Rythmicités de l’attention des enfants et synchronisation,perspective socioécologique

This study investigates the impact of socioecological synchronization on the level and variations in children's attention at school. The aim was to re-examine previous results and broaden the chronopsychological scope of the research to include new synchronizers originating from proximal ecological niches. Two time-management factors were considered, the organization of the school timetable and the regular and predictable daily time with parents, influenced by work organization and compromises within the family. Two studies were conducted on a total of 498 children between six and 11 years of age. Results confirm a daily attention pattern. The level of performance and the daily pattern are affected by the two time-management factors whose beneficial or adverse influence depends on the child's age. Thus, while the weekly school timetable organized over four days has the strongest negative impact on attention performance for the two age groups, desynchronization due to a longer week-end is greater in the older children. The effects of the two possible four-and-a-half-day timetables also differ according to age. The benefits of working on Wednesdays for younger children appeared less beneficial for the older pupils. Regular and predictable daily time with parents does appear to play a role which also varies according to age, as it has an effect on younger children but has no impact on older children's attention or performance. This study confirms the synchronizing role of temporal messages from school and parental niches in the level and variations in children's attention at school, and is in line with the ecological point of view demonstrated by chronobiological studies. These findings support the importance of research that takes an overall approach to the child's environment. Further work should investigate the prioritization of social synchronizers according to their proximity to the child and how they interact.     

Molecular Tumor Boards: Ethical Issues in the New Era of Data Medicine

The practice and development of modern medicine requires large amounts of data, particularly in the domain of cancer. The future of personalized medicine lies neither with “genomic medicine” nor with “precision medicine”, but with “data medicine” (DM) (big data, data mining). The establishment of this DM has required far-reaching changes, to establish four essential elements connecting patients and doctors: biobanks, databases, bioinformatic platforms and genomic platforms. The “transformation” of scientific research areas, such as genetics, bioinformatics and biostatistics, into clinical specialties has generated a new vision of care. Molecular tumor boards (MTB) are one response to these changes and are now providing better access to next-generation sequencing (NGS) and new cancer treatments to patients with inoperable or metastatic cancers, and those for whom the usual treatment has failed. However, MTB face a crucial ethical challenge: maintaining and improving the trust of patients, clinicians, researchers and industry in academic medical centers supported by private or public funding rather than providing genetic data directly to private companies. We believe that, in this era of DM, appropriate modern digital communication networks will be required to maintain this trust and to improve the organization and effectiveness of the system. There is, therefore, a need to reconsider the form and content of informed consent (IC) documents at all academic medical centers and to introduce dynamic and electronic informed consent (e-IC).     

Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents with Turner Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Turner syndrome (TS) is a genetic disorder, affecting 1/2500 to 1/3000 live female births, induced by partial or total deletion of one X chromosome. The neurocognitive profile of girls with TS is characterized by a normal Verbal IQ and weaknesses in visual-spatial, mathematics, and social cognitive domains. Executive functions (EFs) impairments have also been reported in these young patients. However, methodological differences across studies do not allow determination of which EFs are impaired and what is the magnitude of these impairments. The aim of this review was to clarify the EF profile of children and adolescents with TS. Sixteen samples, from thirteen studies, were included in the current meta-analysis. EFs measures used in these studies were classified into working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, or higher-order EFs tasks in accordance with Diamond’s model, Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168 (2013). Results confirmed that girls with TS had significant executive impairments with effect sizes varying from small (inhibitory control) to medium (cognitive flexibility) and large (working memory, higher-order EFs). Analyses by task revealed that cognitive inhibition may be more impaired than the other inhibitory control abilities. Heterogeneity across cognitive flexibility measures was also highlighted. Between-sample heterogeneity was observed for three tasks and the impact of participants’ characteristics on EFs was discussed. This meta-analysis confirms the necessity to assess, in patients living with TS, each EF by combining both visual and verbal tasks. Results also underline that, when studying girls with TS’ executive profile, it is important to explore the impact of moderator variables, such as IQ, parental socio-economic status, TS karyotype, psychiatric comorbidities, and hormonal treatment status.     

Childbirth and Alcohol Consumption Impact of Recent Childbirth on Alcohol Consumption

While the devastating effects of parental alcohol use on children’s health are well known, the specific impact of childbirth on parental alcohol consumption has rarely been examined in the general population. We sought to examine patterns of alcohol use associated with childbirth. Data were drawn from the US National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. We compared successively the characteristics of alcohol use among females living with a child under 1 year with (i) those of females not living with children under 1 year and (ii) those of females living with an older child. Mean daily ethanol intake was lower among females living with a child under 1 than among females either not living with children under 1 year (p?<?0.001) or living with an older child (p?<?0.01). Moreover, low-to-mild drinking frequencies fell among females living with a child under 1, compared with females either not living with children under 1 year (adjusted odds ratio (AOR)?=?0.56; 95% CI [0.40, 0.80] for at least once a month and AOR?=?0.40; 95% CI [0.27, 0.58] for less than once a month) or living with an older child (AOR?=?0.52; 95% CI [0.36, 0.75] for at least once a month and AOR?=?0.66, 95% CI [0.46, 0.94] for less than a month). No significant difference was found for males. Our study suggests that childbirth, as opposed to motherhood per se, reduces several (though not all) dimensions of alcohol consumption in females, but not in males.     

