Prevalence and Nature of Spiritual Distress Among Palliative Care Patients in India

In palliative care research, little attention has been paid to the empirical study of spirituality in patients in non-Western countries. This study describes the prevalence and nature of spiritual distress among Indian palliative care patients. Data from 300 adult cancer patients who had completed a questionnaire with 36 spirituality items were analyzed. Spirituality was shaped by the Indian religious and economic context. A latent class analysis resulted in three clusters: trustful patients (46.4 %), spiritually distressed patients (17.4 %), and patients clinging to divine support (36.2 %). After regression, the clusters were found to be associated with pain scores (p < .001), gender (p = .034), and educational level (p < .006). More than half of the patients would benefit from spiritual counselling. More research and education on spirituality in Indian palliative care is urgently required.     

Impact of Caregiver Factors on Youth Service Utilization of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in a Community Setting

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is an increasingly available evidence-based therapy that targets the mental health symptoms of youth who have experienced trauma. Limited research has examined how to engage and retain families in TF-CBT services in community settings. Using a mixed-methods approach, the goal of this exploratory study was to identify caregiver factors that impact youth enrollment and completion of community-delivered TF-CBT. The study included 41 caretakers of youth referred to therapy at a local child advocacy center following a forensic assessment substantiating youth trauma exposure. Caregiver factors examined include caregiver demographics, trauma exposure, and mental health symptomology. Results from multivariate logistic regressions indicate that caregivers reporting more children residing in the household were significantly more likely to enroll youth in therapy (OR 2.27; 95 % CI 1.02, 5.03). Qualitative analyses further explicate that parents with personal trauma or therapy experiences expressed positive opinions regarding therapy services for youth, and were more likely to enroll in or complete services. Findings suggest that caregivers with personal traumatic experience and related symptomatology view therapy as important and are more committed to their child receiving therapy. Future research on service utilization is warranted and should explore offering parental psychoeducation or engagement strategies discussing therapy benefits to parents who have not experienced trauma and related mental health symptomatology.     

Family Environment in Inner-City African-American and Latino Parents/Caregivers: A Comparison of the Reliability of Instruments

Inner-city, African American and Latino youth are at higher risk for the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Interventions usually focus on changing physical activity and dietary behaviors, yet family environment has the potential to influence response to these interventions. We aimed to identify instruments that could reliably be used to assess the family environment of children from high-risk populations. Selected indices from four instruments were used; the Family Environment Scale (FES), the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales IV (FACES IV), the Self-report Family Inventory (SFI), and the Family Assessment Device (FAD). Out of 15 indices evaluated, 9 were reliable in both ethnicities including FES cohesion, conflict and organization, SFI emotional expressiveness, conflict and family health/competence, FACES IV family communication and family satisfaction, and FAD general functioning. Perceived family environment characteristics did not differ significantly for inner-city African American and Hispanic families.     

Formation of Al3Ni2-type nanocrystalline τ 3 phases in the Al–Cu–Ni system by mechanical alloying

An elemental powder mixture of Al (70 at.%), Ni (15 at.%) and Cu (15 at.%) was milled in a high-energy ball mill for various times ranging from 10 to 100?h to form ternary intermetallic alloys. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy techniques were employed for characterization of the samples. The dissolution of the individual elements into an alloy led to the formation of a τ₃ vacancy-ordered phase after 100?h of milling. This phase was found to be quite stable against milling, and no other crystalline and amorphous phases could be detected. The powder after 100?h of milling was found to contain mostly τ₃ nanophases with partial ordering, and with crystallite sizes in the range 10–20?nm along with a lattice strain of ～0.675%. The milled powder, after annealing at 700°C for 20, 40 and 60?h, revealed the formation of a strain-free and ordered τ₃ phase with a crystallite size of 80?nm, indicating grain coarsening. It is interesting to note that the mechanical energy imparted during milling could not completely destroy the vacancy ordering in the τ₃ phase, unlike other stoichiometric Al–Cu–transition metal (TM) systems, where the disordered B2 (bcc) phase is commonly observed instead of any vacancy-ordered phases.     

Feasibility of Biological Sample Collection among a High-Risk Maternal Population for Child Maltreatment-Qualitative Pilot Findings

Little is known on the feasibility of biological sample collection among at-risk parents for child maltreatment participating in evidence-based parenting intervention studies evaluating behavioral outcomes. This study explored acceptability and feasibility of collecting biospecimen samples among 12 high-risk mothers. Data were taken from semi-structured baseline interviews among participants who provided salivary, hair and buccal swab samples for a pilot study examining biobehavioral stress responses to an evidence-based parenting program. Content analysis results suggest that while uncomfortable, biospecimen collection will not impede research participation. Providers should highlight connections between biology and behaviors to motivate parents and increase engagement in parenting programs.     

