Associate Professor Hillary Shulman, former MA student Sam Bashian, PhD students Rachel Barry Wade and Blue Learner were published in Health Communication for research showing that patients better understand and react to health care options when they are presented using simple language. Their paper, “When Fears Come True: An Experimental Approximation of Patient Comprehension During Initial Cancer Diagnoses,” examines how anxiety about death and other complicated medical information impacts people’s ability to pay attention.