected in a similar manner.     

Using discrepancies to predict the perceived quality of work life

Two job satisfaction surveys tested the hypothesis that discrepancy models provide stronger predictions of satisfaction than do more parsimonious models relying solely on a single component of discrepancy scores. Questionnaire data from samples of 180 working college students and 125 human service workers focused on specific facets of the job, such as: pay, promotion opportunity, and hours of work. Wanted amount of specific job facets was the standard of comparison considered in both surveys. The questionnaires provided measures of facet satisfaction, facet amount, wanted amount, the perceived discrepancy between facet amount and wanted amount as well as the calculated discrepancy between facet amount and wanted amount. Results from 60 tests of differences between correlations provided mixed support. Discrepancy scores were consistently stronger predictors of satisfaction than were wanted amount scores; 24 of 30 tests provided significant support and only 2 of 30 tests provided significant differences in the direction opposite to the hypothesis. Discrepancy scores were not, however, consistently stronger predictors of satisfaction than were facet amount scores; only 8 of 30 tests provided significant support and 8 of 30 test provided significant differences in the direction opposite to the hypothesis. Discussion focused on the importance of addressing these findings in efforts to improve discrepancy theories of satisfaction.M. Joseph Sirgy (the editor of this special issue) and two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.Bob Rice passed away recently. He will be sorely missed.     

Semantic association effects in a mental comparison task

Two reaction time experiments explored the effect of semantic associations on the time required to make mental size comparisons. Subjects in both experiments were able to judge relative size more quickly for associated than for nonassociated pairs. This association effect was found for a variety of different types of semantic relationships. Experiment 2 used a large pool of pairs that were scaled for degree of association and subjective size of the individual items. This experiment demonstrated that a high degree of association is more facilitative for pairs with small rather than large size differences. Two different explanations of the results are presented, and it is tentatively suggested that work on mental comparison may be integrated with a broader range of semantic memory research.     

Why We Shouldn't Swallow Worm Slices: A Case Study in Semantic Accommodation

A radical metaphysical theory typically comes packaged with a semantic theory that reconciles those radical claims with common sense. The metaphysical theory says what things exist and what their natures are, while the semantic theory specifies, in terms of these things, how we are to interpret everyday language. Thus may we “think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar.” This semantic accommodation of common sense, however, can end up undermining the very theory it is designed to protect. This paper is a case study, showing in detail how one popular version of temporal parts theory is self‐undermining. This raises the specter that the problem generalizes to other metaphysical theories. The traditional flavor of temporal parts theory, Worm Theory, claims that everyday objects are four‐dimensional space‐time worms. An alternative flavor, Slice Theory, claims that objects are not space‐time worms but are instead momentary slices of these worms. The differences, we find, are not nearly as great as advertised. In fact, the differences in the two metaphysical theories are entirely masked by compensating differences in the accompanying semantic theories. As a result, the two theories generate exactly the same truth conditions. Common sense says that I was born years ago. Slice Theory adopts a semantic theory that accommodates such claims, but in doing so, it also endorses the claim that I, like other everyday objects, persist and thus do not exist for a mere moment. That is, the metaphysical claims constitutive of Slice Theory are denied by the very semantic theory Slice Theory adopts to accommodate common sense. Slice Theory thus undermines itself.     

5HT antagonists attenuate MK801-impaired radial arm maze performance in rats

Glutamatergic hypofunction occurs in Alzheimer's disease (AD). MK801, a noncompetitive blocker of glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors, was used to disrupt the cognitive performance of rats trained on a delayed nonmatching to sample radial maze task. Drugs which act by blocking serotonin (5-HT) receptors were evaluated for their ability to reduce the cognitive impairment produced by MK801. Specifically, WAY-100635, a selective 5-HT1A receptor antagonist, buspirone, a 5-HT1A partial agonist, ritanserin, a 5-HT2 antagonist, and ondansetron, a 5-HT3 antagonist, were assessed. In addition, the muscarinic agonist arecoline was evaluated for its potential cognitive benefit in this model. It was found that WAY-100635 significantly reduced the cognitive impairment induced by MK801. Treatment with single doses of ritanserin, ondansetron, or arecoline in combination with MK801 did not result in a cognitive impairment, indicating that these drugs attenuated the MK801 impairment. The combination of buspirone and MK801 resulted in an inability of the animals to complete the task. These results suggest that interactions between 5-HT and glutamate may mediate the beneficial effects of reducing cognitive impairment and that 5-HT antagonists, especially selective 5-HT1A antagonists, may be useful in treating AD. Further, it is indicated that the MK801 model of cognitive impairment may add to the armamentarium of tools available to predict treatment efficacy in AD.