Public Trust in Genomic Risk Assessment for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Patient trust in personal medical information is critical to increasing adherence to physician recommendations and medications. One of the anticipated benefits of learning of one’s genomic risk for common diseases is the increased adoption of screening, preventive care and lifestyle changes. However, the equivocal results thus far reported of the positive impact of knowledge of genomic risk on behavior change may be due to lack of patients’ trust in the results. As part of a clinical study to compare two methods of communication of genomic risk results for Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), we assessed patients’ trust and preferred methods of delivery of genomic risk information. A total of 300 participants recruited from the general public in Durham, NC were randomized to receive their genomic risk for T2DM in-person from a genetic counselor or online through the testing company’s web-site. Participants completed a baseline survey and three follow-up surveys after receiving results. Overall, participants reported high levels of trust in the test results. Participants who received their results in-person from the genetic counselor were significantly more likely to trust their results than those who reviewed their results on-line (p?=?0.005). There was not a statistically significant difference in levels of trust among participants with increased genetic risk, as compared to other those with decreased or same as population risk (p?=?0.1154). In the event they undergo genomic risk testing again, 55 % of participants overall indicated they would prefer to receive their results online compared to 28 % that would prefer to receive future results in-person. Of those participants preferring to receive results online, 77 % indicated they would prefer to have the option to speak to someone if they had questions with the online results (compared to accessing results online without the option of professional consultation). This is the first study to assess satisfaction with genomic risk testing by the method of delivery of the test result. The higher rate of trust in results delivered in-person suggests that online access reports may not result in serious consideration of results and lack of adoption of recommended preventive recommendations.     

Specific and differential prediction of health anxiety by disgust sensitivity and propensity

Current models of health anxiety suggest that fear resulting from false alarms to perceived threats to one's health results in the development of hypochondriasis and related disorders. Disgust has been proposed as an affective response that may function as an etiological and maintenance mechanism in health anxiety. Moreover, the way in which an individual perceives the disgust response (disgust sensitivity) may affect health anxiety, separately from their likelihood of experiencing disgust (disgust propensity). The present study utilized multiple hierarchical regression analysis to investigate the degree to which self-reported disgust sensitivity and disgust propensity differentially predict elevated health anxiety in a sample of 620 non-treatment-seeking undergraduates. Further, this effect is tested in comparison to that of anxiety sensitivity, a construct demonstrated to be strongly related to health anxiety. Analyses indicate that disgust sensitivity, rather than disgust propensity, is primarily responsible for this relation. An additional analysis tested the specificity of disgust sensitivity relative to anxiety sensitivity. Disgust sensitivity was no longer significant after including anxiety sensitivity in the model. Suggestions for further evaluation of this relation are provided. These results suggest that although disgust sensitivity may appear related to health anxiety, this relation may be confounded by anxiety sensitivity.     

The benefit of interleaved mathematics practice is not limited to superficially similar kinds of problems

Most mathematics assignments consist of a group of problems requiring the same strategy. For example, a lesson on the quadratic formula is typically followed by a block of problems requiring students to use that formula, which means that students know the appropriate strategy before they read each problem. In an alternative approach, different kinds of problems appear in an interleaved order, which requires students to choose the strategy on the basis of the problem itself. In the classroom-based experiment reported here, grade 7 students (n = 140) received blocked or interleaved practice over a nine-week period, followed two weeks later by an unannounced test. The mean test scores were greater for material learned by interleaved practice rather than by blocked practice (72 % vs. 38 %, d = 1.05). This interleaving effect was observed even though the different kinds of problems were superficially dissimilar from each other, whereas previous interleaved mathematics studies had required students to learn nearly identical kinds of problems. We conclude that interleaving improves mathematics learning not only by improving discrimination between different kinds of problems, but also by strengthening the association between each kind of problem and its corresponding strategy.     

Conceptual response distance and intervening keys distinguish action goals in the Stroop color-identification task

In previous studies, a physical response-distance effect was found in the two-choice Stroop color-identification task, with the Stroop effect being larger when the two response keys were physically close together than when they were far apart. In the present study, we found a conceptual response-distance effect, with the Stroop effect being larger when the response keys were conceptually close (labeled as “5” and “6”) than when they were conceptually far (labeled as “1” and “9”). Moreover, a response-distance effect due to pure physical distance was not evident; rather, the effect was found only when additional keys were placed between the two far response keys. These results are in agreement with a view that response keys are coded as action goals, with farther conceptual distance and additional keys helping distinguish the action goals. The results are difficult to reconcile with accounts that place emphasis on the physical separation of the effectors or their inanimate extensions.     

Convergence and divergence of individual‐level values: A study of Malaysian managers

Malaysia is a multi‐ethnic country with Malay, Chinese and Indian being the dominant ethnic groups. This paper investigates the three ethnic cultures in Malaysia by examining the individual‐level values of managers and professionals. Based on 528 responses to a Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) questionnaire, the paper identifies partial convergence of the value systems of Malay, Chinese and Indian people. It was found that the three ethnic groups do not differ significantly in the individualistic value dimensions of Self‐enhancement and Openness‐to‐change. However, Malays are found to be more conservative and less self‐transcendent than Chinese or Indians, while Chinese and Indians attribute the same importance to these two sets of values.     

