Formation of food aversions in cancer patients receiving repeated infusions of chemotherapy

Patients receiving emetogenic chemotherapy for cancer have been found to develop aversions to normal dietary items consumed in close temporal relation to treatment administrations. These aversions are presumed to develop via conditioning processes as demonstrated in experimental studies of food aversion learning. The present study used a prospective, longitudinal design to evaluate the possible role of conditioning in the formation of aversions to normal dietary items in women receiving adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Patients were monitored for the development of aversions to foods and beverages consumed in the 24 hr periods before and after each of eight consecutive chemotherapy infusions beginning with the initial infusion. Data on the prevalence, course, and prediction of aversions to normal dietary items are reported. These results pointed to similarities and differences between aversions formed to normal dietary items during chemotherapy treatment and aversions formed to taste stimuli during experimental conditioning studies. In addition to their theoretical significance, results also suggest possible strategies for preventing the clinical problem of aversions to normal dietary items in chemotherapy patients.     

Primary Femininity and Female Genital Anxiety

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Does trait coping exist? A momentary assessment approach to the evaluation of traits.

This study investigated the extent to which momentary reports of coping are a traitlike phenomenon and the validity of a questionnaire assessment of coping style. Participants (N = 96) completed the questionnaire, then monitored stressful events and coping activities for 2 days using a hand-held computer that administered a brief assessment every 40 min. Momentary reports exhibited a sizable traitlike component: Individual differences accounted for 42% of the variance for 2 coping items and 15-30% of the variance for 15 items. The questionnaire assessment of coping style was a poor predictor of average momentary coping; the coping style measure and the aggregated momentary measure of trait coping shared 23% of their variance for religion and 0-12% for the 16 other coping measures. Self-report assessments of trait coping are poor measures of the trait component of momentary coping and very poor predictors of coping in specific situations.     

Sparkling at the end of the tongue: the etiology of tip-of-the-tongue phenomenology

The tip-of-the-tongue experience (TOT) is the phenomenological experience that a currently inaccessible word is stored in memory and will be retrieved. TOTs appear to be a universal experience that occurs frequently in everyday life, making the TOT an ideal case study in human phenomenology. This paper considers TOTs in light of Tulving's (1989) challenge to the doctrine of concordance, which is the assumption that behavior, cognition, and phenomenology are correlated, if not caused by identical processes. Psycholinguistic and memory theories, consistent with concordance, argue for direct access, or the view that TOTs and word retrieval are caused by the same retrieval processes. The metacognition view challenges concordance and views TOTs as an inference based on nontarget information that is accessible to rememberers. Current data, reviewed here, suggest that TOTs are caused via direct access and through inferential processes. Dissociations between TOTs and retrieval suggest that the causes of TOT phenomenology and the processes of retrieval are not identical.     

Haptic perception of the distance walked when blindfolded.

The ability to detect the distance walked when blindfolded using only haptic information generated by the walking activity was investigated. Participants walked a straight path until told to stop, turned, and attempted to return to their starting point. The path was completely featureless. Counting was prevented. Blindfolded, sighted participants traveled with a long cane or a trained sighted guide. Gait was varied or distorted. In all experiments the return distance was a linear function of the set distance, with some participants giving and some conditions resulting in remarkably sensitive performances. The magnitude of errors was a linear function of step length.     

Early Behavior Problems as a Predictor of Later Peer Group Victimization: Moderators and Mediators in the Pathways of Social Risk

This study is a prospective investigation of the predictive association between early behavior problems (internalizing, externalizing, hyperactivity–impulsiveness, immaturity–dependency) and later victimization in the peer group. Teacher ratings of the behavioral adjustment of 389 kindergarten and 1st-grade children (approximate age range of 5 to 6 years-old) were obtained, using standardized behavior problem checklists. These ratings predicted peer nomination scores for victimization, obtained 3 years later, even after the prediction associated with concurrent behavior problems was statistically controlled. Further analyses suggested that the relation between early behavior problems and later victimization is mediated by peer rejection and moderated by children's dyadic friendships. Behavior problems appear to play an important role in determining victimization within the peer group, although the relevant pathways are complex and influenced by other aspects of children's social adjustment.     

