Offering predictive testing for Huntington disease in a medical genetics clinic: Practical applications

Predictive testing for Huntington disease is presently offered in a select few medical genetics centers in the United States. This is in part due to the labor intensive counseling and psychological testing suggested by the research protocols. We discuss some specific suggestions for establishing programs for Huntington disease predictive testing within pre-existing medical genetics clinics to encourage more centers to offer presymptomatic testing. This will allow more at risk individuals the opportunity to consider predictive testing and cut down the expenses of traveling to the few predictive testing centers that currently exist. The counseling principals will remain similar to those discussed here, even following the identification of the Huntington disease mutation.     

CHANGING PROTECTIVE AND RISKY BEHAVIORS TO PREVENT CHILD-TO-PARENT TRANSMISSION OF CYTOMEGALOVIRUS

Child-to-parent transmission of cytomegalovirus may be reduced by increasing protective behaviors (handwashing and glove use) and decreasing risky behaviors (intimate contact between child and parent). This study showed that an educational intervention resulted in increases in reported and objective measures of protective behaviors and decreases in reported risky behaviors. Further study must determine if changes in protective and risky behavior are maintained and prevent cytomegalovirus transmission.     

The effects of hormones,Type A behavior pattern,and provocation on aggression in men

Thirty-eight male college students, classified as either Type A or Type B based on their Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS-T) scores, competed in a reaction time task that allowed them to administer shocks to an increasingly provocative fictitious opponent. Salivary testosterone and cortisol were measured both prior to and after the task. Aggression was defined as the level of shock the subject was willing to set for the opponent. The results of this study indicate that a relationship exists between endogenous testosterone levels in men and direct physical aggression. Some evidence for the moderating effects of hormones on the level of aggression expressed by Type As was observed. No direct relationship between Type A and aggression was found.     

Variations on incremental interpretation

The strict competence hypothesis has sparked a small dialogue among several researchers attempting to understand its ramifications for human sentence processing and incremental interpretation in particular. In this paper, we review the dialogue, reconstructing the arguments in an attempt to make them more uniform and crisp, and provide our own analyses of certain of the issues that arise. We argue that strict competence, because it requires a synchronous computation mechanism, may actually lead to more complex, rather than simpler, models of incremental interpretation. Asynchronous computation, which is arguably both psychologically more plausible and conceptually more basic, allows for incremental interpretation to fall out naturally, without additional machinery for interpreting partial constituents. We show that this is true regardless of whether the presumed interpretation mechanism is top-down or bottom-up, contra previous conclusions in the literature, and propose a particular implementation of some of these ideas using a novel representation based on tree-adjoining grammars.The research in this paper was supported in part by grant IRI-9157996 from the National Science Foundation to the first author. The authors would like to thank Fernando Pereira, Edward Stabler, and Mark Steedman for discussions on the topic of this paper and for their comments on previous drafts.     

Internalistic foundationalism and the justification of memory belief

In this paper I argue that internalistic foundationalist theories of the justification of memory belief are inadequate. Taking a discussion of John Pollock as a starting point, I argue against any theory that requires a memory belief to be based on a phenomenal state in order to be justified. I then consider another version of internalistic foundationalism and claim that it, too, is open to important objections. Finally, I note that both varieties of foundationalism fail to account for the epistemic status of our justified nonoccurrent beliefs, and hence are drastically incomplete.     

The Use of Psychoendocrine Strategies in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder1

An overview is presented of a pilot psychoendocrine study of PTSD inpatients in comparison with several subgroups of schizophrenic and affective disorder patients. Using a hormonal profile including Cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine, testosterone, and thyroxine, it was found that the mean values for the PTSD group were at or near the extreme end of the range for every hormone measured, i.e., relatively low for Cortisol and high for the remaining hormones. The possible clinical meaning of these findings is considered in the light of prior psychoendocrine research on chronic stress. The hormonal alterations in PTSD appear to be persistent and suggest the possibility of being linked largely to traits or character structure, perhaps particularly to cognitive variables related to defense and coping mechanisms, as reviewed in detail for each hormonal system. There appears to be a potential for a fruitful union between the traumatic stress and psychoendocrine fields and some future strategies for developing and strengthening such a union are suggested.     

The predictive validity of teacher nominations: A five-year followup of at-risk youth

The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive validity of a teacher nomination procedure for identifying at- risk children. Two hundred and twenty-five children were nominated by their teachers as well- adjusted (n= 75), socially withdrawn (n=76), or socially aggressive (n=74) during the fourth grade. Five years later, 198 of these children (88%) were located and their adjustment evaluated. Significant differences among the nominated children were found on a variety of measures, including academic grades, sociometric status, and social behavior. In addition, differences in school dropout and delinquent offenses were noted. Results are discussed in terms of the validity of teacher nomination procedures and their utility in identifying at- risk youth.