Using a Family History Intervention to Improve Cancer Risk Perception in a Black Community

Few studies examine the use of family history to influence risk perceptions in the African American population. This study examined the influence of a family health history (FHH) intervention on risk perceptions for breast (BRCA), colon (CRC), and prostate cancers (PRCA) among African Americans in Pittsburgh, PA. Participants (n = 665) completed pre- and post-surveys and FHHs. We compared their objective and perceived risks, classified as average, moderate, or high, and examined the accuracy of risk perceptions before and after the FHH intervention. The majority of participants had accurate risk perceptions post-FHH. Of those participants who were inaccurate pre-FHH, 43.3%, 43.8%, and 34.5% for BRCA, CRC, and PRCA, respectively, adopted accurate risk perceptions post-FHH intervention. The intervention was successful in a community setting. It has the potential to lead to healthy behavior modifications because participants adopted accurate risk perceptions. We identified a substantial number of at-risk individuals who could benefit from targeted prevention strategies, thus decreasing racial/ethnic cancer disparities.     

Coping in Caregivers of Youth with Spinal Cord Injury

This study examined coping among caregivers of youth with spinal cord injuries (SCI). Using a cross-sectional survey study design, 164 caregivers completed a demographics questionnaire and the Brief COPE. Their children, youth with SCI ages 7–18, completed the Kidcope. T-tests were conducted to examine differences in caregiver coping by demographic and injury-related factors. Further, logistic regression models were evaluated to examine predictive relationships between caregiver coping and youth coping. Several demographic and injury-related factors were related to caregiver coping, including caregiver gender, race, and education, as well as youth gender, age at injury, and time since injury. In the logistic regressions, two caregiver coping strategies were related to youth coping: caregiver self-blame coping was related to youth self-criticism, and caregiver behavioral disengagement coping (giving up attempts to cope) was related to youth blaming others coping. The findings suggest that caregiver coping may play a role in the coping of their children, and should be considered when addressing coping among youth with SCI.     

In Defence of the Will Theory of Rights

Nicholas Vrousalis has aimed to recast an old objection to the will theory of rights by focusing on Hillel Steiner??s version of that theory. He has argued that Will Theory must either be insensitive to the (values of the) lives of the unempowerable, or be incomplete, because it has no argumentative resources within its conceptual apparatus to ascribe or justify restrictions on the amount of discretion exercised by legal officials. I show that both charges are problematic. They rely on some of Steiner??s inferences which are simply unjustified because they are based on misinterpretations of the logic of Hohfeld??s terminology. The problem for Vrousalis is that his critique takes for granted some of these flawed arguments. The critique is also misdirected to the extent that it assumes that the problems with Steiner??s theory affect Will Theory in general.     

STABILITY OF BIOLOGICAL FATHER PRESENCE AS A PROXY FOR FAMILY STABILITY: CROSS‐RACIAL ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE LONGITUDINAL DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION REGULATION IN TODDLERHOOD

The current study, utilizing data from the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (Love et al., 2005) explored the relationship between biological father presence and emotion regulation over toddlerhood among children from low‐income families. Conceptualizing biological father presence as a proxy for family role development, results are interpreted from a role development theoretical perspective. The latent growth curve model was compared based on child ethnoracial status (African American, Caucasian, Hispanic) and child gender. Consistent biological father presence was associated with toddlers’ regulatory development across toddlerhood, and this relationship was most robust among Caucasian toddlers as compared to African American toddlers. Findings for Hispanic toddlers were not significantly different from those of Caucasian or African American families. Results bolster the literature on father presence and child outcomes. Analyses address consistency in father presence as a proxy for coherent role development and define a link between consistent father presence and children's regulatory development, demonstrating ethnoracial differences which are likely attributed to the social construction of family roles.     

Beyond Pregenital Determination of Femininity and Masculinity (Discussion)1

Abstract

The authors investigate the relationship between the concept of functional pleasure as defined by Fenichel and a number of other psychoanalytic concepts. Considered in the light of this concept, the pleasure–unpleasure principle as defined by Freud is to be distinguished in terms of a pleasure principle and a principle of avoiding unpleasure. These are then reunified in the sense of an unpleasure–functional pleasure principle, to which the substitutive formations of the repressed are subjected. It is argued that, in the realization of substitutive formations of repressed genital–sexual instinctual wishes, the intentional erogenous pleasure changes into a functional pleasure, in which a successful defence finds its experiential expression.     

