Gender Mainstreaming and Healthcare Policy

This review addresses how The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare structures and analyzes the themes that emerge from its own interrogation of the complex concepts of gender, equality, health and policy. Overall the review takes a complimentary tone towards the handbook's arguments and premises and the unique research that sets it apart from other more scientifically or development based gender health texts. It points out, however, that the book maintains its focus on the global north and the efficacy of state policy as the primary tool for gender equality, however defined. The author suggests that in future discussions, the alternative routes and different countries that are only just touched on in the text should be more thoroughly explored.     

Mainstreaming Gender in Theological Education

This article identifies themes and strategies for mainstreaming gender in theological education, based on the author's experience with theological education in Jamaica, the US, and Canada. It begins with the need to “visit the wounds” in such a way that realism about suffering can be accompanied by strategies for healing, transformation, and celebration of the reign of God already with us and in celebration of our agency to work toward it on earth as it is in heaven.     

Resolving "Other" Status:

The current paper describes the phenomenological experience of marginal socio-ethnic status for biracial individuals. A metamodel for identity resolution for individuals who struggle with other status is proposed. Subsequently, multiple strategies in the resolution of ethnic identity development are proposed among which the individual may move and maintain a positive, stable self-image.     

Mainstreaming,resonance, and impersonal impact.

People may use information from a variety of sources in constructing their judgments of crime risk, including direct experience, word‐of‐mouth, and the mass media. One hundred fifty‐eight general population respondents provided 3 estimates of risk of violent crime: societal crime risk, personal crime risk to themselves in their own neighborhood, and personal crime risk to themselves in New York City. Respondents' level of television viewing was related to their estimates of societal crime risk and to their estimates of personal crime risk in New York City (p < .05) but not to their estimates of personal crime risk in their own neighbourhood (p < .05): all 3 risk estimates were related to respondents' level of television viewing only for those with high direct experience with crime, results that are consistent with Gerbner's concept of resonance (Gerbner et al., 1980). The implications for the concept of impersonal impact (Tyler, 1980) and Gerbner et al.'s concepts of cultivation and mainstreaming are also discussed.     

Resolving arguments accurately

This empirical investigation examined how ordinary language users resolved disagreements over the solutions to categorical syllogisms. Forty-six participants completed puzzles in logic. After completing the puzzles, participants were then randomly paired into 23 to compare their answers and to resolve 159 disagreements. Results indicate that the most frequently used strategies for resolving disagreements centered on: (a) arguing over the merits of the position (47% of the time) and (b) appealing to past solutions as a means of addressing current disputes (28% of the time). In addition, the data revealed that the most frequently used strategy (arguing the merits of the positions) was no more effective than random choice (52% increase in correct solutions) while the strategy of appealing to past solutions significantly aided dyads in reaching correct solutions (70% increase in correct solutions).     

Resolving syntactic category ambiguity: An eye-movement analysis

In two experiments, participants' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing biased syntactic category ambiguous words with either distinct (e.g., duck) or related (e.g., burn) meanings or unambiguous control words. In Experiment 1, prior context was consistent with either the dominant or subordinate interpretation of the ambiguous word. The subordinate bias effect was absent for the ambiguous words in gaze duration measures. However, effects of ambiguity did emerge in other measures for the ambiguous words preceded by context supporting the subordinate interpretation. In Experiment 2, context preceding the target words was neutral. Ambiguity effects only arose when posttarget context was consistent with the subordinate interpretation of the ambiguous words, indicating that readers initially selected the dominant interpretation. Results support immediate theories of syntactic category ambiguity resolution, but also suggest that recovery from misanalysis of syntactic category ambiguity is more difficult than for lexical-semantic ambiguity in which alternate interpretations do not cross syntactic category.     

Mainstreaming hearing-impaired students: the effect of effort in communicating on cooperation and interpersonal attraction

Cooperative and individualistic learning experiences were compared in terms of their effects on interaction and relationships between hearing and hearing-impaired students. Two contradictory hypotheses were tested--one stating that the effort required for hearing and hearing-impaired students to communicate would lead to frustration, withdrawal, exclusion, and rejection; the other stating that cooperative learning experiences would lead to cross-handicap interpersonal attraction regardless of communication difficulties. Thirty 3rd-grade students (20 hearing and 10 hearing impaired) were assigned to conditions on a stratified, random basis controlling for handicap, sex, and ability level. They participated in the study for 55 min a day for 15 instructional days. The results indicate that subjects involved in cooperative learning experiences performed higher on measures of interaction and interpersonal attraction between hearing and hearing-impaired students than did subjects involved in individualistic learning experiences.     

