Patients' psychosocial attributes and aggressiveness of cancer treatments near the end of life.

Background: While the use of chemotherapy near the end of life (EOL) has been identified as a relevant criterion for assessing quality of cancer care and has been estimated as non-beneficial, a trend of aggressiveness in cancer care during the last period of life remains. Both patients' sociodemographic characteristics and physicians' practice setting are associated with this use. The role of patients' psychosocial characteristics has however been understudied.

Supporting human factors and ergonomics professionals in anticipating future work changes in response to the anthropocene.

Ergonomics is evolving towards including a broader consideration of ecological and political factors in the design of work environments by adopting an interconnected systems paradigm, highlighting the importance of considering the ecological and political impacts of business. The emergence of 'green ergonomics' encourages sustainable human systems integrated in their natural environment, while respecting ethical values such as respect for human rights and diversity. On the one hand, this is leading to new areas of ergonomic research and intervention, such as energy management and corporate CSR, and on the other, to the need to develop specific skills to anticipate the future in innovative ways.

Using absolutist word frequency from online searches to measure population mental health dynamics.

The assessment of population mental health relies on survey data from representative samples, which come with considerable costs. Drawing on research which established that absolutist words (e.g.

Slowness Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Blind Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Study.

The world often goes too fast for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to process. We tested the therapeutic effectiveness of input slowing in children with ASD. Over 12 months, 12 children with ASD had weekly speech therapy sessions where stimuli were slowly played on a PC, while 11 age- and level-matched children with ASD had speech therapy using real-time stimuli.

Evidence for indirect loss of significance effects on violent extremism: The potential mediating role of anomia.

Psychological research suggests that violent extremism (e.g., terrorism) stems partly from existential motives, such as individuals' need to achieve significance in life after experiencing failure, ostracism, or humiliation (Significance Quest Theory; SQT).

Reducing Information's Speed Improves Verbal Cognition and Behavior in Autism: A 2-Cases Report.

According to the temporal theory of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), audiovisual changes in environment, particularly those linked to facial and verbal language, are often too fast to be faced, perceived, and/or interpreted online by many children with ASD, which could help explain their facial, verbal, and/or socioemotional interaction impairments. Our goal here was to test for the first time the impact of slowed-down audiovisual information on verbal cognition and behavior in 2 boys with ASD and verbal delay. Using 15 experimental sessions during 4 months, both boys were presented with various stimuli (eg, pictures, words, sentences, cartoons) and were then asked questions or given instructions regarding stimuli.

Infants' preference for prosocial behaviors: A literature review.

In 2007, a study carried out by Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom provided concrete evidence that infants as young as 6 months were capable of social evaluation, displaying an early preference for agents performing a prosocial behavior. Since then the development of early social abilities to judge other's behavior has been the topic of a growing body of research. The present paper reviews studies conducted between 2007 and 2015 that experimentally examined infants' social evaluation abilities by testing their preference for agents acting prosocially.

Threat of the thin-ideal body image and body malleability beliefs: effects on body image self-discrepancies and behavioral intentions.

This study examined the effect of the threat aroused by the perception of thin-ideal images combined with beliefs about the malleability of the body on perceived/objective, ideal/objective and ought/objective body image self-discrepancies. An experimental computer program enabled women (N=82) to artificially increase or decrease the shape of their own body (previously photographed) in response to questions about their "actual", "ideal" and "ought" body self-perceptions. As predicted, results showed that women had greater body self-discrepancies when confronted with threatening thin ideals, regardless of their body mass index.

Genetic testing for hereditary cancer: effects of alexithymia and coping strategies on variations in anxiety before and after result disclosure.

This study assessed the impact of the results of genetic testing for hereditary cancer from a multifactorial health psychology perspective, considering that emotional expression plays a key role in psychological adjustment. Measures of dispositional and transactional coping strategies, anxiety and alexithymia were filled out by 77 participants in a longitudinal study design. Statistical analyses were performed using general linear models and partial least squares path modelling, low-constraint methods that are particularly useful in the behavioural sciences.