Increasing the salience of fluency cues does not reduce the recognition memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease!

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is now well established that recollection is impaired from the beginning of the disease, whereas findings are less clear concerning familiarity. One of the most important mechanisms underlying familiarity is the sense of familiarity driven by processing fluency. In this study, we attempted to attenuate recognition memory deficits in AD by maximizing the salience of fluency cues in two conditions of a recognition memory task. In one condition, targets and foils have been created from the same pool of letters (Overlap condition). In a second condition, targets and foils have been derived from two separate pools of letters (No‐Overlap condition), promoting the use of letter‐driven visual and phonetic fluency. Targets and foils were low‐frequency words. The memory tasks were performed by 15 patients with AD and 16 healthy controls. Both groups improved their memory performance in the No‐Overlap condition compared to the Overlap condition. Patients with AD were able to use fluency cues during recognition memory as older adults did, but this did not allow to compensate for dysfunction of recognition memory processes.     

Legacies of War: Asian American Women and War Trauma

ABSTRACT

Although Asian Americans are diverse in many ways, such as language, culture, ethnicity, religion, generational status, and more, many share a common experience: that of having experienced war first hand or being progeny of war survivors. World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian genocide, along with centuries of oppressive and authoritarian rule, have brought experiences of trauma, directly and historically, to the lives of many Asians. Subsequent experiences of migration and resettlement, as well as life in the United States as an ethnic minority, have also compounded the layers of oppression for many Asian Americans. Sexism in our cultures of origin, as well as sexism in the U.S., represents additional realities and traumas faced by Asian American women. In this article, we explore the experiences of war and subsequent traumas in the lives of Asian American women. We present a brief review of the current state of mental health as it relates to the experiences of war trauma, with the goal of providing a crucial contextual backdrop for our review of the best practices in mental health services to Asian American women. We review some of the best practices and conclude with a narrative reflection based on our own involvement in a small professional women’s group that yielded insights, discoveries, healing, and empowerment from the legacy of war trauma.     

Équivalence de la version en français pour le Canada et de la version originale états-unienne de l’Adult Self-Report

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the equivalence of the French-Canadian version of the Adult Self-Report (ASR; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2003) to its original English (USA) version. Both the original English version and the newly translated French-Canadian version were administered to 251 bilingual students from four Canadian provinces (Manitoba, New-Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec), with a one to two weeks interval. Correlations varying from 0.72 to 0.87 indicated a high degree of correspondence between the scales of the two versions. Cohen's d calculated using Morris and DeShon's (2002) formula for within-subjects designs indicate that differences between mean scores varied from near-zero (d = 0.01) to small (d = 0.19), and suggest that they are not clinically significant. Ordinal alpha coefficients for the scales of the French-Canadian version varied from 0.66 to 0.96 but are inferior to those of the English version in seven of the eleven scales. Globally, results indicate that the equivalence of the French-Canadian version to the original English version of the ASR is sufficient to recommend its use.     

Reducing uncertainty to promote appropriate decisions when facing hazardous phenomena at an active volcano

This study investigated a new direction for improving the decision making of populations at risk in the context of uncertain environmental events, such as volcanic hazards. According to the risk as feelings theory and dual process models, situations with certain outcomes do not necessarily require the use of affect heuristics (e.g., experienced feelings, anticipated emotions) as valid information in the decision‐making process. In the case of difficult decisions with moral dilemmas, certainty could even improve decisions. Thus, using an ecological design with various scenarios depicting upcoming volcanic hazards, we examined whether reducing the uncertainty of lethal threat by conveying certainty in an information campaign could influence decision making and promote a better quality of choice (correct application of the recommendations from the competent authorities). We focused specifically on two populations composed of local people living in the vicinity of an active volcano (Tungurahua volcano, Ecuador) and local scientists. We also examined whether a difficult decision involving a moral dilemma (e.g., leaving people behind so as not to jeopardize one's own life) potentiated this effect, compared to a less difficult situation without a dilemma. We demonstrated that, for local people facing a moral dilemma (difficult decision), the reduction of uncertainty of lethal threat involved a better application of the actual recommendations. These outcomes provided perspectives on improving the applications of the recommendations among local populations at risk in the context of a real risk exposure.     

Episodic encoding in normal aging: attentional resources hypothesis extended to musical material

The goal of the present study was to examine age-related changes in musical episodic memory for novel tunes. This was conducted by manipulating the encoding condition in a recognition paradigm. After receiving memory instructions (intentional condition), older and younger participants obtained equivalent hits. In contrast, when intentional encoding was accompanied by a dancing judgment (dancing + intentional condition), the recognition performance of the older persons was severely impaired. Impaired recognition was also found when participants only judged the excerpts without being instructed to memorize them (dancing judgment condition). Although older participants demonstrated a preserved ability to perform the dancing judgment on its own, this ability was not optimal and likely precluded the initiation of more elaborate encoding strategies. These results suggest that asking older persons to divide their attention in the study phase reduces the quality of their musical encoding. Given this extension to musical material, we discuss the notion that the age-related attentional resource decline appears to be domain-general rather than specific to verbal material.