The Interaction Effects of Leader and Follower Conscientiousness on Person-Supervisor Fit Perceptions and Follower Outcomes: A Cross-Level Moderated Indirect Effects Model

ABSTRACT

The primary purpose of this study is to examine how the cross-level interaction between leader and follower conscientiousness influences person-supervisor (PS) fit perceptions, which in turn impact follower work attitudes and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Based on a sample of 1,204 participants in 167 work teams, the results of our cross-level moderated indirect effects model show that highly conscientiousness followers whose leaders also have high levels of conscientiousness experience enhanced perceptions of PS fit which result in higher levels of job satisfaction and OCB and lower levels of intention to quit. The study suggests that high leader conscientiousness serves as a supportive situational cue that motivates followers to more fully express their conscientiousness and act in ways consistent with their conscientiousness.     

Lack of Inhibition: A Motivational Deficit in Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Children With Traumatic Brain Injury*

Recent research has demonstrated that both brain-injured children and children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suffer from response inhibition deficits. To investigate whether these deficits can be influenced by motivational factors, the stop-signal task was performed with and without reward contingencies for successful inhibition. Three groups of children between 8 and 12 years of age, participated in the study: 31 children with ADHD, 37 with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), and 26 normal controls. Results indicated that, although all groups showed comparable learning effects, reward contingencies had different effects on the groups. Whereas the performance of children with ADHD under reward contingencies were brought up to the performance level of normal controls, rewards were found less effective at improving response inhibition in children with TBI. The results further support a motivational/energetic explanation of the inhibitory deficit in children with ADHD, and of a primary response inhibition deficit due to structural brain damage in children with TBI.     

Natural Rights to Welfare

Abstract: Many people have lamented the proliferation of human rights claims. The cure for this problem, it may be thought, would be to develop a theory that can distinguish ‘real’ from ‘supposed’ human rights. I argue, however, that the proliferation of human rights mirrors a deep problem in human rights theory itself. Contemporary theories of natural rights to welfare are historical descendants from a theory of rights to subsistence which was developed in twelfth‐century Europe. According to this theory, each human being has a special role to fulfil in God's plan and therefore has inalienable rights to subsist. Later theories have secularized this idea by claiming that human beings are purposive agents. Secularization, however, comes at a price. In the case of these theories, the price is a failure to provide satisfactory answers to the most basic questions we would expect of a theory of natural rights to answer. They have failed to provide a basis for ascribing these rights to all and only to human beings. They have not been able to generate a clear and viable criterion for ascribing duties correlative to these rights. And they cannot limit rights‐claims in a non‐arbitrary way. Hence we should abandon these theories.     

Motivating minority older adults to exercise

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore with minority older adults their experience in the Senior Exercise Self-Efficacy Pilot Program (SESEP) and establish what aspects of the SESEP helped the participants engage in exercise and what decreased their willingness to exercise. A total of 148 older adults from 12 Senior Centers participated. The majority of the participants were African American (77%), and female (79%) and the average age was 72.9+/-8.0. Analysis of the semi-structured interviews revealed 36 codes which were categorized and reduced to 13 major themes. Eleven of these themes focused on factors that facilitated participation in exercise and two themes included factors that decreased willingness to participate in exercise. Findings support the use of the theory of self-efficacy to change behavior among minority older adults, and future research should focus on identifying culturally specific interventions that will strengthen these beliefs and thereby increase exercise behavior.     

Voluntazy and automatic attentional control of visual working memory

Previous studies of attention-directing cues have focused largely on the effects of cuing on perceptual processes, but cuing may also influence the transfer of perceptual representations into visual working memory. In the present study, we examined this potential role of cues, using both predictive and non-predictive cues in the context of a visual working memory task. Each trial began with a cue, followed by an array of six colored squares, a delay interval, and then a probe square presented at th e location of one of the squares in the previous array. The subjects were required to indicate whether the color of the probe square was the same as the color of the square that had previously been presented at the same location. Performance on this working memory task was more accurate when the cued location was probed than when an uncued location was probed, even when the cued location was no more likely to be probed than any of the uncued locations. An additional experiment using the abrupt-onset paradigm of Yantis and Jonides (1984) yielded similar results. Thus, visual transients may automatically influence the transfer of perceptual representations into visual working memory.