Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories.

In three experiments, undergraduates rated autobiographical memories on scales derived from existing theories of memory. In multiple regression analyses, ratings of the degree to which subjects recollected (i.e., relived) their memories were predicted by visual imagery, auditory imagery, and emotions, whereas ratings of belief in the accuracy of their memories were predicted by knowledge of the setting. Recollection was predicted equally well in between- and within-subjects analyses, but belief consistently had smaller correlations and multiple regression predictions between subjects; individual differences in the cognitive scales that we measured could not account well for individual differences in belief. In contrast, measures of mood (Beck Depression Index) and dissociation (Dissociative Experience Scale) added predictive value for belief, but not for recollection. We also found that highly relived memories almost always had strong visual images and that remember/know judgments made on autobiographical memories were more closely related to belief than to recollection.

Rain dances in the dry season: overcoming the religious congruence fallacy

Religious congruence refers to consistency among an individual’s religious beliefs and attitudes, consistency between religious ideas and behavior, and religious ideas, identities, or schemas that are chronically salient and accessible to individuals across contexts and situations. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research establish that religious congruence is rare, but much thinking about religion presumes that it is common. The religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence. I illustrate the ubiquity of religious incongruence, show how the religious congruence fallacy distorts thinking about religion, and outline an approach to help overcome the fallacy.

Genes, race, and the ethics of belief.

A Troublesome Inheritance, by Nicholas Wade, should be read by anyone interested in race and recent human evolution. Wade deserves credit for challenging the popular dog-ma that biological differences between groups either don't exist or cannot ex-plain the relative success of different groups at different tasks. Wade's work should be read alongside another re-cent book, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Together, these books represent a ma-jor turning point in the public debate about the speed with which relatively isolated groups can evolve: both books suggest that small genetic differences between members of different groups can have large impacts on their abilities and propensities, which in turn affect the outcomes of the societies in which they live.

Sequential anomaly detection in the presence of noise and limited feedback

This paper describes a methodology for detecting anomalies from sequentially observed and potentially noisy data. The proposed approach consists of two main elements: 1) filtering, or assigning a belief or likelihood to each successive measurement based upon our ability to predict it from previous noisy observations and 2) hedging, or flagging potential anomalies by comparing the current belief against a time-varying and data-adaptive threshold. The threshold is adjusted based on the available feedback from an end user. Our algorithms, which combine universal prediction with recent work on online convex programming, do not require computing posterior distributions given all current observations and involve simple primal-dual parameter updates. At the heart of the proposed approach lie exponential-family models which can be used in a wide variety of contexts and applications, and which yield methods that achieve sublinear per-round regret against both static and slowly varying product distributions with marginals drawn from the same exponential family. Moreover, the regret against static distributions coincides with the minimax value of the corresponding online strongly convex game. We also prove bounds on the number of mistakes made during the hedging step relative to the best offline choice of the threshold with access to all estimated beliefs and feedback signals. We validate the theory on synthetic data drawn from a time-varying distribution over binary vectors of high dimensionality, as well as on the Enron email dataset. © 1963-2012 IEEE.

Are the native giant tortoises from the Seychelles really extinct? A genetic perspective based on mtDNA and microsatellite data.

The extinction of the giant tortoises of the Seychelles Archipelago has long been suspected but is not beyond doubt. A recent morphological study of the giant tortoises of the western Indian Ocean concluded that specimens of two native Seychelles species survive in captivity today alongside giant tortoises of Aldabra, which are numerous in zoos as well as in the wild. This claim has been controversial because some of the morphological characters used to identify these species, several measures of carapace morphology, are reputed to be quite sensitive to captive conditions. Nonetheless, the potential survival of giant tortoise species previously thought extinct presents an exciting scenario for conservation. We used mitochondrial DNA sequences and nuclear microsatellites to examine the validity of the rediscovered species of Seychelles giant tortoises. Our results indicate that the morphotypes suspected to represent Seychelles species do not show levels of variation and genetic structuring consistent with long periods of reproductive isolation. We found no variation in the mitochondrial control region among 55 individuals examined and no genetic structuring in eight microsatellite loci, pointing to the survival of just a single lineage of Indian Ocean tortoises.

Factors influencing malaria control policy-making in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

BACKGROUND: Policy decisions for malaria control are often difficult to make as decision-makers have to carefully consider an array of options and respond to the needs of a large number of stakeholders. This study assessed the factors and specific objectives that influence malaria control policy decisions, as a crucial first step towards developing an inclusive malaria decision analysis support tool (MDAST). METHODS: Country-specific stakeholder engagement activities using structured questionnaires were carried out in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The survey respondents were drawn from a non-random purposeful sample of stakeholders, targeting individuals in ministries and non-governmental organizations whose policy decisions and actions are likely to have an impact on the status of malaria. Summary statistics across the three countries are presented in aggregate. RESULTS: Important findings aggregated across countries included a belief that donor preferences and agendas were exerting too much influence on malaria policies in the countries. Respondents on average also thought that some relevant objectives such as engaging members of parliament by the agency responsible for malaria control in a particular country were not being given enough consideration in malaria decision-making. Factors found to influence decisions regarding specific malaria control strategies included donor agendas, costs, effectiveness of interventions, health and environmental impacts, compliance and/acceptance, financial sustainability, and vector resistance to insecticides. CONCLUSION: Malaria control decision-makers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania take into account health and environmental impacts as well as cost implications of different intervention strategies. Further engagement of government legislators and other policy makers is needed in order to increase funding from domestic sources, reduce donor dependence, sustain interventions and consolidate current gains in malaria.

