Article archive / October 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 2. Source pages: 10.
In this month’s Gumbo, I’m honored to have Tulane’s Dr. Gary Dohanich adding to the discussion we started last month with Linda Brannon about psychology and cancer. Gary looks for us at the epigenetic connections that might explain the Purdue findings about higher cancer incidence in adult victims of child abuse.
Dr. Melissa Beck, cognitive psychology professor at LSU, takes a look for us at cell-phones and driving, a pet peeve of mine, as some of my colleagues know. If you haven’t yet experienced the invisible gorilla that Melissa tells us about, follow her link. It’s a hoot.
Baton Rouge area practitioner Dr. Jesse Lambert graciously agreed to comment on a forensic article, where authors warn psychologists that juries and judges often don’t know if we are good or bad. Go figure.
• “Does Childhood Misfortune Increase Cancer Risk in Adulthood?” – Journal of Aging and Health, July 2012.
“Morton, Schafer, and Ferraro of Purdue University report that childhood adversity, in particular abuse by parents, is linked to increased risk of cancers later in adult life. The relationship between childhood abuse and adult cancer risk was strongest when sons were abused by fathers and daughters abused by mothers. However, frequent physical or emotional abuse by either parent also increased the risk of later cancer in offspring of either sex.”
COMMENT: Dr. Gary Dohanich, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Tulane University:
“Numerous reports document the negative effects of childhood adversity, including parental abuse and deprivation, on later health outcomes, ranging from cognitive deficits to somatic illnesses. The current study extends this avenue of research along several lines by confirming the increased risk of cancers, documenting the impact of multiple misfortunes, and identifying the higher vulnerability of males. To explain the underlying link between early environment and adult outcomes, the authors allude to “biological embedding”, as pro- posed by Clyde Hertzman and colleagues, to explain the ability of early experiences to induce long-termchanges in biological systems. At the biological level, the field of epigenetics brings the concepts of nature and nurture into harmony by providing a cellular mechanism by which early environmental factors directly regulate the expression of genes throughout life. In this case, early experiences could alter cellular biochemistry, so that childhood adversity induces long-term effects on the expression or repression of genes that lead normal cells to morph into cancerous states.”
• “DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION: Dual-Task Studies of Simulated Driving and Conversing on a Cellular Telephone” – Psychological Science, November 2001
The researchers found significant interference by conversations on cell phones due to “diverting attention to an engaging cognitive context other than the one immediately associated with driving.”
COMMENT: Dr. Melissa Beck, Assistant Professor of Psychology, LSU, Baton Rouge
“University of Utah Strayer and Johnston (2001) show that divided attention can result in driving accidents. When attention is divided, people can miss information that occurs right in front of their eyes. For example one study demonstrated this inattentional blindness in a basketball pass counting task (Simons & Chabirs, 1999). Participants were to count the number of ball passes made by the team wearing white shirts and to ignore the passes made by the team wearing black shirts. During the middle of the task a person dressed in a gorilla suit walked into the middle of the basketball game and turned toward the camera, pounded their chest and then walked of screen (you can try the task for yourself at this web page: http://www.simonslab.com/videos.html). Only about 50% of the participants noticed the gorilla. This is surprising because people generally believe that if something this salient happens right before our eyes, we will see it. However, this is not the case if our attention is directed to a demanding task. Similarly, if we are talking on the cell phone we may fail to see a pedestrian walk into the street or the car in front of us put on its breaks even if our eyes are looking directly at the location of the pedestrian or the car.
“Another important factor is that when talking on the phone, your conversation partner does not share your visual environment with you. Research has shown that conversations with individuals not in the car with you are more detrimental than conversations with individuals in the car (Drews, Pasupathi, & Strayer, 2008). The reason is that that the visual environment is shared for two people in a car. Therefore, when traffic gets heavy or there is an un expected event, the conversation slows or stops on both ends. However, for a conversation on the phone, the conversation continues and so attention continues to be distracted from the driving task.
Drews, F. A. Pasupathi, M. & Strayer, D. L. (2008) Passenger and cell phone conversations in simulated driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(4), 392-400. Simons, D. J. & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074.
• “Expert Testimony,” Psychological Science, Feb 2011
In a review of expert psychological testimony authors point that current safeguards do not appear to increase sensitivity to research flaws, and that judges and juries can’t always tell what is quality and what is not, in what psychologists present.
COMMENT: Dr. Jesse Lambert, Clinical Psychologist, Forensic Mental Health Assessment
“In the article Expert Psychological Testimony, Cutler and Kovera provide a good review of a number of specific topics related psychological expert testimony. The most salient point of this article is that testimony offered by any psychologist regarding any psycholegal issue at bar, must be of the highest quality.The consequences of providing "shabby" opinions in a forensic case not only betray the trust that has been invested by the Court, but also taints the profession at large.
In addition, the opinion must be offered in a completely transparent fashion, as psychologists providing expert opinion are functioning within the adversarial system of the Court. Each attorney has the right to understand how the opinion was devised and further to challenge the opinion presented.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.