Psychosocial Conditions of Women Awaiting Genetic Counseling: A Population-based Study

The decision whether to undergo genetic counseling for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer is complex. Knowledge about the psychosocial conditions of women who are awaiting counseling is sparse. We aimed to compare the psychosocial conditions of women awaiting genetic counseling with those of women in two reference groups. We included 567 women referred to genetic counseling for hereditary risk of breast or ovarian cancer (Genetic Group), 689 women referred to mammography (Mammography Group) and a random sample of 2,000 women from the general population (Population Group). One to 4 weeks before the first counseling session or mammography, data were collected by questionnaires. Both women affected with cancer and unaffected women in the Genetic Group appeared to have a somewhat higher prevalence of cancer-specific-distress than the corresponding reference groups. Further research on the effect of pre- counseling interventions appear warranted in addition with exploring a potential association between waiting time and cancer-specific distress.     

Do Reentry Women Have Special Needs?

Reentry and nonreentry women were compared on their reasons for being in school, goals associated with education, and campus services used or wanted. Eighty-two California State University, Hayward, undergraduate students volunteered to participate in the questionnaire survey. Reentry women were found to be more self-motivated, with higher educational goals, and higher grade point averages than nonreentry women. Reentry women also made less use of currently available student services. Reasons for this lack of use, and suggestions for future services were explored.     

Legitimizing Paltry Contributions: On-the-spot vs. Mail-in Requests1

Two versions of the legitimization-of-paltry-contributions technique (Cialdini & Schroeder, 1976) were compared with respect to their effectiveness in generating compliance with requests for charitable donations. When immediate, on-the-spot donations were requested, the technique significantly increased compliance rates relative to control conditions; but when the respondents were asked to mail in their contributions, virtually none did. The results offered some support for an image-maintenance explanation of the technique and were viewed as indicating that the effectiveness of the technique is reliable, but primarily under conditions that impose a high degree of situational constraint upon respondents. Implications of the results for door-to-door fundraising and for future research were discussed.     

Material representations in mathematical research practice

Synthese - Mathematicians’ use of external representations, such as symbols and diagrams, constitutes an important focal point in current philosophical attempts to understand mathematical...     

Are there representational shifts during category learning?

Early theories of categorization assumed that either rules, or prototypes, or exemplars were exclusively used to mentally represent categories of objects. More recently, hybrid theories of categorization have been proposed that variously combine these different forms of category representation. Our research addressed the question of whether there are representational shifts during category learning. We report a series of experiments that tracked how individual subjects generalized their acquired category knowledge to classifying new critical transfer items as a function of learning. Individual differences were observed in the generalization patterns exhibited by subjects, and those generalizations changed systematically with experience. Early in learning, subjects generalized on the basis of single diagnostic dimensions, consistent with the use of simple categorization rules. Later in learning, subjects generalized in a manner consistent with the use of similarity-based exemplar retrieval, attending to multiple stimulus dimensions. Theoretical modeling was used to formally corroborate these empirical observations by comparing fits of rule, prototype, and exemplar models to the observed categorization data. Although we provide strong evidence for shifts in the kind of information used to classify objects as a function of categorization experience, interpreting these results in terms of shifts in representational systems underlying perceptual categorization is a far thornier issue. We provide a discussion of the challenges of making claims about category representation, making reference to a wide body of literature suggesting different kinds of representational systems in perceptual categorization and related domains of human cognition.     

Salience Not Status: How Category Labels Influence Feature Inference

Two main uses of categories are classification and feature inference, and category labels have been widely shown to play a dominant role in feature inference. However, the nature of this influence remains unclear, and we evaluate two contrasting hypotheses formalized as mathematical models: the label special‐mechanism hypothesis and the label super‐salience hypothesis. The special‐mechanism hypothesis is that category labels, unlike other features, trigger inference decision making in reference to the category prototypes. This results in a tendency for prototype‐compatible inferences because the labels trigger a special mechanism rather than because of any influences they have on similarity evaluation. The super‐salience hypothesis assumes that the large label influence is due to their high salience and corresponding impact on similarity without any need for a special mechanism. Application of the two models to a feature inference task based on a family resemblance category structure yields strong support for the label super‐salience hypothesis and in particular does not support the need for a special mechanism based on prototypes.     

Computers as a Source of A Posteriori Knowledge in Mathematics

Electronic computers form an integral part of modern mathematical practice. Several high-profile results have been proven with techniques where computer calculations form an essential part of the proof. In the traditional philosophical literature, such proofs have been taken to constitute a posteriori knowledge. However, this traditional stance has recently been challenged by Mark McEvoy, who claims that computer calculations can constitute a priori mathematical proofs, even in cases where the calculations made by the computer are too numerous to be surveyed by human agents. In this article we point out the deficits of the traditional literature that has called for McEvoy’s correction. We also explain why McEvoy’s defence of mathematical apriorism fails and we discuss how the debate over the epistemological status of computer-assisted mathematics contains several unfortunate conceptual reductions.     

Current dysphoria,past major depression,and memory for affective facial expressions

Current Psychology - Memory for others’ sad affective facial expressions may be relevant to depression risk, given that biases have been linked to major depression and transient sad mood...