Resilience,religiosity and treatment adherence in hemodialysis patients: a prospective study

Resilience and religiosity have received attention as an important process in the experience and management of chronic comorbidities; however, there is no study evaluating resilience in hemodialysis patients and its association with other psychological dimensions or with treatment adherence. This observational prospective study assessed resilience (25 item Wagnild and Young Resilience Scale), religiosity under three dimensions (organizational, non-organizational and intrinsic) using DUREL scale, depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) and health-related quality of life (Short Form-36 questionnaire). The main outcomes were medication adherence using the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale-8 (MMAR-8) and the missing/shortened dialysis sessions in the following six months. Of 208 patients approached, 202 (97.1%) agreed to participate. One hundred twenty-three patients (60.9%) were males and mean age was 52.8 ± 14.8 years-old. The median time on hemodialysis was 36 months (IQR, 12, 84). 82 (40.6%) patients obtained a MMAS-8 score <6 and were considered as having ‘poor adherence’. Overall, the mean score of medication adherence was low (5.7 ± 2.1). About adherence to hemodialysis sessions, patients missed a total of 234 (1.6%) hemodialysis sessions. Forty-eight patients (23.7%) missed an average of at least three sessions in six months. Regarding adherence to medication, there was no association in the uni- or multivariate analysis between religiosity dimensions and MMAS-8 score. After adjustment, resilience was positively associated with MMAS-8 score (standardized β coefficient .239, p = .016). Organized and intrinsic religiosity were associated with adherence to dialysis sessions (standardized β coefficient .258, p = .004 and .231, p = .026, respectively). Interestingly, opposite to medication adherence, more resilient patients were associated with less adherence to hemodialysis sessions (standardized β coefficient ?.296, p = .001). Religiosity was associated with dialysis adherence but not with medication adherence. Resilience was associated with higher medication adherence but lower adherence to dialysis sessions.     

Brain dynamics associated with face-naming and the tip-of-the-tongue state

Active brain areas and their temporal sequence of activation during the successful retrieval and naming of famous faces (KNOW) and during the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state were studied by means of low resolution electromagnetic tomographic analysis (LORETA) applied to event-related potentials. The results provide evidence that adequate activation of a neural network during the first 500 ms following presentation of the photograph--mainly involving the posterior temporal region, the insula, lateral and medial prefrontal areas and the medial temporal lobe--is associated with successful retrieval of lexical-phonological information about the person's name. Significant differences between conditions were observed in the 538-698-ms interval; specifically there was greater activation of the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC) towards the supplementary motor area (SMA) in the KNOW than in the TOT condition, possibly in relation to the motor response and as a consequence of the successful retrieval of lexical-phonological information about the person.     

Scaling relative incentive value in consummatory behavior

Surprising downshifts from more preferred (training incentive) to less preferred incentives (test incentive) are usually accompanied by emotional activation and suppression of conditioned behavior in rats. Two experiments were designed to determine whether consummatory behavior is similarly affected by downshifts of equal proportions. Within limits, the degree of consummatory responding during incentive downshift was similar with equal ratios of test concentration to training concentration. Thus, 32–4% and 16–2% downshifts (1:8 test/training ratios) caused similar levels of consummatory behavior, despite differences in the absolute concentrations of the solutions involved in the downshift. An interpretation based on sensory contrast was discarded because of the long intervals between training and test solutions (40 min and 24 h in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively). It is suggested that Weber’s law regulates behavioral suppression after reward downshifts. A theoretical framework for the interpretation of these data is presented.     

Wallace’s and Darwin’s natural selection theories

Synthese - This work takes a stand on whether Wallace should be regarded as co-author of the theory of natural selection alongside Darwin as he is usually considered on behalf of his alleged...     

Historical Inquiry to Challenge the Narrative of Racial Progress

This article explores how a curricular intervention that merges antiessentialist historical content and historical inquiry plays a role in how students complicate the narrative of racial progress. The 3-day curricular intervention centers on Mendez v. Westminster, a case about 1940s Mexican American school segregation. The content and historical inquiry activities explore how (a) Mexican Americans claimed legal Whiteness to gain access to better schools and (b) how Mendez upheld race and language-based segregation. This article outlines how students engage in 4 levels of historical analysis: evidenceless claims, emerging complexity, relational analysis, and multidimensionality. In each type of analysis, students use the antiessentialist historical content to complicate the narrative of racial progress. They highlight, to different degrees, how racial discriminatory policies adapt to continue upholding discrimination. With the antiessentialist historical content in place, the narrative of racial progress functioned as a template, not to emulate but, rather, as a point of comparison. It encouraged students to engage in a complex analysis where they considered how Mendez was an incomplete victory. This research provides insight into levels of analysis that up to now have mostly been theoretical. The larger lesson here, as it applies to how educators teach history, is that (a) the experiences of people of color cannot be essentialized, (b) inquiry can be a useful tool in encouraging historical reasoning that considers such racial/ethnic nuance, and (c) collective memory might be leveraged to encourage students to develop such relational analysis.     

Pretreatment Correlates of the Therapeutic Alliance in the Chronically Depressed

We examined the relationship between patient characteristics and the working alliance in a multisite trial for chronic depression. Patients treated with the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), alone (n = 169) or combined with nefazodone (n = 198), completed the Working Alliance Inventory during the 2nd week of treatment. Within the CBASP alone group, a history of drug abuse/dependence, lower peak social adjustment over the past five years, and lower current social adjustment predicted a significantly poorer alliance. Within the combination group, male gender and a distancing coping style predicted a significantly poorer alliance. Results should be interpreted with caution since they did not replicate across treatment groups, and the number of significant findings were not much greater than chance expectations.     

Differential allocation of study time: incomplete compensation for the difficulty of the materials

The results of many experiments have shown that although people distribute their study time depending on the perceived difficulty of the materials, they do not succeed in compensating for this difficulty (e.g., Mazzoni & Cornoldi, 1993). The purpose of this paper was to explore possible ways to induce compensation. The objective difficulty of the items was varied by manipulating their concreteness. In Experiment 1, we explored whether compensation could be increased through practice. In Experiment 2, predictive memory judgements were obtained to determine to what extent participants were sensitive to the characteristics of the material that made it difficult. Finally, in Experiment 3, participants were given instructions designed to achieve complete compensation. Results showed that although participants' judgements of learning and their allocation of time were sensitive to the objective difficulty of the materials, this knowledge was not spontaneously used to compensate. Thus, even with practice participants recalled more easy items than difficult ones. Only instructions that induced greater awareness of the nature of the material were able to produce complete compensation.     

Time (also) flies from left to right

Everyday linguistic expressions in many languages suggest that back and front space is projected onto temporal concepts of past and future (as in the sentencewe are years ahead of them). The present experiment tested the psychological reality of a different space-time conceptual metaphor—projecting the past to left space and the future to right space—for which there are no linguistic traces in any language. Participants categorized words as referring to the past or to the future. Irrelevant to this task, words appeared either to the left or right of the screen, and responses were given by keypresses of the left or right hand. Judgments were facilitated when word position and response mapping were congruent with the left-past right-future conceptual metaphor. These results are discussed in the context of current claims about the embodiment of meaning and the possible mechanisms by which conceptual metaphors can be acquired.