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.     

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.     

Reversal of Relative Thresholds for Synaptic Facilitation and Increased Excitability Induced by Serotonin and Tail Nerve Stimulation inAplysiaSensory Neurons

Tail shock induces reflex sensitization inAplysiaand, in parallel, induces a number of modulatory effects in central neurons, such as increased excitability in tail sensory neurons (SNs) and facilitation of synaptic transmission from SNs to motor neurons. Both of these modulatory effects are mimicked by exogenous application of serotonin (5HT) or electrical stimulation of the tail nerve P9. In the present study we examined the activation thresholds for increased excitability and synaptic facilitation induced by either 5HT or P9 stimulation. We found that the concentration of 5HT sufficient to produce a significant increase in excitability produced no significant synaptic facilitation and, conversely, that the intensity of nerve stimulation sufficient to produce significant synaptic facilitation produced no excitability changes. This reversal of relative thresholds for these modulatory effects may reflect the differential access of exogenous 5HT and endogenous 5HT (released by tail nerve stimulation) to the SN cell body and synaptic terminals, respectively.     

Causal Attributions for Poorly Performing Projects: Their Effect on Project Continuation Decisions

This study examined the escalation problem within an attribution theory framework. Students read a case scenario containing causal attribution information that described a poorly performing project under their supervision. They made estimates of its future success, as well as a decision whether to continue it. Perceived stability of causality had the primary effect on expectancy of success. A project whose performance downturn was attributed to a stable cause had a lower expectancy. Locus of causality had a smaller but still significant effect. Project downturns attributed to internal causes had a lower expectancy. Expectancy of success was significantly correlated with project continuation decisions. Discrepancies between these results and those reported by Staw and Ross (1978) are accounted for in terms of Weiner's (1985, 1986) attributional analysis.     

Politeness and memory for the wording of remarks

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether people spontaneously remember the wording used to convey politeness. In all experiments, subjects heard statements varying in politeness that had been made by either a high-status (e.g., a professor) or equal-status (e.g., another student) speaker. Subjects’ incidental memory for these statements was then tested with either a recognition (Experiments 1 and 3) or a recall (Experiment 2) procedure. As expected, there was evidence of significant memory for wording that conveyed politeness, and subjects were more likely to remember forms that were incongruous with the speaker’s status. There was also some evidence that subjects encoded the politeness of a remark even when they were unable to recall the specific remark. The results demonstrate the role of the interpersonal dimension in the processing of language in context.     

End-Weight from the Speaker's Perspective

Explanations of the tendency to put long, complex constituents at the ends of sentences (end-weight) usually take the listener's perspective, claiming it facilitates parsing. I argue for a speaker-oriented explanation of end-weight, based on how it facilitates utterance planning. Parsing is facilitated when as much tree structure as possible can be determined early in the string, but production is easiest when options for how to continue are kept open. That is, listeners should prefer early commitment and speakers should prefer late commitment. Corpus data show that different verbs exhibit different rates of word-order variation that are systematically related to differences in subcategorization possibilities in just the way predicted by a strategy of late commitment. Thus, a speaker-based account of lexical preferences in word ordering does a better job of explaining variation in weight effects than a listener-based account.