Randomized controlled trial of yogic meditation techniques for patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

The objective of this study was to compare efficacy of two meditation protocols for treating patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Patients were randomized to two groups-matched for sex, age, and medication status-and blinded to the comparison protocol. They were told the trial would last for 12 months, unless one protocol proved to be more efficacious. If so, groups would merge, and the group that received the less efficacious treatment would also be afforded 12 months of the more effective one. The study was conducted at Children's Hospital, San Diego, Calif. Patients were selected according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition-Revised (DSM-III-R) criteria and recruited by advertisements and referral. At baseline, Group 1 included 11 adults and 1 adolescent, and Group 2 included 10 adults. Group 1 employed a kundalini yoga meditation protocol and Group 2 employed the Relaxation Response plus Mindfulness Meditation technique. Baseline and 3-month interval testing was conducted using the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Symptoms Checklist-90-Revised Obsessive Compulsive (SCL-90-R OC) and Global Severity Index (SCL-90-R GSI) scales, Profile of Moods scale (POMS), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and Purpose in Life (PIL) test. Seven adults in each group completed 3 months of therapy. At 3 months, Group 1 demonstrated greater improvements (Student's independent groups t-test) on the Y-BOCS, SCL-90-R OC and GSI scales, and POMS, and greater but nonsignificant improvements on the PSS and PIL test. An intent-to-treat analysis (Y-BOCS) for the baseline and 3-month tests showed that only Group 1 improved. Within-group statistics (Student's paired t-tests) showed that Group 1 significantly improved on all six scales, but Group 2 had no improvements. Groups were merged for an additional year using Group 1 techniques. At 15 months, the final group (N=11) improved 71%, 62%, 66%, 74%, 39%, and 23%, respectively, on the Y-BOCS, SCL-90-R OC, SCL-90-R GSI, POMS, PSS, and PIL; P<0.003 (analysis of variance). This study demonstrates that kundalini yoga techniques are effective in the treatment of OCD.     

Inattentive and noninattentive ADHD children: Do they constitute a unitary group?

Teacher-rated ADHD and normal control children were administered a continuous performance test (CPT), and were then further subdivided based upon the presence or absence of objectively assessed attentional deficits. In addition, children were assessed using several measures of cognitive and behavioral functioning. Attentional deficits were signficantly more prevalent among the ADHD group, but about half of the ADHD children showed no evidence of objectively assessed attentional dysfunction. Further group analyses indicated that ADHD children with objectively assessed attentional dysfunction appeared cognitively impaired, while ADHD children without objective evidence of attentional dysfunction had more conduct problems. CPT inattention was not related to the presence of cognitive impairments or conduct problems in the control group. These data must be considered preliminary because teacher ratings were the only source of diagnosis and a single measure of inattention was used. However, they suggest that two subtypes of ADHD children can be identified, one characterized by inattention and learning problems, and the other by conduct problems.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Sister Hildegard Kogler and the St. Francis DeSales School, and the parents and children who participated in this study.     

Effects of gender,target's gender,topic, and self-esteem on disclosure to best and midling friends

Two studies examining self-disclosure as a function of discloser's gender, target's gender, topic, class standing, and self-esteem are reported. In the first study, 172 college students were given a test containing items from a modified Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire and the Culture-Free Self-Esteem Inventory, and asked to report disclosure to their best, nonromantic, same-and cross-sex friends; the second study was a replication of the first, but the 138 subjects were questioned about disclosure to midling-level friends. The expected effects were found—topic, target's gender, etc.—and self-esteem level and class standing were found to influence disclosure levels as well. The ² and correlations are reported, so that readers can see an estimate of the effects' magnitudes as well as their significance levels.