Qualitative Evaluation of Medical Information Processing Needs of 60 Women Choosing Ovarian Cancer Surveillance or Prophylactic Oophorectomy

Thirty women who had prophylactic oophorectomy (PO) and thirty women undergoing ovarian cancer surveillance (OCS) completed a one-time in-depth telephone interview exploring information gathering and decision-making processes. There were close similarities between groups, including age, race, marital status, education, menopausal status, number undergoing genetic testing for BRCA mutations, and number of prophylactic mastectomies. The majority of participants indicated overall satisfaction with their final decision. However, many described the information gathering process as frustrating and anxiety provoking. Participants in both groups expressed a need to process medical information within the context of individual psychosocial needs and personal perceptions and experiences. There were recurrent themes with regard to informational and psychosocial needs and personal perceptions and experiences that impacted decision-making process for these women. The present paper is a companion paper to Swisher et al. (J Repr Med 2001, 46:87–94) with the focus of this paper to illustrate the medical informational processing needs identified by this group of women.     

Determining Complex Genetic Risks by Computer

Genetic risk analysis is a frequent and important responsibility for genetic counselors. Computer-based methods of determining risk are available but not generally used. In this paper, we present a computer-based likelihood approach for performing risk calculations (including Bayesian analysis), and the implementation of this approach using the CYRILLIC and LINKAGE computer packages. Several concrete examples are given, and caveats (which can also be applied to other programs for risk calculation) are discussed.     

Approaching Complex Cases With a Crisis Intervention Model and Teamwork: A Commentary

This article is a response to the case of SA presented by O'Daniel and Wells. In this response I support the approach used with the patient, and discuss and expand on the applicability of a crisis intervention model to genetic counseling. In addition, I explore the issue of autonomy and informed decision making for patients who are in crisis. I also discuss the surface contradiction between the mandate for nondirectiveness and the need to provide direction during crisis intervention are discussed and reframe the issue as one of process versus content directiveness. I argue that during times of crisis, genetic counselors may need to direct process in order for patients to be able to make autonomous decisions.     

Recent Developments in the Treatment of Depression

The cognitive and behavioral interventions can be as efficacious as antidepressant medications and more enduring, but some patients will be more likely to respond to one than the other. Recent work has focused on developing sophisticated selection algorithms using machine-learning approaches that answer the question, “What works best for whom?” Moreover, the vast majority of people suffering from depression reside in low- and middle-income countries where access to either psychotherapy or medications is virtually nonexistent. Great strides have been made in training nonspecialist providers (known as task sharing) to overcome this gap. Finally, recent work growing out of evolutionary psychology suggests that antidepressant medications may suppress symptoms at the expense of prolonging the underlying episode so as to increase the risk of relapse whenever someone tries to stop. We address each of these developments and their cumulative implications.     

Redefining super recognition in the real world: Skilled face or person identity recognizers?

While there has been growing interest in the deployment of superior face recognizers in policing and security settings, it is likely that most real‐world tasks tap person rather than face recognition skills. We suggest that changes in real‐world screening tasks and terminology are required to distinguish these individuals from laboratory‐identified superior face recognizers, who have more potential in developing our theoretical understanding of the face recognition system.     

The consistency of superior face recognition skills in police officers

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in people with superior face recognition skills. Yet identification of these individuals has mostly relied on criterion performance on a single attempt at a single measure of face memory. The current investigation aimed to examine the consistency of superior face recognition skills in 30 police officers, both across tests that tap into the same process and between tests that tap into different components of face processing. Overall indices of performance across related measures were found to identify different superior performers to isolated test scores. Further, different top performers emerged for target‐present versus target‐absent indices, suggesting that signal detection measures are the most useful indicators of performance. Finally, a dissociation was observed between superior memory and matching performance. Super‐recognizer screening programmes hould therefore include overall indices summarizing multiple attempts at related tests, allowing for individuals to rank highly on different (and sometimes very specific) tasks.     

Telling stories to communicate the value of the pre‐employment structured job interview

In an effort to bridge the scientist–practitioner gap in the employee selection, some researchers have advocated telling stories to better communicate the value of evidence‐based hiring practices to human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we conducted two experiments that examine the efficacy of storytelling for overcoming managers’ resistance to use structured job interviews. In two experiments, we found that participants who read a story regarding the effectiveness of structured interviews, as opposed to receiving evidence‐based advice, reported more favorable attitudes toward structured job interviews. Serial mediation analysis revealed that the observed attitude change was mediated by an increase in narrative transportation and reduction in counterarguing. Implications for using stories in communicating the value of evidence‐based HR practices are discussed.     

多维计算机化自适应测验中项目曝光控制选题策略的比较

在MCAT中考查四种项目选择指标在有无曝光控制条件下的选题表现。项目选择指标分别是:(1)贝叶斯的D优化方法(D-optimality)、后验期望Kullback-Leibler方法(KLP)、基于等权重复合分数的最小误差方差方法(the minimized error variance of the linear combination score with equal weight,V1)和基于最优权重复合分数的最小误差方差方法(the minimized error variance of the composite score with optimized weight,V2)。将针对认知诊断CAT项目曝光控制的的限制阈值方法(Restrictive Threshold,RT)和限制进度(Restrictive Progressive,RPG)方法、单维CAT中的最大优先指标方法(Maximum Priority Index,MPI)推广到MCAT。模拟研究表明:(1)KLP,D-优化和V1对领域分数估计准确,能力返真性比V2更好。(2)尽管V1和V2方法相比KLP和D-优化方法提高了题库利用率,但这四种选题指标都产生不均匀的项目曝光率分布。(2)三种曝光控制策略都极大地提高项目曝光均匀性,且不明显降低测量精度。(3)MPI与RPG方法在曝光控制方面表现类似,且比RT的方法表现更好。     

Metacognition for strategy selection during arithmetic problem-solving in young and older adults

We examined participants’ strategy choices and metacognitive judgments during arithmetic problem-solving. Metacognitive judgments were collected either prospectively or retrospectively. We tested whether metacognitive judgments are related to strategy choices on the current problems and on the immediately following problems, and age-related differences in relations between metacognition and strategy choices. Data showed that both young and older adults were able to make accurate retrospective, but not prospective, judgments. Moreover, the accuracy of retrospective judgments was comparable in young and older adults when participants had to select and execute the better strategy. Metacognitive accuracy was even higher in older adults when participants had to only select the better strategy. Finally, low-confidence judgments on current items were more frequently followed by better strategy selection on immediately succeeding items than high-confidence judgments in both young and older adults. Implications of these findings to further our understanding of age-related differences and similarities in adults’ metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive regulation for strategy selection in the context of arithmetic problem solving are discussed.     

A novel machine learning approach for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Liver cancer is quite common type of cancer among individuals worldwide. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the malignancy of liver cancer. It has high impact on individual’s life and investigating it early can decline the number of annual deaths. This study proposes a new machine learning approach to detect HCC using 165 patients. Ten well-known machine learning algorithms are employed. In the preprocessing step, the normalization approach is used. The genetic algorithm coupled with stratified 5-fold cross-validation method is applied twice, first for parameter optimization and then for feature selection. In this work, support vector machine (SVM) (type C-SVC) with new 2level genetic optimizer (genetic training) and feature selection yielded the highest accuracy and F₁-Score of 0.8849 and 0.8762 respectively. Our proposed model can be used to test the performance with huge database and aid the clinicians.