The role of the affect heuristic and cancer anxiety in responding to negative information about medical tests

Objective: Little is known about the affective implications of communicating negative information about medical tests. This research explored how affective processes – particularly the Affect Heuristic and cancer anxiety – influence the way in which people respond to such information.

Design: Participants received different types of information about PSA screening for prostate cancer and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for migraine headaches. This was a 2 (Test harm information: present vs. absent) × 2 (Test benefit information: present vs. absent) × 2 (Test recommendation: present vs. absent) between-participants design.

Outcome Measures: Perceived risk, perceived benefit and general attitudes towards PSA and MRI testing, cancer anxiety, preferences to receive the tests vs. not.

Results: As predicted by the Affect Heuristic, test harm information reduced perceived test benefits. However, information about uncertain test benefit did not increase perceived test risks. Information about the test reduced cancer anxiety, indicating defensive coping. These variables – affect, anxiety, perceived risks and benefits – all uniquely predicted test preferences.

Conclusion: Affective processes play an important role in how people respond to and interpret negative information about medical tests. Information about harms and information about the lack of benefit can both make a test seem less beneficial, and will reduce cancer anxiety as a result.     

Foley's Threshold View of Belief and The Safety Condition on Knowledge

This paper introduces a new argument against Richard Foley's threshold view of belief. Foley's view is based on the Lockean Thesis (LT) and the Rational Threshold Thesis (RTT). The former thesis is the claim that it is epistemically rational to believe a proposition if and only if it is epistemically rational to have a degree of confidence in that proposition sufficient for belief. The latter thesis is the claim that it is epistemically rational to believe a proposition if and only if it is epistemically rational to have a degree of confidence in that proposition that meets or exceeds a specified threshold. The argument introduced here shows that the views derived from the joint endorsement of the LT and the RTT violate the safety condition on knowledge in way that threatens the LT and/or the RTT.     

Rorschach Comprehensive System data for 100 nonpatient children from the United States in two age groups

Building on our previously published study (Hamel, Shaffer, & Erdberg, 2000), which provided data on 100 nonpatient children aged 6 to 12 from the United States, we here provide reference data for two more homogeneous age subgroups: 6 to 9 (N = 50) and 10 to 12 (N = 50). Inclusion criteria are described, and expanded interrater reliability statistics at the response level are presented along with scores for the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2001) at each age grouping. In addition to the children being administered the Rorschach, their parents were given the Conners' Parent Rating Scale-93 (CPRS-93; Conners, 1989), and these results are presented as well.     

Book reviews

SCHIFF, W. AND FOULKE, E. (Eds.). Tactual Perception: A Source Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. Pp. 464. ISBN 0 521 24095 6. £25.00.

GILHOOLY, K. J. Thinking: Directed, Undirected and Creative. London: Academic Press. 1982. Pp. 178. ISBN 0 12283482 8. £5.50.

DEUTSCH, D. The Psychology of Music. New York: Academic Press, 1982. Pp. 542. $49.50. ISBN 0 12 2135601.

SHEPARD, R. N. and COOPER, L. A. Mental Irnuges and Their Transfomutions. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 1982. Pp. 364. ISBN 0 262 19200 4. £17.50

WADE, N. The Art and Science of Visual Illusions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1982. Pp. 293. E1y. 95 ISBN 0 7100 0868 6.

REED, S.K. Cognition: Theory and Applications. Montery, Calif.; BrooksiCole Publishing Co. 1982. Pp. 394. $19.95 ISBN 0 8185 0462 5.

CAELLI, T. Visual Perception Theonl and Practice. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1981Pp. 197. £8.50 (paper) ISBN 0 08 oz4419/0~4420.

A. M. UTTLEY. Infomation Transmission in the Nervous System. London: Academic Press. 1979.Pp. 111 £7.50 ISBN 0 12709750 3.

ANDERSON, J. R. (Ed.). Cognitive Skills and their-Acquisition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. 1981. Pp. 386. 00.00. ISBN 0 89859 093 0.

KUCZAC, S. (Ed.). Language Development. Volume I: Syntux and Semantics. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. 1982. Pp. 492. ISBN 0 89859 1OO 7.

DEUTSCH, W. (Ed.). The Child's Construction of Languuge. London: Academic Press. 1981. Pp. 393. ISBN 0 12213580 6. £19.20.

BAKER, C. L. and MCCARTHY, J. J. (Eds). The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1981. Pp. 358. ISBN 0 262 02159 5. £19.25.

DIXON, N. F. Preconscious Processing Chichester: Wiley 1981. Pp. 313. ISBN 0 471 27982 X. £14.95.     

Book reviews

Long, J. and Baddeley, A. Attention and performance IX. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1981. Pp 643. ISBN 0-89859-156-2. £30.

Cutler, A. and Ladd, D. R. (Eds.). Prosody: Models and measurements. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1983. Pp. ix + 159. ISBN 3-540-12428-4. $24.

Wood, G. Cognitive psychology: A skills approach. Monterey, Cal.: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. 1983. Pp. 352. ISBN 0-534-01262-0.

Engelkamp, J. and Zimmer, H. D. Dynamic aspects of language processing: Focus and presupposition. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1983. Pp. 102. ISBN 3-540-12433-0

K. Rayner (Ed.). Eye movements in reading: Perceptual and language processes. New York: Academic Press. 1983. pp. xxi + 526. ISBN 0-12-583680-5. £34.40.

Lass, N. J., McReynolds, L. V., Northern, J. L. and Yoder, D. E. (Eds.). Speech, language and hearing. Philadelphia: WB Saunders Co. 1982. Vol I: Normal processes. (ISBN 0-7216-5641-2, pp. 422, $26.50.) Vol II: Pathologies of speech and language. (ISBN 0-7216-5642-0, pp. 368, $24.50.) Vol III: Hearing disorders. (ISBN 0-7216-5643-9, pp. 238, $22.50.)

Singleton, W. T. (Ed.). The body at work: Biological ergonomics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. Pp. 430. ISBN 0-521-24087-5. £32.50.

Magill, R. A. (Ed.). Memory and control of action. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 1983. Pp. 395. ISBN 0-444-86559-4. $53.25.

Hewstone, M. (Ed.). Attribution theory: Social and functional extensions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1983. Pp. 256. ISBN 0-631-13322-4. Hardback £25.00; paperback £9.50.

Ellis, A. W. Reading, writing and dyslexia: A cognitive analysis. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1984. Pp. 147. ISBN 0-86377-002-9. Hardback £12.95. Paperback £5.95.     

Emotion Socialization in the Context of Family Risks: Links to Child Emotion Regulation

The current study expands upon the extant literature by examining the influence of contextual risk factors (e.g., parental psychological distress, household income, educational attainment) on parental responses to children’s emotional experiences. Participants included 97 ethnically and demographically diverse mother–child dyads with children ranging in age from 7 to 12. Mothers reported indicators of supportive and unsupportive emotion socialization practices, and measures of child emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation. Higher scores on the familial risk index were positively related to increased emotion dysregulation and negatively related to decreased emotion regulation through mediated effects of mothers’ unsupportive reactions to children’s negative emotional expressions. These findings suggest the importance of considering contextual influences on the emotion socialization process and offer potential avenues to foster adaptive emotional development in the context of high risk.