Aging and the segmentation of narrative film

The perception of event structure in continuous activity is important for everyday comprehension. Although the segmentation of experience into events is a normal concomitant of perceptual processing, previous research has shown age differences in the ability to perceive structure in naturalistic activity, such as a movie of someone washing a car. However, past research has also shown that older adults have a preserved ability to comprehend events in narrative text, which suggests that narrative may improve the event processing of older adults. This study tested whether there are age differences in event segmentation at the intersection of continuous activity and narrative: narrative film. Younger and older adults watched and segmented a narrative film, The Red Balloon, into coarse and fine events. Changes in situational features, such as changes in characters, goals, and objects predicted segmentation. Analyses revealed little age-difference in segmentation behavior. This suggests the possibility that narrative structure supports event understanding for older adults.     

A Demonstration of Set-Points for Subjective Wellbeing

This paper presents evidence for the existence of ‘set-points’ for subjective wellbeing. Our results derive from a 10-year longitudinal study in which subjective wellbeing has been measured using a single question of general life satisfaction. The process of data analysis is driven by logic based on the theory of subjective wellbeing homeostasis. This analysis involves the iterative elimination of raw data, from 7,356 individual respondents, based on confidence limits. All results are projected onto a 0–100 point scale. We demonstrate evidence for the existence of set-points lying between 71 and 90 points, with an average set-point-range of 18–20 points for each person. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Sensing sociality in dogs: what may make an interactive robot social?

This study investigated whether dogs would engage in social interactions with an unfamiliar robot, utilize the communicative signals it provides and to examine whether the level of sociality shown by the robot affects the dogs’ performance. We hypothesized that dogs would react to the communicative signals of a robot more successfully if the robot showed interactive social behaviour in general (towards both humans and dogs) than if it behaved in a machinelike, asocial way. The experiment consisted of an interactive phase followed by a pointing session, both with a human and a robotic experimenter. In the interaction phase, dogs witnessed a 6-min interaction episode between the owner and a human experimenter and another 6-min interaction episode between the owner and the robot. Each interaction episode was followed by the pointing phase in which the human/robot experimenter indicated the location of hidden food by using pointing gestures (two-way choice test). The results showed that in the interaction phase, the dogs’ behaviour towards the robot was affected by the differential exposure. Dogs spent more time staying near the robot experimenter as compared to the human experimenter, with this difference being even more pronounced when the robot behaved socially. Similarly, dogs spent more time gazing at the head of the robot experimenter when the situation was social. Dogs achieved a significantly lower level of performance (finding the hidden food) with the pointing robot than with the pointing human; however, separate analysis of the robot sessions suggested that gestures of the socially behaving robot were easier for the dogs to comprehend than gestures of the asocially behaving robot. Thus, the level of sociality shown by the robot was not enough to elicit the same set of social behaviours from the dogs as was possible with humans, although sociality had a positive effect on dog–robot interactions.     

Specialised use of working memory by Portia africana,a spider-eating salticid

Using expectancy–violation methods, we investigated the role of working memory in the predatory strategy of Portia africana, a salticid spider from Kenya that preys by preference on other spiders. One of this predator’s tactics is to launch opportunistic leaping attacks on to other spiders in their webs. Focussing on this particular tactic, our experiments began with a test spider on a ramp facing a lure (dead prey spider mounted on a cork disc) that could be reached by leaping. After the test spider faced the lure for 30 s, we blocked the test spider’s view of the lure by lowering an opaque shutter before the spider leapt. When the shutter was raised 90 s later, either the same lure came into view again (control) or a different lure came into view (experimental: different prey type in same orientation or same prey type in different orientation). We recorded attack frequency (number of test spiders that leapt at the lure) and attack latency (time elapsing between shutter being raised and spiders initiating a leap). Attack latencies in control trials were not significantly different from attack latencies in experimental trials, regardless of whether it was prey type or prey orientation that changed in the experimental trials. However, compared with test spiders in the no-change control trials, significantly fewer test spiders leapt when prey type changed. There was no significant effect on attack frequency when prey orientation changed. These findings suggest that this predator represents prey type independently of prey orientation.     

Wittgenstein,Quasi-fideism,and Scepticism

In the discussion of certainties, or ‘hinges’, in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty some of the examples that Wittgenstein uses are religious ones. He remarks on how a child might be raised so that they ‘swallow down’ belief in God (§107) and in discussing the role of persuasion in disagreements he asks us to think of the case of missionaries converting natives (§612). In the past decade Duncan Pritchard has made a case for an account of the rationality of religious belief inspired by On Certainty which he calls ‘quasi-fideism’. Pritchard argues that religious beliefs are just like ordinary non-religious beliefs in presupposing fundamental arational commitments. However, Modesto Gómez-Alonso has recently argued that there are significant differences between the kinds of ‘hinges’ discussed in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and religious beliefs such that we should expect an account of rationality in religion to be quite different to the account of rational practices and their foundations that we find in Wittgenstein’s work. Fundamental religious commitments are, as Wittgenstein said, in the foreground of the religious believer’s life whereas hinge commitments are said to be in the background. People are passionately committed to their religious beliefs but it is not at all clear that people are passionately committed to hinges such as that ‘I have two hands’. I argue here that although there are differences between religious beliefs and many of the hinge-commitments discussed in On Certainty religious beliefs are nonetheless hinge-like. Gómez-Alonso’s criticisms of Pritchard mischaracterise his views and something like Pritchard’s quasi-fideism is the correct account of the rationality of religious belief.