Cancer Risk Assessment Using Genetic Panel Testing: Considerations for Clinical Application

With the completion of the Human Genome Project and the development of high throughput technologies, such as next-generation sequencing, the use of multiplex genetic testing, in which multiple genes are sequenced simultaneously to test for one or more conditions, is growing rapidly. Reflecting underlying heterogeneity where a broad range of genes confer risks for one or more cancers, the development of genetic cancer panels to assess these risks represents just one example of how multiplex testing is being applied clinically. There are a number of issues and challenges to consider when conducting genetic testing for cancer risk assessment, and these issues become exceedingly more complex when moving from the traditional single-gene approach to panel testing. Here, we address the practical considerations for clinical use of panel testing for breast, ovarian, and colon cancers, including the benefits, limitations and challenges, genetic counseling issues, and management guidelines.     

If I imagine it,then it happened: The Implicit Truth Value of imaginary representations

Imagination sometimes leads people to behave, feel, and think as though imagined events were real even when they know they were not. In this paper, we suggest that some understanding of these phenomena can be achieved by differentiating between Implicit Truth Value (ITV), a spontaneous truth evaluation, and Explicit Truth Value (ETV), a self-reported truth judgment. In three experiments, we measure ITV using the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (Sartori, Agosta, Zogmaister, Ferrara, & Castiello, 2008), which has been used to assess which of two autobiographical events is true. Our findings demonstrate that imagining an event, like experiencing an event, increases its ITV, even when people explicitly acknowledge the imagined event as false (Experiments 1a and 1b). Furthermore, we show that imagined representations generated from a first-person perspective have higher ITV than imagined representations generated from a third-person perspective (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that implicit and explicit measures of truth differ in their sensitivity to properties underlying truth judgment. We discuss the contribution of characterizing events according to both ITV and ETV to the understanding of various psychological phenomena, such as lying and self-deception.     

A Normative Database and Determinants of Lexical Retrieval for 186 Arabic Nouns: Effects of Psycholinguistic and Morpho-Syntactic Variables on Naming Latency

Research into lexical retrieval requires pictorial stimuli standardised for key psycholinguistic variables. Such databases exist in a number of languages but not in Arabic. In addition there are few studies of the effects of psycholinguistic and morpho-syntactic variables on Arabic lexical retrieval. The current study identified a set of culturally and linguistically appropriate concept labels, and corresponding photographic representations for Levantine Arabic. The set included masculine and feminine nouns, nouns from both types of plural formation (sound and broken), and both rational and irrational nouns. Levantine Arabic speakers provided norms for visual complexity, imageability, age of acquisition, naming latency and name agreement. This delivered a normative database for a set of 186 Arabic nouns. The effects of the morpho-syntactic and the psycholinguistic variables on lexical retrieval were explored using the database. Imageability and age of acquisition were the only significant determinants of successful lexical retrieval in Arabic. None of the other variables, including all the linguistic variables, had any effect on production time. The normative database is available for the use of clinicians and researchers in the Arab world in the domains of speech and language pathology, neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics. The database and the photographic representations will be soon available for free download from the first author’s personal webpage or via email.     

Longitudinal Analysis of Adolescent NSSI: The Role of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Factors

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) occurs in approximately 10 % of adolescents. To establish effective prevention and intervention initiatives, it is important to understand onset, maintenance and cessation of NSSI. We explored whether the relationships between interpersonal factors (i.e. attachment, social support) and NSSI were mediated by intrapersonal factors (i.e. emotion regulation, self-esteem, self-efficacy). Participants were 1973 students (1414 female and 559 male) aged between 12 and 18 years (M?=?13.89, SD?=?0.97) recruited from 40 Australian high schools. Participants completed a questionnaire at two time-points with a 12-month interval. At baseline, 8.3 % of adolescents engaged in NSSI, increasing to 11.9 % at follow-up. Family support was most salient in onset, maintenance and cessation of NSSI. Attachment anxiety was related to NSSI onset. Of the intrapersonal variables, self-esteem and self-efficacy were significant in predicting onset of NSSI. Self-esteem, self-efficacy and cognitive reappraisal mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and NSSI onset. A combination of interpersonal and intrapersonal variables contributes to the onset, maintenance and cessation of NSSI in adolescence. Perceived family support appears to be an important safeguard against NSSI. Strategies targeting family functioning and teaching cognitive reappraisal techniques to adolescents may reduce the number engaging in NSSI.     

