Objective: This study sought to evaluate the feasibility of a pilot, dyad-based lifestyle intervention, the Unidas por la Vida program, for improving weight loss and dietary intake among high-risk Mexican American mothers who have Type 2 diabetes and their overweight/obese adult daughters. Method: Mother-daughter dyads (N ϭ 89) were recruited from two federally qualified health centers and randomly assigned to either the Unidas intervention or to the control condition. The 16-week Unidas intervention consisted of the following: (a) four group meetings, (b) eight home visits, and (c) booster telephone calls by a lifestyle community coach. The control condition consisted of educational materials mailed to participants' homes. Participants completed surveys at T1 (baseline) and T2 (16 weeks) that assessed various demographic, social network involvement, and dietary variables. Results: Unidas participants lost significantly more weight at T2 (p Ͻ .003) compared with the control participants. Furthermore, intervention participants also were more likely to be eating foods with lower glycemic load (p Ͻ .001) and less saturated fat (p ϭ .004) at T2. Unidas participants also reported a significant increase in health-related social support and social control (persuasion control only) and a decrease in undermining. Conclusions: The Unidas program promoted weight loss and improved dietary intake, as well as changes in diet-related involvement of participants' social networks. The results from this study demonstrate that interventions that draw upon multiple people who share a health-risk have the potential to foster significant changes in lifestyle behaviors and in social network members' health-related involvement. Future research that builds on these findings is needed to elucidate the specific dyadic and social network processes that may drive health behavior change.

We investigated the semantic blocking effect in picture naming and word-picture matching for two nonfluent aphasic patients who show evidence of a deficit in inhibiting verbal representations (M.L. and B.Q), one fluent aphasic patient (K.V.), and neurologically intact control participants. In two picture-naming tasks (Experiments 1A and 1B), M.L. and B.Q, relative to controls, showed a greatly exaggerated semantic blocking effect in naming latencies that increased dramatically across repeated presentations. On two corresponding word-picture matching tasks (Experiments 2A and 2B), both also showed an increasing semantic blocking effect, though the effects were not as large nor as consistent as those in naming. The fluent patient, K.V., showed a pattern like controls on both tasks. On an associated word-picture matching task, both M.L. and B.Q showed results paralleling those of controls. The contrast between the production and comprehension patterns for M.L. and B.Q. supports the conclusion that their exaggerated blocking effect in production arises during lexical rather than semantic selection. We postulate that M.L.'s (and potentially B.Q's) production effect is due to difficulties in postselection inhibition, which results in overactivation of lexical representations. This overactivation is likely to be one source of their nonfluency in spontaneous speech.

Objective Although chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment is common among breast cancer patients, evidence for effective interventions addressing cognitive deficits is limited. This randomized controlled trial examined the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a Tibetan Sound Meditation (TSM) program to improve cognitive function and quality of life in breast cancer patients. Methods Forty-seven breast cancer patients (mean age 56.3 years), who were staged I–III at diagnosis, 6–60 months post-chemotherapy, and reported cognitive impairment at study entry were recruited. Participants were randomized to either two weekly TSM sessions for 6 weeks or a wait list control group. Neuropsychological assessments were completed at baseline and 1 month post-treatment. Self-report measures of cognitive function (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT)-Cog), quality of life (SF-36), depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale), sleep disturbance (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index), fatigue (Brief Fatigue Inventory), and spirituality (FACT-Sp) were completed at baseline, the end of treatment, and 1 month later. Results Relative to the control group, women in the TSM group performed better on the verbal memory test (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test trial 1) (p = 0.06) and the short-term memory and processing speed task (Digit Symbol) (p = 0.09) and reported improved cognitive function (p = 0.06), cognitive abilities (p = 0.08), mental health (p = 0.04), and spirituality (p = 0.05) at the end of treatment but not 1 month later. Conclusions This randomized controlled trial revealed that TSM program appears to be a feasible and acceptable intervention and may be associated with short-term improvements in objective and subjective cognitive function as well as mental health and spirituality in breast cancer patients.

Speech error data and empirical studies suggest that the scope of planning is larger for semantic than for phonological form representations in speech production. Previous results have demonstrated that some patients show dissociable impairments in the retention of semantic and phonological codes. The effect of these STM deficits on speech production was investigated using a phrase production paradigm that manipulated the semantic relatedness of the words in the phrase. Subjects produced a conjoined noun phrase to describe two pictures (e.g., "ball and hat") or produced the same phrases in response to pairs of written words. For the picture naming condition, control subjects showed an interference effect for semantically related pictures relative to unrelated pictures. This interference effect was greatly exaggerated for two patients with semantic short-term memory deficits but not for a patient with a phonological STM deficit. For the written words, control subjects showed a small facilitatory effect for the onset of phrases containing semantically related words. One of the patients with a semantic STM deficit who was tested on picture naming was also tested on these materials and showed a small facilitatory effect within the range of controls. The findings support the contention that speech planning is carried out at a phrasal level at the lexical-semantic level and that the capacities that support semantic retention in list recall support speech production planning.

With the increasing success of cancer treatment and the ability to return to previous family, social, and work activities, symptom management and quality of life are an essential part of survivorship. We propose that meditation may help to improve cancer-related cognitive dysfunction, alleviate other cancer-related sequelae, and should be fully investigated as an adjuvant to cancer treatment.