An Analysis of the Ego-Depletion Effects of Emotion Versus Attention Draining Tasks: Even Emotionally Arousing Depletion Tasks Do Not Show an Ego-Depletion Effect

The theory of ego-depletion has come under intense scrutiny within the past few years. Beginning around 2010, researchers conducted meta-analyses and large replication studies that have investigated this topic, and found a wide range of evidence for and against the existence of an ego-depletion effect. Although the goal has been to determine whether this effect exists or not, the research has proved that the answer may be more complicated than that. The purpose of the current research was to examine the different theories about self-control, and to test two specific depleting tasks against a control group. The depleting tasks were chosen by selecting one that has been shown to have a depleting effect in multiple studies, the emotion-suppression task, and one that has shown small or negligible ego-depletion effects, the attention video task. This study also used two dependent measures, the impossible version of the Euler tracing task and the Multi-Source Interference Task, which have been used in previous studies on ego-depletion. The results did not show an ego-depletion effect for either task, on either of the dependent measures. This supports recent research that has contradicted the ego-depletion theory, however, more studies need to be done to determine if there are certain conditions in which the ego-depletion effect is present, or if the effect is universally spurious

Impact of a pre-counseling educational video on the duration of cancer genetic counseling sessions

Background: Genetic counseling and testing is considered a necessary component of clinical care for patients who may be at risk for hereditary cancer syndromes. Appropriate genetic counseling and testing can impact medical management for these patients. There is a documented shortage of genetic counselors, leading to long wait times and inequity in access to these services. Many approaches are being studied to address these issues of access to genetic counseling and testing. This study aims to investigate whether having patients watch an educational video prior to their cancer genetic counseling appointment decreases the duration of the appointment. The goal of this research is to identify ways to streamline genetic counseling sessions so that genetic counselors have more clinical availability. Methods: An eight-minute-long educational video was created by the cancer genetic counselors and the Medical Director of the Cancer Genetics Program at UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital. This video was sent to patients when they scheduled their appointment and they were encouraged to watch it prior to their appointment. Over the course of multiple years, the cancer genetic counselors documented whether or not their patients watched the educational video prior to the counseling session. They also documented the duration of each session, whether they had a student with them in the session, whether the session was virtual or in-person, and whether a pedigree was obtained during the session. Results: Whether patients watched the educational video did not have a significant impact on the duration of the genetic counseling sessions. Sessions were significantly longer when there was a student present or when a pedigree was taken during the session. Telemedicine sessions were significantly shorter than in-person counseling sessions. Conclusion: The results of this research showed that the educational video did not impact appointment duration. However, there were limitations of this study. Namely, patients may have watched the educational video months before their appointment which may have impacted their recall of the information. This study did show that telemedicine counseling sessions were significantly shorter than in-person sessions, which suggests that virtual appointments may be helpful in increasing the efficiency of genetic counseling clinics