People who expect to enter psychotherapy are prone to believing that they have forgotten memories of childhood trauma and abuse.

We asked 1004 undergraduates to estimate both the probability that they would enter therapy and the probability that they experienced but could not remember incidents of potentially life-threatening childhood traumas or physical and sexual abuse. We found a linear relation between the expectation of entering therapy and the belief that one had, but cannot now remember, childhood trauma and abuse. Thus individuals who are prone to seek psychotherapy are also prone to accept a suggested memory of childhood trauma or abuse as fitting their expectations. In multiple regressions predicting the probability of forgotten memories of childhood traumas and abuse, the expectation of entering therapy remained as a substantial predictor when self-report measures of mood, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder symptom severity, and trauma exposure were included.

The frequency of voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memories across the life span.

In the present study, ratings of the memory of an important event from the previous week on the frequency of voluntary and involuntary retrieval, belief in its accuracy, visual imagery, auditory imagery, setting, emotional intensity, valence, narrative coherence, and centrality to the life story were obtained from 988 adults whose ages ranged from 15 to over 90. Another 992 adults provided the same ratings for a memory from their confirmation day, when they were at about age 14. The frequencies of involuntary and voluntary retrieval were similar. Both frequencies were predicted by emotional intensity and centrality to the life story. The results from the present study-which is the first to measure the frequency of voluntary and involuntary retrieval for the same events-are counter to both cognitive and clinical theories, which consistently claim that involuntary memories are infrequent as compared with voluntary memories. Age and gender differences are noted.

Cross-cultural variability of component processes in autobiographical remembering: Japan, Turkey, and the USA.

Although the underlying mechanics of autobiographical memory may be identical across cultures, the processing of information differs. Undergraduates from Japan, Turkey, and the USA rated 30 autobiographical memories on 15 phenomenological and cognitive properties. Mean values were similar across cultures, with means from the Japanese sample being lower on most measures but higher on belief in the accuracy of their memories. Correlations within individuals were also similar across cultures, with correlations from the Turkish sample being higher between measures of language and measures of recollection and belief. For all three cultures, in multiple regression analyses, measures of recollection were predicted by visual imagery, auditory imagery, and emotions, whereas measures of belief were predicted by knowledge of the setting. These results show subtle cultural differences in the experience of remembering.

Reliving, emotions, and fragmentation in the autobiographical memories of veterans diagnosed with PTSD

Fifty veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) each recalled four autobiographical memories: one from the 2 years before service, one non-combat memory from the time in service, one from combat, and one from service that had often come as an intrusive memory. For each memory, they provided 21 ratings about reliving, belief, sensory properties, reexperiencing emotions, visceral emotional responses, fragmentation, and narrative coherence. We used these ratings to examine three claims about traumatic memories: a separation of cognitive and visceral aspects of emotion, an increased sense of reliving, and increased fragmentation. There was evidence for a partial separation of cognitive judgments of reexperiencing an emotion and reports of visceral symptoms of the emotion, with visceral symptoms correlating more consistently with scores on PTSD tests. Reliving, but not fragmentation of the memories, increased with increases in the trauma relatedness of the event and with increases in scores on standardized tests of PTSD severity. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

RCN4GSC Workshop Report: Managing Data at the Interface of Biodiversity and (Meta)Genomics, March 2011.

Building on the planning efforts of the RCN4GSC project, a workshop was convened in San Diego to bring together experts from genomics and metagenomics, biodiversity, ecology, and bioinformatics with the charge to identify potential for positive interactions and progress, especially building on successes at establishing data standards by the GSC and by the biodiversity and ecological communities. Until recently, the contribution of microbial life to the biomass and biodiversity of the biosphere was largely overlooked (because it was resistant to systematic study). Now, emerging genomic and metagenomic tools are making investigation possible. Initial research findings suggest that major advances are in the offing. Although different research communities share some overlapping concepts and traditions, they differ significantly in sampling approaches, vocabularies and workflows. Likewise, their definitions of 'fitness for use' for data differ significantly, as this concept stems from the specific research questions of most importance in the different fields. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that there is much to be gained from greater coordination and integration. As a first step toward interoperability of the information systems used by the different communities, participants agreed to conduct a case study on two of the leading data standards from the two formerly disparate fields: (a) GSC's standard checklists for genomics and metagenomics and (b) TDWG's Darwin Core standard, used primarily in taxonomy and systematic biology.

Patient beliefs and behaviors about genomic risk for type 2 diabetes: Implications for prevention

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 2015.Type 2 diabetes is a major health burden in the United States, and population trends suggest this burden will increase. High interest in, and increased availability of, testing for genetic risk of type 2 diabetes presents a new opportunity for reducing type 2 diabetes risk for many patients; however, to date, there is little evidence that genetic testing positively affects type 2 diabetes prevention. Genetic information may not fit patients illness representations, which may reduce the chances of risk-reducing behavior changes. The present study aimed to examine illness representations in a clinical sample who are at risk for type 2 diabetes and interested in genetic testing. The authors used the Common Sense Model to analyze survey responses of 409 patients with type 2 diabetes risk factors. Patients were interested in genetic testing for type 2 diabetes risk and believed in its importance. Most patients believed that genetic factors are important to developing type 2 diabetes (67%), that diet and exercise are effective in preventing type 2 diabetes (95%), and that lifestyle changes are more effective than drugs (86%). Belief in genetic causality was not related to poorer self-reported health behaviors. These results suggest that patients interest in genetic testing for type 2 diabetes might produce a teachable moment that clinicians can use to counsel behavior change.