Combined visual illusion effects on the perceived index of difficulty and movement outcomes in discrete and continuous fitts’ tapping

The speed-accuracy trade-off is a fundamental movement problem that has been extensively investigated. It has been established that the speed at which one can move to tap targets depends on how large the targets are and how far they are apart. These spatial properties of the targets can be quantified by the index of difficulty (ID). Two visual illusions are known to affect the perception of target size and movement amplitude: the Ebbinghaus illusion and Muller-Lyer illusion. We created visual images that combined these two visual illusions to manipulate the perceived ID, and then examined people’s visual perception of the targets in illusory context as well as their performance in tapping those targets in both discrete and continuous manners. The findings revealed that the combined visual illusions affected the perceived ID similarly in both discrete and continuous judgment conditions. However, the movement outcomes were affected by the combined visual illusions according to the tapping mode. In discrete tapping, the combined visual illusions affected both movement accuracy and movement amplitude such that the effective ID resembled the perceived ID. In continuous tapping, none of the movement outcomes were affected by the combined visual illusions. Participants tapped the targets with higher speed and accuracy in all visual conditions. Based on these findings, we concluded that distinct visual-motor control mechanisms were responsible for execution of discrete and continuous Fitts’ tapping. Although discrete tapping relies on allocentric information (object-centered) to plan for action, continuous tapping relies on egocentric information (self-centered) to control for action. The planning-control model for rapid aiming movements is supported.     

FUTURE ORIENTATION: A MEDIATOR IN TEMPORAL CODING

Influence of future orientation on temporal coding was investigated in two experimental studies. A three by two paradigm involving three conditions of list discrimination and two groups of subjects of high and low future orientation, was used. Story writing technique and list discrimination tasks were employed to assess future orientation and efficiency in using temporal codes, respectively. Results show that in experiment 1, when subjects had been forewarned about an impending memory test and hence there was a competition between these future demands and present demands of an orienting task, performance of high as compared to low future oriented subjects was better on list discrimination tasks; they utilized temporal codes more efficiently. This difference in performance between high and low future oriented groups of subjects was not evident in experiment 2 when there was no forewarning about an impending memory test. Temporal coding was better for different concept rather than same concept lists. It is argued that type of material, as well as perception of future utility of material, influence the amount of temporal coding for both groups of subjects, but dispositional future orientation also mediates the perception of the utility of a material in the future to affect its temporal coding.     

Early adversity in rural India impacts the brain networks underlying visual working memory

There is a growing need to understand the global impact of poverty on early brain and behavioural development, particularly with regard to key cognitive processes that emerge in early development. Although the impact of adversity on brain development can trap children in an intergenerational cycle of poverty, the massive potential for brain plasticity is also a source of hope: reliable, accessible, culturally agnostic methods to assess early brain development in low resource settings might be used to measure the impact of early adversity, identify infants for timely intervention and guide the development and monitor the effectiveness of early interventions. Visual working memory (VWM) is an early marker of cognitive capacity that has been assessed reliably in early infancy and is predictive of later academic achievement in Western countries. Here, we localized the functional brain networks that underlie VWM in early development in rural India using a portable neuroimaging system, and we assessed the impact of adversity on these brain networks. We recorded functional brain activity as young children aged 4–48 months performed a VWM task. Brain imaging results revealed localized activation in the frontal cortex, replicating findings from a Midwestern US sample. Critically, children from families with low maternal education and income showed weaker brain activity and poorer distractor suppression in canonical working memory areas in the left frontal cortex. Implications of this work are far‐reaching: it is now cost‐effective to localize functional brain networks in early development in low‐resource settings, paving the way for novel intervention and assessment methods.     

Interaction of Perception and Action in Discrete and Continuous Rapid Aiming Tasks

Previously, we have shown that discrete and continuous rapid aiming tasks are governed by distinct visuomotor control mechanisms by assessing the combined visual illusion effects on the perceived and effective index of difficulty (ID). All participants were perceptually biased by the combined visual illusion before they performed the rapid aiming tasks. In the current study, the authors manipulated the order of performing perceptual and motor tasks to examine whether perceptual or motor experience with the illusory visual target would influence the subsequent perceived and effective ID in discrete and continuous tapping tasks. The results supported our hypothesis showing that perceptual experience with the illusory visual target in the discrete condition reduced the effective ID in the subsequent discrete tapping task, and motor experience with the illusory visual target in the continuous condition reduced the illusion effects on the perceived ID in the subsequent perceptual judgment task. The study demonstrates the coinfluence of perception and action, and suggests that perception and action influence one another with different magnitude depending on the spatial frame of reference used to perform the perceptuomotor task.     

Perceived justice of available opportunities and self-esteem,collective esteem and social exclusion: A study of three religious groups in India

Groups have their own social realities which determine their perceptions of justice having impact on their well- being and consequent integration with the mainstream society. The objective of the present study was to understand variations in perceived justice in terms of opportunities existing in five different domains, i.e. social prestige, economic, educational, employment and political by the Hindu Majority (N = 100) and Muslim (N = 100) and Christian (N = 76) minorities in India. In addition, the study also aimed to understand the relationship of perceived justice with self-esteem, collective esteem and social exclusion. Male and female participants (N = 276) of the study were either of high or low caste, and were of employed or unemployed status from a north Indian city. The results indicate that justice perception is determined by religion and caste not by gender and employment status. The majority Hindus perceived significantly higher perceptions of justice than Christians and Muslims minorities on all four domains except education. For education the minority Muslim group had lower justice perceptions than Hindus and Christians who did not differ significantly. The three groups differed significantly in their ratings of social exclusion with maximum exclusion perceived by Christians and minimum by Hindus. Results have implications for development initiatives.