Resolving the emergence-reduction debate

The debate between emergentists and reductionists rests on the observation that in many situations, in which it seems desirable to work with a coherent and unified discourse, key predicates fall into different groups, such that pairs of members one taken from each group, cannot be co-predicated of some common subject. Must we settle for ‘island’ discourses in science and human affairs or is some route to a unified discourse still open? To make progress towards resolving the issue the conditions under which such segregations of predicates seem inexorable must be brought out. The distinction between determinable and determinate properties throws light on some aspects of this problem. Bohr’s concept of complementarity, when combined with Gibson’s idea of an affordances as a special class of dispositional properties is helpful. Several seeming problems melt away, for example, how it is possible for a group of notes to become hearable as a melody. The mind-body problem and the viability of the project of reducing biology to chemistry and physics are two issues that are more difficult to deal with. Are mental phenomena, such as feelings and memories emergent from material systems or are they actually material properties themselves? Are the attributes of living beings emergent from certain accidental but long running collocations of chemical reactions, or are they nothing but chemical phenomena? If emergent, in what way are they distinctive from that from which they emerge?     

Resolving Disputes Over Frozen Embryos: A New Proposal

This paper proposes a principle for adjudicating conflicts between estranged couples over whether the frozen embryos they earlier created together ought to be gestated or destroyed. I argue that the fate of the embryos ought to be determined by the party who would be most harmed by having his or her preferences overruled. But I also claim that, when embryos are destroyed against the opposition of one of their co‐creators, the individual at whose behest this was done owes compensation to his disappointed opposite number, in an amount that reflects the harm accruing to the latter as a result of the termination of the procreative project.     

Emotions within reason: Resolving conflicts in risk preference

This research focused on differential effects of emotional and rational preferences in decision making and how people resolve conflicting risk preferences caused by inconsistency between their emotional reactions to and rational assessment of a risk problem. In addition, effects of the framing of choice outcomes on emotional, rational, and overall risk preferences were examined. Adopting a within-subjects design, Study 1 showed that the emotional choice preference was often the opposite of the rational choice preference and was more risk-seeking than the rational preference. The overall favourability rating for a chosen option was significantly higher when the emotional choice and rational choice were the same than when they were opposed. Emotional preferences were significantly more susceptible than rational preferences to the hedonic tone of risky choice framing. The overall preference was a compromise of the conflicting emotional and rational preferences in some risk domains, and resembled either the emotional preference or the rational preference in other risk domains. Study 2, using a between-subjects manipulation, further confirmed that emotional preference and rational preference had differential effects on risky choice.     

Brief Report: Young Adult Women Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts

Little is known about the social cognitive development of young adults. Furthermore, existing studies of young adults tend to rely on college-age participants. A study of social cognition during interpersonal conflict was conducted with 100 young adult women (mean age = 25 years). The relationship of contextual variables to conflict-resolution strategy was examined. Strategy coding was done according to Selman's (1980) four-level model of interpersonal negotiation strategies. Of the features of context studied, the nature of the relationship between the participant and the other person (work-based, personal, or impersonal) was related to strategy use. Most strategies used (46%) were low-level unilateral strategies, e.g., giving in to the demands of the other person. Most participants reported conflicts at work. These data, taken with other research on young adults' perceived lack of ability at handling conflicts at work, suggest that constructive conflict management programs may be important for young adult women in the school-to-work transition.     

Resolving conflicting social categories: the role of age-related executive ability

We investigated the effect of age-related decline in executive ability on the application of emergent features to incongruent social category conjunctions (e.g., male midwife). When forming an impression of an incongruent conjunction, older adults used more emergent attributes (attributes associated exclusively with the category conjunction and not the constituents), relative to younger adults. Moreover, this relationship was mediated by a reduction in inhibitory ability (measured using a Stroop task) and processing speed (measured using a Digit Symbol Substitution Test, DSST). These findings are consistent with the notion that executive ability is pivotal in understanding social functioning in older adults. We discuss the implications of these findings for the continuing development of models outlining the processes and stages involved in perceiving social category conjunctions.