Parkinson’s Disease: Patients’ Knowledge,Attitudes, and Interest in Genetic Counseling

The objective of this study was to assess the genetics knowledge of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), and to explore their attitudes on genetic testing and interest in genetic counseling. We surveyed 158 patients from the University of Maryland Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center. Patients averaged a score of 63% on general genetics knowledge and 73% on PD genetics knowledge. Participants had an overall positive attitude toward genetic testing: 80% believed that the use of genetic tests among people should be promoted, and 83% would undertake genetic test for PD if it was available. Patients reported a high interest to discuss the benefits, risks, and impacts of genetic testing for PD (mean sum score?=?26, range?=?9–35), and 43% patients expressed interest in meeting with a genetic counselor. Multivariate regression analysis showed that patients who had more positive attitudes toward genetic testing for PD were more interested in meeting with a genetic counselor (β?=?0.6, p?<?0.001). This study is the first to demonstrate an interest in genetic counseling among patients with PD. Our findings demonstrate a new niche for genetic counselors to support patients in clarifying gaps or misconceptions in knowledge about PD genetics as well as the possible risks, benefits, and limitations of genetic testing.     

Zukunftsperspektiven sexualforensischer Psychotherapie

There is a controversial discussion on to what extent sexual forensic psychotherapy has a positive influence on the legal probation of sexually delinquent people. From this the question arises on how treatment with a perspective for success could be structured. This article assumes that such a perspective can only succeed through close cooperation between science and psychotherapeutic practice. Through the analysis of a methodologically elaborate study, considerations on the motivation and the influence of empirically ascertained risk factors are developed and each placed in relation to scientific and therapeutic practice. In this way various problems are tackled, which range from insufficiently described interventions via too little therapeutic flexibility up to limitations in the scientific evaluation. Finally, possible barriers for the development of such a perspective are discussed and the connection to the so-called risk-need-responsivity (RNR) model is explored.     

Automated Item Generation with Recurrent Neural Networks

Utilizing technology for automated item generation is not a new idea. However, test items used in commercial testing programs or in research are still predominantly written by humans, in most cases by content experts or professional item writers. Human experts are a limited resource and testing agencies incur high costs in the process of continuous renewal of item banks to sustain testing programs. Using algorithms instead holds the promise of providing unlimited resources for this crucial part of assessment development. The approach presented here deviates in several ways from previous attempts to solve this problem. In the past, automatic item generation relied either on generating clones of narrowly defined item types such as those found in language free intelligence tests (e.g., Raven’s progressive matrices) or on an extensive analysis of task components and derivation of schemata to produce items with pre-specified variability that are hoped to have predictable levels of difficulty. It is somewhat unlikely that researchers utilizing these previous approaches would look at the proposed approach with favor; however, recent applications of machine learning show success in solving tasks that seemed impossible for machines not too long ago. The proposed approach uses deep learning to implement probabilistic language models, not unlike what Google brain and Amazon Alexa use for language processing and generation.     

MLK Day and Racial Attitudes: Liking the Group More but Its Members Less

Intuition suggests that the Martin Luther King holiday (MLK Day) should improve racial attitudes toward African Americans. However, its influence may depend on whether African Americans are evaluated as a group or individually. In two studies, we assessed racial attitudes either on MLK Day or on a control day. As might be expected, participants had more sympathetic attitudes towards African Americans as a group on MLK Day compared to control days; however, they evaluated individual African American exemplars more negatively on MLK Day compared to control days, who presumably seemed worse by comparison to the eminent political figure.     

Determinants of Scanpath Regularity in Reading

Scanpaths have played an important role in classic research on reading behavior. Nevertheless, they have largely been neglected in later research perhaps due to a lack of suitable analytical tools. Recently, von der Malsburg and Vasishth (2011) proposed a new measure for quantifying differences between scanpaths and demonstrated that this measure can recover effects that were missed with the traditional eyetracking measures. However, the sentences used in that study were difficult to process and scanpath effects accordingly strong. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity, sensitivity, and scope of applicability of the scanpath measure, using simple sentences that are typically read from left to right. We derived predictions for the regularity of scanpaths from the literature on oculomotor control, sentence processing, and cognitive aging and tested these predictions using the scanpath measure and a large database of eye movements. All predictions were confirmed: Sentences with short words and syntactically more difficult sentences elicited more irregular scanpaths. Also, older readers produced more irregular scanpaths than younger readers. In addition, we found an effect that was not reported earlier: Syntax had a smaller influence on the eye movements of older readers than on those of young readers. We discuss this interaction of syntactic parsing cost with age in terms of shifts in processing strategies and a decline of executive control as readers age. Overall, our results demonstrate the validity and sensitivity of the scanpath measure and thus establish it as a productive and versatile tool for reading research.     

Zur Analyse des Bumerang-Effektes

Zusammenfassung In zwei Experimenten wurde mit Hilfe unterschiedlicher sozialer Attitüden und Werthaltungen jeweils die Hypothese geprüft, daß sich Einstellungen nach einstellungskonträrer Agitation in Richtung dieser Agitation oder aber nicht und in Gegenrichtung zur Agitation ändern, je nachdem ob sie weniger oder mehr in allgemeineren Werthaltungen verankert sind. Im Rahmen einer um die Konzeption der Verankerung erweiterten Theorie der kognitiven Dissonanz können damit besser als bisher sogenannte Bumerang-Effekte bei Änderungen von Attitüden erklärt werden.

---

Summary In two experiments we tested the following hypothesis concerning social attitudes and value orientations: Attitudes will be changed after counter-attitudinal agitation in the direction of this agitation or in opposite direction depending on their degree of being anchored in general value orientations. With the theory of cognitive dissonance, supplemented by the conception of anchoring, we are now able to explain better than before the so-called boomerang-effects which appear with attitude changes.