“There is Something not Quite Right with Brad…”: The Ways in Which Families Construct ADHD Before Receiving a Diagnosis

This study explored how four families who were in the midst of the process of a potential diagnosis of ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’ (ADHD) for their child negotiated competing explanations of the problems. The research drew on a social constructionist, systemic and attachment lens to understand; (a) the constellations of meanings that are constructed by the families to explain the difficulties and (b) how families use strategies in their talk to account for or contest these constellations of meaning. A discursive analysis revealed that the families in this study, following initial explorations, adopted a sequential and cumulative dismissal of psychosocial explanations. Hence, the thrust of the conversation implicitly added up to the only possibility, the inevitable conclusion that it was ADHD. The malleability and flexibility in which the families explored these explanations varied and for some families the process of closure towards ‘illness’ as a dominant explanation sealed alternative conversations more than in others. The findings also revealed a complexity for the parents in balancing the need to offer discipline versus another response and this has clinical implications and highlights the need for further research in this area.     

Suffering and the Shape of Well-Being in Buddhist Ethics

This article explores the defense Indian Buddhist texts make in support of their conceptions of lives that are good for an individual. This defense occurs, largely, through their analysis of ordinary experience as being saturated by subtle forms of suffering (du?kha). I begin by explicating the most influential of the Buddhist taxonomies of suffering: the threefold division into explicit suffering (du?kha-du?khatā), the suffering of change (vipari?āma-du?khatā), and conditioned suffering (sa?skāra-du?khatā). Next, I sketch the three theories of welfare that have been most influential in contemporary ethical theory. I then argue that Buddhist texts underdetermine which of these theories would have been accepted by ancient Indian Buddhists. Nevertheless, Buddhist ideas about suffering narrow the shape any acceptable theory of welfare may take. In my conclusion, I argue that this narrowing process itself is enough to reconstruct a philosophical defense of the forms of life endorsed in Buddhist texts.     

Belief in Magic Predicts Children's Selective Trust in Informants

Children are able to distinguish between regular events that can occur in everyday reality and magical events that are ordinarily impossible. How do children respond to a person who brings about magical as compared with ordinary outcomes? In two studies, we tested children's acceptance of informants' claims when the informants had produced either magical or ordinary outcomes. In Study 1, children's skeptical or credulous stance toward magic predicted their endorsement of the claims made by the informants. Children who were more credulous were likely to accept information from the informant who had produced magical outcomes. In Study 2, a brief manipulation was only partially effective in changing children's initial stance toward magic. Their initial stance toward magic continued to predict their acceptance of information from the informant who had produced magical outcomes.     

Feasibility and effectiveness of school-based relaxation in lowering blood pressure

Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a broadly useful anxiety reduction technique that has been found to lower blood pressure (BP) in essential hypertension. The present investigation is the first to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of wide-scale PMR instruction as a public health promotion strategy aimed at adolescents. Students (N = 1,400) in Grades 9 and 10 at two large Baltimore City public high schools underwent BP screening; those with BP persistently above the 85th percentile were randomly assigned to (a) 12 weeks daily PMR instruction provided in class for academic credit or (b) a control condition. The latter students had their BP measured at the same frequency as the PMR students and completed the PMR course during the following year. Approximately two thirds of eligible students entered and completed the study. Results demonstrated that treatment students (n = 51) enjoyed daily PMR, mastered the technique, and achieved reduced systolic BP at posttest relative to the untrained controls (n = 59). At follow-up 4 months later, group BP differences were not significant. Implications for use of PMR to promote cardiovascular health are discussed.     

Midline and off-midline tongue and right- and left-hand vibrotactile thresholds of stutterers and normal-speaking individuals

Vibrotactile thresholds for 7 male stutterers and 7 normal-speaking men (age range for both groups = 19 to 32 yr.) were obtained from the right, midline, and left sides of the lingual dorsum, and the thenar eminences of both hands. The stutterers showed slightly higher (less sensitive) mean thresholds than the normal speakers for all three lingual test sites. This was not the case for the thresholds obtained from both hands. The preliminary data suggest that oral peripheral sensory integrity might be somewhat different for stutterers than for normal-speaking individuals.